Persuasion (1818) / Persuasion (1995)

Jane Austen’s oeuvre ends on kind of a downer note. Persuasion is no fairy-tale in which a tousled and damp Colin Firth rides in to whisk away a raven-haired, sharp-tongued young woman to his sprawling estate, winning her with acidic wit and brooding, needy glances from across the –

What was I saying? Oh yeah, Persuasion. It’s the wish-fulfillment of the older woman who thought she missed her only chance at love, not the pink-and-ponies bridal fantasy of Pride and Prejudice. This means it’s less fun to read. If I wanted to listen to women in their thirties complain they aren’t married, I’d watch Sex and the City. Austen is widely considered to have invented the romance novel, but in the case of Persuasion, we’re talking more like chick lit. And even Bridget Jones gets to make out with Colin Firth.

In a lot of Austen literature, the heroine is described as plainer than her sisters, friends or desirable cousins. Filmmakers then proceed to cast these roles with Kiera Knightley and Gwenyth Paltrow. Not so the BBC, which took seriously the descriptions of Anne Elliot in the first chapter: “faded and thin,” and “haggard.” In fact nearly everyone in the miniseries looks like they’re riding the Green Line at rush hour. This does not make for a sweeping period romance, but it might be an okay documentary that reminds me how nice it is to live in the 21st century where I’m allowed to have my own money and a job.

What made reading the book worthwhile is this exchange at the end, between Anne and a male friend on the subject of whether it is women or men who love longest and deepest. It was not part of the original ending. It feels, a little, like the words of an author who didn’t live long enough to see a future she might like too.

“Well, Miss Elliot,” (lowering his voice,) “as I was saying we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman, would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you — all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.”

“Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”