The main character of Jane Austen’s Persuasion is a wilting wallflower whose brief early romance was nipped in the bud. With nail-biting anguish Anne watches as her former lover becomes an eligible bachelor courted by all.
While Captain Wentworth’s deepest character remains elusive for much of the book, her own character is a superb mixture of unappreciated loyalty and constant desire to please. Thus she embodies constancy in the face of abandonment: rejected by a vain parent; loving but undemanding as a person; feeling the full weight of rejection in all aspects.
What makes her story so profoundly engaging is not only the complete tie-in between characterisation, plot and themes. It’s that somehow Austen manages to make Anne a real-seeming person, not a cypher. She represents thematic qualities even as she exists in her daily life and navigates its complexity. Thus the core of Anne’s characterisation — her endurance through neglect and heartache — gives the story its great depth and meaning, while the daily workings of her intelligence inside this fluctuating world make it seem true.
Persuasion, abandonment, constancy, suffering — and reversal.
Perfection!