Review | Persuasion by Jane Austen

#QOTD – Do you write handwritten letters?

I feel that when someone sends you a handwritten letter, you receive a part of who they are. I am crazily analogue, a sucker for everything vintage, little notes in coffee stained paper, polaroid pictures, sending handwritten letters, making birthday cards and keeping a journal over a digital planner. I have even turned to pen pals for exchanging letters, but with this pandemic, I don’t get to go out to the post office to post my letters.

Persuasion by #JaneAusten is my third Austen novel (Pride & Prejudice and Emma being the first two), and I think I agree to the belief that when it comes to Jane Austen’s love scenes, there is the letter scene in Persuasion, and then there is everything else.

Anne was engaged once, to Frederick Wentworth when she was 19, but her well-meaning friends and family convinced her to break off the engagement because Wentworth had no money. Eight years later, Wentworth has joined the navy and made his fortune. Over the course of the book, Anne and Wentworth come back together.

Anne Elliot is not witty like P&P’s Lizzie Bennet, nor is she brashly confident like Emma Woodhouse of Emma. She is Austen’s older heroine, and a mature one too. The plot was not very amusing, rather a little sadder, but painfully beautiful.

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