Fanny and Anne

In researching for our assignment next week, I found an interesting essay from Nineteenth-Century Fiction, published by the University of California Press. In her piece, "Jane Austen's Subdued Heroines", Valerie Shaw points out similarities shared by Fanny Price and Anne Elliot that separate the two from the other Austen heroines. Firstly, Shaw notes that Austen places Fanny and Anne in an outsider role in their home, and as a result, both women lend themselves "to the selfishness of others [as] a way of dodging natural desire to be wanted, not just needed." In the role of the outsider, "Both characters are free to observe the societies which exclude them, but their freedom brings more pain than pleasure because it comes with separation from the men they love. Both try to reconcile themselves to the inevitability and finality of the separation. Their suffering, as they try to accept with the mind what is anathema to the heart, stretches almost the entire length of the novels." Fanny's unspoken love for Edmund mirrors Anne's longing for Wentworth. Shaw remarks, "The solitariness of Fanny Price and Anne Elliot, is by comparison, more painful:  they are not only separated from the men they love -- and know for certain they love -- they are at odds with the societies in which they live and act." Fanny is elevated in the estimations of her family and society with her engagement to Edmund, and from Fanny's reward for her endurance and subdued nature, we can predict that Anne will be rewarded similarly at the end of Persuasion.