Maybe Austen was getting soft in her older age because we
seem to finally get the romantic ending that at least I have been hoping for.
There are some exceptions, (Pride and Prejudice, for one, which is so often the
exception…) but usually the ending is an unhappy-happy ending, meaning the
ending may appear happy but there is really something else going on. I’m glad
she chose this ending, where there is actually a real proclamation of love and
honesty about the past. Anne and Captain Wentworth get to renew their love and
get engaged. Plus Wentworth is rich now, hurray! Social mobility is once again
brought up in the closing line with the inclusion of the “domestic virtue” in
the Navy, which I took to mean that there is the possibility of establishing
one’s security and possibility. Wentworth is now a deserving man, and not the
only one who has changed his status. The Elliots seem to be more aware of their
circumstance and are at least considering their bad debt, even Sir Walter.
Austen is still tying up all the loose ends, but normally she does this in such
a forced way, and this seemed more romantic, if not more believable. It’s a
surprisingly satisfying ending. I’d like to return to my original question of
whether or not being persuaded is a good trait, and it seems to be answered in
the ending. Anne decides that she was right to be persuaded in the past, and
she therefore kind of recognizes the duty she had at the time. Now that the
social order is different, Wentworth is a better match than he was years ago…
wait, this is getting less and less romantic as I think about it… I might need
to rethink my previous comment here. At least there’s a proclamation of love,
and luckily society organized itself so that these two people could get
together.
YES I loved the ending for its realistic qualities too! I really struggled with the fact that Anne and Wentworth were okay to marry now only because he's rich as well, but I think it's still clear that they love each other and perhaps might have even still gotten married even if he was only well off rather than absolutely loaded. If he were broke and desolate, then I know Austen wouldn't have made them a match because even Austen herself knows that all the love in the world can't fix a marriage with no prospects at all (take Fanny's parents, for example) and just wouldn't have made sense. Only now that they have both love AND a sustainable lifestyle can their marriage truly work. I like to think it's romance with a good dash of sense thrown in.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree, when reading I was so thrilled with the happy, romantic ending. Still a little rushed, but I felt like at least it took a few chapters to tie up loose strngs rather than a few pages, and Anne and Captain Wentworth had moments throughout the whole novel building up to finally admit their love. It seemed in this novel Austen used the past to support and build up their relationship, so we as readers would be really unhappy if the novel did not end in matrimony (I didn't have this feeling so much with Elinor and Edward, etc). Austen may have built up the romance so that the social critique that Wentworth is only a respectable match when he becomes wealthy is less obvious.
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