Jane Austen and the Gentrification of Commerce

Abstract

In fifth chapter of Persuasion (1817), Jane Austen's narrator describes desolation of heroine Anne Elliot as Anne contemplates impending departure from family's ancestral home in Somersetshire countryside. The move, to smaller rented quarters in city of Bath, is a sad one. In language that has come to haunt criticism of novel, narrator observes: Anne, though dreading possible heats of September in all white glare of Bath, and grieving to forego all influence so sweet and so sad of autumnal months in country, did not think that, every thing considered, she wished to remain (23). The heroine's mood is as mercurial as it is doleful in span of a sentence moving between dread, regret and resignation. Yet what has always struck critics is way Somersetshire scenery seems to function here, and elsewhere, as a kind of objective correlative for not only Anne's but also Austen's mood. Autumnal is word used to describe Persuasion, last novel Austen completed before death and work that critics often call most personal. There is no need to rehearse reasons why this critical commonplace, linking Anne's autumn with Austen's, is teeming with fallacies a judgment Claudia Johnson rendered some time ago.1 Rather, question that must be asked is: what does perceived autumnal mood of novel have to do with its supposed critique of aristocratic authority? The question asks us to consider relationship between novel's political and personal dimensions, and it also requires that we negotiate a more complex politics than is often assumed. For once one looks into it, regret Anne expresses appears to be related to heroine's of degradation in family's social position, a feeling of injured pride articulated moment Anne crosses threshold of apartment in Bath. Though she acknowledges that new home was undoubtedly best in Camden-place, she sigh[s] that her father should feel no degradation in his change; should see nothing to regret in duties and dignity of resident land-holder (90-91). Such sentiments are commonly expressed in Austen's fiction, but what is their role in a novel whose other distinguishing feature is its attack on aristocratic prerogative? Most attempts at historicizing Persuasion focus on novel's exaltation of Captain Wentworth, a naval officer and man of sense whose worth trumps claims of lineage (167). The novel's hero has even acquired what we might call meta-heroic status within Austen criticism. A typical commentator singles out Wentworth as the only Jane Austen hero who lifts a finger to better his