The Beginning and Early Middle of Persuasion ; Or, Form and Ideology in Austen's Experiment with Narrative Comedy

Abstract

Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in distressed one. (3) Mr. Shepherd was completely empowered to act; and no sooner had such an end been reached, than Anne, who had been most attentive listener to the whole, left the room, to seek the comfort of cool air for her flushed cheeks; and as she walked along favourite grove, said, with gentle sigh, a few months more, and he, perhaps may be walking here. (25) This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before. She understood him. He could not forgive her - but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her and becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer without the desire to give her relief. It was remainder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed. (91) These three well-known passages from Jane Austen's last novel represent the first move of exposition, the introduction of the narrative's global instability (that is, the situation that must be complicated and resolved before the novel can end), and the culmination of Anne's reflections about Wentworth during the Uppercross section of the novel, at point I will call its early middle. It is my contention that, in