The Choice: Jane Austen’s heroines have a choice to make. Here’s what happens next.
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The Choice: Jane Austen’s heroines have a choice to make. Here’s what happens next.
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Hello, friends,
It’s still January, and we’re spending this month discussing Jane Austen’s wintery, soulful novel Persuasion, and finding the joy and hope where we can - in Austen, in fiction, and in life!
Today’s post is about a choice that Anne Elliot, our heroine in Persuasion, makes. It baffles me, surprises me, and it’s small, friends, ever so small; but yet it’s big in its example of how Austen has so much that is in the details - all intentional, all carefully plotted, and all telling us something. And here we are listening and discussing and decoding, 200 years later.
And this is about a small passage that outlines, in just three sentences, a conscious, difficult - and rather ballsy, it has to be said - decision by Anne Elliot, a woman who does not have a lot of options.
It’s a still, quiet thing. It is not heralded, and there is no drumroll or resulting fireworks.
It is in fact easy to miss. But it’s there - and we want to explore what it’s about.
And in exploring what it’s about, we find so much more to unravel than expected, starting with this easy-to-miss, baffling, almost slightly masochistic-seeming thing that Anne decides! So, here we go:
Anne’s Choice
It’s all in just three sentences of Persuasion - and it’s easy to miss even when you’re looking for it.
The passage appears in an in-between time for Anne - before Anne knows the vastly eligible William Elliot’s true character; but after she and Wentworth have briefly reconnected and he is free of Louisa. It is before the two former loves are completely reconciled - there is still much that could go wrong.
Anne is contemplating this, one morning at her hotel in the middle of busy Bath. I imagine her at a window watching the parade of humanity, in the “white glare” of this status-hungry, appearance-obsessed city.
She is, as always on this morning, cloaked in the consciousness of time - at once full of regret, doubt about what could have been, hope about what might be, and a present that is completely uncertain.
And she is contemplating William Elliot, the most eligible bachelor in her very eligible world, who is paying attentions to her, and who - if she could accept him - would restore not only status and stability to her through marriage, but he would also restore her to the family’s ancestral estate, Kellynch Hall, where she would be mistress and take the place of her late beloved mother. Memory and regret mingle with a growing soft light of hope in her consciousness.
And this is when she decides something, on her own, within herself and for herself. And it’s a choice that gives her peace amidst everything.
Here it is:
“There was much to regret. How she might have felt, had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth: and be the conclusion of the present suspense good, or bad, her affection would be his for ever. Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation.” (Chapter 21, p. 135, Norton Critical Edition)
That’s the choice - whether the future is going to be “good, or bad,” Anne cannot control.
How William Elliot will act, and what kind of person he is, Anne cannot know and cannot control.
What Wentworth himself will do, Anne cannot control.
The one thing Anne Elliot can control she does control, and that’s to make a decision: She can decide that “her affection would be his for ever.”
She can decide that their “union” is what she will honor, even if it’s past its sell-by date, and that union will keep her from other men, including the one who’s about to inherit her very own home. Any other union will separate her from her true love as effectively as death itself.
The one thing Anne Elliot can control she does control, and that’s to make a decision: She can decide that “her affection would be his for ever.”
This is deep, friends! And it’s all there, in three sentences, even if one of those sentences does have both a colon and a semicolon.
And in case we were about to miss this thing - this digging-of-Anne-into-the-very-depths-of-her-soul-to-muster-what-agency-she-has-and-find-a-way-to-go-forward-that-gives-her-peace thing - Austen has laid it out for us and underlined it with the brief, understated yet clarifying passage that comes right after that, where she tells us exactly what to think of this:
“Prettier musings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy, could never have passed along the streets of Bath, than Anne was sporting with from Camden-place to Westgate-buildings. It was almost enough to spread purification and perfume all the way.”
That’s again Austen telling us what to think of this, and we don’t even realize it - what Anne has just done is significant, and sweet. It is sweeter than all of Bath, and in fact her very nature and agency and choice is enough to “perfume” these glaring, mean streets.
Meanwhile: William Elliot.
And to back up a bit - this is coming before, notably before, Anne learns of her cousin William Elliot’s true character from Mrs. Smith. Anne awakes the next morning having reunited with a now free and untethered Wentworth, and they seem to have reconnected. There is hope. But nothing is guaranteed, though much is possible.
In veering her choice away from the all-but-guaranteed life of status and wealth that would buoy up any other young woman in Bath, Anne is doing something radical. To choose nothing - a “nobody” as has been established early on - over a very-much-Somebody by the standards of this world.
But as for her cousin, Mr. William Elliot, his attentions are “flattering but painful” - she’s already described him as an ideal person to outward appearances; his only fault, at this point in the narrative, is, like Jane Fairfax’s, of not being open enough.
Now, she, in the conditional tense that always evokes time and its passage in this novel, Austen forces us to reflect on on what might have been with Mr. Elliot, by cleverly describing Anne’s refusal to reflect on just that:
“How she might have felt, had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth …”
What is Anne saying here?
She is saying there is no guarantee; though Wentworth has just begun again to bring her “joy, senseless joy!” - nevertheless the conclusion might be “good or bad.” And, in a world where there aren’t a lot of options for what one does, she is choosing how to think. And how to love.
And she has the power to make that decision; there’s not a lot of wiggle room, there is much out of her control. But choose she can and will.
So she chooses Wentworth. Whether or not he chooses her again, she believes her love for him will - if not unite her to him - will divide her from any other.
So she chooses Wentworth. Whether or not he chooses her again, she believes her love for him will - if not unite her to him - will divide her from any other.
She takes a nearly powerless situation, reaches deep in herself, and from the margins of the world she inhabits she makes a choice: She chooses love.
Anne not only chooses love, but she chooses love that, as she says in her extraordinary climactic speech in the debate with Capt. Harville is the kind of strong love - “that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.”
Fanny Price’s Stubborn, Relentless, Radical Choice
And thinking about Anne’s choice brings to mind the choices involved in other Austen heroines - especially the one that, for me, most brings to mind Anne’s quiet strength and spirit: Fanny Price.
We all remember Fanny’s big choice: It comes at the end of a long upward trajectory that Fanny is on throughout the length of the novel, and the choice illuminates her new-found desirability in worldly terms, her prudence and intelligence, and also her conscience and strength - and what appears to be her obstinate stubbornness.
And in retrospect, for those of us who know theses stories inside and outside, Fanny’s - like Anne’s - choice might seem easy. We know about Henry Crawford and how he ends up - but Austen makes this choice way more difficult than she needs to.
Austen makes it more difficult by showing Henry changing, growing and surprising himself as much as anyone by actually caring for Fanny. As previously reported, he provides what is the only thing approaching a sexy moment in Mansfield, and it seems Austen wants us readers to wobble even when Fanny won’t.
Tables have truly turned: Fanny has spent the novel ignored, unloved - and we have been right there with her and her anguished consciousness, as professor John Mullan might put it. But now she is offered love, with all the credentials of society that has up til now rejected and ignored Fanny.
And her choice? She rejects that love - even if it is going to be love returned. It is not for her.
This is ballsy! Why?!
Fanny stays firm. But we’re not super clear what might have happened - she might have chosen him, in the end. But in the end it’s Henry himself who has wavered. He just cannot resist the opportunity to turn Mrs. Rushworth back into Maria Bertram.
Austen is twisting, turning, throwing things up in the air even in this carefully constructed story - but as Mullan points out in his engaging book What Matters in Jane Austen, these are not fixed characters - any chance thing, including rain, an overturned carriage, or proximity to a former flirt, can cause a person to waver, as events, and as circumstances, shape them. Such it is in life, and such it is in Austen’s realism.
So then: We have Anne’s conscious, deliberate choice for love, even if it is unreturned. And Fanny’s conscious, deliberate choice to reject love, even if it is returned.
We also have Anne’s conscious, deliberate choice for love, even if it is unreturned. And Fanny’s conscious, deliberate choice to reject love, even if it is returned.
Anyone else want to stand up and make a choice?
Eliza’s Choice - but not that one
Elizabeth’s perhaps most famous choice is one of our favorite scenes in all of Austen - that wonderful moment in Pride and Prejudice where she marshals her mind and her eloquence to reject the haughty, “bewitched” Darcy, before, as we also appreciate, ultimately accepting him. And this early proposal rejection, understandably, is the choice that gets all the press.
But there’s another, quite Anne-like choice that Elizabeth makes, and, like Anne’s, it’s highly personal and fuels her with power, agency, and determination that is completely private and interior in its evolution and its expression.
This choice happens at Pemberley, when she is visiting with her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner, and she’s knocked over with the grandness of it all. And she contemplates that all this, the vast wealth, and history, and foundational stability of this Great House constitutes the very thing, the very life, and the status that she has rejected - by sending Darcy on his way, without even contemplating it.
She contemplates now.
That first view of Pemberley - so dramatically captured on screen by both the 1995 BBC series and the 2005 feature film - brings with it the contemplation by Lizzy that pervades the reader and viewer as we also tour this Great House. But Austen actually makes it explicit: “and at that moment she felt, that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!”
And does she say anything - as we all would, and likely so would Jane Austen herself, dear reader, to her aunt? “All of this could have been mine,” we might blab!
She does not. She entertains this thought, like Anne, looking out a window very quietly, never mentioning this wonderful, slightly bittersweet secret that we as readers are allowed in on. Not a word is breathed to her aunt and uncle and certainly not Mrs. Reynolds.
Elizabeth tours the rooms, looks out every window, and there is an entire paragraph devoted to the understated beauty and “real elegance” of the place, and she thinks yet again, “And of this place … I might have been mistress!”
But then she thinks, again: “‘—But no,’ recollecting herself, — ‘that could never be: my uncle and aunt would have been lost to me: I should not have been allowed to invite them. This was a lucky recollection — it saved her from something like regret.”
In Anne-like self-communion she simply reflects, explicitly, on whether she has any regret. Would this have changed her answer?
She makes her choice, again: No.
Even though Austen calls this “lucky,” don’t believe her - we can choose to some extent how we will view a thing. And Lizzy makes a decided, determined choice:
Even seeing all of this, even taking these riches into account, and in light of her burgeoning feelings for Darcy, she reflects that if she wouldn’t actually be able to enjoy this place with her family, such as it is, and with her beloved aunt and uncle Gardiner, even as she is doing now, she would not have any pleasure in accepting.
What is remarkable about The Choice in Austen is that it always reveals a third path - it’s not the world’s way, or the highway; it’s not either a complete acceptance of status and wealth, or a rejection of it; it’s simply showing that a young person can always marshal their inner strength and stay true to oneself. Whether that means choosing love, as in Anne’s case, an undying, unrequited love, but nevertheless embracing the power in choice; or whether it means embracing the power in denial, as in Elizabeth’s choice and Fanny’s stubbornness.
Guess what, it’s not all about you, Emma!
Unlike every other heroine in Austen, Emma does not lack power or agency. Instead, power and agency is exactly what she misuses and misdirects.
There appears to be no agonizing choice that the plot hinges on in Emma.
What is remarkable about The Choice in Austen is that it always reveals a third path - it’s not the world’s way, or the highway; it’s not either a complete acceptance of status and wealth, or a rejection of it; it’s simply showing that a young person can always marshal their inner strength and stay true to oneself.
Or is there?
Look again! There is in fact a choice - a big, fat, juicy choice - that wrecks and rebuilds the entire plot of Emma.
But it’s not Emma’s choice; it’s Jane’s.
Yes, Jane Fairfax, as we explored in a previous post, when faced with being a governess and marrying Frank Churchill, chooses, first, being a governess!
And do we blame her, friends? After that business at Box Hill? And all the relentless flirting and subterfuge that has driven her to a Regency-style nervous breakdown?
This is a deeper, darker moment in Emma than most discussions acknowledge.
It turns both Frank and Emma - the less superior lovers in the novel, as opposed to the superior characters of both Jane and Knightley - into nervous wrecks. And both of them - not only Frank, but also Emma - are set about determinedly and desperately to redeem themselves in Jane’s eyes.
Jane has a choice. She can marry this fop, or she can take the highway.
She takes the highway, first, and even though right afterward she swerves back to her fop - still, her message gets through, and it’s through Jane Fairfax that Austen shows us that even a powerless, disconnected young person with no prospects can forge a path powered by self-respect, intelligence, and superiority.
What’s the Matter with Marianne?
What about Sense and Sensibility?
Elinor is a very Anne Elliot-like heroine - prudent, strong, dutiful, inwardly beautiful in every way. She and her sister Marianne spend the majority of this novel reacting to the bad choices of others - their father’s inability to get his house in order, the brother’s weak refusal of financial support.
But a choice does present itself in this novel, and at a crucial point for the dynamic, emotional Marianne.
It comes with Marianne’s illness; and her choice - which is basically to live.
Throughout Sense and Sensibility, Marianne has displayed a high level of rejection of standard norms - falling into silence, non-communication, and awkwardness, for anyone other than her sister or a Romantic, poetry-reciting lover.
Marianne embraces Romance, nature, “dead leaves,” dramatic verse, high sensibility and feeling, and in a very Romantic gesture - she eventually embraces death.
Her illness marks a dramatic turning point. It flares when she takes herself into terrible winds and weather in a fit of heartbreak, leaving her exhausted, soaked, and ill.
When her fever breaks and she wakes up, she is a new Marianne.
Marianne has made a decision, you could say. A choice: She will embrace life, and to do that she must compromise, and find the good where she can.
The good is not going to be found in wanton trysts in the woods, or poetic verse, and it’s not going to ride up on horseback and sweep her off her feet.
The good is going to come from embracing life such as it is, and supplying some grace, some consideration, and some rationality in your recipe for love, of both family and friendship, and romance.
Marianne has made a decision, you could say. A choice: She will embrace life, and to do that she must compromise, and find the good where she can.
She’ll compromise, she’ll embrace life, and she’ll accept the love of the flannel-wearing Colonel Brandon. That’s Marianne’s choice.
Not so fast, Catherine
So that takes care of our heroines, friends; Marianne, Jane Fairfax and Emma, Elizabeth, Fanny Price, and Anne Elliot. Who are we missing?
Oh yes, we almost got by with it, but not so fast - we’re missing Catherine Morland.
She’d like to sneak away and avoid this discussion altogether.
But we’re dragging Catherine in here for just a minute, to say that Catherine doesn’t appear to have much choice, in any matter.
And perhaps it’s her lack of choice that is the point, in Northanger Abbey.
But yet: Choice is, when you think about it, still a key plot device in the novel.
While young, naive Catherine has little agency, perhaps this is itself the point, and it’s what is dramatized.
It’s that frustrating, infuriating lack of agency that is exactly what we are meant to feel in Catherine’s scenes with John and Isabella Thorpe. You have a remarkable scene in which Catherine is being driven by John Thorpe away from the Tilney siblings whom Catherine wants to see, and he’s not only ignoring her pleas, and then her demands, that he stop; he constantly makes light of her powers of choice, and her agency as an individual, even while showing himself to be an unmitigated fool.
Professor Maria DeBlassie points all of this out in her conversation with the Austen Connection podcast about the ordinary gothic.
Austen is showing us something about choice with Catherine Morland too - in this early heroine, the reveal is that not finding one’s agency, not being allowed to tap into one’s inner resources and navigate a path, is the evil.
In her subsequent novels, Austen gave her heroines agency - and if there were no choices immediately available, Austen helped those heroines - Elizabeth, Jane Fairfax, Fanny Price and Anne Elliot - to pull a choice out of thin air, to almost by magic make a decision that they could and would live with.
Therefore they are choosing - and not waiting for an invitation! - to reshape their world in a way that allows them to embrace self, love, and life, on their own terms.
—
Share your thoughts, friends! Do you have in mind a favorite choice of any Austen characters, or any other Great Choices from favorite characters in literature? What are your thoughts on looking at Austen’s stories through this lens of choice and agency or the lack of those things? Share any thoughts here:
Thank you for being here in this community where we find the ways Austen’s stories connect to us today, and the ways she connects us to each other.
If you’re new to this group, you can see our archive of conversations here, and you can follow the Austen Connection podcast on Spotify and Apple. You can also join our conversations at @AustenConnect on Twitter, and at @austenconnection on Insta and Facebook.
Meanwhile, enjoy your January, such as it is. Drink tea. Read fiction.
Stay in touch, and stay well.
Yours very truly,
Plain Jane
Cool links:
We can’t mention Colonel Brandon’s flannel without mentioning the wonderful podcast “The Thing About Austen” and the flannel waistcoat edition.
Professor Maria DeBlassie writes about witchery, magic, all things gothic and Jane Austen, from New Mexico.
Here’s the Austen Connection conversation with Professor Maria DeBlassie.
UCL Professor John Mullan’s book What Matters in Jane Austen - I’m reading and enjoying this at this very moment and recommend!
Jane Fairfax Drops the Mic - and makes a choice!