relational peace with Jane Austen's Persuasion
and connections to Mary Harrington's "Abolish Big Romance"
dear you,
you may have seen Netflix’s 2022 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. There are some great video essays (1, 2) about how the film differed considerably from Austen’s novel, but I wanted to reflect specifically on how the 2022 interpretation of Persuasion reflects contemporary perspectives on dating, romance, and marriage, and that this contextual dissonance could be why the film fell flat and garnered generally poor reviews.
In highlighting the disconnect between marriages of the past in the novel and marriages of the present in the film, I want to use Persuasion to demonstrate why I agree so strongly with social and cultural writer Mary Harrington in her advocacy for viewing marriage in a traditional, practical light as a social union, instead of the contemporary lens as a vessel for ego gratification and self-fulfillment.
Persuasion is one of Austen’s last novels, published posthumously, with a lead who differs greatly from other protagonists like Emma or Elizabeth Bennet in her quiet, gentle demeanor and older age (27). Austen herself wrote to her niece Fanny Knight “You may perhaps like the Heroine [Anne Elliot], as she is almost too good for me.” The story follows sweet Anne as she struggles in introverted silence after having been persuaded by her family to reject her one love, Friedrich Wentworth’s, proposal eight years ago. As the story begins, we follow Anne in her private agony in regretting this decision as she still loves Wentworth and fears her rapid approach towards spinsterhood.
The period of Austen’s novels, the Regency Era (~1811 - 1820), was a time when social norms — including marriage — were drastically adjusting to the changing material realities of the industrial era. The shift is clear in Persuasion through the contrast between Sir Walter Elliot, Anne’s father, a traditional “gentleman” from his lineage, and the new “gentlemen” like Wentworth who have made their way in the world not by inheritance but through success in the marketplace.
Social and cultural writer Mary Harrington addresses this important transition in the context of marriage, noting:
“But the dawn of the industrial era tipped the balance of power away from the medieval blend of agriculture and artisanship toward a new, urbanized bourgeoisie that derived its money and power from manufacturing and international trade … the aspirational eighteenth-century bourgeoisie focused the education of their daughters on snagging a husband who possessed not the landowning power of England’s feudal, agrarian past but the commercial nous to flourish in England’s expansionist, mercantile future. That meant teaching women to be graceful, decorative, driven by emotion, and largely lacking in practical skills – for such women were not expected to do much at all, compared to their skilled and hard-working foremothers.”1
We see this shift precisely in Persuasion, as at first, Wentworth is determined as a poor match for Anne because he does not have landowning power, but as he grows in commercial market success, he becomes a desirable husband, just as the social image of a “desirable husband” itself changes. Meanwhile, Anne, who in the novel’s beginning is painfully shy, introverted, and possesses little confidence, has had no success in finding a husband because, though she is intelligent and practical, she has struggled to be “graceful, decorative,” and act out the decorum of polite society. In the novel, Wentworth is the only person in Anne’s life who ever acknowledged her intelligence and strength of moral character, and saw her as a true equal.
Austen makes it clear in Persuasion (1817) that Anne is aware of, and tortured by, the potential financial and social consequences of her growing into spinsterhood. But Anne Elliot’s worry is not about loneliness or the struggle of living as a “single woman,” but about losing the opportunity to function as an agent of society in a world where the smallest unit of a community is not the individual, but the household.
Feminists like Stephanie Coontz have noted that “women [of history] needed to marry in order to survive,”2 which is true in a sense, but the broader context is that everyone needed to belong to a household to function in society. For Anne Elliot, or for Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice, a lack of marriage meant staying in the household of their parents, and for a male widower of Persuasion, Captain Benwick, this meant still living with the family of his ex-wife. Almost no one in the Regency Era or many historical contexts of the past would be living as we do in 2024 in single individualism.
So Persuasion, the novel, is deeply entwined with the political and social context of marriage as a necessary social structure for the protection of individuals and the formation of a household. In the 2022 adaptation, this context is completely lost.
Persuasion (2022) is a modernized, comedic approach to Austen’s slow-burn, melancholic love story. Neflix took gentle, shy Anne Elliot and made her witty and sarcastic. Instead of lamenting the loss of the one person who saw value in her, and fearing the future, Anne of the 2022 film plays the trope of a bitter ex as she screams in her pillow, drinks excessive amounts of wine, and makes awkward table speeches and snarky comments to the camera.
To demonstrate the film’s repugnant modernization and “dumbing down” of language, here is how Jane Austen describes Wentworth and Anne’s relationship in the novel:
“There could have never been two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.”
And here is how this line is translated by Anne on screen in the movie adaptation:
“We’re worse than strangers, we’re exes.”
Karolina Żebrowska in her video essay explores why Hollywood hates gentleness, which I thought was a great take on Anne’s 2022 character update, but what I want to address is the movie adaptation’s shift to focusing entirely on Anne’s romantic feelings about Wentworth instead of her emotions as a complex web of regret and shame as she may need to rely on her family forever.
Circling back to Mary Harrington, in her 2021 piece titled “Abolish Big Romance,” Mary introduces “Big Romance” as the way our culture has come to adopt a romantic, picturesque view of marriage, not as a practical unit of solidarity in society but as a result of romantic passion and affection.
Marriage historically in the West was shaped greatly by the Catholic church’s teaching that the bond is “an act of the will by which a man and a woman through an irrevocable personal covenant mutually give and accept each other” (Canon 1057.1), and the necessity of individuals to form households. The union thus provides people permanence, stability, and the structure to continue a lineage. This view of marriage as a practical social necessity in the structure of society is quite different from views of relationships in 2024. As Mary notes,
“The twentieth century grew used to thinking about marriage as a vector for self-fulfilment …Our biggest obstacle is an obsolete mindset that deprecates all duties beyond than personal fulfillment, and views an intimate relationship as a vector for self-development or ego gratification rather than an enabling condition for solidarity.”
Persuasion (2022) is aligned exactly with this 2024 version of marriage as a vector for self-development and ego gratification. Wentworth in the film watches Anne with the energy and efforts of a school crush, and their eventual reunion is characterized by passionate kissing. This showy romance differs greatly from Wentworth’s — while beautiful — calm declaration of love in the novel, as the two old friends walk through a garden together and agree to marry.
Wentworth confesses his love to Anne in the movie:
Wentworth confesses his love to Anne in the book:
So what can we gather from this, and where do we go from here? Overall, I agree with Mary Harrington, when she writes:
“Especially when we all have the option to be economically independent, and the whole culture valorises self-actualisation over duty, the pressure is strong to treat a rough patch as a reason to exit your commitments and lapse back into atomised individualism … from the point of view of Big Romance: surely you must spend time finding yourself, and wait till you meet The One? But in a world where absolutely everything is unstable, from geopolitics to money and even the climate, far-sighted younger millennials and Gen Z are turning instead toward interpersonal stability … It’s time to abolish Big Romance.”3
In my life experience, abolishing the “Big Romance” mindset has only brought me relational peace. This isn’t to say act as an unfeeling robot, but Harrington’s view is undoubtedly true that romance and affection are a byproduct of an already strong bond based in mutual respect and stability.4 I’d rather be Anne Elliot of Persuasion (1817), pursuing kindness, gentleness, and practicality, and commit to my beloved on a walk in a garden, than the Anne Elliot of Persuasion (2022), drinking wine in the bathtub, making my intelligence known through sarcasm, demanding of a man “love me, you idiot,” and passionately kissing in the public square.
Next time you have a relational conflict, with the culture at your back telling you “you deserve better,” “choose yourself,” perhaps take a page from Austen and Harrington. Vis a vis Wentworth, write your love a letter declaring, “I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant,” and perhaps suggest a meander together in the sunshine.
THIS BOOK COULD BE FOR YOU IF: you are seeking calm and peacefulness in your romantic endeavors. You love beautiful prose. You saw Persuasion 2022 and want to know the fuller story, with many of the best parts left out of the film.
RECOMMENDED READING: On a park bench or a place indoors where you can glance out the window, read while holding your beloved’s hand.
thanks for reading,
catherine | sollucidity
Love in the Marketplace, Mary Harrington, 2021
Marriage, a History, Stephanie Coontz, 2005
Abolish Big Romance, Marry Harrington, 2021
Abolish Big Romance, Marry Harrington, 2021