Persuasion - Jane Austen

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Résumé :
Persuasion is among Jane Austen's most historically grounded works. Like many people in Britain, Jane Austen and her family followed the ups and downs of the British war effort on both land and sea. As was the case with Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice before it, one of Austen's aims in Persuasion is to present a message about British society through contrasting pairs: in this case, aristocratic vanity versus the private and public utility of the navy. Having drawn this critical picture of a vain aristocratic class, Austen uses the knowledge she gained through her family's wartime experiences to create an alternative image of Britain: a navy whose men and women are useful to one another, society, and the national war effort. As useful as Austen's naval characters are, despite whatever challenges they might face in the service, when the novel's crisis comes at the end of the first volume, it is another character altogether who proves their value: Anne Elliot. On one level, Anne Elliot's story reinforces Austen's critique of the class-based society of her time. But Persuasion's resolution is more complex than such a summary of social and financial calculation might suggest. It would be a drearily didactic book were that not the case. Instead, it is the interiority of the plot--how much of it occurs in Anne's head and is viewed from her often-limited perspective--that maintains our interest to the end. How Austen achieves this, while addressing both the insidious and beneficial impacts of the art of persuasion, deserves our attention. (from Introduction by Todd Webb)...

Biographie:
Jane Austen (1775-1817) One of the world's most famous and prolific women authors, Jane Austen was born in Hampshire, England. Austen remains a dearly loved novelist, thanks to her social commentary on the British gentry at the time. She extensively wrote about women and their dependence on men, the said and unsaid rules of patriarchy, and what they had to do in order to either gain or retain their social standing. Crafted with classic humour, wit, and sarcasm, Austen's writing transcends the barriers of age and time. Jane Austen started writing at a young age for the amusement of those around her, as gifts for loved ones - and, interestingly, as a way of catharsis. Given that the society at the time viewed women in restricted social roles - as merely mothers and wives - Austen published her books anonymously. The truth was only made public by her brother, Henry, after her death in 1817. Of her published novels - some of which include Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey - Pride and Prejudice remains one of the best-loved works among readers to this day. She also wrote an adapted play, titled Sir Charles Grandison, and a satire called Plan of a Novel in addition to multiple poems, letters, and prayers during her lifetime....

Sommaire:
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English writer who first gave the novel its distinctively modern character through her treatment of ordinary people in everyday life. Her six novels have become timeless classics because Austen's astonishingly diverse characters all insist on their private judgment as an innate right even in the most confining circumstances. Few other books present such fully rendered individuals whose actions captivate readers to this very day....