Persuasion (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Jane Austen
- First Published: 1818
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism
- Time of Work: The early nineteenth century
- Setting: Southern England
- Principal Characters: Anne Elliot, Frederick Wentworth, Sir Walter Elliot, Elizabeth Elliot, Mary Musgrove, Charles Musgrove, Lady Russell, William Elliot
- Genres: Long fiction, Fiction of manners, Bourgeois fiction
- Subjects: Values, Parents and children, Love or romance, Gender roles, Nineteenth century, Social issues, Marriage, Prejudices or antipathies, Class consciousness, Manners or customs, Social life, Jealousy, envy, or resentment, England or English people, Fathers, Sisters, Aristocracy or aristocrats, Gossip
- Locales: Bath, England, Somersetshire, England
Form and Content
Like most of her novels, Persuasion affords Jane Austen an opportunity to explore social relationships among middle-class men and women living in what is usually considered a refined, country environment away from the commercial and political centers of England. Unlike other Austen novels, however, Persuasion features a heroine who is not a young ingenue first learning the customs and taboos of polite society. Anne Elliot, second daughter of a minor country baronet, is nearing thirty when the action of the novel begins. Readers learn early that...
[The entire page is 2248 words long]
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