Austen and The Woolf

“When she was laid in the cradle again she knew not only what the world looked like, but had already chosen her kingdom.”
It is unusually long for a blogpost I know but I can’t resist posting this essay in it’s entirety. Virginia Woolf’s essay on Jane Austen was published in her 1925 collection of essays [...]

Accident and Coincidence in Persuasion

Part Two
It is during the significant turning point of Persuasion’s storyline, the visit to Lyme, that the accidents of Uppercross come to a head, and where the strands of the web holding Wentworth close to Louisa Musgrove and away from Anne shift and snap in their course. The visit to Lyme heralds the closing of [...]

Accidents and Coincidence in Persuasion

Movement, actual and figurative, is an essential element of Persuasion. Anne Elliot, Captain Wentworth and Mr William Elliot, are traveling within a web of accidents and coincidence. This web holds all three players suspended together, giving each the advantage of mystery and secrets, yet keeping the suitors tangled just out of reach, gradually moving in their necessary [...]

Impropriety by the Seaside II

Lyme
While there is indecorousness at Uppercross, foolishness at Kellynch Hall and snobbishness in Bath, the improprieties practiced by almost every character in the first half of Persuasion are capped by the dangerous and interesting events of the novel taking place by the seaside, at Lyme. The careless intimacy between Captain Wentworth and Louisa Musgrove [...]