< Persuasion

Persuasion/YMMV


  • Anvilicious: The text emphasizes its message on the importance of yielding to persuasion by brutally physically punishing Louisa Musgrove.
  • Complete Monster: Mr Elliot, at least by Jane Austen standards. Mrs Smith describes him as "a man without heart or conscience; a designing, wary, cold-blooded being... would be guilty of any cruelty... totally beyond the reach of any sentiment of justice or compassion... black at heart, hollow and black!" He really does come across as a bit of a sociopath in the text.ve for not yielding to persuasion at Lyme.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: The description from Chapter 6 of the deceased Richard Musgrove:

"[Richard] had, in fact... been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done any thing to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead."

Which was nothing more nor less at the time than a riff on 'Dick' being a low-class nickname...and is now a good example of Have a Gay Old Time.
  • Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The look on Captain Wentworth's face when Anne joins him by the captain's wheel in the 1995 film version. Ciaran Hinds conveys volumes with one soft smile.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: Anne learns near the end of the book that Mr Elliot is rather an unpleasant person, and is trying to ensure his inheritance of Sir Walter's title by any means necessary. By the end of the story, he... is closer to his goal, since Sir Walter and Mrs Clay are no longer a couple and thus won't produce an heir. Anne and her friends get their happy endings, but the inheritance is still destined for someone rather awful.
  • Rule-Abiding Rebel: Inverted, Anne believes she would have been happier marrying Captain Wentworth from the beginning even if he had never made a penny, and the narrator points out that two unsuitable young people in love are usually able to get married, never mind two mature people with one independent fortune between them.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: Charles Musgrove is a Louisa Musgrove/Captain Wentworth shipper; his wife Mary is a Henrietta Musgrove/Captain Wentworth shipper. Things almost get ugly between them over this. There were deeper implications. Mary really didn't want Henrietta to "throw herself away" on country curate Charles Hayter. It is, after all, very inconvenient to be "giving bad connections to those who have not been used to them."
  • Stoic Woobie: Anne
  • Sympathetic Sue: Anne -- Austen herself admitted that she was a "heroine [who] is almost too good for me."
  • Values Dissonance:
    • Real women must yield to persuasion, regardless of the value of the counsel, decides Anne towards the end.

"I must believe that I was right, much as I suffered from it, that I was perfectly right in being guided by the friend whom you will love better than you do now. To me, she was in the place of a parent. Do not mistake me, however. I am not saying that she did not err in her advice. ... But I mean, that I was right in submitting to her, ... and if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman's portion."

    • Or, alternatively, female/family attachments matter before romantic ones (seeing as her boyfriend was giving her 'persuasion' of exactly the opposite nature, her dilemma wasn't whether she yielded to persuasion, but to whose.)
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