![]() ![]() ![]() Ever since their late mother’s best friend, Lady Russell, persuaded Anne to break up with her first love-a dashing naval officer named Frederick Wentworth-she has lived only to be of use to her loved ones, who at times hardly seem to love her in return. Youngest sister Mary married a moneyed gentleman, but she can’t bear being second to anyone-even in her own family. Sir Walter is equaled in snootiness only by his elder daughter Elizabeth, who is oblivious to the fact that her best friend is angling to become the next Lady Elliot. Yet though a wistful shadow lies across this book, perhaps in consequence of its author’s failing health, it remains like all her novels a romantic comedy: romantic, because no subject drew on her experience more than the drawing-room society of well-bred and well-off men and women trying to catch wives and husbands comedies, because she couldn’t dwell long on the subject without an ironic laugh.Īnne Elliot, the middle of three daughters of the repulsively vain and blood-proud Sir Walter Elliot, has outlived the full bloom of her beauty, and so also any realistic hope of finding a husband. The last novel completed by the author of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma, was first published in 1818, the year after Austen’s death at age 41. ![]()
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