Book: Persuasion

Author: Jane Austen
First Published: 1817
Original Language: English
Themes: the opinions of others, etiquette, selfishness vs sacrifice, patience

In A Nutshell: Poor Anne Elliot is mostly ignored by her family, being the gentlest and plainest of the three daughters of Sir Walter Elliot, a careless and vain baronet. Due to Sir Walter's extravagances, it becomes necessary for the family to remove to Bath and let their house, Kellynch Hall, to Admiral Croft and his wife. Unbeknownst to almost anyone else, Mrs. Croft is the relative of one Captain Wentworth; although now a successful and rich sailor, his prospects were less certain when he was engaged to Anne eight years before. Lady Russel, Anne's friend and adviser, persuaded her to break the engagement off for the sake of duty, and the two were sundered in anger and regret.

Now Anne is forced to renew her acquaintance with Captain Wentworth, who is still dashing and charming but seems to have no interest in her. Anne spends much time with the Musgroves, her brother-in-law's family, where the captain is very popular, and seems to be developing an attraction to one of the Miss Musgroves. During an excursion at Lyme, this Miss Musgrove injures her head accidentally and Captain Wentworth withdraws, allowing another captain to win her heart. Although encouraged by this news, Anne finally goes to Bath to be with her family but finds the rank-obsessed parties of Bath stagnant and uninteresting. A cousin of hers, Mr. Elliot, shows great interest in her and means to marry her, but an old friend, Mrs Smith, warns Anne that he's false and self-serving. Finally, Captain Wentworth can contain himself no more and professes his enduring love for Anne, and after those eight long years of regret and pain, they can finally be joyously married.

Thinking Makes It So: I should say from the outset that I am disinclined to like Anne Elliot. She's one of those sweet, gentle, obliging creatures who take no notice of themselves, who let other people command and override them with no apparent inclination to stand up for their own thoughts, feelings, or desires. She's so perfectly, submissively, wonderfully, angelically gentle that you just want to scream...if you're me, I guess. I can't help thinking that the whole silly painful awkward situation could've been avoided if Anne had stood up for herself and asserted her own wishes in the first place.

That said, Anne is surrounded by a lot of obnoxious, self-obsessed, overbearing people. Her father is so absorbed in himself and his gentility that he's gotten their family into debt, and he treats less fortunate people with disdain and scorn, as does his arrogant daughter, Elizabeth. The youngest daughter, Mary, is even more insufferable; she constantly wheedles, guilt-trips, and manipulates people's emotions by professing herself ill or very ill-used whenever something doesn't suit her fancy or she feels too neglected. Somehow, out of all of this, Anne emerged as a gentle soul, primarily concerned with maintaining the peace and comfort of others.

The selfishness of others is less obvious. Mr Elliot had formerly scorned an acquaintance with his relatives, but when he suspects that Sir Walter may remarry and thereby jeopardize Mr Elliot's position as heir of the Elliot title, he insinuates himself into their family with flattery and good manners to make sure it doesn't happen. In fact, there are very few major players in the whole story that are at all worthy of a positive opinion, since everyone seems to be operating out of purely selfish motives--even Captain Wentworth, who admits that everything he does through the whole book is motivated by his love for Anne. The only one apparently totally free of this vice is, again, Anne herself, whose first concern is always to make sure that everyone around her is happy at the sacrifice of her own happiness, contentment, solitude, or companionship.

I knew how this book would end when I started it--I knew that Anne would eventually reconcile with Captain Wentworth--so all I really needed to know was how they got there. Although I didn't dislike it, I didn't like it much, either; there was far too much of Anne being confused and upset but sacrificially hiding it so that no one might have any idea that, I don't know, something important might be going on in her life. Although granted, since almost all the people around her are self-absorbed snobs, they probably either wouldn't care or treat her as a nuisance, so maybe she has a point.

Although I assume Persuasion is, indeed, about persuasion, it seems to me that it's also a good close look at the different types of selfishness and pride in this particular rank and style of life at the time, and how the character of Anne defies what was, I imagine, rather typical of the time. Anne is humble, charitable, and giving; she visits a poor friend in need; she does chores and volunteers for work that other people don't want to do so that they can enjoy themselves, and she gets little thanks for any of it. I guess the problem for me is that she's so perfect as to be a bit irritating, compounded by her apparent inability to assert herself. Really, I prefer Emma.

That You Must Teach Me: I think, given that I'm now sure that I won't be teaching any of these books in the foreseeable future, I'm going to discontinue this section, since I can do research later if I have to. I would say, though, that if I were to pick one of Austen's books to teach, it wouldn't be Persuasion; there simply isn't enough happening, clever social commentary or no.

Book: Oliver Twist

Author: Charles Dickens
First Published: 1837-1839, England
Original Language: English
Topics: Childhood, adulthood, poverty, generosity vs greed, indifference vs compassion, crime, murder


In A Nutshell: The book follows the childhood years of one Oliver Twist, an orphan raised in abuse and poverty. Through some absolute miracle--the persistance of innocence and love in the fact of horrible circumstances, I guess--Oliver is sweet, loving, naive, and generally the most perfect and adorable child you could imagine. The weird thing is that against all proof (and reason), almost everyone he meets immediately assumes that he's a deceitful, villianous little demon, and treats him accordingly, despite which Oliver continues to be innocently honest and perfect. At a very young age, he is apprenticed out to an unsympathetic master to learn the trade of undertaker, but when he is accused of attacking an older apprentice, he runs away to London, where he is taken in by a gang of child pickpockets run by a greedy Jew (yay stereotypes) named Fagin. At first grateful for their kindness, Oliver soon learns that they are theives, and on his very first outing with them, gets accused of pickpocketing (of which the Artful Dodger, and not he, is guilty) and is arrested.

During the trial he meets Mr Brownlow, who believes in his innocence and takes Oliver in.
Oliver's domestic bliss in the loving care of Mr Brownlow and his housekeeper is shattered when he is kidnapped by Nancy and Bill Sikes, associates of Fagin's, and dragged back to their lair. They force him to help them with a robbery at a countryside house, which goes horribly awry when Oliver tries to warn the family within and gets shot for his trouble. The baddies leave him to die, and he is found and cared for by the Maylies, with whom he finds great happiness and a return to health. Sikes, Fagin, and a mysterious man named Monk are plotting Oliver's death, but they are overheard by Nancy, who goes to the Maylies to warn them. Sikes finds out and kills Nancy in a rage, but through the actions of Mr Brownlow and the Maylies, Oliver's persecutors are finally confronted.

The twists (lol pun) and turns in the plot are endless, but eventually, they find out who Oliver's parents were, restore his name and inheritance, and the baddies get their comeuppance, so they all live happily ever after the end.

Thinking Makes It So: I very much enjoyed this book, but I was a bit surprised to discover that despite the title, the book is not really about Oliver at all. It follows his story, and the plot revolves around his identity and the events of his young life, but the real focus of the book is the people around him, who act for or against him. Oliver has very little control over anything that happens, and is generally totally at the mercy of these people, and so he acts as a mirror to show their personalities and characters as they interact with and respond to him. In this capacity, Oliver has really little to no personality of his own beyond being, as mentioned above, unfailingly sweet, innocent, and almost irksomely angelic all the time.

On the other hand, there is a wealth of characters in this book with greatly varied personalities, motivations, and conflicting desires, which are thrown into sharp relief by the problem of Oliver's destiny. Of these, my favorite is Nancy, who, although considering herself to be inextricably tangled in the life of abuse and crime she has known all her life, has pity on Oliver and tries to help him as best she can, at terrible cost to herself. While for Oliver, as a mirror at best and plot device at worst, it is difficult to feel anything beyond concerned compassion, Nancy's plight evokes sympathy, frustration, rage, grief, and pity as she struggles between the urges of her compassion for Oliver to do the right thing and the entanglements of her horrible, dysfunctional life that try to keep her where she is.

Dickens' use of language is one of the best parts about the book, being simultaneously wry, satirical, sarcastic, and critical of the callous way that people treat Oliver as a fictional stand-in for orphans and unfortunates everywhere. Dickens is particularly sharp-tongued over the aptly named Mr Bumble, a parish beadle who, far from fulfilling his Christian duty to take care of the poor, tries to give them as little as he can, uncaring of whether they survive or suffer. His punishment comes in the form of his selfish marriage to Mrs Mann, who, true to her name, wears the (metaphorical) pants and browbeats him to her will. Dickens describes Mr Beadle's uncompassionate treatment of the poor with mocking sarcasm, and his subsequent enslavement by his wife with almost gleeful understatement. Dickens' tongue-in-cheek statement of the attitudes of selfish and uncaring people towards the poor evokes both indignation and a little guilt, as if he's muttering between the lines, "You laugh, but I know you've thought this way too." It's simultaneously amusing, frustrating, and unsettling.

Anyway, there are so many characters and convoluted plot resolutions packed into this one book that I'm sure I could study it for ages and still have something to say. The self-serving greed of Fagin, the careless joviality of the Dodger and his friend, the angelic compassion of Miss Maylie, and the brutality of Sikes are all magnified by their proximity to Oliver for the reader's benefit to examine and wonder how, if they were presented with a poor, lost orphan child, they would choose to respond.

That You Must Teach Me: Although amusing and ironic to a native speaker, I can easily imagine that much of Dickens' clever social commentary will be lost on a long-suffering English learner in a tornado of incomprehensible snide remarks and sarcasm. I'd be careful to draw this out by asking students what they think Dickens' opinion of the different characters are, what his views on the poor and charity are, and what the students themselves think of the same things. It would take a long time, though, to get through this book, because of the combination of a fairly convoluted plot and a lot of snarkiness.

Book: Jane Eyre

Author: Charlotte Brontë
First published: 1847, England
Original Language: English
Topics: Marriage, schools, role of women, romance, courtship, disability

Book: Uncle Tom's Cabin

Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
First published: 1852, United States
Original Language: English
Topics: Slavery, human rights, Christianity, racism