Persuasion

Jane Austen

Description

آن إليوت هي ابنة السير والتر إليوت، بارون يعطي أهمية كبيرة لوسامته ومكانته بالمجتمع ويصرف كَمِّيات هائلة من أمواله. أم آن الحنون ماتت قبل مدة. وأختها إليزابيث تشبه أباها في العديد من الطرق. أخت آن الصغيرة ماري هي امرأة متذمرة ومعتمدة كثيرًا على غيرها، متزوجة من تشارلز ماسجروف الوريث لقاضي محترم. لا أحد من عائلتها، يمكن أن يعطي آن الرفقة التي تريدها، التي في ال27 من عمرها وغير متزوجة، في طريقها إلى العنوسة. بعد أن طلب يدها وينتورث وهي في ال19 من عمرها، يتم إقناع آن بالعدول عن هذا الالتزام من قبل صديقة أمها المقربة الأرملة لايدي راسل. لايدي راسل تشكك بحكمة آن من الزواج بوينتورث، الملازم البحري الفقير بلا عائلة أو أي صلات جيدة.
يرجع وينتورث في حياة آن بعد غياب طويل، عندما يضطر أبو آن لبيع بيته إلى زوج أخت وينتورث، الأميرال كروفت. نجاح وينتورث في الحرب النابولية يكسبه ترقية ويُعطى وينتورث مبلغ مالي قدره 25,000، كجائزة لقبضه على أعداء في الحرب. آل ماسجروف يرحبون بوينتورث وآل كروفت بحرارة للحي. اثنان من بنات ماسجروف يعجبان بوينتورث كثيرًا بالرغم من أن إحداهما، هينريتا، مخطوبة من ابن عمها. بالرغم من ذلك يظل آل ماسجروف يخمنون أي من البنتين سيتزوج وينتورث.
زيارة كابتين وينتورث لصديق مقرب له، تنتج رحلة إلى المكان الذي يعيش فيه صديقه. وخلال هذه الرحلة إلى البحر تقع لويزا، إحدى بنات ماسجروف، وتصبح في خطر شديد. وهنا تصرفات آن للعناية بلويزا تجعل وينتورث يعجب بها من جديد. تحسن حالة لويزا يكون بطيء وثقتها بنفسها تهتز بشدة. لذا حالتها هذه تستوجب من صديق وينتورث، الحزين على موت خطيبته، العناية بها. وهكذا تتم الخطبة بينهما.
في هذا الوقت، السير والتر وإليزابيث يذهبان للعيش في باث. ويأملان العيش بطريقة ملائمة لبارون وعائلته مع نفقة أقل إلى أن تصبح أوضاعهما المادية مستقرة. ابن أخ السير والتر، وليام اليوت، الذي أهان السير والتر من قبل، يظهر ويريد التصالح مع عمه. إليزابيث تشك بأنه معجب بها ولكن اللايدي راسل تعرف أنه معجب في الحقيقة بآن. بالرغم من أن وليام إليوت يبدو بأنه رجل محترم إلا أن آن لا تثق به، وتجد أن شخصيته غامضة. تظهر لها الحقيقة صديقة قديمة وتخبرها بأن وليام إليوت جاء لمجرد الورثة وأن هذا سبب رغبته في الزواج منها. يأتي آل ماسجروف إلى باث لشراء ملابس الزفاف لابنتهم لويزا. وكابتن وينتورث وصديقه يرافقانهم. وفي مشهد يناقش كل من آن وصديق وينتورث العلاقات ويسمعهما وينتورث ويكتب رسالة مؤثرة إلى آن يخبرها بمشاعره تجاهها ويطلب يدها مرة أخرى للزواج وبذلك يخطب وينتورث آن من جديد. ومن ثَمَّ تعترف لايدي راسل بخطئها تجاه الكابتن وتبقى هي وآن أصدقاء.

Sujets

• ENGLISH LITERATURE

Informations

• Publié par: The Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9796500118468
• Langue: English

Extrait

Jane Austen

Persuasion

Edited by Prof. Ramses Awad

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Contents

The Outhor and her work The Text Notes: - Chapter Summaries and Glossaries - Irony and humour Characterisation : - Anne Elliot - Frederick Wentworth - Elizabeth Elliot - Sir Water Elliot - Mrs Mary Musgrave - Lady Russell Questions

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The author and her work

Jane Austenwas born in December 1775 at Steventon in Hampshire where her father George Austen was Rector. Here she spent her child- hood and young womanhood. Her father, who was later to recognize his daughter's unquestionable talents, took pupils and prepared them for Ox- ford, where two of his sons were to study. Jane's mother was a keen gar- dener, had a strong sense of humour, and suffered from lengthy bouts of ill-health. The Austens were a close family. The eldest son James had a curacy, and later succeeded his father at Steventon. While still a boy, the next brother Edward was adopted and brought up by well-to-do cousins at Godmersham in Kent. Henry, next in age, was certainly close to Jane in terms of sympathy, sharing her delightful sense of humour and partic- ularly her wit. But closest of all to Jane was her sister Cassandra; their intimacy allowed her to mock her sister's talents while at the same time appreciating them- "You are indeed the finest comic writer of the present age", she once wrote to her.

Jane's two other brothers Charles and Frank entered the Navy, where both achieved high rank. Jane was encouraged to write, her fa- ther even corresponding with a publisher on her account, and she often read aloud, particularly her early burlesques, to Cassandra. They were an engaging, attractive and largely unquarrelsome family. After their father's death, all the sons helped to support their mother. In 1782 Jane and Cassandra were sent to stay at a school in Reading, returning after about two years; by this time James was at Oxford. Their father's sis- ter, who married a Frenchman, later became strongly attached to the Austens at Steventon. Her husband was executed in 1794 at the height of the French Revolutionary terror; it was probably through her that Jane learned much of the world outside Steventon.

In these impressionable years Jane Austen was certainly reading Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-84), Oliver Goldsmith (1730-74), George Crabbe (1754-1832) and William Cowper (1731-1800) and a number of travel books. Most important of all she read all the novels she could lay her hands on. These were many and various. She began to write burlesques and parodies of many of her contemporary writers, almost anticipating Thackeray's published experiments in this vein some sixty years later. Obviously she wrote much before she was sixteen years old, ant her juvenilia have been published with editorial commentaries

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inVolume the First, theSecond andThirdsecond volume is. The Love andFreindshipspelling), in part told in letters, the form (her Jane inherited from the great 18th-century novelist Samuel Richard- son, and also from other writers who employed the epistolary style. There is some evidence thatElinor and Mariannewritten in was this style before 1796; it was later redrafted asSense and Sensibility. LadySusanwas also composed in the form of letters, whileFirst Im- pressionswas finished in 1797 and offered by Mr Austen to the Lon- don publisher Cadell, who turned it down. The family had enjoyed it; it was later to be redrafted and published asPride and Prejudice. By 1798 Jane Austen was well on with a novel which was to undergo heavy revisions before it emerged asNorthanger Abbey. Mr and Mrs Austen were bent on retiring to Bath, and the family certainly visited Ramsgate and Lyme Regis; Lyme was the location of the memorable scene in Persuasion where Louisa Musgrove falls off the Cobb and is injured. The Austens settled in Bath just after the turn of the century, and Jane is thought to have had an unhappy love affair at about this time. Jane never really liked Bath. By 1803 she had re- vised the early version ofNorthanger Abbey, though it had to wait for a number of years before being published. The fragment ofThe Watsonswas begun in 1803. In the following year Jane suffered the loss of her great friend Mrs Lefroy and at the beginning of 1805 her father died. During this period she was certain- ly depressed. In addition to family burdens, it must be remembered that she had received virtually no recognition as an author outside her own family. Her letters through this period still reflect her interest in people and how acutely she was sketching them. She wrote how thankful she was to leave for Clifton ("with what happy feelings of Es- cape"). This was in 1806, and in 1807 the family removed to South- ampton, where they were to remain for the next three years. They be- came more intimate with Edward living at Godmersham, and when his wife died leaving eleven children, Jane and Cassandra found them- selves constantly employed as aunts to this band of nephews and niec- es.

By 1809 Jane was again in touch with her publisher overSusan (later Northanger Abbey), but although he was prepared to let her have back her copy for what he had paid for it; he put a bar on her publishing it. In 1809 she moved with her mother and sister to Chaw- ton in Hampshire, and she still found herself happily in communica-

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tion with a number of the younger members of her family. Some of these have left sympathetic and affectionate pictures of their aunt, who was generally content with her life at Chawton. Early in 1811Sense and Sensibilitypublished, and Jane was was already revisingPride and Prejudice. This appeared in 1813, and when she received her own copy from London she wrote to Cassandra, "I have got my own darling child." As she has told us, she loved the character of Elizabeth Bennet as she had created her. From this period onwards her letters reflect how concerned she was with her own writ- ings. She wrote, as we know, in the sitting-room, and it is apparent thatSense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice andMansƒield Park were being dealt with at revision or proof level at about the same time. Her works were published anonymously and, according to her brother Henry, she held back with each book 'till time and many perusals and satisfied her that the charm of recent composition was dissolved'. Mansƒield Park appeared in 1814, and was followed in 1815 by Emma. "The latter received a generous review from Sir Walter Scott as well as the accolade from the Prince Regent's librarian J. S. Clarke, granting Jane Austen permission to dedicate any future work to the Prince Regent. He even went on to suggest that she might like to write an historical romance, illustrative of the august House of Coburg". But her horizons, though narrower in terms of geographical and historical compass, were wide in inner human understanding. Henry retrieved the copyright ofNorthanger Abbey, and in 1816 Jane drafted the "Ad- vertisement" for the novel. This was printed - posthumously - with the text. But at this time she was busy with another novel, for she had be- gun Persuasion; she finished it in July 1816, though she cancelled one chapter which was virtually redrafted. This novel andNorthanger Ab- beyput aside while work on were Sanditonbegun in January was 1817. ByMarchof that year she was very ill; in May she went to Win- chester with Cassandra for medical attention. It was of no avail, and on 18 July she died, leavingNorthanger AbbeyandPersuasion to be published in the following year. Thus lived and died in unremarkable and retired obscurity one of the greatest English novelists. Throughout her writings her moral stance is clear, uncompromising in its perspective, never sententious or smug. She invested the English novel with a new status, preparing the way for the great writers of the nineteenth century, like Charles Dickens (1812 - 70), George, Eliot (1819 - 80) and Thomas Hardy

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(1840 - 1928). It has been said that her canvas was narrow, and there is no doubt that she would have been the first to have acknowledged this; such great events of her time as the French Revolution and the ensuing wars, excesses, idealisms and struggles find no place in her work. But her range encompassed the novelist's essential material; the affairs of the human heart. With refinement of style and a meticulous observation of character in action and interaction she brought to fic- tional characters a closer and deeper scrutiny than anything attempted in novels before.

Jane Austen learned much from her predecessors, but she imposed on the novel her own compactness of form, giving to her characters a consistent psychology and development that was to influence not only 19th-century novelists but those who were to write from the con- sciousness of character in the twentieth. Those who feel that her writ- ings are those of an old maid should ask themselves if sexual passion has ever been depicted so strongly - not indulgently, not salaciously, not sensationally - as in the feelings of Darcy for Elizabeth Bennet. The conventions within which Jane lived demanded a certain code of conduct, an acceptance of what must not be uttered or seen; reticence ruled; yet her awareness encompasses all. We know that she knows, and that she intends us to know, that the gloss of polite conversation cannot hide people's basic motives. Her way is to be ironic without be- ing cruel, satirical without being complacent, wide without being pre- tentious and, above all, human and understanding in her attitude to- wards the human condition. The purity and accuracy of her dialogue stand the test of time; to translate her to film, stage or television is not to translate but merely to accept - script - writers cannot improve her.

Jane's spirit is in many ways a comic one, and we might here recall Meredith's words in hisEssayonComedythat "The laughter of Come- dy is impersonal and of unrivalled politeness". her country house, par- sonage and Bath society seem unaware of tragedy, the tragedy behind the teacups, the incest behind the domestic ritual which informs the novels of Ivy Compton - Burnett, for example. For Jane Austen's faith leads her to show us life as it generally is; she steers between the ex- tremes of vinegar and saccharine by the simple expedient of being true to her eye and her ear; they never let her down.

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PERSUASION

CHAPTER I SIR WALTER ELLIOT, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Ba- ronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were power- less, he could read his won history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favourite volume always opened: 'ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL 'Walter Elliot, born March I, 1760, married July 15, 1784, Eliza- beth, daughter of James Stevenson, Esq., of South Park, in the county of Gloucester; by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue, Elizabeth, born June I, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, No- vember 5, 1789; Mary born November 20 , 1791' . Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer's hands; but Sir Walter had improved it by adding, for the information of himself and his family, these words, after the date of Mary's birth : 'Mar- ried, December 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles Musgrove, Esq., of Uppercross, in the country of Somerset', and by inserting most accurately the day of the month on which he had lost his wife. Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family in the usual terms; how it had been first settled in Cheshire, how mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of high sheriff, repre- senting a borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of loyal- ty, and dignity of baronet, in the first year of Charles II with all the Marys and Elizabeths they had married; forming altogether two hand- some quarto pages, and concluding with the arms and motto : 'Princi- pal seat, Kellynch Hall, in the county of Somerset', and Sir Walter's handwriting again in this finale : "Heir presumptive, William Walter Elliot, Esq., greatgrandson of the second Sir Walter'.

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Vanity was the beginning and end of Sir Walter Elliot's character : vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth, and at fifty-four was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could the valet of any new-made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devo- tion. His good looks and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment, since to them he must have owed a wife of very superior character to anything deserved by his own. Lady Elliot had been an excellent wom- an, sensible and amiable,whose judgment and conduct, if they might be pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence afterwards. She had humoured, or softened, or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for sev- enteen years; and though not the very happiest being in the world her- self, had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her children, to attach her to life, and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to quit them. Three girls, the two eldest sixteen and fourteen, was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath, an awful charger rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, silly father. She had, however, one very intimate friend, a sensible, de- serving woman, who had been brought, by strong attachment to her- self, to settle close by her, in the village of Kellynch; and on her kind- ness and advice Lady Elliot mainly relied for the best help and maintenance of the good principles and instruction which she had been anxiously giving her daughters. This friend and Sir Walter didnot marry, whatever might have been anticipated on that head by their acquaintance. Thirteen years had passed away since Lady Elliot's death, and they were still near neighbours and intimate friends, and one remained a widower, the oth- er a widow. That Lady Russell, of steady age and character, and extremely well provided for, should have no thought of a second marriage, needs no apology to the public, which is rather apt to be unreasonably discon- tented when a womandoesmarry again, than when she doesnot; but Sir Walter's then, that Sir Walter, like a good father chaving met with one or two private disappointments in very unreasonable applications),

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