Anne Elliot Of Persuasion Essay
Both genders during the Victorian and Edwardian Ages were molded into two spheres of expectations and opportunities defined solely by their sex, male and female. In the words of Austen “Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.” Men were thought to be the highest of the hierarchy, while women were made from “the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man”. “True Women” possessed the four cardinal virtues of piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. Women, however, were not content to stay in this mold of domesticity within the grasps of the four virtues. Instead, some women of this
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In other terms, “with all [of Anne’s] claims [to] birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence… would be, indeed, a throwing away…” (20). Anne possesses all the qualities of an eligible bachelorette. However, when she falls in love with Wentworth, he is of lower class than her and holds no hope for providing for Anne in the future. Anne breaks off the engagement, proving her attachment to the aristocratic thinking that a man must provide for his wife, financially, politically, and physically. Had she married Wentworth at 19, she would have been cast from society because she “[threw] herself away” for love instead of money and societal position. Only when Wentworth has gained money and position in society is he an eligible bachelor for Anne and she decides that the love she holds for him is no longer a trifle ideology and he is suitable enough to marry. This upper-class idea of marriage as a contract is something even Anne cannot go against. She does marry for love in the end, but she does not marry for love when he has nothing, proving she is a combination of the Victorian woman and the modern
In other terms, “with all [of Anne’s] claims [to] birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence… would be, indeed, a throwing away…” (20). Anne possesses all the qualities of an eligible bachelorette. However, when she falls in love with Wentworth, he is of lower class than her and holds no hope for providing for Anne in the future. Anne breaks off the engagement, proving her attachment to the aristocratic thinking that a man must provide for his wife, financially, politically, and physically. Had she married Wentworth at 19, she would have been cast from society because she “[threw] herself away” for love instead of money and societal position. Only when Wentworth has gained money and position in society is he an eligible bachelor for Anne and she decides that the love she holds for him is no longer a trifle ideology and he is suitable enough to marry. This upper-class idea of marriage as a contract is something even Anne cannot go against. She does marry for love in the end, but she does not marry for love when he has nothing, proving she is a combination of the Victorian woman and the modern