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Persuasions #15, 1993 Pages 261-263
“Suspense and Indecision” Austen’s Revision of Persuasion RAY TUMBLESON Seattle, WA The draft conclusion of Persuasion gains a general significance
in an examination of Jane Austen’s work at large as the only surviving draft
material for any of her corpus. As
such, it is our only point for comparison of her work in progress and the final
product; even the juvenilia survives only in clean copy, whereas solely draft
works such as The Watsons and Sanditon lack a final version. That these two chapters are, perhaps not
entirely fortuitously, the last of the novel permits us to examine a question
close to the crux of much recent critical debate about Austen: what is the
relation of her fiction to her society, and more generally of fiction as a
creative space within the social space?
Although critics since Sir Walter Scott and other reviewers of her time
have regarded hers as a comforting and conservative voice, in the past
generation feminist criticism has begun to question the conception of her work
as unproblematic in its reconciliation of romance and propriety. A contemporary reviewer was pleased to find in Persuasion
a greater degree of seriousness about the tender passion than in Austen’s
earlier works. The woman who penned the
celebrated opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice, and who signalled
her awareness of the conventionality of happy endings by referring near the end
of Northanger Abbey to “my readers, who will see in the tell-tale
compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to
perfect felicity,” had shown herself capable of an honesty about the marriage
market disconcerting to the mystifications of romantic convention.1 One can as easily love a rich man as a poor,
but open acknowledgement of this insight comports poorly with the economy of
the companionate marriage that had evolved to reconcile the ideologies of
Protestant and capitalist individualism and of female obedience. The draft chapters of Persuasion
bring Anne Elliot and Wentworth quickly together for a discussion that resolves
their relationship but neglects the context of their match. In revising these
chapters, Austen retrieves the Musgroves from the first volume of the novel at
once formally to prevent them from simply vanishing and substantively to
protract the unease of “Suspense and Indecision” (263) that has previously
enveloped Anne. The revision expands 11 pages to 35, and virtually all the extra space is devoted to extending the period of suspense between Anne’s leaving Mrs. Smith, where she learns of Mr. Elliot’s questionable past, and her renewing vows with Wentworth. A tete a tete delayed only three pages in the draft (258-61) has to wait 28 in the revision (212-40). In the draft, Anne happens to pass the Crofts’ quarters, and encountering the Admiral by chance is “obliged to stop” (258) lest she seem rude. There he leaves her alone with Wentworth after requesting that the Captain ask her whether the rumour is true that she means to marry Mr. Elliot and wishes to live at Kellynch. Her statement that “There is no Truth in any such report” leads within a few lines to He
had been standing by a chair – enjoying the releif [sic] of leaning on
it – or of playing with it; – he now sat down – drew it a little nearer to her
– & looked, with an expression which had something more than penetration in
it, something softer, – Her Countenance
did not discourage. – It was a silent,
but a very powerful Dialogue; – on his side Supplication, on her’s [sic]
acceptance. – Still a little nearer –
and a hand taken and pressed – and “Anne, my own dear Anne!” – bursting forth
in the fullness of exquisite feeling – and all Suspense & Indecision were
over. – They were re-united. They were restored to all that had been
lost. They were carried back to the
past … (263) This scene completes the motion of sitting beside Anne, and so declaring
himself, which Wentworth had begun at the concert only to be dissuaded by
jealousy of Mr. Elliot. The intervening
chapter having revealed Mr. Elliot as unworthy of regard, the renewal of old
vows has nothing more to impede it, and so the past is restored in a rapid and
full way of which Jay Gatsby would have approved.2 Plunging ahead to the emotional catharsis of
the reconciliation, the draft leaves the Musgroves stranded and forgotten to
unite the lovers in a scene more trite and conventional than any in Austen’s
finished works. Any common heroine can
have her hand squeezed and, if her name is Anne, hear a murmur of “Anne, my own
dear Anne!” Miss Anne Elliot is not to
be had at so cheap a rate. Once the two begin their discussion, it and the final chapter of winding up that follows survive largely intact in the published version, but the transition disappears, to be replaced by a much longer narrative relating the Musgroves and Elliots. These two families have hitherto operated entirely separately as Anne has moved in the company of the one or the other but never of both. Now, foreshadowing her union with Wentworth, the two circles begin to interact. The result, however, is far from an idyllic image of cosmic reconciliation; on the contrary, the Elliots are as heartless as ever, with Elizabeth feeling “that Mrs. Musgrove and all her party ought to be asked to dine with them, but she could not bear to have the difference of style, the reduction of servants, which a dinner must betray, witnessed by those who had always been so inferior” (219), and in return the Musgroves feel the resentment voiced by Charles. The Musgroves are reintegrated into the book, but in a manner that only emphasizes the irreconcilable differences between the branches of an extended family. Captain Harville’s discussion with Anne of Benwick’s faithlessness to Harville’s dead sister and the disapproval by Mrs. Croft and Mrs. Musgrove of long engagements both serve as parallels to the central romance – a romance whose distinguishing features have been as a history its long interruption and as a story its suppression and indirection. It has been traditional in romances since
Classical times, of course, for lovers to be beset with difficulties and for
the story to conclude as soon as they are overcome, but Persuasion is
remarkable for having as its primary obstacle the man’s obstinate refusal to
give any indication that he is in love with the heroine. In the expanded buildup to the reunion of
the lovers, however, more traditional external constraints arise, though they
are not villainous machinations but the routines of social intercourse,
routines so smothering that Wentworth breaks through them only with a
letter. The very busyness of the
novelistic milieu, its social density, becomes obstructive to the resolution of
the plot, and this obstruction is precisely what the revision adds. Elliot pride and Musgrove unimaginative
kindliness that “thought only of one sort of illness” (238) can equally
frustrate the resolution of romance.
Love cannot simply elide eight years any more than it can make the
Musgroves less prosaic or the Elliots less arrogant. Wentworth’s “ ‘It is a period, indeed! Eight years and a half is a period!’ ” (225) replaces “They were
carried back to the past.” The revision
replaces with a protraction of Anne’s near-Joycean “silence, cunning, and
exile” the easy leap to satisfaction of the draft conclusion. No sharp-eyed Mrs. Croft spies important
developments between her brother and Anne and contrives to keep herself and her
husband out of their way; instead the lovers must work in solitary secrecy amid
the oblivious. Happily married to her warrior, Anne ends the
later version as the earlier, without a fear but that her husband will have an
opportunity to exercise his “Profession which is – if possible – more
distinguished in its Domestic Virtues than in its National Importance”
(273). The arch final chapter, a brief
dismissal of characters good and bad into the future, survives revision
virtually unchanged; it is the penultimate chapter, where the emotional climax
occurs, that needs extensive rewriting and expansion. Austen knows where the story will end, but has to go back to
redefine and complicate the path which leads there. Simultaneously multiplying obstructions and wrapping up loose
plot ends in a manner that makes clear that the resolution portends no
universal harmony, Austen’s revision of the conclusion of Persuasion
complicates a simple, almost pro forma scene of mutual troth-plight into an
intensely ambiguous intersection of the social and the anti-social, pitting
together novel and romance as antagonists within the work. NOTES 1 Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, in volume 5 of The Novels of
Jane Austen, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969),
250. All future references to Austen’s
works will be made in the text to this edition. 2 “ ‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’ ” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925), 111. |
