Now when Anne and Captain Wentworth have been thrust into each other's company once again they both use a great amount of self-directed persuasion. Meaning they both persuade themselves of something. In this case they have been persuading themselves that the other is not interested in getting back together and has lost all of the feelings they had ten years previous. This is of course the complete opposite of the real truth as they both still have feelings for the other and they both want to get back together, neither losing any of the feelings they had ten years ago. They are both so adamant that the other is not interested they begin to interpret anything the other person says and twist it around so it seems that they are being negative to the other. For example when Captain Wentworth and Louisa were having an argument in the woods (after taking a long walk with the Musgroves and Anne) Anne hears what Captain Wentworth is saying to Louisa and interprets it all as complements to her as though he was mocking Anne. 'Your sister is an amiable creature but yours is the character of decision and firmness, I see. If you value her conduct or happiness, infuse as much of your own spirit into her, as you can. But this, no doubt, you have always been doing. It s the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on.' In reality he was supporting Anne and demeaning Louisa but not as Anne interpreted it. Therefore because Anne was using self-persuasion to persuade herself about what she thought Captain Wentworth meant, she missed out on what he was really trying to say, and so continued to believe that he was not interested. Again towards the end of the walk when they met up with Mrs Croft and the Admiral in the carriage, Captain Wentworth spoke to the couple quietly to tell them to take Anne with them in the carriage purely because he believed she was tired and not enjoying herself. This is not how Anne understood it, she believed that Captain Wentworth was trying to get rid of her. If Anne continues to be as untrusting of people and believes that they are always against her she will lose all her friends and start to become paranoid.
Nearer the beginning of the book when Sir Walter finds out that he is losing money and needs to retrench, he needs to be persuaded by numerous people to do so. For example it was up to Lady Russell, Anne and Mr Shepherd to try and persuade Sir Walter that this is what needed to be done. ' "If we can persuade your father to all this" said Lady Russell looking over her papers, " Much may be done." '
For them to accomplish this they would have to use direct persuasion (where someone intentionally persuades someone to do what they want.) This is however not always bad because they are trying to persuade Sir Walter to do this with his best interests in mind. It is purely the fact that Sir Walter is too insolent to realise that this is what needs to be done which is why people need to persuade him. Sir Walter could however take their persuasion the wrong way, he may believe that they are trying to put him further in debt or try to run his life as though he can't do it himself.
A much more common theme later on in the book is social persuasion - this is when the public take on an idea which then gets spread around as a certain truth when really it could be nothing more than a rumour. For example when Mr Elliot persuaded people that he was going to marry Anne the public spread it around as gossip which then escalated way out of proportion which then put great pressure on Anne. By now everybody believed that Anne and Mr Elliot were engaged when really Anne knew nothing about this and had never even been proposed to by Mr Elliot (incidentally even if she had been she would have declined his offer). It is morally dangerous for the public to do this because when they spread around these rumours they don’t think about the effect it is having upon the people its about. In this case it is Anne Elliot who is effected by this.
When Mary is pretending to be ill so that she gets more attention and doesn't have to look after her children, she gets a visit by Anne even though she knows Mary is not really ill (if she were really ill she would have been sent to Lyme to recover). Everybody goes along with the charade when in her company, except her husband Charles who openly tells Mary that he believes she is not ill. When Anne is there Mary tells her to try and persuade Charles that she really is very ill. ' I do believe that if Charles were to see me dying he would not think there was anything the matter with me. I am sure, Anne, if you would, you might persuade him that I really am very ill--a great deal worse than I ever own.' Charles also confides in Anne and tells her to try and to persuade Mary to stop pretending to be ill all the time. Charles' exact words were 'I wish you could persuade Mary not to be always fancying herself ill'. Anne now faces a moral dilemma. If she was to tell Charles that Mary really was ill she knows she would be lying because she knows that she is not ill. If she tells Mary to stop pretending to be ill she will lose the respect of her sister.
A much less common form of persuasion in the novel is indirect persuasion. An example of indirect persuasion is when the Misses Musgrove walk past a window where Mary and Anne were standing looking out over the grounds. Not wanting to sound rude the two asked Mary if she would like to join them for a long walk, clearly emphasising the word 'long' to try and put her off coming with them. Mary didn't pick up on this and agreed to go with them. Anne really didn't want to go for a walk but realised that the sisters didn't want Mary to go so she felt persuaded to go along with them to try and dissuade Mary from going. When they had set off on their walk they met up with Captain Wentworth and Mr Musgrove, Anne now faced a choice - she could either turn back because she didn't want to proceed if they were walking with Captain Wentworth or she could carry on and try to dissuade Mary. She went on. When Anne made the decision to go on the walk to help out the sisters she did it because she thought it would be the right thing to do. In some ways it ended up backfiring on Anne as she would have much rather stayed at home than walk with Captain Wentworth and Mr Musgrove. So when she made the decision to go along she was acting very unselfishly.
When William Elliot comes back into the story he has to try and persuade his family that he is a changed man from what he was before. He uses deliberate persuasion to try and get his point across even though he is really only back to make sure he doesn't miss out on his inheritance. The family believes his story and accepts him back into the family. William Elliot uses a lot of direct persuasion to get what he wants. For example he persuades Mr Smith to lend him money with the promise of repayment but with really no intention of paying it back. For a normal person this would present lots of moral dangers about lying and being deceitful but Mr Elliot sees none of these and thinks only of himself.
He does a good job of persuading everybody that he is a good man worthy of marrying Anne and even gets Lady Russell on his side, who then tries to persuade Anne that she should marry him.
When Anne reads the letter sent to her by Captain Wentworth about how he really feels about her she needs time to recover from it by herself for reflection. She did not get enough of this time before Charles, Mary, and Henrietta all came in they told her that she looked ill and needed to see a doctor, but she didn't need a doctor she needed to be on her own. She now had to persuade them that she wasn't really ill and that she was going to go home. But they would not let her walk home so they rang for a chair, again Anne had to persuade them that she would rather walk, but they would not let her walk alone either so Charles insisted that he go with her, but she really needed to be on her own so again she had to persuade Charles that he needn't walk with her. This posed moral dangers for Anne because she was not being entirely truthful to them it was for the good of herself and Captain Wentworth that she didn't tell them.
Throughout this book persuasion has been expressed in a number of different ways. It has had both detrimental and positive outcomes. In many of the cases which ended up with negative outcomes the persuader was selfish and was looking at only their own point of view without taking into consideration the thoughts or opinions of the person they are persuading. Just because someone trusts another person's opinion it doesn't mean that they have to take their advice or be persuaded by them. If Anne had gone on what she believed in rather than Lady Russell she would have been much happier. The life of Jane Austen has had a large part to play in the story of persuasion as she was persuaded not to marry someone who she believed she loved and ended up regretting it.
For my essay I have used references from the BBC documentary 'The Real Jane Austen' with Claire Tomalin who wrote the book on Jane Austen 'Jane Austen - A Life'.
I have also used the introduction from the Penguin Classic edition of Persuasion.
