Jane Austen Quote of the Week 189

My favorite novel is Persuasion, so I wanted to dwell on that this week. What I found is a "passionate passage" amongst those I helped gather in the "Male Voices in Praise of Jane Austen" web site. It is found where Anne Elliot and Captain and Wentworth had just renewed their engagement near the end of the novel:

"... they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement. There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other's character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting. And there, as they slowly paced the gradual ascent, heedless of every group around them, seeing neither sauntering politicians, bustling housekeepers, flirting girls, nor nursery-maids and children, they could indulge in those retrospections and acknowledgements, and especially in those explanations of what had directly preceded the present moment, which were so poignant and so ceaseless in interest. All the little variations of the last week were gone through, and of yesterday and today there could scarcely be an end."

What caught my attention is the description of their "new" feelings for each other. It is a clue that we should pick up on and put to use ourselves in our relationship with the opposite sex. My oh my, the things we can learn from Jane Austen, the spinster!

If you care to read the entire group of "passionate passages" you will find them here starting with Persuasion:

http://www.theloiterer.org/ashton/year00/passion2.html

Yours aff'ly,

Linda the Librarian

Pic: Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds for Persuasion 1995