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TISAN REVIEW
the past and its power in the present. Like all melancholy persons , Anne
feels strongly the pull of the past, with its unresolved attachments and
losses. In being pale, thin, and sad, she seems to be living out that past -
not only her loss of Wentworth but her identification with the dead
mother, who was "not the very happiest being in the world herself." As
Lady Elliot suffered from Sir Walter's selfishness, so does Anne. And as
Lady Elliot died, so has Anne , at least in part, becoming a prematurely
faded creature doomed to spinsterhood and childlessness . The lost
mother, no longer a real person whose imperfections can be recognized,
has been idealized and taken into the self. Lady Russell finds that in Anne
"she could fancy the mother to revive again."
The first love provides the ground plan for others, and the trajectory
of Anne's relationship with W entworth seems to repeat the pattern of
that with the mother: attachment, bereavement, prolonged depression.
Freud alludes to the "shadow of the object" that falls on the ego after a
loss of love; Anne lives in the deepened shadow of two such losses. After
Wentworth leaves, she behaves as if her own worth went with him.
Depression is often understood as anger turned inward against the
self - "a disguised expression of an attitude of revolt ... transformed
into melancholic contrition," according to Freud. Indeed Anne, unlike
Austen's other heroines, never gets angry at those who have injured her
- her dreadful family, her impatient suitor, even the person most imme–
diately responsible for her plight, her godmother. Lady Russell consis–
tently and vigorously misguides Anne with regard to her suitors, persuad–
ing her to reject Wentworth, then arguing in favor of the uninteresting
Charles Musgrove and later the villainous Mr. Elliot, Sir Walter's heir.
Although Anne "did not blame Lady Russell," her attitude toward the
older woman is obviously ambivalent: Anne feels that if anyone were to
ask her counsel in such a case, " they would never receive any of such
certain immediate wretchedness, such uncertain future good."
Lady Russell is clearly a maternal figure - godmother, mother's best
friend, "one who had almost a mother's love, and mother's rights."
Thus the ambivalence toward her can be understood
to
represent the
mingled love and resentment felt for the dead mother. Like the self-sacri–
ficing Lady Elliot, Lady Russell stands for the renunciation of pleasure;
she and her persuasion suggest the repressive superego founded on feelings
of guilt toward the dead parent. The theme of persuasion associated
with her gives the book its title, and the word itself appears many times
in the text. Wentworth attributes Anne's defection to "overpersuasion";
Anne hopes Wentworth will see the virtues of "a persuadable temper."
There is a search for the right balance between the persuadable and the
resolute, repression and impulse, society and the individual.
In terms of this conflict, Wentworth is squarely on the side of im-
