Book #53: Persuasion by Jane Austen

I remember that the last time I read this book, I read it at the same time as Mansfield Park, and I thought the two heroines were very similar and equally boring and I wasn't the HUGEST fan. Fanny from Mansfield Park is especially quiet and impotent and does basically nothing interesting the whole book. But Anne, in Persuasion, is actually much more interesting. She is less outspoken than Lizzie Bennet, and probably more conventional and respectful towards her undeserving parents (even in thought), but I like how she stays interested in Captain Wentworth even after all hope is supposedly gone, and how she is completely unprideful and unmercenary in her aspirations and opinions about herself. She also talks a lot more about marrying someone who is intelligent, and the narrator mentions a lot of times how Anne Elliott is very intelligent and well-reasoning herself, but she still gets nervous and overthinks things when she's around her love interest and spends hours wondering about what he meant when he said X. I love how ridiculous her father and sister are, especially how her father talks so much about whether the people around him are beautiful or not.

It's kind of interesting to think about what the plot is for this story. There really ISN'T that much of a plot, and a lot of the principal characters in Anne's life at this time are really kind of random people (like the Musgroves) and there are a lot of them. But it's all plenty engrossing and you root so hard for Captain Wentworth and Anne to end up together!