The Dashing Sea-Captain

Captain Frederick Wentworth! The man whose heart was ever faithful to the woman he loved--even when she rejected him!

Captain Wentworth returns from a successful sea-voyage--now quite wealthy, but still broken-hearted about how he was treated by Anne Eliot (who was persuaded into rejecting his offer by her godmother).

Captain Wentworth returns to Kent to see Anne. Even though he has been deeply wounded, he cannot help but continue to love her:

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant." --Persuasion Chapter 23.

Now, if a young man today were to say that to a young lady today, she would probably cry, because either a) she was very happy that she knew and liked such a romantic young man or b) she was very sad that she liked a young man who thought he was living in the 19th century :)

Either way, it is a very romantic thing to say...

A Sad, Persuaded, Girl

Poor Anne Eliot!

Persuaded against her better judgment not to marry the man that she loved...

Years later, she regrets her feeble-mindedness... but then the dashing Captain Frederick Wentworth come back to England!

Anne is a very sweet lass--doing everything that her father and older sister wish her to do. She does not often get her own way, but she is used to it.

Her only comfort is her godmother, who, unfortunately, was also the lady who persuaded her not to marry Captain Wentworth.

"She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning. "--Persuasion, Chapter 4.

I like Anne Eliot. She understands obedience to her father, but yet, she doesn't seem to have developed her own opinion (at least in public). But by the end of the story, she shows herself to be a stronger character, less easily persuaded by others, yet still as sweet and charming as ever...

Miss Elizabeth Bennet, of whom we have heard so much!

Miss Elizabeth Bennet is a very strong-minded, very original girl. She is fond of reading, long walks in the countryside (even though her skirts might get a bit muddy!)

At first, she hate Mr. Darcy because of the wrong he did to her sister regarding Mr. Bingley--he persuaded Mr. Bingley that Jane Bennet did not really love him, and besides, she was below Mr. Bingley's station anyway!

But when Mr. Darcy performs a chivalrous act towards her family, Elizabeth cannot help but see him in a kinder light.

Although she is a headstrong girl who says whatever she likes in public--something considered undesirable in a girl at that time--she still remains a true lady.

She does not gossip, like some of her sisters and her mother, and she always keeps a sensible head in a difficult situation.

"Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley's attentions to her sister, Elizabeth was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticise. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she hardly had a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware; to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with." --Pride and Prejudice Chapter 6

The Inquisitive Young Matchmaker

Enter Miss Emma Woodhouse!

...and Mr. Knightly, of course!

Emma is a charming young woman who believes herself perfectly capable of creating happy marriages for other people--even when her only proof of such a gift is a single lucky guess!

Trouble ensues as Emma attempts to re-match already happy people--and finds herself the object of more than one young man's affections in the process.

Emma soon realizes that she should not meddle with other people's happiness--because they are the ones who are best equipped to find their own happiness.


From Chapter 22 of Emma:

Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.

Austen Wednesdays: Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy

I've decided to start out with Mr. Darcy--perhaps one of the best known Austen characters from Pride and Prejudice other than Elizabeth Bennet.


As you can see by the pictures, I am slightly biased as to which Pride and Prejudice movie versions I think are the best.

Mr. Darcy is a considerably wealthy man, with an income of at least £10,000 a year. He owns a large estate called Pemberley, where he also looks after his younger sister.

When you first meet him in Pride and Prejudice, he is portrayed as an almost cruel, snobbish person with a huge ego. However, by the end of the novel, Elizabeth sees his true colors when he demonstrates his love for her by acting in a very self-less way towards her family in a time of crisis.

Mr. Darcy is the very picture of perfection--in fact, I am quite sure he has never had or ever will have a real earthly equal.


From Chapter 11 of Pride and Prejudice:

"I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise."

"No," said Darcy, "I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost is lost forever."

"That is a failing indeed!" cried Elizabeth. "Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me."

"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil— a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome."

"And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody."

"And yours," he replied with a smile, "is willfully to misunderstand them."