Her Body, Her Self: Negotiating Social Expectation and Desire in Jane Austen's Persuasion

Abstract

Jane Austen's final novel poses the question of an analogy between bodily and mental frames and this essay explores the extent and nature of the connection between mind and body as rendered by the text. Recent critical conversations discuss the way Anne's body is objectified by gazes, the way that sensations and bodily movement in Persuasion figure and facilitate romance, and the way that the blush communicates shame. Building upon this scholarship, I argue that Anne's body is the site of self-knowledge that facilitates a process of understanding her desires and resisting social expectation. Kathleen Stewart's concepts of "bloom space" and worlding are useful as a manifestation of the dynamic process of coming to know oneself, while D.A. Miller's concept of "Austen Style" provides a foundation for an analysis of the ways that social expectations and pressure are established by the narrative. With these theoretical frameworks, I discuss how depictions of liminality and movement are a narrative strategy for communicating the desire and anxieties that inform Anne's self-understanding. I also attend to gazes, physical appearances, physical sensations, and physical manifestations of affect as signals of self-understanding as well. Through the emerging confidence and sense of self that comes from attention to her body, Anne is ultimately able to defy social expectations and pursue her romantic desire for Captain Wentworth. By considering the capacity of one's body to be the site of understanding one's place in the world, I believe that Persuasion challenges twenty-first century readers to think about the social expectations and opportunities for self-knowledge that are created or denied by new forms of disembodied communication and social media.