Jane Austen’s Persuasion Is Based on a Real-Life Romance
But should you watch the panned Netflix movie?
Period dramas have always been popular and that’s not going to change anytime soon. In recent years there has been the Apple TV+ series about Emily Dickinson, the remake of Jane Austen’s Emma, the ongoing Outlander saga and the wildly popular Bridgerton. So it’s no surprise Netflix will air a re-imagining of Austen’s Persuasion this Friday.
I admit I can’t resist historical pieces. Who can pass up the possibility of escaping to another time and place for an hour or two? Add to that the fact that Persuasion has always been my favorite Austen novel, though it is far from her most popular. Don’t get me wrong: I loved Pride and Prejudice, both the book and the BBC miniseries with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. Persuasion is Austen’s final novel, however. Its heroine Anne Elliot is older and dare I say wiser?
At 27, Anne is a departure from Austen’s earlier protagonists and critics have described the book as Austen’s gift to herself. She was 42 when she wrote it and not well. She enjoyed moderate success as a writer but everything she published had appeared anonymously, as was expected of women authors at the time. Like Anne, Jane never married — but she had fallen madly in love when she was young.
A real-life Captain Wentworth
In Persuasion, a relative “persuades” 19-year-old Anne not to marry Captain Frederick Wentworth because he isn’t a suitable partner. In real life, family members made sure 20-year-old Jane and the dashing did not get their happy ending. Both Jane’s and Tom’s families considered the match unsuitable.
Tom had no money and had not yet established himself as a lawyer. Supposedly even Jane conceded at the time that the match could not succeed. Like Anne, she was smitten. In a letter to her sister Cassandra, she wrote:
I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together.”
Lefroy’s relatives sent Tom away in 1796, a little more than a year after he arrived in Steventon, the north Hampshire village where Austen lived. Jane couldn’t forget Tom and the breakup devastated her:
The day will come on which I flirt my last with Tom Lefroy and when you receive this it will be all over. My tears flow as I write at this melancholy idea”.
Two years later she had tea with one of Lefroy’s relatives and desperately wanted to ask about him. But “pride” kept her silent.
Tom went on to become a successful barrister, judge and politician. He married in 1799 and fathered seven children with his wife Mary. When asked about their relationship after Jane’s death, Lefroy admitted his feelings for her to :
My late venerable uncle … said in so many words that he was in love with her, although he qualified his confession by saying it was a boyish love. As this occurred in a friendly & private conversation, I feel some doubt whether I ought to make it public.”
As for Jane’s sixth and final novel, it didn’t appear until 1817, six months after her death. It’s hard not to see parallels between Jane’s barrister and Anne’s captain.
Dakota Johnson, who plays Anne in the Netflix version, would probably agree. In a interview, Johnson said she believes Anne is closer to Jane than any of her other characters:
I really felt like Anne Elliot is maybe the most like her — like Austen. In her prose, she’s sort of winking and nodding to the reader.”
Unlike Austen, Anne gets her second chance. The heroine may be living in a cheap Bath rental with awful relations but she hasn’t given up on love. When her family lets their home to an Admiral and his wife to reduce expenses, Anne and Wentworth meet again after a seven-year separation.
Will she follow her instincts and try again with the man she can’t forget? Or should she finally move on?
A modern retelling
Directed by Carrie Cracknell, the adaptation features Johnson alongside Cosmo Jarvis, Henry Golding, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Mia McKenna-Bruce and Richard E. Grant. To appeal to viewers, Cracknell inserted anachronistic phrases and “Fleabag” tropes into the period drama.
describes Persuasion as a savory appetizer but notes the changes don’t quite work:
It is like an Austen amuse bouche — an entry-level cover version that tries to rev up the humor and speak directly to Gen Z by using its lingo — or at least an advertising executive’s idea of what Gen Z sounds like. But something feels off about the way it is executed.”
I also admit to being a little wary of the movie. First, I’ve watched both — which, by the way, got good reviews — and was mildly horrified. Because Dickinson is my favorite poet it was almost painful to see not one but two on-screen versions that differed so radically from my view of her. I’m far from alone on this. Almost everybody has had the experience of seeing a favorite book butchered, or at least distorted, to appeal to contemporary audiences.
To make matters worse, the early reviews of Persuasion are, well, terrible. As in really, really bad. doesn’t even try to hold back:
But this adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, by the theatre director , from a screenplay by Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow, is a travesty. The gauzy melancholy of Austen’s story about lost loves reunited is mothballed in favour of a sassy romcom reading of the material.”
If you want to read more of the same, Google Netflix and Persuasion: you will find a slew just like The Guardian’s bloodbath of a review. One of the more forgiving critiques emphasizes Cracknell’s disregard for the of the story:
Persuasion is a story about the silent tragedies that people carry with them and the leaden weight of regret. To adapt Anne Elliot’s story as one of quips and eye rolls and giggles betrays her dignity and the genius of Persuasion.”
I am going into this as an outlier but let me say up front: the last thing I want to see right now is a dreary film about a somber spinster. The leaden weight of regret does not entice me whatsoever. I’m also not a fan of dignity when it comes to romance. Austen herself — who poked fun at the pompous Mr. Darcy and lambasted pretentiousness in all her books — would likely not tout dignity either.
More importantly, that’s not the essence of Persuasion and it doesn’t capture Austen either. Jane had a keen wit — and yes, Anne is the darkest of her heroines. She’s no Elizabeth Bennet, that’s certain. Would Austen — or Anne — have engaged in the silly behavior Johnson does on screen? Probably not.
But would 20-year-old Jane, whose letters speak of profligate dancing and carrying on, have been slightly goofy? Maybe. Even Lefroy’s comment about their relationship being a “boyish romance” seems to confirm the lightness of their connection.
Panned movies I’ve loved
Will the bad reviews stop me from watching Persuasion? Hardly.
I’ve lost count of the panned movies I’ve loved. Still, I don’t want to see Anne’s romance made into something trivial because that’s not what the novel is about and it’s not what the romance with Tom meant to Austen.
That said, I’m willing to give the film a chance. One of the things that ruined for me is that the movie failed to capture Dickinson’s rebellious spirit and wicked humor. The critics’ consensus on that movie? A whopping 92 percent approval rating. has this to say:
A Quiet Passion offers a finely detailed portrait of a life whose placid passage may not have been inherently cinematic, but is made more affecting by Cynthia Nixon’s strong performance.”
Anybody who thinks Dickinson’s life was a “placid passage” does not know Dickinson. More to the point: I don’t want to watch movies about placid passages. Which, I suppose, is why I hated it.
On the flip side, I rather like that Persuasion doesn’t take itself too seriously — and neither does Johnson as Anne Elliot.
Not all the reviews have been bad either. piece on the film isn’t exactly glowing but it’s a long way from The Guardian’s thrashing:
And yet Johnson does manage to sell much of it. She is subtle where many might choose something big and breaks the fourth wall like she’s letting us in on a secret. It may be “Fleabag”-esque, but she’s not imitating Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She’s making it her own. In fact, most of the cast is rather vibrant and full of newish discoveries — especially Cosmo Jarvis (who some will recognize from “Lady Macbeth”) as Anne’s old love Frederick Wentworth. . .”
Want to decide for yourself? Watch the trailer below.
