Paddy, we perhaps hope this would happen. I mean, this yearning will happen. Does her some drip clues along the way that it will happen? I think she does. Yes, it's interesting hearing Fiona describe that scene because it reminds me how cleverly Austin counterpoises it with an earlier scene where Anne is essentially concealed in a Holly Bush. And of course, the roles are reversed yet again, as Karen was saying. This time Anne is in the right situation and it is simply one of the most touching scenes in all of English literature. She's almost too perfect, Anne. It's just coincidence that she happens to be sat under the bush.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen’s last complete novel, which was published just before Christmas in 1817, five months after her death. It is the story of Anne Elliot, now 27 and (so we are told), losing her bloom, and of her feelings for Captain Wentworth who she was engaged to, 8 years before – an engagement she broke off under pressure from her father and godmother. When Wentworth, by chance, comes back into Anne Elliot's life, he is still angry with her and neither she nor Austen's readers can know whether it is now too late for their thwarted love to have a second chance.
The image above is from a 1995 BBC adaptation of the novel, with Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds
With
Karen O’Brien
Vice-Chancellor of Durham University
Fiona Stafford
Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford
And
Paddy Bullard
Associate Professor of English Literature and Book History at the University of Reading
Producer: Simon Tillotson