Austen tells us exactly what to think about in Sir Walter. Vanity was the beginning and end of Sir Walter Eliot's character. He judges absolutely everyone he encounters by the standards of his own good looks. The Baronessie was the lowest rank of the inherited titles, although you wouldn't know it from the way that Sir Walter carries on. You do get the feeling with Sir Walter that he's a character who stepped out of an 18th-century novel,. which is odd because we think of persuasion as her most 19th century novel.
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