The novel is about positively representing mobility and deracination. I think it's very striking as well with Mrs. Smith because of her mobility issues Anne has to go and visit her, doesn't she? And I think that is one of the things we find in Bath. You know, moving from owned to rented accommodation, moving through space,. is very positively represented in a way that you don't see in a lot of Jane Austen's previous novels. Yes. Do you want to take us to the key scene really? One of the key scenes, probably the key scene. White Heart was the name of a real name. But it's very well chosen and obviously White Heart has rings
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