Rhetoric and Gender in Jane Austen's Persuasion - Outline Example

Jane Austen’s book is one that most people have struggled to evaluate or box into a particular theme. The first read often leaves many underwhelmed and wondering exactly what the book entails. However, as many have pointed out over the years, the lessons espoused in the book are becoming continually apparent and important, and surprisingly fitting into various themes of life today. The book tackles the themes of politics and the decline of socio-economic classism, as well as the feminist view which looks into the place of gender as a distinction in society.

 Persuasion is the story of the Eliott family, a respected family with a title that owns a huge estate. Sir Walter Eliot’s wife is said to have died 14 years before, leaving the man with his three children Mary, Elizabeth and Anne. Sir Walter is however used to the lavish lifestyle, prone to overspending, and leads the family into debt, which forces them, despite opposition from Sir Walter, to move away from their home and find a cheaper place to live. It is the story of how the daughters and their father cope with this change and the various characters in their life, and how the two generations in the family deal with a life they have not necessarily always been accustomed to “.

without compromising their dignity or relinquishing their comforts in a way not to be borne” (221). Most people who have read Jane Austen’s Persuasion, especially at school, are left unimpressed by it (Tennant n.p). It is one of those books whose thematic importance strikes one much later in life when they begin to observe the various nuances and the effects of the biggest divisions of all, gender and socio-economic standards. The main character, or at least one of the main characters Anne Eliot, has been described as dismally passive.

Her sister Elizabeth seems desperately in wait for a man, or is it a love, that never comes. The third sister Mary seems stuck with a husband that values hunting and shooting more than anything (Tennant n.p). It is an unimpressive story that goes on and on about the dull life of a family, with seemingly no central theme.