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Jane Austen
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Anne is often with all four now, and too wise to give a verdict at home. She thinks Louisa rather the favourite, and she does not think Wentworth in love with either sister. What they feel for him is a fever of admiration that may become love. He shows no triumph, and he is wrong only in accepting two young women at once. Charles Hayter then quits the field, refuses a dinner, and is said to be studying himself to death. Mary hopes for a dismissal. Anne feels only that Hayter is wise.
A fine November morning brings a long walk. Mary insists on going, and Anne goes too, hoping to turn back with Mary and lessen the interference. The men return early and join them. Anne means to stay out of the way, yet she hears Louisa tell Wentworth she would rather be overturned by the man she loved than driven safely by anyone else. He says he honours her.
Their destination is Winthrop. Mary will not go down, so Charles and Henrietta run to the house while Louisa draws Wentworth into the hedge for nuts. Anne sits on a bank and hears them through holly. Louisa boasts she made her sister go, because a made-up mind is not turned by interference. Wentworth praises that firmness, holds up a glossy hazelnut that has outlived the storms, and says those who would be happy must be firm. Louisa adds that Charles once wanted to marry Anne, that she refused him, and that Lady Russell is blamed. Anne hears how he judges her character, and she cannot move until the feeling eases.
Henrietta and Hayter come back devoted to each other, and Louisa walks with Wentworth, while Anne stays with Charles and Mary. At the lane the Crofts offer a seat. Wentworth clears the hedge, and without a word he puts the tired Anne into the gig. She understands him. He cannot forgive her, yet he cannot see her suffer and do nothing. It is friendship he does not acknowledge. The Admiral is sure Frederick will choose one of the girls. Mrs Croft takes the reins at a dangerous post, and Anne is set down at the Cottage.
What you overhear can sound like final judgment because you cannot answer back. Anne listens while Wentworth praises firmness and Louisa repeats the story of Lady Russell's persuasion.
Before you adopt someone else's moral lecture as truth, weigh it against what they still do when you need help.
This chapter
He praises Louisa for refusing to be easily persuaded, and he holds up a hazel nut: glossy, unpunctured, still happy while others are trodden under foot. The lecture sounds like care for Henrietta. It is also a verdict on the woman behind the holly, who is not meant to hear. Firmness lets him admire a decided girl without calling the old refusal grief.
Continue this thoughtA Principle Told to a NutLady Russell's day of return is fixed, so Anne looks towards Kellynch and the same church as Wentworth, until a letter from Captain Harville sends him to Lyme and Louisa, sure that keeping her own way is a merit, bears down every wish to wait for summer. The party will stay the night, and the carriages do not reach the town until past noon.
What this chapter proves — the pattern beneath the scene
In this chapter, the lesson is Advice With No Expiry.
The card below names the pattern this chapter proves — carry it with you into the original text.
Advice With No Expiry
On the walk to Winthrop, Wentworth praises Louisa's decisiveness while Anne is close enough to hear. Louisa links the broken engagement to Lady Russell. A theory of character becomes a verdict on Anne's past, delivered to a hedge.
Key Insight
Other people will turn your old compliance into a moral. If you cannot revise the original decision, you will spend years overhearing what it supposedly proved.
“Let those who would be happy be firm.”Explore full theme analysis
Chapter 10
Other opportunities of making her observations could not fail to occur. Anne had soon been in company with all the four together often enough to have an opinion, though too wise to acknowledge as much at home, where she knew it would have satisfied neither husband nor wife; for while she considered Louisa to be rather the favourite, she could not but think, as far as she might dare to judge from memory and experience, that Captain Wentworth was not in love with either. They were more in love with him; yet there it was not love. It was a…
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Take a lecture you were not meant to hear, as Anne hears Wentworth praise the firm hazelnut and condemn a yielding character. Write the verdict. Then write one later action, as when he puts her into the Crofts' carriage, and say whether that action matches the lecture.
Write the overheard sentence and the later action side by side, and mark the one you will not swallow whole.
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Other theme-by-theme analyses from this book.
Watch Kellynch go to the Crofts while Wentworth rises, and carry worth without performing the rank you lost.
Stay only Anne until you refuse the household's yes to Mr. Elliot, then act without asking Lady Russell first.
Watch Camden Place lean toward Mr. Elliot until Mrs. Smith opens the ledger on what his agreeableness costs.
See past Sir Walter's mirror and Mr. Elliot's polish to the woman who gives the orders on the Cobb.
Hold a feeling through eight years of silence, a cold reunion, and the letter that finally names it.
Deep diving the literary elements.
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