Mary's Complaints — Persuasion

Austen finally reveals what happened eight years ago, and it's devastating in its ordinariness. In the summer of 1806, Frederick Wentworth came to Somersetshire, a young naval commander, brilliant and confident, with nothing but his own talents to recommend him. He met Anne Elliot, nineteen and lovely, starving for someone to love in a family that didn't see her. They fell deeply, rapidly, completely in love. It was mutual, intense, and certain, the kind of connection that feels like discovering you've been looking for someone your entire life. Then reality intervened. Sir Walter was appalled, a naval officer with no fortune, no family, no prospects beyond the dangerous uncertainties of wartime advancement. His coldness was crushing but survivable. Lady Russell's opposition was not. She loved Anne genuinely, had been almost a mother to her since Anne's own mother died. And she saw Wentworth's confidence as recklessness, his brilliance as arrogance, his certainty as dangerous youth. She painted a picture of Anne's future: constant anxiety, poverty, dependence on a man whose ship might never come in, whose career might end with death at sea. It would ruin her. It was imprudent, improper, hardly capable of success and not deserving it. Anne, at nineteen, trusted Lady Russell more than herself. She broke the engagement, believing she was being prudent, even noble, protecting Wentworth from a rash decision as much as protecting herself. He left the country heartbroken and angry, certain he'd been used badly. A few months saw the beginning and end of their attachment. But not the end of Anne's suffering. Seven years have passed. She never loved anyone else. She refused Charles Musgrove, who married her younger sister instead. And now, tracking Wentworth's career through naval lists, she knows the terrible truth: everything he promised came true. He's rich. He's successful. And she sacrificed happiness for prudence that turned out to be cowardice.