Jane Austen's Persuasion: a dramatic audiobook
ColourfulMel_VA for Anne Elliot
HOW TO PLAY ANNE
Anne is sensible, grounded, and calm. She withholds her own heart to keep the peace. She is the person to whom all responsibility falls. She is dignified and strong, she feels deeply, but she must feel it all alone. She is the one to carry everyone else, there is no one to share her load.
ABOUT THE CHARACTER
The novel's protagonist, Anne Elliot is the middle daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, a landed baronet from a socially important family. Quiet and reserved, yet clever and practical, Anne sees the foolishness in her father's lavish spending. Because she is neither the most beautiful nor the most image-conscious of his daughters, Sir Walter often overlooks Anne, slights her, and dismisses her opinions. Though Anne seeks love, she is conscious of her duty to her position and the prudence of making a suitable match. Seeking to please those around her, in her youth, she was persuaded from following her true desires. In contrast to both of her two sisters and to the other young female characters in the novel, Anne is level-headed, considerate of others, and humble. She balances duty and passion in a composed and respectful way.
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favourite volume always opened: ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL.
[Anne's dear friend has assumed that Anne will marry a man that Anne has no intention of marrying. Everyone thinks it will happen and Anne's own choice has not been considered. Her friend is being cautious about what she says because she's so sure of it.]
Will not this manner of speaking of him, Mrs Smith, convince you that he is nothing to me? Surely this must be calm enough. And, upon my word, he is nothing to me. Should he ever propose to me (which I have very little reason to imagine he has any thought of doing), I shall not accept him. I assure you I shall not. I assure you, Mr Elliot had not the share which you have been supposing, in whatever pleasure the concert of last night might afford: not Mr Elliot; it is not Mr Elliot that-- (cuts herself off before she reveals too much)
[Anne knows her family must move to Bath in order to save money. Her father is irrational and argumentative and doesn't want someone from the navy as a tenant of their old house. The love of Anne's life, whom she rejected, departed from her rejection to join the navy. She is both convincing her father here and revealing that she still thinks of her love as a dignified man.]
The navy, I think, who have done so much for us, have at least an equal claim with any other set of men, for all the comforts and all the privileges which any home can give. Sailors work hard enough for their comforts, we must all allow.
