In which I discuss the novel Persuaded by Jenni James

I am, at best, ambivalent about Jane Austen inspired literature, as I discussed in the previous post. But I keep trying, particularly with the modern adaptations of her work.

So one day  two Young Adult books from the Jane Austen Diaries series by Jenni James popped up on the Goodreads giveaway pages, and I thought, "Why not?" and entered their giveaway contest.  And then Persuaded, a modern adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Persuasion, showed up a few weeks later, on the same day as the Sherman Alexie book excerpted in a previous post. A couple of days after that, I finished a big paper and decided to relax and reward myself with some fun reading for a change. I finished the whole book that night, which is more than I can say for the Zombie book (see last post).

Overall, it was cute. In case you think that seems condescending, I read a lot of “cute” books: Jennifer Crusie, for example. The basic premise is a retelling of Persuasion, set in current Farmington (state?) with teenagers. Gregory Wentworth is the kid whom Amanda Ellis is persuaded by her friends, notably Kylie Russell, to turn down when he asks her to be his girlfriend. He immediately moves to Phoenix, Arizona. Three years later, he is back in Farmington, rich and gorgeous. In the meantime, the Ellis family has fallen on harder times financially and moves to a much smaller house, while the Wentworth family buys their mansion.


Persuaded did raise some questions for me:

1. The meaning of the word “four-wheeling”. When the subject first comes up in the book, I associated it with ATVs. Growing up, a friend had a three wheel ATV and we rode that thing all over the forest area behind her house. We called it three-wheeling. Ms. James refers to four-wheeling, so at first I thought she meant the four wheel type of ATV, but then I realized that they were going out in the desert in a huge Hummer. Not my idea of “four-wheeling”. In high school, the guys with big trucks went “mudding”, an activity in which I did not participate, but which necessitated them driving their trucks to school Monday morning covered in mud, even above the windows, as a badge of honor or manhood or something. Then I wondered if the difference was that I grew up in an area with massive amounts of rain, and therefore mud. So on a recent trip to a bookstore, I dragged a friend to the magazine area to look at truck magazines. Our "research" did not clear it up, as some of the titles referred to four-wheeling, and others to mudding. The term off-road events also came up, but that same friend pointed out that it could refer to to wheeled items other than trucks.

In this book, four-wheeling refers to big trucks driven off-road, and ATV-ing refers to riding the small one to two person machines. It is while the group is riding ATVs that Kylie Russell, who at first corresponded to the character of Lady Russell since she was instrumental in persuading Amanda to turn down Gregory, and then later to Louisa Musgrove since she falls in love with him when he comes back rich and gorgeous, hurts herself showing off her riding tricks, which corresponds to Louisa jumping off the Cobb in Lyme Regis.
 
2.The purpose of a Young Adult adaptation of Jane Austen. Sure, I mostly enjoyed it, but I recognize the story and the characters. Part of the enjoyment is figuring out which character and events the author intended to match up with the Jane Austen version. Really!

Young Adult as a book category generally spans around 13-17 years old, depending on reading ability. Would someone in that age group who is already reading Jane Austen want to read this book? I read other blogs and books by Jane Austen aficionados who wax eloquently about their first memories of reading Jane Austen, but I don't actually remember mine. She was just suddenly there, and part of my life. I believe it was during my first attempt at college, around 20 or so. I do remember the big extracurricular project during my senior year of high school (age 17-18) was reading the unabridged version of Les Miserables. I then flashed back to about 10 or 11 years old, when one of my favorite books was A Wrinkle in Time. So while at the bookstore that same friend and I took Persuaded back to the children's section and compared it to A Wrinkle in Time. Vocabulary- and grammar-wise, A Wrinkle in Time seemed at a higher level than Persuaded, barely. Therefore, presumably, this book was not written for teenagers like me, and I’m not sure that a teen who was already into Austen would be reading this book.

Another possibility is that the book was intended to be liked on its own merits and hopefully encourage teens to want to read Jane Austen. I can only look at this book through the filter of multiple readings and multiple movie adaptations of Persuasion, and therefore find it impossible to separate it from the original work. I do know someone in this age range who reads voraciously, though this particular teen’s taste runs toward Harry Potter and Twilight, but I forgot to ask her to read the book when I saw her last, and decided to just finish this post. So I am undecided as to whether this book would be good on its own without its association with Jane Austen.
 
3. The insinuation that Amanda needed Gregory present to let her know she was beautiful. One thing that disturbed me occurred toward the end of the book, after Gregory had already left the email which reconciled him and Amanda (Captain Wentworth leaves a letter for Anne, but new technology and all that). Gregory talks about how he never should have left Amanda in the clutches of her family, who only told her stepsister she was beautiful and not Amanda, and that Gregory should have stayed in touch so that Amanda knew she was beautiful.

Here (pg.215):
“Where is the girl who knew how beautiful she was? Who shyly lowered her eyes but blushed because she knew it was true, not because she was embarrassed to be noticed?”

 and here: (216):
“You are the most beautiful girl in the whole world. You are! You always have been. And from now on, you’re going to hear it every day until you believe it again. You got that?”

 Yeah, it gets a little sappy after they realize they love each other. And it’s absolutely wonderful when a man is around to tell you that you’re beautiful. Especially when a young woman is getting bombarded with images of how she’s supposed to look, and in this case, when her family prefers the looks of one sister over another. But would I want a stepdaughter of mine (if I actually had one) to think that she does not have the resources within herself, and that Gregory Wentworth or his substitute was necessary for her to feel good about herself? Absolutely not. And while this may not be what Ms. James was suggesting with Persuaded, these two pages lend themselves to this conclusion.

 It's true that in Persuasion, Anne Elliot's family does not appreciate Anne's type of beauty. "Her father had found little to admire in her, (so totally different were her delicate features and mild dark eyes from his own)" which leads to her sister Elizabeth being considered far more elegant and believed to have the ability to make a better marriage than Anne.  It's also true that Anne's "early bloom" fades away after she is persuaded to reject Captain Wentworth and he goes off to sea, though the mention is made "now that she was faded and thin".  So it could just be that she's lost some weight in a time when this was not attractive: later, after relocating to her sister Mary's house for a while and gaining new surroundings and people, the return of Captain Wentworth and a brief visit to the seaside in Lyme Regis, Anne gains "plumpness".  In Bath, her father compliments her on her improved looks, "he thought her 'less thin in her person, in her cheeks'".
 
Though Anne's family does not appreciate her, in beauty, brains, or musical talent, Anne has a pretty solid self-image. She knows the extent of her musical ability, and she "would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated mind" to live like a Musgrove daughter. That's about the extent of Ms. Austen's attributing any thoughts to Anne herself about her capabilities, but Ms. Austen does continue to allude to Anne's strengths. Captain Wentworth refers to Fanny Harville as a superior creature, and he, Anne, and the reader know he's really referring to Anne. Lady Russell is less gifted than Anne in "a quickness of perception..., a nicety in the discernment of character, a natural [mental] penetration". When Louisa Musgrove is injured jumping off the Cobb, it is Anne Elliot who reacts rationally and takes care of everything. 

In short, Captain Wentworth likes Anne Elliot for her brain. In contrast, Gregory Wentworth in Persuaded seems to focus on Amanda's beauty and her incredible ability on the piano. I prefer Ms. Austen's approach. However, it did not dissuade me from enjoying the break from schoolwork provided by my late night reading of Persuaded.

The reviews for the previous books in the Jane Austen Diaries series, this book, and the excerpt from the next, Emmalee, have almost persuaded me to look for the rest of the series.

High praise indeed.