Johnson finds deep significance in these tiny gestures, and analyzes moments of physical intimacy between Elliot and her suitors.įor Johnson, part of the power of Austen’s writing is in her “stage direction”: the physical constellation of characters in scenes like the pivotal one that takes place in a concert hall.

“Little circumstances-when eyes just miss, or when hands touch, whether by accident or intent-are interspersed among more dramatic scenes in which a man and woman feel acutely each other’s physical presence,” she writes. Johnson explores Austen’s use of blushes, beating hearts, physical gestures, and almost-contact-devices that weave a web of physicality around Anne and Wentworth. Only after many torturous scenes of emotional restraint are they reunited, brought together by an impassioned letter of Wentworth’s that may count as one of fiction’s sexiest love notes. Her past comes back to haunt her when her old beau, now a captain in the British Navy, returns. The novel follows Anne Elliot, a 27-year-old spinster who has, seven years earlier, broken off an engagement with naval officer Frederick Wentworth, succumbing to family pressure despite her own affection. Persuasion’s physical reactions and interactions create a novel Johnson calls “surprisingly vibrant and seductive, though understated.” As in Austen’s other books, she uses the eyes and hands to create a world that is “physically stimulating, if not sexually suggestive”-a world of shy glances, chance meetings, and cramped spaces that throw its heroine and hero together again and again.

Austen uses the eyes and hands to create a world that is “physically stimulating, if not sexually suggestive.”

Persuasione by Jane Austen