THE CONSTRUCTION OF A THINKING WOMAN IN PERSUASION

Abstract

‘Thinking woman’ as an accepted reality came into the society with the rise of Feminism back in 1848. Accepting and practising the act of giving a woman her rightful identity as an individual who can speak, think, and feel for herself became a persisting challenge even in the present time. Renaissance saw changes that were never thought of before. When it came to giving a separate, individual identity to a woman, literature and reality came into loggerheads. Classic pioneering women authors like Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Marry Shelley, Louisa May Alcott, Virginia Woolf, and many more represented a side of women that the classic male writers were unsure of representing. With these women writers portraying an unkempt and raw beauty of women, came the wave of need for identity for women. Here, with special focus on Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion, we see the growth of woman who is not merely a responsibility of the man, but rather a thinking and feeling individual. Anne Elliot, unlike Elizabeth Bennet, represents a unique style of how meekness is not a weakness rather it contains the strength of powerful observation and rational actions.