Captain Harville is distressed in Chapter 23 of
Persuasion because of Captain Benwick's change of affections from Miss Fanny
Harville to Louisa. In this state, he invites Anne to stand beside him at the edge of the
Musgrove's room next to the window so he can confide his thoughts to
her.
Harville laments that Captain Benwick has so soon forgotten
Fanny and turned his affections to Louisa, being thrown together with her after her fall.
Harville says to Anne: "Poor Fanny! she would not have forgotten him so soon!" Thus he introduces
a long discussion between the two of them about the question of whether men or women are
constant in their affections for the objects of their love when
parted from them.
Captain Wentworth is seated at a writing desk near
at hand engaged in writing a letter about the miniature portrait of Captain Benewick that Benwick
has asked Harville to give to Louisa (though it had been produced in Cape Town, South Africa, for
Fanny Harville). Wentworth is near enough so that, if he tries, he can hear what Anne and
Harville are speaking of.
He hears that Harville wins the point that
men feel a deep and abiding constancy of love and affection when separated from their wives and
families. He also hears that Anne wins the point that women feel constancy of love and affection
more deeply and for longer than men when the object of their love is removed from them either
through death or other circumstances:
[Anne}: No, I believe [men] capable of everything great
and good in your married lives. ... while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the
privilege I claim for my own sex ... is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is
gone.
The importance of this is that
Wentworth here learns indirectly that
Anne still loves him and has always loved him and that therefore there may be renewed hope for
him for winning her hand in marriage. The result of this learning is
that while under the pretense of finishing his letter written on Benwick's behalf, he hastily
pens another letter addressed to Anne confessing his feelings and his
hopes.
Too good, too
excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and
constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F.
W.
He then contrives a way to secretly
hand it to her. Anne reads his letter and brings herself to believe
that he still loves her and is seeking her love again as she learns
from the letter that hope has been renewed in his heart.
[Wentworth]: Tell me not that I am too late, that such
precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own
than when you almost broke it,
....
The
result of this learning is that Anne and
Wentworth finally reach an agreement and finally have the freedom to unite their
love in marriage, a marriage that makes all of Anne's well-wishers
happy--eventually:
There was nothing less for Lady Russell to do, than to
admit that she had been pretty completely wrong, and to take up a new set of opinions and of
hopes.
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