This is a character discussion for my new novel, Prideful & Persuaded, available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. If you’ve already read the novel, please rate and/or review on Amazon or Goodreads.
The first time I read Persuasion I didn’t like it (I was 17, that must be my excuse) but I loved Sir Walter Elliot. The first chapter, where we learn that a man spends all his spare time reading his own family history just tickled my fancy. His actions and speeches throughout the book are hilarious. Now that I have read the entirety of Jane Austen’s illustrious works, I find Sir Walter to be the best of her comical yet cruel characters. Mrs. Norris from Mansfield Park is another great example, she is terrible but very often funny (especially when she mooches cream cheese and partridge eggs from Southerton).
We meet Sir Walter first, before Anne, the actual main character, or Wentworth the male hero. We are told that “vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character”. This is extremely true, when Sir Walter takes a moment to think about his youngest daughter, Mary, he asks about her appearance, “The last time I saw her she had a red nose, but I hope that may not happen every day.” and then he offers to buy her new clothes to protect her from sharp winds. When he is alone with Anne, he compliments her looks, “less thin in her person, in her cheeks; her skin, her complexion, greatly improved; clearer, fresher. Had she been using any thing in particular?” This is the full extent of his paternal affection, he’s a terrible father. Or as Lady Elliot, Anne’s mother, thought before dying, “a conceited, silly father.”
This is rather tragic, and it’s certainly messed up Mary, who is so starved for attention and love that she can’t appreciate that she has married into a very normal, loving family. But it’s also so over the top that you can’t help but laugh. It also helps to know that not very much would have been expected of a Regency father. The girls would have had a governess, they all went to school, and we can assume that even neglected Anne is well-dressed and provided for if only because Sir Walter wants his whole family to look their best.
What is worse is that Sir Walter is also most likely a member of parliament, as he met his heir, Mr. Elliot, “in the lobby of the House of Commons”. Yes, this man is helping run a country! That’s hilarious! But also, very concerning for the state of the country. Let’s hope the other MPs are more intelligent (I wonder if he is friends with some other Jane Austen MPs, Mr. Palmer from S&S and Sir Thomas from MP?)
My favourite part of Sir Walter’s character is his counting of plain women. It’s horrible, it’s very bad in the light of MeToo, but I just can’t help laughing because of how exact he is about all of it. “once, as he had stood in a shop on Bond Street, he had counted eighty-seven women go by, one after another, without there being a tolerable face among them.” Eighty-seven! Who counts to eighty-seven!?! I can’t think of a single time in my life that I’ve counted eighty-seven of something for fun. And then luckily, because Sir Walter’s dislike of plain faces is universal, he insults all the men too. See, not so misogynist after all.
The last great part about Sir Walter is that he accepts Anne’s marriage to Wentworth because Wentworth is a very handsome man:
Sir Walter, indeed, though he had no affection for Anne, and no vanity flattered, to make him really happy on the occasion, was very far from thinking it a bad match for her. On the contrary, when he saw more of Captain Wentworth, saw him repeatedly by daylight, and eyed him well, he was very much struck by his personal claims, and felt that his superiority of appearance might be not unfairly balanced against her superiority of rank; and all this, assisted by his well-sounding name, enabled Sir Walter at last to prepare his pen, with a very good grace, for the insertion of the marriage in the volume of honour.
What an excellent father! What a wonderful character that Jane Austen put together. Absolutely terrible but at the same time, so funny that I can’t work up a real hatred for him.
I actually started my novel by writing chapter 2, where Mr. Shepherd and Lady Russell persuade Sir Walter to have lower expectations for marriage. I love how Sir Walter, through the book, seems to be so very persuadable. He doesn’t want to rent his house; he certainly doesn’t want it rented to the navy! but he comes around. Mr. Elliot has grievously insulted the family, but he talks his way right back in. Sir Walter was a very fun character to write and I’m so happy that Jane Austen invented him!