<1>In a moment of internal discomposure, Anne Elliot defines the ills of women’s circumstances in the nineteenth century: “With all the restraints of her situation… The absolute necessity of seeming like herself produced then an immediate struggle” (Persuasion 258). Anne demonstrates that the “struggle” for the genteel woman is maintaining a carefully constructed façade of “seeming like herself.” This internal effort, the “immediate struggle,” that permeates women’s lives is to regulate one’s affect and maintain outward composure, which is difficult for Anne when grappling with the mental and emotional upheavals that mark her narrative and body. The “restraints” of Anne’s “situation” speak to Austen’s central concern with the position of women, an interest that pushes Austen to seek solutions for managing the difficulties of being a woman in a restrictive, patriarchal society through Anne—the psychosomatic heroine—and her requisite affective labor.
<2>Austen identifies the problems of women’s lives in the nineteenth century, because she experiences them herself. In a letter to her sister Cassandra on March 5, 1814, Austen points to the difficulties of being a woman with an active mind in a world that does not allow for the employment of women’s intellect: other than mending, reading, and letter writing, she has “nothing else to do.” (Letters 268). In her novels, Jane Austen delineates the suffering women encounter: a lack of options, financial and familial instability, romantic trials, a lack of profession, boredom, and loss. These “natural,” “probable,” and “everyday” instances that comprise Austen’s aesthetic are the stimuli for women’s psychosomatic illness (Letters 234); because of “everyday” little traumas, every woman has the capacity to be psychosomatic in Austen’s narrative world. The difficulties of everyday life beget psychic stress and unruly emotions that can easily manifest in the physical body. For Austen, psychosomaticism(1) is related to authenticity: psychosomatic response is the mapping of one’s mental and emotional truth on the physical body, a truth women are not to display.
<3>Austen demonstrates her understanding of the mind-body relationship as one fraught with social and personal tensions for women by way of the psychosomatic heroine. Though a woman may wish to be authentic, she must remain contained for her protection. Unruly emotions cannot slip through a façade of composure, nor can the body betray internal states for risk of public and social censure. Maintaining an outward appearance of self-possession keeps women socially viable subjects; though the body has the capacity to demonstrate internal conflict, women must work to compose themselves. Mary O’Farrell identifies this “separable will” the body has (O’Farrell 127), a “will” that needs to be controlled. For O’Farrell, this kind of “well-behaved will” is important for civility, but for Claudia Johnson, “What is at stake is not propriety, but survival” (Johnson 64).(2) Johnson affirms Austen’s “concern…for the therapeutic care of the mind as it lives in time, buffeted by hope, fear, and disappointment” (64).(3) For Austen, affective labor is crucial, because it enables psychosomatic heroines like Anne not only to master themselves and bolster their wellness but to navigate the world in which they live. In short, affective labor enables them to survive.
<4>Austen’s ideas of how her heroine survives through the necessary work of affective labor are acute in Persuasion. In Austen’s words, the psychosomatic heroine must “struggle against a great tendency to lowness,” and she accomplishes this because of “the absolute necessity of seeming herself” (Persuasion 105, 258). In order to navigate in her social world, Austen’s novels show psychosomaticism to be the condition the everyday woman must “struggle against.” In Persuasion, Austen establishes Anne Elliot as a psychosomatic heroine who continually works towards managing her mind, body, and emotions. As such, Austen articulates an argument that this individual, affective work necessary to the psychosomatic heroine includes work helping others as a pathway to self-healing. Anne, through her practice of affective labor, serves as a model for how to adapt to the social requirements of the world, while also yielding positive returns for one’s individual health.
“She Must Enure Herself”: The Psychosomatic Heroine and Affective Labor
<5>By the time Austen completes Persuasion in 1817, the trope of what I term the psychosomatic heroine was long-established. From multi-generic precedents like the Medieval writings of Margery Kempe, Shakespeare’s tragic heroines like Ophelia, heroines of amatory fiction and early women’s writing, to Samuel Richardson’s iconic Clarissa Harlowe, the psychosomatic heroine was a consistent character type who literalized mind-body relations and sought means of managing the illness that mental and emotional tumult could bring or perish for lack of self-management. For writers of the long eighteenth century, the novel provided a flexible form with which to explore this protagonist for whom psychosomaticism is a hallmark of her characterization and development. Innovations in narration, like the growth in free-indirect discourse, and significant narrative space with which to delve deeply into a heroine’s history, psychological minutiae, and external circumstances created “real, round, and complex” characters that Dierdre Lynch identifies as having an inner life and subjectivity that forms them as “the expressive analogue to ourselves” (Lynch 2-3). The interest in interiority enabled novel writers the experimental room to explore the mind, body, and emotion through the vehicle of the psychosomatic heroine.
<6>The psychosomatic heroine responds to social, domestic, and personal pressures and stressors with mental and emotional preoccupation that leads to physiological symptoms that vary depending on personal circumstances. Her body responds to the mental and emotional environment with symptoms that can range from passivity, silence, and isolation to bodily tremors, illness, decline, or frenzy; the most extreme physical response is death. On an individual basis, the psychosomatic heroine typically sees an onset of mental and physical symptoms in response to relational issues, secret keeping, or social constraint. On a larger scale, and for the purposes of this discussion, the psychosomatic heroine manifests anxieties associated with being a female subject in the eighteenth century: a lack of professional options, a lack of marital choice, and being subject to parental authority and social control.
<7>The work of managing the mind and body through affective labor is hard work indeed, and, for female heroines, failure in this crucial work can be fatal. For this genteel heroine to whom the professional world is closed, the primary avenue of gainful employment is to adhere to societal norms and marry into domestic bliss; to do this, she must present a consistent image of unwavering calm and happiness. Affective labor, this method of self-regulation, speaks to the influence of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon and what Michel Foucault identifies as the internalization of the medical gaze where the health of the body is subject to self-surveillance and self-discipline. Essentially, gendered social codes are reinforced through a panopticon-like self-surveillance where women are required to remain placid and composed or to display positive, or at least unbothersome, emotions. In Anne’s case, she continually “must” oversee her affect and do the affective labor necessary to “seem herself” despite the constant emotional disruptions to her outward composure. The form of the novel exposes the ideological fissures in this construction of femininity by way of psychosomatic illness, where a heroine’s placid façade is broken and her genuine affect is made visible. However, because this mode of unfiltered self-expression is unacceptable to society, the psychosomatic heroine must work to govern herself to continue navigating within her world.
<8>The psychosomatic heroine ultimately reveals the paradox the female subject encounters in the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: what society expects women to be is unnatural, yet they still must conform to these expectations through the difficult labor of self-management. This crucial affective labor of managing reactions, emotions, and thoughts enables the psychosomatic heroine to have success in her narrative by maintaining the ability to operate in her society. Like other heroine types—such as the sentimental heroine, quixotic heroine, Gothic heroine, bildung heroine, or heroine of sensibility—the psychosomatic heroine reveals cultural discourses that speak to what it means to be a woman in the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Unlike other heroine types identified in the novel, the psychosomatic heroine redefines ideas of women’s work. Rather than domestic work,(4) maternal work,(5) or professional work,(6) the psychosomatic heroine demonstrates that the most important work a woman does is on and for herself: she must perform the affective labor of managing her mind, body, and emotions in order to navigate her world.
<9>In Persuasion, Jane Austen articulates the cultural encoding of affective labor as a constant task for the psychosomatic heroine. Austen describes Anne’s continual efforts to manage her psychosomatic state to match the “needful civilities” society dictates for women in a number of ways (201): Anne must “clothe her imagination” (46); “must enure herself…must teach herself to be insensible” (56); “reason with herself, and try to be feeling less” (64); “arrange[] her own [feelings]” (87); “recover” (87, 95); or take “a little interval for recollection” (201). These modes of self-regulation are the work that Anne performs to manage her mind, body, and emotions. Although Austen’s novelistic depiction of what I’ll likewise call ‘affective labor’ precedes Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s articulation, their assertion of affective labor as a way to describe how immaterial, intangible, psychological, or interpersonal labors “produce collective subjectivities, produce sociality, and ultimately produce society itself” is very useful when exploring Austen’s Persuasion (Hardt 89).(7) Like Katherine Skaris, I use the term ‘affective labor’ to “recognize and represent” women’s labors that are not traditionally categorized as work (Skaris 4), because the concept of affective labor recognizes, like Austen, that “there are other kinds of work beyond the traditional and industrial definitions” (Skaris 5). Austen makes plain the realities of what women need to do to survive in their society, and at the heart of that necessary work are the positive outcomes for their well-being: the emotional and psychological well-being that facilitates bodily health and keeps them a viable subject on the marriage market.
<10>Austen demonstrates that affective labor is just as valuable as conventional forms of labor that are remunerated or acknowledged; domestic and familial duties are typically women’s purview in the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but affective labor is also a specific duty expected of women to survive and to thrive in their world. Like Arlie Hochschild’s ground-breaking assertion of women’s “second shift,” or the affective labor required to perform familial and partner care after their daytime job, in 1989, Austen speaks to the perpetual shift in which women must work to keep their minds, bodies, and emotions in check. Hochschild defines affective labor as labor that “requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others” (7), and it is through this labor that women must manage their feelings and direct them according to social expectations.(8) Beyond helping others, affective labor also works inwardly to manage and regulate one’s emotional state: Shiloh Whitney recognizes the “vital and valuable” modes of affective labor, noting that affective labor is “essential to even basic human relationships, as well as to self-care” (Whitney 283). Austen highlights both the “self-care” and social conformity that affective labor yields through Anne Elliot. Austen charges Anne with noticing and managing the signs and symptoms of her powerful emotions on her mind and body, because Austen is quite aware of the “tolerable calmness” society expects of its women (Northanger Abbey 142). Austen deeply recognizes that women are entangled in society as a necessity of their existence, and those who best do affective labor are rewarded with personal and relational fulfillment in marriages that are stipulated as meaningful, loving, and happy. Beautiful bodies may be attractive, but Austen sees that healthy minds, bodies, and emotions are crucial for success and the prevention of psychosomatic illness.
<11>Jane Austen shows that women’s daily lives are a touchstone for the psychosomatic in the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Austen investigates the private, more domestic sphere to locate women’s suffering, and her novels reveal the necessity of appearing composed in an often-turbulent world of personal and social strife. By shifting the psychosomatic heroine away from tragedy and Gothic-level drama of Richardson’s Clarissa or Burney’s Cecilia and Camilla to the more realistic, everyday struggles of women, Austen picks up a more optimistic thread of possibilities for women and their capacity to manage psychosomatic illness through psychological work. Austen shows the necessity of self-governance for achieving ‘success’ as a woman, because a heroine’s ability to self-manage is tied to the ability to successfully navigate her world and achieve as much happiness as is possible for her to do. Through the heroine Anne Elliot, Austen’s Persuasion reveals the sociocultural restrictions that influence women’s mind-body responses and the ways in which a woman can ‘work’ within and against the system that would otherwise bind her. Austen’s premise may not appear the most overtly radical when it comes to women’s rights, but that is because she paints the world as it is and examines how the system can best be navigated for women’s potential to be met within the set restrictions. Affective labor, then, serves as a dual-purpose coping mechanism: the work aids the psychosomatic heroine in managing life’s stressors and burdens but also enables her to present the desired social presence.
“Her Bloom Had Vanished Early”: Anne Elliot as Psychosomatic Heroine
<12>Anne’s famous ‘loss of bloom’ physiologically displays her psychological turmoil and emotional loss. Anne’s compelling narrative elevates suffering over lost love from commonplace to an “extraordinary fate” like Marianne Dashwood’s (Sense and Sensibility 429); Anne transcends situational constraints, defying odds by achieving fulfillment and a perceptibly happy marriage. As a woman who is older and more mature, Anne occupies a unique place for a heroine: she begins the novel as a self-effacing afterthought whom others expect little of. Anne seeks to manage her mind and body through being useful to others; Anne demonstrates how the psychosomatic heroine works to survive when a happy resolution is not clearly in sight. Anne is quite on her own in controlling of her psychosomatic symptoms; she reveals the “absolute necessity of seeming like herself” as the cure for visible suffering (Persuasion 258). Her capabilities in healing others works to restore her “bloom,” showing how work on others, as much as work on self, can promote wellness for the Austenian psychosomatic heroine. Anne is the first Austen heroine to have an industry, a useful enterprise: her role as doctor transforms her situation from seemingly tragic to optimistic and fulfilling. Having the outlet of meaningful work enables Anne’s healing as much as, if not more so than, the resolution of her romantic trials. Where Austen’s early novel Sense and Sensibility shows work that on self is tantamount to conquering psychosomaticism,(9) Persuasion shows work aiding others is of equal utility in promoting health and happiness.
<13>Anne’s introduction to the text immediately sparks associations of the mind-body with her visible marks of suffering. At the start of the novel, Anne’s body speaks loudly: “her bloom had vanished early,” “she was faded and thin,” and Anne is “haggard” (6). The “early” removal of her “bloom” carries deep psychosomatic implications, as youthful suffering promotes Anne’s physical deterioration. As John Wiltshire notes of Persuasion, “it is a portrait of suffering” (Jane Austen and the Body 155), and Anne’s body reflects this sense of “suffering” and serves as the subject of this “portrait,” for she lives with “a severe degree of self-denial, which her own conscience prompted” (Persuasion 14). While Anne may be deeply ethical and self-effacing, she lives so to “a severe degree.”(10) Nothing is by half measures with Anne’s ethos and body:(11) her body shows extreme marks of despair that her disposition echoes. Captain Wentworth sees the radical change in Anne’s body after eight years of self-denial, as Anne’s sister Mary reports, “You were so altered he should not have known you again” (65). Anne’s “loss of bloom” stands in for her suffering and self-denial; it provides a visible, bodily marker of Anne’s psychosomatic circumstances. Anne recognizes the difficulties of her condition, realizing, “She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning” (32). While Anne possesses lineage and, previously, wealth, she also suffers great loss with the death of her mother and the highly impactful end of her engagement with Wentworth. Anne diagnoses her past and present states: the past had “over-anxious caution” while her present is “forced” (32). Anne demonstrates her ability to think critically and analytically about herself, as a doctor figure who can diagnose her own suffering.
The Doctor is In: Anne’s “First Utility”
<14>Anne is set up as a capable doctor figure to lend credibility to her self-diagnosing status. Barbara MacLean lauds Anne as “a potential physician,” who “combines a practical pragmatism with a sympathetic solicitude” (MacLean). These qualities serve Anne well, especially when dealing with difficult patients. On a visit to her terminally ‘ill’ sister Mary’s, Anne attends her sister’s health complaints. Anne, through great exertion with “patience” and “forced cheerfulness,” is able to “cure” her attention-seeking sister (42); Anne shows her ability to diagnose, seeing that company and good spirits is all Mary requires. Anne is clearly labelled the more capable of the two sisters, because “Mary had not Anne’s understanding or temper” (39). Anne even acknowledges her own superiority of mind and intellect, thinking of the Musgrove sisters “she would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments” (44). Anne’s intelligence and competence set her up as an authority, and her capacity for diagnosis and cure reveals her to be like a doctor in her small community.
<15>Anne works by doctoring not only her sister but other family members and acquaintances, proving her medical competence. When her nephew is injured “Anne had every thing to do at once” (57), while Mary is the one who goes into “hysterics” (58).(12) Anne, quick-thinking and with composure, assists the family and the young patient, largely because she “had” to. Her family and others rely on her; Anne reflects, “She knew herself to be of the first utility to the child” (62). The difference between the two sisters’ reactions to the boy’s injury indicates the distinction between the psychosomatic heroine and the hysterical woman: Mary’s “hysterics” prove the contrast to Anne’s presence of mind and knowledge of her “first utility.” Anne is dependable and useful in a crisis; her desire to help and to heal speak to her natural doctoring abilities and willingness to regulate her emotions, unlike her sister Mary’s wanton lapses into hyperemotionality and self-indulgence.(13) Anne’s abilities are especially employed in one of the most famous scenes of the novel: Louisa Musgrove’s fall. While walking on the cobb in Lyme Regis, Louisa daringly seeks to jump into Wentworth’s arms off of a high step; he’s unprepared and she falls to the ground. Quick-thinking and acting Anne proves herself the competent emergency responder, telling others how to proceed.
<16>The scene of Louisa’s fall and her emergency care moves at “rapid” pace, with Anne giving the directives for how to best proceed (Persuasion 118-9).(14) Her cool, analytical mind is shown to advantage, and her years of working at composure and self-control are showcased through her skills of handling a tense situation. Anne responds like a respected authority, with others obeying and “everything…done that Anne had prompted” (119). Anne displays her knowledge of caring for injuries, particularly grievous injuries, ordering the others to “rub” Louisa’s “hands” and “temples” (118). While she calls for a “surgeon,” Anne is the attending doctor figure the party turn to and “look to” for “directions”: she is the one “with all the strength and zeal, and thought” (118-9). Time and again, Anne proves herself to be a “capable” doctor figure to others (123), effectively managing the care of others’ wounds and illnesses.
<17>Anne’s caretaking abilities, though well-acknowledged by the text, are not always put into use for her own self. Anne’s body betrays the lack of self-care that Anne as psychosomatic heroine perpetrated with her continual self-denial, and like Elizabeth Sabiston notes, “we are very aware of her physical frailty” (43). Anne tires more easily than even her faux-invalid sister Mary when taking a walk: “Mary…would go on…Anne, really tired herself, was glad to sit down” (Persuasion 93). The walk tires Anne more easily than any of the others, and Wentworth’s metaphor of the “hazel-nut,”(15) an implied slight to her character Anne overhears, prompts Anne to be fully still: “Her own emotions still kept her fixed, she had much to recover from, before she could move” (95). Anne’s “emotions” affect her body, from which she must “recover” prior to walking again. These emotions continue to affect Anne, because her body seems to lack endurance when walking back, for Anne was “was tired enough” (96). She is so “tired” that Captain Wentworth hoists her into his sister’s passing carriage due to “his perception of her fatigue” and his desire to give her “relief” (98). The fatiguing emotional weight Anne carries around exhausts her and is heightened by Wentworth’s return and her perceptions of his thoughts of her “character” (96). Anne’s internal conflicts manifest in her physical body, creating an early decline in her energy.
<18>In the face of these internal upheavals and her physical weakness, Anne focuses instead on mental encouragements, a form of affective labor that produces the positive outcome of increased personal health. Anne uses her thoughts as her self-care, thus Anne develops great self-reliance to heal herself. Anne reframes her isolation by thinking “with heightened gratitude of the extraordinary blessing of having one such truly sympathising friend as Lady Russell” (46). Anne thinks of her only “friend” as an “extraordinary blessing,” a sentiment that rings hollow with the reader’s knowledge that much of Anne’s lingering sadness extends from this friend’s interference. Because Lady Russell disapproved of Wentworth, Anne is more alone with the pains of her lost love, she “was left to persuade herself, as well as she could” (53). Anne must “persuade herself,” such a loaded statement, suggesting that persuasion is what one does to get by when one has regrets or painful emotional baggage. When those around her speak “so much of Captain Wentworth” and his imminent visit, Anne experiences “a new sort of trial to [her] nerves,” a trial that “was one to which she must enure herself” (56). Anne places the onus on herself, internally, to “enure herself”—treat herself with affective labor— regarding the emotional difficulties she faces. The firmness with which she goes about what “she must” do presents the difficulty of healing psychosomatic illness and the necessity of matching gendered social expectations; there is no option for Anne not to do this work, either by her own or by society’s estimation. Because this “trial” is of “a new sort,” Anne’s previous tactics for coping by assisting others may not work, and Anne’s internal discourse reflects her interest in self-cure and self-control.
<19>Anne’s work aiding others bolsters her own self-work and demonstrates her knowledge of and experience with affective complaints. On her visit to Lyme Regis, Anne presents a method for dealing with psychosomatic threats to Captain Benwick, because she views herself as having “the right seniority of mind” (108). Anne knows her experience with grief over lost love—eight years of experience—grants her “seniority” in diagnosing and proposing treatments for depressive thoughts. To counteract the pain of those difficulties for Benwick,
She ventured to recommend a larger allowance of prose in his daily study; and on being requested to particularize, mentioned such works of our best moralists, such collections of the finest letters, such memoirs of characters of worth and suffering, as occurred to her at the moment as calculated to rouse and fortify the mind by the highest precepts, and the strongest examples of moral and religious endurances. (108-9)
Anne’s suggestions tend towards prose rather than the imaginative and Romantic poetry(16) that Benwick regularly consumes, books that show “moralists,” “characters of worth and suffering,” and “the finest letters” that are “calculated” to “fortify the mind.” Anne essentially suggests bibliotherapy that promotes healthy emotional coping and processing. The emphasis on “moralists” and “memoirs” speaks to the precepts of moral management that developed in the late eighteenth-century initially as a treatment for severe mental ailments like insanity; in these cases rationality, moderation, and daily purposeful activity were promoted as cures for the afflicted. Anne acts as moral therapist, suggesting “the highest precepts” as mediators for the emotional extremes Benwick heightens through the “hopeless agony” his reading of mournful poetry generates (108). Anne seeks to combat the intellectual and emotional incest Benwick participates in with his preference for the “impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony” and “various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness” (108). The passages he favors amplify his distress, and Anne sees his reading perpetuating “the misfortune of poetry” where “strong feelings…ought to taste it but sparingly” (108). Anne recognizes the dangers of indulging painful feelings with like reading material, and her coaching to the “grateful” Benwick shows the benefits of moderation in all areas of life (109). Anne guides Benwick to consider what Anne Crippin Ruderman calls the “intrinsic rewards of moderation” (Ruderman 14), as she suggests the “moral and religious endurances” that the best “examples” of literature worth studying highlight (Persuasion 109). The examples Anne showcases fit into her applications of affective labor that she practices to harness her own unruly emotions.
<20> Anne’s prescription for texts that inspire emotional regulation appears to benefit Captain Benwick, though she does not fully practice what she prescribes for herself. Upon “serious reflection,” Anne notes that her recommendations to Benwick are some that she should heed herself: “like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination” (109). Anne is still working on following the dictates she has laid out for Benwick in choosing works that would help him recover and heal. She has been dealing with turbulent and disappointed feelings for eight years, and she acknowledges her shortcomings in following through on her precepts for affective labor through the reading material she selects. Alternately, Benwick takes Anne’s advice to heart: Charles Musgrove later reports to Anne that Benwick’s “head is full of some books that he is reading upon your recommendation, and he wants to talk to you about them” (142). Benwick makes the change in his reading materials Anne suggests, yet he “had not nerves for coming away with” the Musgroves at present, though had plans to “make his way over to Kellynch one day” (142). Benwick appears to be in the process of healing and expects to recover enough to bolster his sociability because of Anne’s guidance. When the surprise of Benwick and Louisa Musgrove’s engagement is made known to Anne, she judges that Benwick “was not inconsolable…He had an affectionate heart. He must love somebody” (181). Though Benwick is disposed to love again, Anne recognizes that she is not disposed to love another: her heart is solely for Captain Wentworth. While affective labor is beneficial for all, such as in Benwick’s case, the stakes are higher for Anne: affective labor is her only recourse for survival.With Wentworth’s return, Anne realizes the necessity of processing and harnessing her emotional reactions to cope with his presence in her current life.
Her “Shudderings Were To Herself”: Anne’s Affective Labor
<21>The impetus for Anne’s affective labor primarily revolves around the central issue of her psychosomatic complaint: her lingering depression from her failed relationship with Captain Wentworth. She feels compelled to maintain composure in his presence, and her “shudderings were to herself” (Persuasion 71): she cannot fall apart again, particularly if he no longer cares for her, so her feelings must remain private and contained. Anne may be in an emotional time warp, perseverating as her mind and body do on the “circumstances” of the past, but she imagines Wentworth to not be in the same boat. She ponders: “Anne felt the utter impossibility, from her knowledge of his mind, that he could be unvisited by remembrance any more than herself. There must be the same immediate association of thought, though she was very far from conceiving it to be of equal pain” (68). While Anne assumes Wentworth experiences the same “remembrance” she does, she doubts his recollections generate “equal pain.” Anne shows her affinity to Benwickian grief: her pain is “very far” from Wentworth’s and likely any other man’s. She embraces the view that “Man is more robust than woman” in terms of emotions (253), and the ability of “loving longest” demonstrates the extremity of woman’s emotional entanglements “when hope is gone” (254). Her belief in woman’s deeper emotionality—a socially mandated assumption—manifests in her perseveration on the past, perpetuated through her own experience of body and spirit-wrecking emotions of loss.
<22>Anne is hyper-focused on the issues of her past relationship with Wentworth and how she can best deal with his re-entry into her life. Upon Wentworth’s impending arrival, “a thousand feelings rushed on Anne, of which this was the most consoling, that it would soon be over. And it was soon over” (64). Anne’s experience of “a thousand feelings” denotes the intensity and impact of Wentworth’s presence on Anne’s equilibrium. She reminds herself “it would soon be over,” and being correct has a “consoling” tendency. Being inside Anne’s consciousness demonstrates the control she has over her narrative and her state of being. Anne dictates her frame of mind, which is especially evident when processing the slight Mary delivers to Anne from Wentworth’s offhand comment about Anne’s changed appearance:
‘So altered that he should not have known her again!’ These were words which could not but dwell with her. Yet she soon began to rejoice that she had heard them. They were of sobering tendency; they allayed agitation; they composed, and consequently must make her happier. Frederick Wentworth had used such words, or something like them, but without an idea that they would be carried round to her. He had thought her wretchedly altered, and in the first moment of appeal, had spoken as he felt. (65-66)
Anne presents her reactions, her interpretation of his intentions, and a stunning rapid-fire processing of complex and painful emotions in this moment of free indirect discourse. She ponders “such words” that Wentworth had regarding her “altered” self, yet is generous enough—or still in love enough—to attribute no ill will to his having said them. Anne reveals what Roger Gard calls her “habitual self doubt” through her addition to Wentworth’s observation (202), that she is “wretchedly altered,” but she also demonstrates her ability to allow others their feelings, even when those feelings may injure her own, a learned effect from dealing with her self-absorbed and sometimes cruel family members. Anne shows her ability to quickly process and reframe the negative emotions that could injure her further should she allow them to, but she also shows her emotional delicacy at being so impacted by a single comment.
<23>Anne is frequently preoccupied with all matters Wentworth and the past, but she is also able to contain those thoughts and emotions, such as when “the agitations of Anne’s slender form, and pensive face, may be considered as very completely screened… Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world.” (Persuasion 73-74). Anne can conceal her “agitations” “very completely,” and the psychosomatic implications of “personal size and mental sorrow” is clear: regardless of frame, all bodies can feel and reflect “deep affliction.” Austen validates “mental sorrow” as a condition with “no necessary proportions,” except for the ability to keep the expression of that condition “very completely screened.” Austen’s twist to the psychosomatic heroine’s narrative is that heroines can feel deeply, but they must harness and work through it for their sociability and well-being. Affective labor is tantamount to Austen’s portrayal of “deep affliction,” where Benwicks must be taught to diversify their reading to moderate their grief and Annes are tacitly lauded for concealing the “agitations” that accompany lingering “mental sorrow.” Anne is positioned again as the authority and the one who can self-diagnose and treat herself; she can screen her emotions due to long practice and efforts.
<24>Anne shows the effort affective labor requires: it is a constant ‘exertion,’ to borrow the terminology from Sense and Sensibility (297), and Anne must work continually to conquer feelings that could undo her. Anne provides Austen’s definition of psychosomaticism: she has “to struggle against a great tendency to lowness” (Persuasion 105). When visiting Lyme and thinking about all her life could have been, her depressive thoughts demand a “struggle” to combat.(17) Austen recognizes that life does not provide many options for a nineteenth century woman, and self-control is difficult work that an Austen heroine must vigilantly attend to. Anne is aware of the demands of her emotional containment, particularly in moments that arouse great feeling, like Wentworth’s assistance when Anne’s nephew is hanging from her:
Little sturdy hands were unfastened from around her neck… Captain Wentworth had done it. Her sensations on the discovery made her perfectly speechless. She could not even thank him. She could only hang over little Charles, with most disordered feelings… very painful agitation, as she could not recover from, till enabled by the entrance of Mary and the Miss Musgroves to make over her little patient to their cares, and leave the room. She could not stay. (87)
Anne realizes “She could not stay” when she is in “very painful agitation.” She needs the time and space to regroup and organize her “disordered feelings.” Recovery is a constant work in progress for which the psychosomatic heroine needs respite. Briefly after Anne’s withdrawal from “the room,” Anne repeats, “she could stay for none of it…neither Charles Hayter’s feelings, nor any body’s feelings, could interest her, till she had a little better arranged her own. She was ashamed of herself, quite ashamed of being so nervous, so overcome by such a trifle; but so it was; and it required a long application of solitude and reflection to recover her” (87). Anne shows the process for the Austenian psychosomatic heroine: “solitude and reflection” yield emotional and physical results by enabling self-containment. Feelings are like furniture, to be “arranged” in perfect order. The shame Anne feels at being so reactive to “such a trifle” reveals the anxiety that accompanies the psychosomatic state. Without full control over one’s body’s reactions, the perpetual cycle of psychological turmoil and active body continues. Anne recognizes the need for self-control to counteract being “so nervous, so overcome,” and she uses her private time to “recover.” Anne’s tactics for self-control prove effective over the course of novel, as Anne strengthens and treats the psychosomatic issues that had broken down her body.
Healing Work: Anne Gets Her “Bloom” Back
<25>Anne begins to exit her depressive state and effects healing for herself when she renews her confidence, finding effective employment for her time: helping others and travelling.(18) Winning admiration from Wentworth over her capability in caring for Louisa, travelling to Uppercross and Lyme, and continuously processing and controlling her emotions through affective labor prompts healthful changes in Anne. Her ‘bloom’ returns, catching the attention of others: “Anne's face caught his eye, and he looked at her with a degree of earnest admiration, which she could not be insensible of. She was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features, having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of eye which it had also produced” (112). Anne is “looking remarkably well,” showing her “pretty features” to advantage. Her awareness of the “admiration” she attracts boosts her confidence, enabling her “youth” to be “restored.” Travelling to the seaside seems to have a positive effect on Anne, and her healing is augmented by her opportunities to help heal others, Benwick and Louisa. Mobility and being useful promotes Anne’s ability to heal: employment provides outlets for energy that could turn inward and outwardly manifest psychosomatic complaints. Lady Russell also sees that “Anne was improved in plumpness and looks,” and Anne is “hoping that she was to be blessed with a second spring of youth and beauty” (134). The “second spring” Anne wishes for stems partly from “the silent admiration of her cousin” Mr. Elliot (134), but it also reflects the positive attitude Anne’s affective labor brings about.
<26>Anne comes more fully into herself—gets her groove back, so to speak—and effects healing in her mind and body. She has a healthy glow with her return of ‘bloom,’ and she is in a healthier frame of mind. Anne is able to move on, and she “smiled over the many anxious feelings she had wasted” (139). Anne gains resiliency, healing from “anxious feelings she had wasted.” Her renewed sense of self and happier frame of mind and body brings male notice, which causes “Anne, smiling and blushing, very becomingly” (154). Anne’s blushes reflect the sexualized connotations of being “in bloom” (King 3).(19) Anne matches Amy King’s assertion that “The blush is a descriptive sign of flourishing” (245, n.57), and illustrates Mary Ann O’Farrell’s ideas of the blush as a legible sign of variable internal states.(20) Anne’s body is in revival, where her youthful appearance reflects greater health. Positive emotions also aid Anne’s healing, as she sees more possibilities in a future with Wentworth: “it was not regret which made Anne's heart beat in spite of herself, and brought the colour into her cheeks when she thought of Captain Wentworth unshackled and free. She had some feelings which she was ashamed to investigate. They were too much like joy, senseless joy!” (182). Happiness may be “senseless,” but it is the prime aid of the healing psychosomatic heroine. Joy and safe knowledge of love helps regulate the Austenian psychosomatic heroine’s emotions and body: because Wentworth “must love her,” “Anne’s mind was in the a most favourable state for the entertainment of the evening; it was just occupation enough: she had feelings for the tender, spirits for the gay, attention for the scientific, and patience for the wearisome” (202). The “favourable state” of “Anne’s mind” shows the healing powers of happiness and security in love. Anne can bear much more than she previously could when she was consumed by lingering grief and depression, and her “occupation enough” in “entertainment” rather than self-control and self-denial enables her to exhibit her newfound health.
<27>Anne’s new invigoration does not mean her work as psychosomatic heroine is done, however; she still must work at self-regulation to continue to stave off noticeable bodily reactions. Anne may be adept at affective labor from her continual efforts throughout the novel, but she remains susceptible to intense emotions and becomes flustered seeing Captain Wentworth: “Her start was perceptible only to herself; but she instantly felt that she was the greatest simpleton in the world, the most unaccountable and absurd! For a few minutes she saw nothing before her; it was all confusion. She was lost, and when she had scolded back her senses, she found the others still waiting for the carriage” (190). Spotting Wentworth makes Anne feel “the greatest simpleton,” because she has to “scold[] back her sense.” Anne’s “confusion” and her feeling of being “lost” speaks to the disturbing impact Wentworth has on her system and her strong feelings for him. With her hopes rising higher with Wentworth’s continued presence in her life and his single state, Anne “tried to be calm, and leave things to take their course, and tried to dwell much on this argument of rational dependence” (240). Anne values rationality, but she also must work at being “calm,” a practice of mental and emotional exertion that persists until her relationship status is resolved. Anne’s uncertainty regarding Wentworth and his feelings for her produces hectic and confusing emotions, as well as “agitations” (249).
<28>Anne’s case of unruly emotions typically circles around Wentworth, prompting her to continue the practice of affective labor that enables her to be “outwardly composed” (244). Anne acknowledges the impact of “the period” of “Eight years and a half” that have kept her in a psychosomatic cycle (244). Her feelings of love for Wentworth remain unchanged, her strong reactions to his presence and interactions with him consistently occur, and she still requires “a calmer hour” to process and regulate the emotions that course through her “imagination” and body (244). Even following the happy resolution of her relationship with Wentworth in the original ending, Anne spends “calmer” hours processing her emotions and seeing their effects on her physical body: “It had been such a day to Anne! ...She was almost bewildered, almost too happy in looking back.—It was necessary to sit up half the Night and lie awake the remainder to comprehend with composure her present state, and pay for the overplus of Bliss, by Headake and Fatigue” (322). Excessive emotions still render physical impacts for Anne; the dashes and exclamations textually symbolize the marks that the highs and lows of emotions have on the physical body. The “Headake and Fatigue” Anne accumulates from lack of sleep shows that even “Bliss” can wreak havoc on the body.
<29>Happiness in Persuasion is an alternative to the decline of the body, but even positive emotions require management through affective labor to keep the mind and body healthy. Following her reading of Wentworth’s letter confessing his continuing love for her, Anne thinks,
Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from. Half an hour's solitude and reflection might have tranquillized her; but the ten minutes only which now passed before she was interrupted, with all the restraints of her situation, could do nothing towards tranquillity. Every moment rather brought fresh agitation. It was overpowering happiness. And before she was beyond the first stage of full sensation, Charles, Mary, and Henrietta all came in. The absolute necessity of seeming like herself produced then an immediate struggle; but after a while she could do no more. She began not to understand a word they said, and was obliged to plead indisposition and excuse herself. They could then see that she looked very ill, were shocked and concerned, and would not stir without her for the world. This was dreadful.” (258-59)(21)
Anne shows the psychosomatic heroine’s plight: she cannot help but show psychological and emotional upheaval through her physical body. Anne looks so “very ill” that her family and friends cannot be gotten rid of. Anne believes in the “absolute necessity of seeming like herself,” yet she cannot do so without much “struggle.” Anne’s “dreadful” inability to control her mind and body, to manifest “tranquillity,” demonstrates the keen torture of “the restraints of her situation” both as a woman and in the context of her personal and relational circumstances. With no socially proper recourse to go to Wentworth and reconcile, Anne must claim “indisposition.” Interestingly, only “half an hour” could have restored Anne to rights, revealing her competence in affective labor; Anne can process destructive emotions in a mere half hour. Anne shows that the psychosomatic heroine may still have bodily outpourings of emotional pain, but those outpourings are able to be regulated and done so in an ever-evolving manner.
<30>Anne proves Austen’s thesis of affective labor as an effective method of containment that can lead to greater health and vigor, while also helping one navigate the matrix of society, culture, self, and relationships communicated by the gendered social code. Anne confirms her skills as an affective laborer, believing she “could command herself enough” (260). No longer with ‘would,’ ‘must,’ or ‘should,’ Anne believes that she can “command herself.” She has faith in her capacity to control her emotions and, by extension, her body. Anne’s ever-increasing ability to “command” signals that she is psychologically and physically stronger: she can face the challenges emotional turmoil might bring her and surpass them with her more efficacious affective labor. In the end Anne achieves the happy ending she previously despaired of, and as a result, “Anne was tenderness itself, and she had the full worth of it in Captain Wentworth’s affection” (274). Anne lives out her thought that women are “the most tender” (253); she, being “tenderness itself,” shows the emotional sway of love and the wholeness that comes from being in mind-body accord with consistent psychological and emotional management.
<31>In addition to showing the rewards of affective labor for mental and bodily health, Persuasion ushers in a new era of the psychosomatic heroine where professional concerns more stridently enter the conversation of women’s options in the nineteenth century. In a discussion of men and women’s emotional lives with Captain Harville, Anne anticipates the crux of Victorian psychosomatic heroines’ difficulties:
We certainly do not forget you as soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions." (253)
Anne notes the lack of “profession” as the root of women’s “fate.” Because they “live at home, quiet, confined,” women’s “feelings prey upon” them. The confinement, fictional and real, women experience throughout the nineteenth century extends beyond a domestification of women’s roles to a theory of sexual difference that confines them further.(22) Elaine Showalter, in her seminal The Female Malady, implicitly argues that female psychosomatic ailments are a direct response to women’s daily lives, because the “suffocation of family life, boredom, and patriarchal protectivism…gradually destroys women’s capacity to dream, to work, or to act” (61). Showalter’s conclusions regarding the female form’s susceptibility to psychological stifling reflects the mores of the Victorian period that socially separated the sexes on a principle of binary opposition; women’s confinement in the Victorian period becomes based on an ideology of sexual difference that posits women as passive and ignorant, thus suited only to the private sphere.(23) Anne affirms her experience of this traditional theory of men and women’s sexual and emotional difference, saying men’s
feelings may be the strongest…but the same spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments. Nay, it would be too hard upon you, if it were otherwise. You have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with. You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all quitted. Neither time, nor health, nor life, to be called your own. It would be hard, indeed…if woman's feelings were to be added to all this… All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.” (Persuasion 253-4)
At the core of women’s difficulties is the threat that “loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone” offers. Women are viewed as “the most tender” in “spirit.” They have emotions and reactions that would be “too hard” upon men; the internal life of a woman counterbalances the “labouring and toiling” of a man’s physical life. Anne grants men “the strongest” emotions, due to their “more robust” form, but she contends their shorter life span presents a natural “analogy” for how men’s “attachments” expire prior to a woman’s.(24) Women linger and “hope” when possibility and probability is gone. Anne, despite her happy ending, reveals the tragedy of women’s lives: a lack of options, boredom, romantic difficulties and failures, and a persistent obligation to self-regulate stimulate psychosomatic illness. Women’s emotional lives are expected to remain private, invisible, and managed, and Austen exposes the difficulties the everyday woman faces because of these gendered social codes and the necessity of affective labor for social conformity. More optimistically, however, Anne’s practice of affective labor provides readers with a model for managing mental and bodily health to best navigate their world.