Persuasions and Proposals: Female Agency in Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion

Authors

• Hannah Swenson

Keywords

Jane Austen, female agency, marriage and persuasion

Abstract

In all six of her completed novels, one of Jane Austen’s primary interests is the theme of persuasion—particularly as it relates to the lives and decisions of young women. Her final book Persuasion, published six months after her death, can therefore be read as a final culmination of the topic of accepting and exerting influence. As scholar Ann Molan has observed, Austen “penetrates the intrinsic doubleness of persuasion, its ability to destroy and fashion, its ineradicable presence in all human dealings, and the riskiness of deciding one’s lot by something uncertifiable” (108). Although the theme of persuasion and persuadability is pervasive in Austen’s work, the scope of this paper only extends to situations in which young women are being persuaded to accept or reject marriage proposals. After all, marriage is a critical factor of a person’s satisfaction with life, and deciding who to marry (or not marry) was one of the only major life decisions that young women in Austen’s time were able to make.

Recommended Citation

Swenson, Hannah (2026) "Persuasions and Proposals: Female Agency in Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion," AWE (A Woman’s Experience): Vol. 12, Article 20.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/awe/vol12/iss1/20