In 1806, Lady Russell vetoed her god-daughter Anne’s marriage to Frederick Wentworth because of his ‘most uncertain profession’ and lack of the social connections necessary to rise through the ranks of the Navy (Ch. 4). Eight years later, however, when the dashing Wentworth returns to England on shore leave, as a bona fide war hero with a personal fortune of £25,000, he has become excellent husband material.
Anne and Wentworth become engaged in early 1815. The date is poignant, because as Lucy Worsley points out, Persuasion’s first readers would have known that ‘Napoleon was going to escape from Elba, and war would be resumed once again. This story of sailors and the sea was set in the calm before the storm’ (Worsley 2017, p. 304). Sadly, Jane Austen died before seeing her own beloved sailor brothers Charles and Frank reach the peak of their profession. The latter, once praised by England’s national hero Lord Nelson as ‘an excellent young man’, eventually rose to become Admiral of the Fleet Sir Francis Austen.
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