Ninth Street

I have too many floral skirts to count, so I’m always more than prepared for spring. Then again, the lines between California’s seasons have blurred, with each season proving to be unusually warm and dry. Most experts agree this isn’t a good thing. Nevertheless, spring in Berkeley means squinting in the sun on the walk to Philz via Ninth Street and drinking a large iced coffee before dinner. The coffee was accompanied by a couple chapters of Persuasion, and I must say, I may have unknowingly saved the best for last. It is heartfelt, sophisticated, and Anne Elliot is by far my favorite Austen heroine. I love that Anne and Captain Wentworth are the couple to watch, yet they hardly interact with each other, and it is the peripheral conversations and events that push the story of their relationship forward. This makes even the most distant, civil remark between them feel electric and full of meaning.
 
I enjoyed an abbreviated spring break of three days in San Diego, where relaxing and indulging is easy if not natural to do. The weekend included wine tasting, Indian food, strolling through Coronado, gin and tonic at the bars in North Park, fish tacos, and playing with a chihuahua. March was a fast one, though I suppose they all are. I’m aiming for April to be a productive one, which includes figuring out what exactly that means to me. Away we go.
 

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Sense and Sensibility

“Though nothing could be more polite than Lady Middleton’s behavior to Elinor and Marianne, she did not really like them at all. Because they neither flattered herself nor her children, she could not believe them good-natured; and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without knowing what it was to be satirical; but that did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given.”

Sense and Sensibility, p. 67
By Jane Austen
Published 1811

Currently Reading: Persuasion

Persuasion is the last of Jane Austen’s books that I plan to read before taking a breather, and fittingly so, as it is her last completed novel. The timing is especially perfect because having just finished her first novel, Northanger Abbey, I am very curious to compare the bookends of her life’s work.
 
Anne Elliot is 27-years-old, noticeably older than Austen’s previous heroines. She is the middle child of widower Sir Walter Elliot, a vain man who describes her as “haggard.” This is not the story of a giddy young girl flirting her days away, but of a sweet and elegant woman whose life demands heartache and patience. At 19, Anne falls in love with Frederick Wentworth, but rejects his marriage proposal due to her family’s insistence that he is beneath her. Frederick goes off to sea, Anne remains unmarried, and the main drama unfolds when he returns, now a captain in the Royal Navy and an embodiment of the self-made man, another new type of character for Austen.
 
There is something striking about Persuasion being Austen’s final novel before her death at 41, as if it is some kind of culmination of all that she has written, of all that she has experienced. Persuasion is Austen’s all too soon farewell, written even in the face of illness, and I am eager to pay my respects.