Matriarch Of Persuasion Analysis

By comparing and contrasting the matriarchs of Persuasion and A Room With A View, one can know how Jane Austen’s and E. M. Forster’s societies’ viewed marriage. The matriarch from Persuasion was Lady Russell, who was the Elliot’s Godmother. As the Godmother, Lady Russell had a huge influence on the whole family, especially Anne Elliot. Early on in the novel, Anne Elliot fell in love with a man named Captain Wentworth who at the time being was not of much importance. Since he was as Lady Russell puts it “Captain Wentworth had no fortune,” (Austen, p. 27), Lady Russell thought it was foolish for Anne to marry him; so she “persuaded [Anne] to believe the engagement a wrong thing— indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it” (Austen, p. 27). Conveying only one thing to the
This may be bad morality to conclude with, but I believe it to be truth’ (Austen, p. 232). All of this would mean is that Jane Austen’s society believes marriage should be noncommittal and one should only marry someone of high class, wealth, and connections. On the hand, E. M. Forster ’s society’s view on marriage is a little different. In A Room With A View Mrs. Honeychurch, the mother of the protagonist Lucy Honeychurch, is the matriarch. Mrs. Honeychurch is from the victorian era, making her beliefs about marriage more about economic reasons, but as the novel goes on the reader can see a change in her attitude. At first, Mrs. Honeychurch is seen wanting her daughter, Lucy, to marry a man named Cecil because, “he’s good, he’s clever, he’s rich, he’s well connected” (Forster, p. 86). And it also becomes even more clear that Mrs. Honeychurch really wants this marriage to take place when she finds out how her son, Freddy, responds to Cecil when he asks his permission to marry