Persuasion.

     The novel I choose as my 18th/19th century summer reading novel was Jane Austen's Persuasion. As I always like to do before picking a novel that I must read from a list, at the beginning of the summer, I sat down with the summer reading list and my computer and began looking up abstracts of each title. After having read short summaries of each of the 8 18th/19th century novels that I could potentially choose to read over the summer, I decided on Persuasion because the summary of this novel had appealed most to me. In addition to the fact that this novel was simply the most appealing to me, I had also chosen this book because I had always desired to read Jane Austen as I had heard mixed reviews on her writing. Many people had, prior to the beginning of the summer, told me how much they disliked Austen's writing, while a few felt quite strongly when telling me how much they loved her writing; I, therefore, decided that I would like to read a novel of hers in order to form my own opinion of Austen as an author, and I saw this summer as the perfect opportunity to do so. Therefore, in the end, I believe that I picked this novel because the content grabbed my attention and because I was drawn to the author who I had been wishing to read for quite some time. 
     Overall, I believe, after having read this book, that Austen is an example of an excellent female storyteller. Although, admittedly, there were some low points in her storytelling in this novel, I believe that her strengths greatly outweigh her weaknesses.
     In Persuasion, I think one of the best aspects of Austen's storytelling is her thorough development of the many characters that we come across in this story. Austen does a great job developing each character independently, through their relationships with the other characters in this novel, and through the eyes of the other individuals in the story. An example of character development through another character's eyes occurs as follows when Louisa Musgrove describes her sister-in-law, Mary:
     "Mary is good-natured enough in many respects," said she; "but she does sometimes provoke me excessively, by her nonsense and her pride; the Elliot pride. She has a great deal too much of the Elliot pride.--We do so wish that Charles had married Anne instead. --I suppose you know he wanted to marry Anne? (Austen 93)
This passage is a great example of Austen's development of characters within the novel, as, with this single passage, we gain insight not only into Mary's but also into Anne's character. In this example alone, we can appreciate how Austen makes her characters come alive by way of contrasts and foils within the story. In this excerpt alone, we not only discover that Mary has an immense, and sometimes, according to Louisa, intolerable, pride, but also that Anne does not have this same air of haughtiness. Austen's impressive storytelling is evident here, as she is able to reveal so much important information about two central characters in such a short passage that is told by an outsider's perspective. 
     To me, some aspect of a novel needs to be relatable for the novel to be an example of prime storytelling. In Persuasion, the most relatable part of the story is the idea of persuasion itself. As all of us have succumbed to persuasion or pressure at one time or another, and later usually come to regret it, the premise of the entire novel is something that many readers can sympathize with. Austen does a great job portraying persuasion in its two stages: acceptance and subsequent regret.  Throughout most of the novel, Austen shows Anne accepting and justifying Lady Russell's reasons for persuading her not to marry Captain Wentworth, as typical of any individual persuaded to do something. Concerning most of the novel with the justification stage of persuasion, Austen accurately portrays how an individual pressured into doing something by someone they respect greatly would try to come up reasons as to why he (or she) was correct in listening to the person who persuaded them. Moreover, by addressing the rejection stage towards the end of the novel, Austen correctly depicts how it is human nature to strongly end up resenting an idea or action that someone persuaded you into believing or doing. This resentment is seen when Anne states that she "was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not risk" (262). This quote shows that, even though Anne was persuaded to do something because Lady Russell wanted to protect her, she still regrets her yielding to Lady Russell's persuasion. Austen does an impeccable job of portraying the stages of persuasion in a manner in which every reader can relate to, and, for that, Austen's storytelling is evidently superb. 
     Contrarily, I think Austen fails in her storytelling because she does not have action drive the plot of her novel. Although this novel is essentially a romance novel, a certain degree of action is still required to make a novel interesting throughout. However, since Austen's novel greatly lacks action and movement, the parts of the book that simply include pages and pages of conversation make the book a bit dry and drab. Although I thoroughly enjoyed Jane Austen's writing in this novel, the lack of an action-driven plot provide a reason for readers to dislike Austen's writing and label it boring and uneventful. Although I found the deficiency of action to be one of the major flaws of this novel, I thought the strengths greatly outweighed the novel's weaknesses.