‘The Ruins of the Face’: The Aesthetics of Ruin in Austen's Persuasion

Abstract

This article investigates Jane Austen's network of bodily metaphors in Persuasion, re-examining ‘bloom’ in the context of its pair, ‘ruin’. While the novel is traditionally understood as a progress narrative that moves from Anne's self-description as being ‘in ruins’ to the restoration of her ‘bloom’, the article examines the inconsistency around Anne's appearance and ‘bloom’ throughout the novel, contending that rather than presenting a progression, the novel stages the problematics of physiognomy, of reading the body as an index of internal feeling. I argue that by situating Austen's metaphors within context of picturesque writing on ruins and ‘roughness’ from William Gilpin and Uvedale Price, we can conceive of weathered, worn out, broken, pierced, and ruined bodies as the rough texture that animates Persuasion.