Favorite Heroine -- JAFF in October #4

Today's #JAFFinOctober topic is #FavoriteHeroine.

My favorite Austen heroine is Anne Elliot. Don't come at me because my favorite isn't Elizabeth Bennet -- I love her too, even though her stubbornness reminds me uncomfortably of my own sometimes. I also adore sweet, naive Catherine Morland, and even admire Elinor Dashwood. But Anne Elliot is altogether a much different creature.

 

 

Considering who her family is -- all the demands they make on her and their ignorance of her concerns, their snobbery and ridiculousness -- Anne Elliot has the patience of a saint. She handles the behavior of her foolish fop of a father, supercilious snob of an elder sister, and the narcissistic neediness of her younger sister far better than I would. She attends to the complaints of the well-meaning but inappropriately confiding Musgroves and bears up under Wentworth's resentful, thinly veiled comments about her character and his flirting with Louisa Musgrove right in front of her with a grace an maturity that shows how superior she is to every other female character in the book (well, except perhaps for Mrs. Croft, who deals with her apparently absent-minded husband with ease and cheer). 

I adore Anne because she has more patience with the irritating people in her life than I can imagine -- certainly she has a great deal more patience than I do! She doesn't complain about her lot, she simply does what needs to be done, because if she doesn't do it, no one will. And she forgives Wentworth's ill-advised conduct because she loves him and she knows he can be better than that. 

I'm not saying Anne doesn't have her flaws, but she is perhaps the most mature and well-rounded of Jane Austen's leading ladies. And that is why I prefer her over all the others.