I have begun listening to Persuasion, the way that you might tear into whole-grain bread as soon as it has left the oven. A warm slice of bread is never quite going to count as health food, but it is not so very bad for you, either--and it is awfully nice. Re-reading Jane Austen is really not at all what I am meant to be doing with my life, but life at Upper Cross has proved comforting so far.

I wonder how much my impression of Anne Elliott this time around has been shaped by the current theme in my reading. I spent most of the journey back from the States re-reading parts of the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. Last week I listened to sufficient samples of Patrick Tull and Simon Vance to put in a request for the latter's recording of Master and Commander (though I respect the conventional opinion that Tull's accents are more lively and more authentic). So captaincy and ships were very much at the back of my mind as I listened to Anne's management of Musgroves of all ages and stages. And indeed, there is a very particular kind of leadership in the way Anne handles the crew at Upper Cross. The bloody discipline of the Navy--very much present in what I recall of C.S. Forester's books, presumably a feature of O'Brian's which my imperfect memory of them has elided, and implicitly queried by Novik's characters--is of course an impossibility in Jane Austen's countryside. But the domestic version of good Naval order, or its absence, is near the fore of Austen's descriptions of a household's residents and their characters. And when other parties are slack, it is Anne who is relied upon: to smooth tempers, to stop her nieces and nephews from running wild, to hint at the correct or sensible action for her sister to take, to play umpire or diplomat between her sister and brother-in-law.

At least, Anne keeps the household shipshape when she is allowed to. She has little effect at Kellynch Hall, where her father and sister Elizabeth use her without even appreciating her good sense, as the Musgroves do. Here perhaps is a contrast with the captains of His Majesty's Navy and His Majesty's (fictitious) Aerial Corps: the captain of a household, who in Austen's world is a woman, gains her authority from diplomacy rather than orders. Where Anne is respected, however imperfectly, she uses her powers to keep things shipshape; where she is ignored, she is reduced to playing Cassandra. Does Captain Wentworth know anything like the struggles of a domestic captain? Does he understand the parallel between his role and Anne's? There has been no hint of it by Chapter Ten--and I suspect that the comparison may never really come into focus. But I am finding the contrast between the management of a ship and a household, however eisegetical, an interesting theme in this particular voyage through Persuasion.