영문초록
Austen`s last published novel, Persuasion, marks a shift from her earlier novels in its explicit references to historical events, Napoleonic Wars and returning naval officers. This essay attempts to situate individuals` fictional histories within a larger frame of social and national issues of the period, and explain how individual characters` progresses in the novel correspond with a national issue of re-positioning rich naval men within the domestic setting. Anne Elliot, Austen`s most mobile heroine in Persuasion, occupies a conflicting position within the novel. While the heroine is most marginalized and alienated in the aristocratic Elliot family, the novel centers around her inner feelings of suffering and despair, and emphasizes her crucial role in managing crises and accidents. Drawing attention to the dual portrayal of Anne as homeless, invisible, dependent yet mature, confident and active, this essay shows how Anne`s mobility is not necessarily uncompatible with ideal domestic womanhood, and how Austen envisions a vision of mobile domesticity that affirms and embraces an unsettled, uncertain future life. The essay first examines how Anne`s removals, while enacting her unstable status within the family, open up possibilities for her to experience cultural diversity and cultural relativism. Then, it investigates how naval homes, humble and unsettled, offer domestic happiness and comfort and how they are presented as an alternative to oppressive, failing aristocratic communities, based on the inherited estate and land. Finally, it shows how Anne`s marriage to a navy officer signifies her refusal of aristocratic values of settlement, stability and order, and anticipates a new way of portable domesticity, while enjoying companionship of happy, pleasant naval couples and friends.