Even Anne Elliot Can't White-knuckle Her Way to Happiness

Thoughts on Duty and Desire in Persuasion

View of the Mall in Saint James's Park,after 1709-1710

One October day my husband and I were strolling through St. James Park in London as the beech trees lining the walkways shed their golden leaves. While I gazed upward at the autumn beauty, I took an inattentive step toward an approaching curb and he, ever conscientious, steadied me. But soon I noticed that he was looking only at the path. “Look up!” I urged. “The trees are too beautiful to miss.” And so it goes with desire and duty. They need one another—duty to steady desire, desire to enliven duty.

In literature this dynamic is most often apparent in love stories. Often one lover is desiring and another dutiful, leading to a union that reflects the healing of the divided cosmos. Ancient and medieval thinkers called this unifying love eros, often represented as a young god aiming his piercing arrows into human hearts. Pagan and Christian philosophy has always considered the healing wound of eros the proper ground-of-being for any meaningful human goodness and happiness. Perhaps that is why so many enduring stories are full of dutiful souls whose long-neglected eros is awakened, tested, lost, and regained. Duty is neither happy nor good without desire. Just as desiring souls must learn to limit themselves, dutiful souls have a different and no less difficult challenge: they must learn to delight themselves.