had a realization about persuasion today that the reason Anne can’t move on for 8 long years is not just her own sorrow but the fear that he will and can and does hate her for what she did to him. I think that fear and then that realization that it’s true settles into her bones and freezes her up and she can’t get past it. I’ve always felt really deeply (without understanding why) that Anne recovers from her heartbreak before we think she does, that before everything reaches its resolution between them at the end of the book Anne is better than she was before—less frozen, less traumatized. That it’s not his declaration that changes things, but something earlier.
And I never really understood it before now but I think it’s because she has proof that he doesn’t hate her. At first she sees that he’s still angry (and because she’s Anne doesn’t really take that as the triumph she could have, as a testament to the power of how deeply she affected him, but is instead pained by it) but when he’s kind to her in spite of it, when he pays attention to her well-being and looks out for her in these small but particular ways, she responds to it with this humble gratitude because she’s been set free from the guilt that’s been holding her captive for so long. She never imagines that anything else will happen between them, that he’ll pay any attention to her romantically. She knows she blew that chance long ago, but she’s so relieved to know that he doesn’t hate her that it’s almost enough and at least is definitively better than it was before. The wound that’s been eating away at her wasn’t her own pain, not really, but his, and then her pain at the thought that he was alive in the world hating her for causing him that pain. That’s a special kind of twisted torment to live with and to watch it be undone by acts of gentleness and kindness—even if the doer of them is still sometimes begrudging and resentful, to watch her be able to breathe again after 8 years of holding her breath is very soft and it makes me cry.
