Persuasion Family Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #10

Anne, satisfied at a very early period of Lady Russell's meaning to love Captain Wentworth as she ought, had no other alloy to the happiness of her prospects than what arose from the consciousness of having no relations to bestow on him which a man of sense could value. There she felt her own inferiority very keenly. The disproportion in their fortune was nothing; it did not give her a moment's regret; but to have no family to receive and estimate him properly, nothing of respectability, of harmony, of good will to offer in return for all the worth and all the prompt welcome which met her in his brothers and sisters, was a source of as lively pain as her mind could well be sensible of under circumstances of otherwise strong felicity. (24.10)

This passage sets up a new set of family values to replace those that Anne's family believes in: instead of Anne's family being superior to Wentworth's because of their class, they're inferior because they're jerks. Family here becomes simply the people that are in it, and if those people aren't cool, then the family as a whole is no good, no matter how aristocratic they are.