Cutting Important Characters

There has been a lot said about Persuasion (2022) since the release of its first trailer, but something I have yet to see mentioned is the perplexing case of a missing character. 🧐🕵️‍♀️

Before we begin, I do understand when you are translating media, especially books to screen sometimes you have to cut characters. Whether it's for time or because you don't want to have to pay another actor, or because they simply aren't important, cutting characters does happen and sometimes for the better. However, the character that was cut from this Persuasion adaptation is not only necessary for the storyline but also incredibly integral to the Jane Austen universe.

Now if you are unfamiliar with the book or need some help remembering, let me introduce you to a character named Mrs. Smith. She is Anne Elliot, the protagonist's, school-mate, who is now poor, ill, and a widower who lives in Bath. Anne visits Mrs. Smith while in Bath herself.

The Importance of Mrs Smith to Anne Elliot

Mrs Smith acts almost as a window into Anne throughout some of their conversations about the going-ons around Bath. Of course, in the 2022 adaptation of Persuasion we instead have the breaking of the fourth wall, as a view into some of Anne's more inner thoughts and feelings.

Mrs Smith seems to be one of the only characters in the novel that can truly understand Anne, and she makes observations such as "'Your countenance perfectly informs me that you were in company last night with the person, whom you think the most agreeable in the world, the person who interests you at this present time, more than all the rest of the world put together.' (page 221)." And she is not wrong.

One of the biggest reasons to keep Mrs Smith was for the revelation at the end of the story. In the novel Mrs Smith tells Anne about Mr Elliots true character and it changes the way in which Anne views him even before he is seen on the street with Mrs Clay; "...and when she thought of his cruel conduct towards Mrs Smith, she could hardly bear the sight of his present smiles and mildness, or the sound of his artificial good sentiments'' (page 244). In the film, instead, we have an abrupt jump from Anne liking Mr Elliot to her seeing making out with Mrs Clay... there's no development of dislike or hatred for the character, and in terms of the film's characterization of Mr Elliot, it almost seems out of place for him to do it.

Mrs Smith also acts as a mirror for Anne, a mirror of Anne if she were to marry Mr Elliot, and what would become of her in that future life.

The Importance of Mrs Smith to Jane Austen

Now if you've been reading up on Persuasion I'm sure you've seen a million times that this was Austen's final novel that she finished. The tone of the novel being one of her most melancholy is usually attributed to her writing it while in poverty and while sick herself. It is because of this idea, that I thought when reading it that Mrs Smith was almost a self insertion of Austen. They are both poor, sick, suffering. The pure suffering of Mrs Smith also made me wonder if Austen knew how sick she was and that she was possibly dying? Obviously this is just speculation, but it is not very "out there" to suspect that Austen put parts of herself into one of her characters.

Mrs Smith is perhaps kind of like an all knowing character, she is kept up on gossip around and also has vital information that changes the course of Anne's story. With the line "Every body of any consequence or notoriety in Bath was well known by name to Mrs Smith" (page 220), makes me believe more that Mrs Smith is Jane Austen as a character in her own novel. Why? Because the author of her own novel would know everybody in her own little world.

Whether you believe in my wild theories or not, I think Mrs Smith is still an integral character for the story and plot of Persuasion, and cutting her out of it completely is a horrendous crime against the whole novel.

(Any citations and page numbers come from the Vintage Classics edition of Persuasion with an Introduction by Lynne Truss)