aracters), but it’s a common feature of the novel and what distinguishes it from drama. Although similar to the novel, a work of drama is a written text, drama is written for a different purpose, to be performed on the stage. As opposed to the private experience of reading the novel, watching a play is a more public experience, to be appreciated in a room full of bodies, who respond to the play with laughter, groans, surprise, boredom, etc. Also, in a play we are only privy to the inner life of characters through witnessing the characters’ (actors’) speech and actions, or thru the artifice of soliloquy to inform us of the characters’ thoughts and feelings. But the novel acts as a collage of experiences and emotions. Although Persuasion is a romance in which the characters do not change, we find Anne’s character rich because this layering over time of Anne’s thoughts, emotions, and actions exists. We deem a novel successful if it adheres to what Watt calls its “fidelity to human experience” (13).Persuasion is divided into twenty-four chapters, but if we were to read one chapter by itself as a story, it would not stand independently. It would not feel complete. The novel is a work of long prose fiction that is commonly divided into chapters (I can’t think of an instance when this chapter or section format has not been used in the novel, if only to divide the novel into manageable chunks), yet each chapter is not self-sufficient, as opposed to a collection of short stories. The sequence of the chapters is important. We read from the front of the book to the back, in order to make meaning of the text. The chapters are connected and lend a sense of cohesion to the work. Full meaning in the text lies in the sum of the chapters, not by picking a choosing excerpts here or there. While reading the novel, we expect continuity. Even if the author is mastering various narrative threads, we expec...
