Anne accepts Captain Wentworth

Anne accepts Captain Wentworth's renewed proposal after receiving his passionate letter, leading to their reconciliation and engagement. This moment resolves the central romantic conflict of the novel, transforming eight and a half years of separation, misunderstanding, and suppressed feeling into a re-union more tender and more secure than their first engagement had been.

The Letter and Its Immediate Effect

Captain Wentworth, unable to listen in silence any longer, wrote to Anne during the morning at the White Hart, using the pretext of composing a letter for Captain Harville. He declared, "I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope." He offered himself to her again "with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago," and insisted he had loved none but her. The letter was placed before Anne with "eyes of glowing entreaty" as he hastily collected his gloves and left the room. The revolution that one instant made in Anne was almost beyond expression; her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed. She devoured the words, and the contents of that letter determined all that this world could do for her.

The Walk and the Reconciliation

When Anne left the White Hart with Charles Musgrove, Captain Wentworth joined them on Union Street. Charles, needing to see a gunsmith, asked Wentworth to take his place and give Anne his arm to her father's door. There could not be an objection; there could be only the most proper alacrity. Soon they were proceeding together toward the comparatively quiet and retired gravel walk, where the power of conversation made the present hour a blessing indeed. There they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many years of division and estrangement. They returned into the past, more exquisitely happy in their re-union than when it had been first projected—more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other's character, truth, and attachment.

Explanations and Retrospections

All the little variations of the last week were gone through. Wentworth confessed that jealousy of Mr Elliot had been the retarding weight, the doubt, the torment—operating from the very hour of first meeting her in Bath, returning after a short suspension to ruin the concert, and influencing everything he had said and done in the last four-and-twenty hours. It had been vanquished at last by those sentiments and tones which had reached him while she talked with Captain Harville, and under the irresistible governance of which he had seized a sheet of paper and poured out his feelings. He persisted in having loved none but her; she had never been supplanted. He had been constant unconsciously, had meant to forget her and believed it to be done, had imagined himself indifferent when he had only been angry. He acknowledged that only at Uppercross had he learnt to do her justice, and only at Lyme had he begun to understand himself. There he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way.

The Evening Party and Confirmation

That evening, at the card party in Camden Place, Anne was glowing and lovely in sensibility and happiness. She had cheerful or forbearing feelings for every creature around her. With Captain Wentworth, there were moments of communication continually occurring, and always the hope of more, and always the knowledge of his being there. In one of these short meetings, she told him she had been thinking over the past and believed she was perfectly right in being guided by Lady Russell, though she would never give such advice herself. He replied that he trusted to being in charity with Lady Russell soon, but asked whether, if he had written to her when he returned to England in 1808 with a few thousand pounds and was posted into the Laconia, she would have renewed the engagement then. "Would I!" was all her answer, but the accent was decisive enough. He cried out that six years of separation and suffering might have been spared, and that he must learn to brook being happier than he deserved.

The Outcome

Sir Walter made no objection to the match; Captain Wentworth, with five-and-twenty thousand pounds and as high in his profession as merit and activity could place him, was no longer nobody. Lady Russell, after some struggle, admitted she had been mistaken about both men and attached herself as a mother to the man who was securing the happiness of her other child. Anne gloried in being a sailor's wife, though she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to a profession distinguished in its domestic virtues as well as its national importance. The dread of a future war was all that could dim her sunshine.