(Apologies if I'm jumping ahead to chapter 4 too soon.)

I have in recent years been very much inclined to agree with Lady Russell that it would have been too great a risk for Anne to marry FW when he had no money to support her and was in a very dangerous profession which might at any time have left her a poor widow with children to support (not unlike Mrs Clay, as a matter of fact - in situation if not in personality).

But now on re-reading chapter four I find it unclear how much it is merely the engagement which is at issue rather than the marriage. And here is where I begin to have a big problem with Lady Russell:

Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen...to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune...

Had LR not had that unreasonable prejudice in favor of birth and rank, but only the more reasonable concerns about FW's future in an uncertain & dangerous profession, perhaps she might have suggested some compromise - that they maintain only an informal engagement for a certain period, wait to see how FW would fare in his career, etc. But instead she persuaded Anne to break with him entirely ('She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing - indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it.') Of course, he himself might have suggested a compromise, had he not been such a hotheaded young man ('totally unconvinced and unbending, and of his feeling himself ill-used by so forced a relinquishment.')!