Jeffrey's description of Anne Elliot's "almost flawless perfection" stopped me in my tracks.

I have no quarrel with that statement, considering what we have seen of Anne so far, but it does raise a couple of issues for me.

1. I do not want Anne to be perfect. Part of the charm of JA's work for me is that her characters are so real, so believably human, with the imperfections that go with the human condition. Her heroes and heroines are not uniformly good, nor are her 'villains' uniformly bad.

So JA's famous statement:- "pictures of perfection ... make me sick and wicked"(*) resonates very strongly with me. This was written in a letter to her niece Fanny Knight just as 'Persuasion' was ready for publication. Referring to this, JA's letter goes on to say:
"You may perhaps like the Heroine, as she is almost too good for me."(*)

So it looks as though Anne may indeed prove to be almost perfect. JA and Jeffrey both qualify Anne's perfection with that word "almost". Why? This makes me want to discover what flaws or faults Anne may have that make her human and save her from being too oppressively perfect.

2. Allowing that Anne may be almost perfect, I then have to wonder why I react so differently to Anne Elliott and Fanny Price. I will cheerfully admit all Fanny's good qualities but I cannot really warm to her, whereas I instinctively like Anne very much indeed. It is a conundrum which I'll be bearing in mind through the rest of the GR.
(I know that many people, including Jeffrey, will not agree with me about Fanny Price, but it can't be helped. We just feel things differently I guess, and I do not want to start another round of "Fanny wars"! ;-D )