"That quarter of the mind": The Psychodynamics of the Female Will In Jane Austen's Persuasion

[...]women best pursue their divinely ordained "domestic duties" so the sexes will "be meet and rational companions to one another" (Baillie 1853, 709). [...]she sometimes is passive, remaining emotionally on shore, with "her friends" fearing that her "tenderness" for Wentworth would lead to chronic "dread" of a "future war" that would "dim her sunshine." Given a second chance to choose Wentworth, the young woman finds the strength to move beyond the safe world of advantage championed by her deceased mother and verymuch-alive guardian. According to theorists like Nancy Chodorow and Carol Gilligan, the nearly exclusive role of women in the caretaking of children in Western cultures has encouraged two distinct patterns of self-awareness and learning between the sexes.