Jane Austen, IS, Foucault and of course rats

I've recently been trying to read "Persuasion" by Jane Austen - partially as a distraction, and partially because the name has always jumped out at me in that singular way that only Jane Austen can: there is something so dry and enigmatic, and yet unpretentious about her titles (and portrayals). Also, the idea of a less-beautiful, aged but wise heroine feels more than a bit poignant. Also I fucking love sailors.

I'm only at the beginning and I keep having to re-read pages because my eyes keep dripping from the page in fatigue (and probably also because Austen's characters generally take a bit of wearing in before they fit and become interesting). This means that I keep staring at sentences, when they suddenly jump out of context and feel abstract - or rather, bizarrely relevant. 

Specifically, this keeps disquieting me:

"It was painful to look upon their deserted grounds, and still worse to anticipate the new hands they were to fall into; and to escape the solitariness and melancholy of so altered a village, and to be out of the way when Admiral and Mrs Croft first arrived, she had determined to make her own absence from home begin when she must give up Anne."

This is in the context of a man having to rent out his home to Admiral Croft because he is very deep in debt due to his... unwise purchases. This is a man consumed by his own self-worth: he is obsessed with his own (and others') beauty, as well as the social status of his family. 

Anne is a quiet but admirable woman (unmarried, late twenties). The person whose thoughts these are is greatly fond of Anne, although many others are embarrassed by her - as one who has lost the bloom of beauty and was reaching old-spinster territory. So far, she feels tossed about like a hot plate between people, and filled with regret (and many loud despairing and nervous sighs).

This idea that is was "painful to look upon their deserted grounds" - an image of house, still furnished with many generations of a family's possessions, empty of the people who define it as home, left for those whom have the money to afford it - felt reminiscent of how I imagine it looks and feels in Syria right now. And perhaps, the "pain" is felt not only as the genuine loss of the house for the family, but "still worse" that the place will become occupied by people who will not see it as 'home' but as a 'house' - a "ground". 

In the same way that (Foucault) words take on different meanings depending on who and where and when they are said, places too lose and gain meaning from the same factors. The room in which your father died is seen as merely a room, perhaps with some coffee stains on the table. Indeed, I think this is the "solitariness" that Austen describes at seeing a place move on. In Syria (and elsewhere in time and place), land which to a family means the whole context of their life is degraded to a mere political conquest. Having to flee one's home is more than just losing what you own and to strip yourself of familiarity and memory, but also to strip the place of the same - leading to a feeling of injustice and many other complex emotions I cannot possibly understand, never having been forced to flee my home. Perhaps Anne here, one hand always tracing her footprints, can be the symbol of memory and a time left behind. 

This book, apparently, explores how Anne retrieves a past and possibility she'd thought was lost (and her fault). 

Persuasion. 

I anticipate that I shall learn a lot from this book.