The general philosophical core of Persuasion revolves around the three daughters of baronet William Elliot, Elizabeth, Ann, and Mary, chronologically.
Elizabeth is the Edwardian version of a feminist: stubborn, working-minded, with a very high standard for any man who might consider proposing, and therefore was around 30 and unmarried, which is the early 1800s might as well be a death sentence.
Mary is the opposite: girlish, emotional, self-absorbed, and was so afraid of becoming a spinster that she married someone who wasn't for her, and ended up with a less-than-fulfilling marriage.
Ann is the 'just right' woman: cares about herself but wants to be with a man who loves her whom she loves. It's a long story (it's a novel after all), but eventually Ann is able to connect with a Navy captain who had loved her for years but thought she was unavailable.
In short, there are two approaches made here. One is Aristotelian: Elizabeth is the deficiency of female, Mary the excess of female, Ann is the golden mean. The other is Biblical: Ann is the type of wife material God intended, equivalent to Ruth, or (possibly) Mary the Theotokos, while the other sisters are examples of women in the Bible who are less than successful wife material.
Of course, today's liberal woman scoffs at all of this, and becomes either Jezebel or Gomer.
Thanks, an interesting post.
They may scoff, but if you look at the popular women's fiction, like Sex & the City, they still end with a wedding, just like Jane Austen.