Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.”
- Source
- Persuasion
- Date
- 1818
- Local voice
- Fictional character · Captain Frederick Wentworth (letter)
Meaning of “You pierce my soul. I am half agony,…”
Wentworth’s letter holds pain and possibility together: the renewed declaration is intense because he still does not know whether Anne’s feelings have survived their long separation.
Where does it come from?
Persuasion, Chapter XXIII, Project Gutenberg #105. Captain Frederick Wentworth writes the line to Anne Elliot while listening to her conversation with Captain Harville; the letter is signed “F. W.” and is fictional character writing, not Austen autobiography.
Why the local voice matters
Wentworth writes this directly to Anne Elliot in Chapter XXIII while listening to her conversation with Captain Harville.
