Frederick Wentworth

Frederick Wentworth is a fictional character, the protagonist's love interest, in Jane Austen's novel Persuasion.

Plot

The heroine, Anne Elliott falls in love with Wentworth, when she is just twenty years old. Her family, and her godmother, strongly disapprove of her agreeing to his marriage proposal. They are snobs, and think Wentworth is both too poor, and not prominent enough in Britain's social structure. Under their pressure she tells Wentworth she can not marry him. One of her options would have been to wait until she was twenty-one, and could marry him without her father's approval.

The novel is set eight years later, and Anne is still unmarried. By the conventions of the day, being unmarried at 28, means she is unlikely to ever get married. She has regretted her rejection of him, that entire eight years.

Further, her family's status has dropped, because her foolish father has mismanaged the family's property, and spent beyond their means. He has had to put the family's estate out to rent, while moving to Bath. Anne stays at the estate, to help the renter, Admiral Croft, get settled. Admiral Croft's wealth is based on prize money. Admirals are entitled to one eighth of the value of ships captured by vessels under their command.

Unknown to Anne, Admiral Croft is Wentworth's brother-in-law. Wentworth was one of the Captains on one of the ships under his command, and he too has returned to Britain as a wealthy man. Anne's feelings over meeting him, when he comes to visit his sister, and the Admiral, are complicated. His feelings are complicated too. He is wealthy enough to marry into the aristocracy now, and Anne's younger sister's young sisters-in-law are very interested in him. He seems very interested in her younger relations.

But, in the end, Wentworth forgives Anne, and they eventually marry.

Wentworth's role in later fiction

Later authors wrote novels where they re-used the Wentworth character. In particular, Constance Pilgrim's 1971 book, Dear Jane: a Biographical Study presented itself as an actual biography, that asserted the plot of Persuasion was based on a real-life relationship between Austen and John Wordsworth, a Captain for the East India Company.