English language translation theory department

CONCLUSION
At first glance, the end of Persuasion might seem all puppies and sunshine. Anne and Captain Wentworth get together at last! Mr. Elliot gets the boot! Even Mrs. Smith gets rich! Sounds like a classic happily-ever-after, riding-unicorns-into-the-rainbow-sunset ending, right?
Well...almost. While the ending does suggest that having eight years to grow up and figure themselves out has made our happy couple even more likely to stay that way, and with the added bonus that Anne's snobby family is finally OK with Wentworth's naval profession, the last sentence of the novel is oddly ambivalent. In fact, it sounds almost like a warning: "[Anne] gloried in being a sailor's wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtues than in its national importance". While the novel has been boosting sailors from the get-go, it ends with a sobering reminder: the navy is, after all, part of the military, which means that if war should come they're among the first to be affected.
While war is what brought Wentworth his fortune and made his reunion with Anne possible, it's also a continuing threat to their happiness. That particular war may be over, but if Anne and Wentworth have learned anything from their romance, it's that you can't entirely trust an ending to stay ended. Wars and love are like Freddy Krueger: they all have a tendency to keep coming back.
While Anne doesn't narrate the story directly, we do get the story mostly through her eyes. That also means we get her blind spots too. A good example of this is when, after seeing Captain Wentworth through the window of Molland's sweetshop, Anne feels "a great inclination to go to the outer door; she wanted to see if it rained," and thinks, "Why was she to suspect herself of another motive?". The narrator doesn't jump in and say, "but REALLY she was hoping to get Wentworth's attention," instead letting Anne's version stand on its own without additional comment. And while we do get a few scenes when Anne's not around (like when Captain Wentworth is talking to his sister), most of the time we find out about events only when Anne hears about them.
Although the narrative is mostly in the third person, an unidentified "I" pops up towards the end: after saying that young people who make up their minds to get married will find a way to do it, the narrator says, "This may be bad morality to conclude with, but I believe it to be truth". Who is this "I," and why does s/he wait until the end to declare him/herself? Is there something about this particular statement that requires a first person speaker to make sense? Could an omniscient narrator "believe [something] to be truth"?
The appearance of an "I" here also raises the question of perspective in the rest of the novel – if the narrator is an individual "I" rather than a disembodied voice, what is his/her relation to the rest of the characters? It may be tempting to assume this "I" is Jane Austen herself, but it’s entirely possible Austen is just messing with us by using the first person. Is this momentary "I" the key to the novel, a fake-out, or a throwaway? The answer to all these questions is yes – or no, depending on how you read it.
The last chapter ties up most of the loose ends into a neat little package. Anne’s family manages to deal with her marrying Wentworth, even Lady Russell comes around, and Mrs. Smith gets her financial affairs resolved in the bargain. The only notes of uncertainty are whether Mrs. Clay will manage to seduce Mr. Elliot, and whether a war will come to mar Anne’s happiness.