The theme of lost happiness in the novels Persuasion by Jane Austen and Eugene Onegin by A.S. Pushkin

Two classic novels of English and Russian literature - Persuasion by Jane Austen and Eugene Onegin by A.S. Pushkin - with a similar ring love story provide an interesting opportunity to analyze some variations of fiction solutions to the problem of happiness in the context of national philosophy, author's aesthetics and genre tradition. The motive of the lost happiness is one of the key ones in the central love conflict of the two novels. Happiness appears in Persuasion and Eugene Onegin as the highest but fragile value: happiness is easy to lose. The ring plot allows the authors to connect again a couple of people who experienced a lot and grew spiritually, who are able to realize the worth and value of happiness. The idea of moral self-standing, individual perfection as the result of daily spiritual work is very important in English and Russian literature of the the 19th century. Pushkin, like Austen, needed to display the temporal distance to show the development and self knowledge of the hero. The topic of happiness has the background of other destinies in Persuasion and Eugene Onegin. There are pictures of the beautiful feeling in everyday life, of habits that replace happiness, of quiescence as an intentional choice in the novels. The author's position is that there is no substitute for happiness. True happiness can only be based on harmony with one's own self. The central heroines in both novels face the problem of happiness and debt correlation. Rationality in actions denotes the problem of mind and sense correlation and debt is connected with 'the ability to control oneself' in the novels. The English novel is based on the English sensual philosophical ethics, in which happiness and debt are in a relationship of interdependence but not mutual exclusion. Jane Austen's novel offers the option of human moral harmony. While Persuasion final signifies that spiritually matured heroes become worthy of happiness the Russian novel reflects the drama of reckoning for errors of youth and incompleteness of the main hero's way. The happy endings of English novels defined by enlightenment optimism and by the belief that the world develops in the direction of progress, on the one hand, could not but fascinate foreign readers by their harmony and consistency. On the other hand, in Russia they were subjected to irony as literary simplifications uncalled on the background of the intense drama of Russian life. The typological comparison of the happiness problem reflection in Persuasion and Eugene Onegin discovers an obvious affinity of characters and collisions up to text similarities determined by the dominance of close moral-philosophical problems inherent to Russian and English literature and genre peculiarities of the European novel of the 19th century.

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