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The essay begins by asserting that fiction is persuasion—subtle, indirect, undogmatic, nevertheless it has designs on the reader and is a mode of communication. The example of Jane Austen gives particular illustrations of persuasion as a subject, including self-persuasion (in Emma); the easy persuasion of an unresisting subject (in Sense and Sensibility); and difficult and unwelcome persuasion (in Persuasion).