Lady Russell's Reconciliation

This fanfiction is largely a reaction to Kathryn Davis' article ""A New Set of Opinions and of Hopes: Lady Russell's Education." This article, in short, sought to argue that Lady Russell's place in the novel was not merely that of a classist Dowager who sabotages Anne's first engagement to Captain Wentworth, but rather as a woman still grieving the loss of her dearest friend, Lady Elliot, and frequently and consistently mistaking Anne for her mother, a mistake which just so happens to result in her poorly judged persuasion eight years before the novel's start and one which persists up until its final chapter. Taking the sentiments expressed by Davis in this article, I decided that an interesting interjection into Austen's text would be to examine Lady Russell at her precise moment of conflict and reconciliation which occurs "off-page" in chapter 24. This scene is incredibly interesting to me as it inherently confronts an issue which I believe gets overlooked in many other critical texts: Lady Russell's frequent mistaking Anne for Lady Elliot throughout the novel. This was not something that was incredibly apparent to me upon my first reading, but it is a consistent and notable trend throughout the text, perhaps best demonstrated in the quote "it is only in Anne that she could fancy the mother to revive again." This case of mistaken identity, as well of an evident Freudian slip, is never fully explored in the text which left me incredibly curious as to how Lady Russell would possibly come to terms with Anne's marriage without overcoming, or at least addressing it. This is the issue which I seek to address here.
Many other choices were made within the work, but this was the primary motivation for writing.