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Once engaged to Captain Harville's now-deceased sister, Captain Benwick is a depressed naval officer who spends much of the narrative mourning the death of his lost love. He is a shy man and an ardent reader of poetry, which he uses to cope with his grief. When Anne meets him, he living with Captain and Mrs. Harville while on leave from his ship. Although he is initially reserved, Captain Benwick bonds with Anne, who feels that she has done a good thing by patiently helping a grieving man open up once more. Although it is never explicitly stated, Austen implies that Anne has a fondness for Captain Benwick because she can relate to his grief. Captain Wentworth may not have died like Captain Benwick’s fiancé, but Anne has nonetheless experienced a loss.
Captain Benwick also inadvertently inspires Captain Wentworth to act on his feelings for Anne. At the start of the novel, Captain Wentworth is still bitter from Anne’s rejection eight years prior and he does not attempt to rekindle their relationship out of pride. Anne and Captain Wentworth begin to bond again as the story progresses, softening his previous resentment. However, Captain Wentworth does not act on his feelings until he receives a wake-up call when Captain Benwick and Louisa Musgrove become engaged. The union forces Captain Wentworth to realize that he has “loved none but [Anne],” for a few reasons. To begin with, he does not understand how Captain Benwick and Louisa could have formed an attachment when they are so dissimilar. His bewilderment, and his conviction that marriages should be between two people with similar dispositions, allows him to recall the many moments in the text in which he and Anne and are shown to be kindred spirits. Further, he wonders how Captain Benwick could marry again so soon after his fiancé died because “a man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman. He ought not; he does not.” The pensive repetition and the use of present tense suggest that, while Captain Wentworth is speaking about Captain Benwick, he is thinking about his own feelings for Anne, from which he has never recovered. Though it is possible that Captain Wentworth and Anne would have found their way back to each other eventually, it is clear that Captain Benwick inadvertently caused an epiphany that inspired Captain Wentworth to follow his heart.
