The purpose of this paper is to explore the various readers and texts within the novel Persuasion, and how the process of reading both affects and reflects emotion. Using reader-response theory to examine the relationship between readers and their respective texts -- in particular, Wolfgang Iser’s essay “Interaction Between Text and Reader” -- I demonstrate how there are two categories of readers in the novel: those whose reading produces and changes emotion, and those who read to reproduce and reflect their own inner state. Both of these types of readers are ultimately flawed because they both taking reading to its utmost extremes; characters who read affectively, such as Sir Walter or Mrs. Musgrove, tend to disregard the inherent meaning of the text in favor of its utility, while reflective readers, like Captain Benwick, become too deeply entrenched in purely emotional responses to the text. I propose that Anne acts as the embodiment of a more ideal reader because she reads both affectively and reflectively, synthesizing these two different types of reading and using texts not simply as a means of experiencing emotion, but as a way to process and manage it. Ultimately, I examine the ways that Persuasion’s structure causes the novel to be read in the same way, looking at the climactic letter scene as an example of the way the Persuasion draws its reader away from purely sensational responses to the text and asks the reader to take a critical look at emotion.