Does anyone else read Anne and Captain Wentworth, in their first engagement, when Anne was 19, as expecting a long engagement until he'd earned sufficient fortune, rather than planning to marry immediately?

There's no reference I can see to them hoping to get married right away. Lady Elliot does think of it as "snatched off" but then changes her thoughts to:

Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence!

So the two ideas are contrasted, "snatched off" or "most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence".

There's also the story inside Persuasion of Fanny Harville and Captain Benwick's long engagement while they were waiting for him to earn a sufficient fortune. It's Fanny who dies young in their case, but in general the risks must have been more of the men dying young so a woman might spend much of her youth waiting and maybe passing up on other opportunities to have her own home and family, only to lose out at the end.

Then towards the end of Persuasion, Mrs Musgrove and Mrs Croft have a talk about long engagements, and engagements of uncertain length, they're both against them, and we have:

Anne found an unexpected interest here. She felt its application to herself, felt it in a nervous thrill all over her; and at the same moment that her eyes instinctively glanced towards the distant table, Captain Wentworth’s pen ceased to move, his head was raised, pausing, listening, and he turned round the next instant to give a look, one quick, conscious look at her.

Finally, Wentworth resents Anne for years for breaking their engagement. This seems to me very unheroic if they were expecting to marry right away, given all the practical risks of Anne being left a poor widow with small children to raise. But if, from his perspective, it's an issue of Anne not being willing to wait for him, then his resentment makes more sense. If they're not engaged they can't even send each other letters during those years. I know Wentworth isn't perfect but I can't believe in him being so resentful for a lesser cause.

Anyway other thoughts?