Book Review: Emma
Aug. 2nd, 2024 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhile not quite as divisive as Fanny Price, Emma Woodhouse can also start a minor flamewar. Upon my first read, I was an unabashed Emma-lover; upon reread, I have more complicated feelings about her as a person, but something approaching awe towards Jane Austen’s work developing her character, because she’s so complicated and contradictory in a way that can be hard to portray without making a character feel simply incoherent. And yet she is entirely coherent, a fully realized creation in all her contradictions; and not only that, but she changes a great deal over the course of the book, perhaps more than any other Austen heroine.
The characteristic that struck me as forcibly unappealing this time is the fact that Emma is such a snob. Surely I noticed this upon first read, because it’s not at all subtle. A smattering of incidents, to which I could append many more: she’s convinced that the illegitimate Harriet must be a gentleman’s daughter, just because she’s pretty and Emma likes her. She twits Mr. Knightly for arriving at events on foot like a plebe, rather than properly in a carriage. Part of her dislike for Mrs. Elton arises from the fact that Mrs. Elton intends to take precedence over her, Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield.
Part of it of course also arises from the fact that Mrs. Elton sounds unbearable. Actually, I did have a bit of sympathy for Mrs. Elton this time around, simply because she’s a stranger to literally everyone in town except her husband whom she knew a mere five weeks before she married him, and she’s clearly trying to establish herself in this new situation… by being wildly interfering in everyone else’s business, by for instance forcibly arranging a governess job for Jane Fairfax who adamantly does not want one just yet.
But, of course, Emma herself has some interfering tendencies, although the velvet glove over her iron hand tends to be far more plush than Mrs. Elton’s. (People often dislike their own worst qualities when they meet them in others.) Most dramatically, she talks Harriet out of accepting Robert Martin’s offer of marriage - all the while loudly proclaiming that of course she doesn’t want to influence Harriet at all! but if a woman doubts whether she should accept a man, she shouldn’t! - largely because she considers Robert Martin beneath the notice of her own intimate friend Harriet.
I found the Emma/Harriet friendship intriguingly femslashy the first time I read it, but somewhat less so this time around: Emma is so obviously settling on the first possible replacement friend who shows up after her dear governess Miss Taylor leaves Hartfield to get married. And part of Harriet’s charm to her is her patent inferiority to Emma in all things except possibly good nature, which Emma herself is well aware of - although perhaps not fully cognizant that it doesn’t speak well of her that she prefers an inferior friend who can never make her envious to a Jane Fairfax, whose skill at music must always make Emma aware that she has not improved her raw talent with practice as she should.
So far, this all sounds pretty negative. But one of the fascinating things about Emma is that this taste for interference, which is perhaps her worst quality, in some ways arises from her best quality, which is her loving solicitude for her father. Mr. Woodhouse is an incredibly nervous man, easily alarmed by even small changes, and Emma has essentially taken charge of him since she was quite young - certainly since her elder sister Isabella married, and possibly even before that, since Isabella’s nerves are almost as weak as her father’s.
Is it any wonder, as the most sensible person in the house since the age of at least thirteen, the one who soothes her father’s anxieties and arranges his life, Emma has come to consider herself capable of arranging lives more generally? And although some of her decisions with regard to Harriet are nearly disastrous, her actions towards Harriet and toward her father are truly guided by loving solicitude.
It isn’t even that she is patient with her father, for to say she is patient suggests that she is occasionally taking a deep, aggravated breath as she bears with his infirmities. Her affection for him is so complete that she enters into all his anxieties, not in the sense that she agrees that he is correct to be anxious, but in fully feeling that the anxiety is real to him and acting always to soothe it.
And, my God, I could never. I may lack some of Emma’s faults, but I also cannot see myself, day after day after day after day, lovingly devoting my time and attention to a whittering old man who never grows used to any change and is constantly anxious about his health, everybody else’s health, the weather, etc. etc. etc. Maybe I’ve never talked a friend out of marrying her own true love; but all the same, like Gunga Din, Emma is a better man than I.
The characteristic that struck me as forcibly unappealing this time is the fact that Emma is such a snob. Surely I noticed this upon first read, because it’s not at all subtle. A smattering of incidents, to which I could append many more: she’s convinced that the illegitimate Harriet must be a gentleman’s daughter, just because she’s pretty and Emma likes her. She twits Mr. Knightly for arriving at events on foot like a plebe, rather than properly in a carriage. Part of her dislike for Mrs. Elton arises from the fact that Mrs. Elton intends to take precedence over her, Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield.
Part of it of course also arises from the fact that Mrs. Elton sounds unbearable. Actually, I did have a bit of sympathy for Mrs. Elton this time around, simply because she’s a stranger to literally everyone in town except her husband whom she knew a mere five weeks before she married him, and she’s clearly trying to establish herself in this new situation… by being wildly interfering in everyone else’s business, by for instance forcibly arranging a governess job for Jane Fairfax who adamantly does not want one just yet.
But, of course, Emma herself has some interfering tendencies, although the velvet glove over her iron hand tends to be far more plush than Mrs. Elton’s. (People often dislike their own worst qualities when they meet them in others.) Most dramatically, she talks Harriet out of accepting Robert Martin’s offer of marriage - all the while loudly proclaiming that of course she doesn’t want to influence Harriet at all! but if a woman doubts whether she should accept a man, she shouldn’t! - largely because she considers Robert Martin beneath the notice of her own intimate friend Harriet.
I found the Emma/Harriet friendship intriguingly femslashy the first time I read it, but somewhat less so this time around: Emma is so obviously settling on the first possible replacement friend who shows up after her dear governess Miss Taylor leaves Hartfield to get married. And part of Harriet’s charm to her is her patent inferiority to Emma in all things except possibly good nature, which Emma herself is well aware of - although perhaps not fully cognizant that it doesn’t speak well of her that she prefers an inferior friend who can never make her envious to a Jane Fairfax, whose skill at music must always make Emma aware that she has not improved her raw talent with practice as she should.
So far, this all sounds pretty negative. But one of the fascinating things about Emma is that this taste for interference, which is perhaps her worst quality, in some ways arises from her best quality, which is her loving solicitude for her father. Mr. Woodhouse is an incredibly nervous man, easily alarmed by even small changes, and Emma has essentially taken charge of him since she was quite young - certainly since her elder sister Isabella married, and possibly even before that, since Isabella’s nerves are almost as weak as her father’s.
Is it any wonder, as the most sensible person in the house since the age of at least thirteen, the one who soothes her father’s anxieties and arranges his life, Emma has come to consider herself capable of arranging lives more generally? And although some of her decisions with regard to Harriet are nearly disastrous, her actions towards Harriet and toward her father are truly guided by loving solicitude.
It isn’t even that she is patient with her father, for to say she is patient suggests that she is occasionally taking a deep, aggravated breath as she bears with his infirmities. Her affection for him is so complete that she enters into all his anxieties, not in the sense that she agrees that he is correct to be anxious, but in fully feeling that the anxiety is real to him and acting always to soothe it.
And, my God, I could never. I may lack some of Emma’s faults, but I also cannot see myself, day after day after day after day, lovingly devoting my time and attention to a whittering old man who never grows used to any change and is constantly anxious about his health, everybody else’s health, the weather, etc. etc. etc. Maybe I’ve never talked a friend out of marrying her own true love; but all the same, like Gunga Din, Emma is a better man than I.
