Emma

Some notes on Emma.

Posted: 1 March 2008 (printer-friendly permalink)

Discussion:  (huh?)

Emma is commonly regarded as Jane Austen’s greatest novel, but it has set some challenges for the critics.

Professor Mudrick thinks that everyone has misunderstood Emma, and he may be right, for Emma is a very difficult novel.  We in our time are used to difficult books and like them.  But Emma is more difficult than any of the hard books we admire.  The difficulty of Proust arises from the sheer amount and complexity of his thought, the difficulty of Joyce from the brilliantly contrived devices of representation, the difficulty of Kafka from a combination of doctrine and mode of communication.  With all, the difficulty is largely literal; it lessens in the degree that we attend closely to what the books say; after each sympathetic reading we are less puzzled.  But the difficulty of Emma is never overcome.  We never know where to have it.  If we finish at night and think we know what it is up to, we wake the next morning to believe it to be up to something quite else; it has become a different book.

Lionel Trilling, Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen, pp. 151-2

Rosmarin (1984) advances the intriguing idea of paying ‘’increased and systematic attention to the interpretative history’ of the work, especially to where critics have agreed upon a deficiency in an otherwise ‘perfect’ text to check whether this isn’t actually a defect in their interpretative model (p. 215).  Rosmarin takes as one of her departures a ‘dangling insight’ from Harvey.

What I am sure of is that were the reader fully aware from the outset of the true facts then the irony would become ponderous and schematic. Why this should not be so at a subsequent reading when the reader has such foreknowledge is a mystery that I can't pretend to explain […].

[…, p. 57] we, too, share the frailty of the characters, not merely by being human, but also, in a special sense, by being readers. In other words, Emma is a novel which constantly tempts us into surmise, speculation, judgement; the process of reading runs parallel to the life read about. Hence the need for mystification and hence the delayed revelation which shows us how we, too, are liable to mistake appearances for realities and to arrive at premature conclusions. The novel betrays us to ourselves.

W. J. Harvey, The Plot of Emma, p. 54-7

This idea that in Emma the author is manoeuvring the reader into repeating the mistakes of the protagonists in their ‘misreading’ of the novel is similar to the thesis advanced here to explain the design of Sense and Sensibility. 

To subsume so many choices under the rubric of ‘flaw’ and such complex and extensive interpretive activity under the guise of passive watching makes little explanatory sense.  The novel makes better sense if we begin with these ironic choices and that activity, unfolding the value of the novel in their terms.  We would begin, that is, by assuming that Austen meant the reader to be mystified, to make many of the same interpretive errors or, as Booth aptly puts it, many of the same misreadings that Emma makes.  No longer would the reader have the luxury of condescension, of always seeing more clearly than Emma.  In an explanatory model that concentrates not on what Emma represents but on what the experience of reading Emma is like, the reader not only watches Emma’s education, he reenacts it, learning from his misreading and the subsequent rereading makes it possible.  The novel becomes our tutor, the very act of reading it our lesson.

Adena Rosmarin, Misreading Emma: The Power and Perfidies of Narrative History

I won’t repeat Adena’s detailed analysis here but it shows how we are encouraged on emerging from Volume I with Emma’s misunderstandings with Mr Elton to feel not only kindly towards the heroine but superior to her and confident that we are in control.  In the final two volumes the reader’s confidence and mastery, just like Emma’s is tested, and it would take a sharp reader indeed on first reading to avoid repeating some of Emma’s mistakes in the ‘misreading’.  To illustrate this consider the passage in Scott’s review of Emma where he winds up his critique of Emma:

Perhaps the reader may collect from the preceding specimen both the merits and faults of the author. The former consists much in the force of a narrative conducted with much neatness and point, and a quiet yet comic dialogue, in which the characters of the speakers evolve themselves with dramatic effect. The faults, on the contrary, arise from the minute detail which the author’s plan comprehends. Characters of folly or simplicity, such as those of old Woodhouse and Miss Bates, are ridiculous when first presented, but if too often brought forward or too long dwelt upon, their prosing is apt to become as tiresome in fiction as in real society. Upon the whole, the turn of this author’s novels bears the same relation to that of the sentimental and romantic cast, that cornfields and cottages and meadows bear to the highly adorned grounds of a show mansion, or the rugged sublimities of a mountain landscape. It is neither so captivating as the one, nor so grand as the other, but it affords to those who frequent it a pleasure nearly allied with the experience of their own social habits; and what is of some importance, the youthful wanderer may return from his promenade to the ordinary business of life, without any chance of having his head turned by the recollection of the scene through which he has been wandering.

Walter Scott, Walter Scott, an unsigned review of Emma, Quarterly Review, p. 67

Now Scott won’t be the first to notice that Miss Bates and Mr Woodhouse pose challenges to the reader.  In Mudrick’s words, the ‘barely living’ Mr Woodhouse[1], could help us to sympathise with Emma’s mischievous and lively imagination and helps to first disarm our criticism of her and then our judgement.

Although Emma never dismisses her father, she does dismiss Miss Bates and we can see the narrator subtly encouraging the reader to follow suit.  In this extract Emma’s patience and our patience have already been tried by Harriet’s dithering in Fords and are met at the on the way out.

Voices approached the shop—or rather one voice and two ladies: Mrs. Weston and Miss Bates met them at the door.

“My dear Miss Woodhouse,” said the latter, “I am just run across to entreat the favour of you to come and sit down with us a little while, and give us your opinion of our new instrument; you and Miss Smith. How do you do, Miss Smith?—Very well I thank you.—And I begged Mrs. Weston to come with me, that I might be sure of succeeding.”

“I hope Mrs. Bates and Miss Fairfax are—”

“Very well, I am much obliged to you.  My mother is delightfully well; and Jane caught no cold last night.  How is Mr. Woodhouse?—I am so glad to hear such a good account.  Mrs. Weston told me you were here.— Oh! then, said I, I must run across, I am sure Miss Woodhouse will allow me just to run across and entreat her to come in; my mother will be so very happy to see her—and now we are such a nice party, she cannot refuse.—`Aye, pray do,' said Mr. Frank Churchill, `Miss Woodhouse's opinion of the instrument will be worth having.'— But, said I, I shall be more sure of succeeding if one of you will go with me.—`Oh,' said he, `wait half a minute, till I have finished my job;'—For, would you believe it, Miss Woodhouse, there he is, in the most obliging manner in the world, fastening in the rivet of my mother's spectacles.—The rivet came out, you know, this morning.— So very obliging!—For my mother had no use of her spectacles— could not put them on.  And, by the bye, every body ought to have two pair of spectacles; they should indeed.  Jane said so. I meant to take them over to John Saunders the first thing I did, but something or other hindered me all the morning; first one thing, then another, there is no saying what, you know.  At one time Patty came to say she thought the kitchen chimney wanted sweeping.  Oh, said I, Patty do not come with your bad news to me.  Here is the rivet of your mistress's spectacles out.  Then the baked apples came home, Mrs. Wallis sent them by her boy; they are extremely civil and obliging to us, the Wallises, always—I have heard some people say that Mrs. Wallis can be uncivil and give a very rude answer, but we have never known any thing but the greatest attention from them.  And it cannot be for the value of our custom now, for what is our consumption of bread, you know?  Only three of us.— besides dear Jane at present—and she really eats nothing—makes such a shocking breakfast, you would be quite frightened if you saw it. I dare not let my mother know how little she eats—so I say one thing and then I say another, and it passes off.  But about the middle of the day she gets hungry, and there is nothing she likes so well as these baked apples, and they are extremely wholesome, for I took the opportunity the other day of asking Mr. Perry; I happened to meet him in the street.  Not that I had any doubt before— I have so often heard Mr. Woodhouse recommend a baked apple. I believe it is the only way that Mr. Woodhouse thinks the fruit thoroughly wholesome.  We have apple-dumplings, however, very often.  Patty makes an excellent apple-dumpling. Well, Mrs. Weston, you have prevailed, I hope, and these ladies will oblige us.”

Emma would be “very happy to wait on Mrs. Bates, &c.,” and they did at last move out of the shop, with no farther delay from Miss Bates than,

“How do you do, Mrs. Ford?  I beg your pardon.  I did not see you before.  I hear you have a charming collection of new ribbons from town.  Jane came back delighted yesterday.  Thank ye, the gloves do very well—only a little too large about the wrist; but Jane is taking them in.”

“What was I talking of?” said she, beginning again when they were all in the street.

Emma wondered on what, of all the medley, she would fix.

 “I declare I cannot recollect what I was talking of.—Oh! my mother's spectacles.  So very obliging of Mr. Frank Churchill! `Oh!' said he, `I do think I can fasten the rivet; I like a job of this kind excessively.'—Which you know shewed him to be so very. . . . Indeed I must say that, much as I had heard of him before and much as I had expected, he very far exceeds any thing. . . . I do congratulate you, Mrs. Weston, most warmly. He seems every thing the fondest parent could. . . . `Oh!' said he, `I can fasten the rivet.  I like a job of that sort excessively.' I never shall forget his manner.  And when I brought out the baked apples from the closet, and hoped our friends would be so very obliging as to take some, `Oh!' said he directly, `there is nothing in the way of fruit half so good, and these are the finest-looking home-baked apples I ever saw in my life.'  That, you know, was so very. . . . And I am sure, by his manner, it was no compliment. Indeed they are very delightful apples, and Mrs. Wallis does them full justice—only we do not have them baked more than twice, and Mr. Woodhouse made us promise to have them done three times— but Miss Woodhouse will be so good as not to mention it.  The apples themselves are the very finest sort for baking, beyond a doubt; all from Donwell—some of Mr. Knightley's most liberal supply. He sends us a sack every year; and certainly there never was such a keeping apple anywhere as one of his trees—I believe there is two of them.  My mother says the orchard was always famous in her younger days.  But I was really quite shocked the other day— for Mr. Knightley called one morning, and Jane was eating these apples, and we talked about them and said how much she enjoyed them, and he asked whether we were not got to the end of our stock. `I am sure you must be,' said he, `and I will send you another supply; for I have a great many more than I can ever use. William Larkins let me keep a larger quantity than usual this year. I will send you some more, before they get good for nothing.' So I begged he would not—for really as to ours being gone, I could not absolutely say that we had a great many left—it was but half a dozen indeed; but they should be all kept for Jane; and I could not at all bear that he should be sending us more, so liberal as he had been already; and Jane said the same.  And when he was gone, she almost quarrelled with me—No, I should not say quarrelled, for we never had a quarrel in our lives; but she was quite distressed that I had owned the apples were so nearly gone; she wished I had made him believe we had a great many left.  Oh, said I, my dear, I did say as much as I could.  However, the very same evening William Larkins came over with a large basket of apples, the same sort of apples, a bushel at least, and I was very much obliged, and went down and spoke to William Larkins and said every thing, as you may suppose.  William Larkins is such an old acquaintance! I am always glad to see him.  But, however, I found afterwards from Patty, that William said it was all the apples of that sort his master had; he had brought them all—and now his master had not one left to bake or boil.  William did not seem to mind it himself, he was so pleased to think his master had sold so many; for William, you know, thinks more of his master's profit than any thing; but Mrs. Hodges, he said, was quite displeased at their being all sent away.  She could not bear that her master should not be able to have another apple-tart this spring.  He told Patty this, but bid her not mind it, and be sure not to say any thing to us about it, for Mrs. Hodges would be cross sometimes, and as long as so many sacks were sold, it did not signify who ate the remainder. And so Patty told me, and I was excessively shocked indeed! I would not have Mr. Knightley know any thing about it for the world!  He would be so very. . . . I wanted to keep it from Jane's knowledge; but, unluckily, I had mentioned it before I was aware.”

Miss Bates had just done as Patty opened the door; and her visitors walked upstairs without having any regular narration to attend to, pursued only by the sounds of her desultory good-will.

 “Pray take care, Mrs. Weston, there is a step at the turning. Pray take care, Miss Woodhouse, ours is rather a dark staircase—rather darker and narrower than one could wish.  Miss Smith, pray take care.  Miss Woodhouse, I am quite concerned, I am sure you hit your foot.  Miss Smith, the step at the turning.”

Emma, Vol. II, Ch. IX (27.43-53) & MP3 recording of Prunella Scales from Emma audiobook

The narrator’s sly correction at the start of the passage subtly encourages—almost incites—the reader to join in Emma’s dismissive attitude towards Miss Bates.  And anyone who reading the novel for the first time who doesn’t skim the walls of text that make up Miss Bates’ monologues has probably been warned in advance.   (It is interesting to see how a great comic actress tackle the problem: very quickly, of course; but even so Prunella Scales’ hilarious reading of the above passage takes a full six minutes.)  Mary Lascelles (1939) seems to have been the first to notice that many of the mysteries that perplex Emma and the reader can be unravelled by paying close attention Miss Bates, but we and Emma dismiss the vulnerable and dependent old spinster and (most likely) share in the humiliation at the picnic.[2]

Although the novel is famously about its heroine it is also about the interdependence of the heroine and Highbury, and Emma finding her place in the community.  If we identify too closely with Emma and repeat her mistakes in dismissing Miss Bates we can repeat her most telling mistake.  In Miss Bates speech—which is really a stream of consciousness—we get a ‘kaleidoscopic mirror of Highbury’[3] and some crucial psychological factors become apparent.

Most obviously we see from Miss Bates that Frank Churchill is a big hit in the Bates household, and Frank using a flimsy pretext to decline accompanying Miss Bates to secure Emma’s company.  But there is much in the incidental details too, such as Miss Bates putting out her apples baking because she can’t afford an oven.  The bakers would likely place the food in the hot ovens at the end of the day to be baked in their residual heat[4]—it is no wonder that she makes do with two rounds of baking.  This kind of poverty is facing Jane Fairfax but she has had no preparation for it, and we get a strong sense of Jane’s humiliation when her aunt, in her efforts to look after Jane’s health, sponges Mr Knightley’s apples, sparking a quarrel between aunt and her niece.  But we also find out that Knightley has given away the last of his apples and gotten into trouble with his housekeeper, understandably vexed to see that they will be without apples for most of the year, and his manager, William Larkins, assumes Mr Knightley has sold the apples.  Through Miss bates we get some insight into the mystery of the relationship between Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill, a slice through a cross-section of Highbury, but also some crucial psychological factors, such as the Bates pitiful situation with Jane staring into her future and the most telling revelation of the character of Mr Knightley.  In this most subtle of mystery novels where nothing is ever quite as it appears Miss Bates is our truest source and only entirely reliable source of information, but we have to be paying attention.[5]

Only Emma, with her modern consciousness, comes out with it that Miss bates is a bore, and only Emma can give herself the thought that Mr Weston is too simple and openhearted, that he would be a ‘higher character’ if he were not quite so friendly with everyone.  It is from outside Highbury that the peculiarly modern traits of insincerity and vulgarity come, in the person of Frank Churchill and Mrs Elton.

Lionel Trilling, Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen, p. 134

While Bradbury observed that every Austen heroine has to traverse a ‘moral assault course’ to get to the resolution it has been the contention of this book (and Rosmarin (1984) and others[6]) that she also subtly poses the reader an analogous set of challenges in the reading so it is worth paying close attention to the judgements that emerge out of the reading.  We have seen Miss Bates the bore, so, before coming to Mrs Elton, what about Mr Weston’s ‘indifference to a confusion of rank’ (24.5) and Frank Churchill with ‘none of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of trick and littleness’ (46.48)?  Here we can see that Emma’s judgements are highly ironic, Emma’s tampering with Harriet’s expectations showing real confusion, and as she said herself she had been ‘making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple’ (16.10).  This revelation took place in the first volume when the reader could see the problems and safely agree, but since the end of the first Volume Emma has continued her imaginist career with the speculations about Jane Fairfax and Mr Dixon, and trying to pair off Harriet with Frank Fairfax, but, as Rosmarin (1984) shows, Austen is careful to get the reader’s connivance in these subsequent blunders and into the bargain the reader’s assent to the hypocritical judgments, but the reader will have to be sharp to see this. 

Emma was not required, by any subsequent discovery, to retract her ill opinion of Mrs. Elton.  Her observation had been pretty correct. Such as Mrs. Elton appeared to her on this second interview, such she appeared whenever they met again,— self-important, presuming, familiar, ignorant, and ill-bred. She had a little beauty and a little accomplishment, but so little judgment that she thought herself coming with superior knowledge of the world, to enliven and improve a country neighbourhood; and conceived Miss Hawkins to have held such a place in society as Mrs. Elton's consequence only could surpass.

Emma, Vol. II, Ch. XV (33.1)

That we cringe so much at Mrs Elton should be a warning that we are again being set up.  A careful scrutiny of all of Emma’s judgements of Mrs Elton will show that they apply to Emma with at least as much force.  It gets worse.  Mrs Elton’s patronizing of Jane Fairfax is far less odious and destructive than Emma’s of Harriet Smith, and Emma has trampled Jane Fairfax’s sensibilities as much as Mrs Elton did her own and has behaved in a much more reserved manner towards Mrs Elton in her turn.  Mr Knightley who can think no less of the Eltons continues to remain on good terms with them and be mindful of their place in the community, something that Emma fails to do.[7]  Mrs Elton’s vulgarity not only restores the readers sympathy to the heroine as many critics have observed[8] but also masks her own (and ours by association).

Emma’s cardinal error is to believe that she is the Queen of Highbury,[9] that it exists for her own aggrandizement, and that none of the constraints that apply to others are applicable to herself—that she is above them all.

“I do so wonder, Miss Woodhouse, that you should not be married, or going to be married! so charming as you are!”—

Emma laughed, and replied,

“My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry; I must find other people charming—one other person at least. And I am not only, not going to be married, at present, but have very little intention of ever marrying at all.”

“Ah!—so you say; but I cannot believe it.”

“I must see somebody very superior to any one I have seen yet, to be tempted; Mr. Elton, you know, (recollecting herself,) is out of the question:  and I do not wish to see any such person. I would rather not be tempted.  I cannot really change for the better. If I were to marry, I must expect to repent it.”

“Dear me!—it is so odd to hear a woman talk so!”—

“I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.  And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine.  Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband's house as I am of Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.”

“But then, to be an old maid at last, like Miss Bates!”

“That is as formidable an image as you could present, Harriet; and if I thought I should ever be like Miss Bates! so silly—so satisfied— so smiling—so prosing—so undistinguishing and unfastidious— and so apt to tell every thing relative to every body about me, I would marry to-morrow. But between us, I am convinced there never can be any likeness, except in being unmarried.”

“But still, you will be an old maid! and that's so dreadful!”

“Never mind, Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else.  And the distinction is not quite so much against the candour and common sense of the world as appears at first; for a very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross. This does not apply, however, to Miss Bates; she is only too good natured and too silly to suit me; but, in general, she is very much to the taste of every body, though single and though poor. Poverty certainly has not contracted her mind:  I really believe, if she had only a shilling in the world, she would be very likely to give away sixpence of it; and nobody is afraid of her:  that is a great charm.”

“Dear me! but what shall you do? how shall you employ yourself when you grow old?”

“If I know myself, Harriet, mine is an active, busy mind, with a great many independent resources; and I do not perceive why I should be more in want of employment at forty or fifty than one-and-twenty. Woman's usual occupations of hand and mind will be as open to me then as they are now; or with no important variation.  If I draw less, I shall read more; if I give up music, I shall take to carpet-work. And as for objects of interest, objects for the affections, which is in truth the great point of inferiority, the want of which is really the great evil to be avoided in not marrying, I shall be very well off, with all the children of a sister I love so much, to care about.  There will be enough of them, in all probability, to supply every sort of sensation that declining life can need. There will be enough for every hope and every fear; and though my attachment to none can equal that of a parent, it suits my ideas of comfort better than what is warmer and blinder.  My nephews and nieces!—I shall often have a niece with me.”

Emma, Vol. I, Ch. X (10.9-21)

Emma is as ludicrously proud of her resources as Augusta Elton but Augusta Elton takes her place in the life of Highbury.  Although the Coles ‘ought to be taught that it was not for them to arrange the terms on which the superior families would visit them’ and wanted she wanted the ‘power of refusal’, in the event Emma finds the ‘party to be assembled there, consisting precisely of those whose society was dearest to her’.  But Emma has an inflated sense of her own position, not being so socially far above the Coles as she thinks, nor Mrs Elton.

The landed property of Hartfield certainly was inconsiderable, being but a sort of notch in the Donwell Abbey estate, to which all the rest of Highbury belonged; but their fortune, from other sources, was such as to make them scarcely secondary to Donwell Abbey itself, in every other kind of consequence[.]

Emma, Vol. I, Ch. XVI (16.9)

Emma must submit to stand second to Mrs. Elton, though she had always considered the ball as peculiarly for her. It was almost enough to make her think of marrying.

Emma, Vol. III, Ch. II (38.29)

Marilyn Butler has caught it well.

On the one hand the novel has to do with prolific, fanciful thinkers and talkers, from Emma at her worst, and Frank Churchill habitually, down to the lesser figures.  Some talk to be wrongly understood; some talk and are not listened too.  Opposed to all of these characters, who exist largely in a medium of word, is a firmly rendered notion of reality, linked in the novel to one laconic character.  Highbury village and its main street; the rich surrounding farmland dominated by Donwell Abbey; in both worlds Mr Knightley is ubiquitous, although he is seen much more continuously than he is heard.  In the middle distance he is everywhere—conferring with the Mr. Elton about parish affairs, or with Robert Martin about farming; detected sending apples to Miss Bates, or asking for her errands when he rides to Kingston.  Highbury gatherings are not complete without him; unlike Emma, he is always present when the Coles or the Eltons entertain.  Compared with his active involvement in the community, Emma’s conception of herself as first lady is a kind of figment of her mind.  Although hers is an old and wealthy family, the Woodhouses’ money has nothing to do with Highbury: they own very little land there.

Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, p. 272

Although the common perception is that Emma is chalk to the Mansfield Park cheese some have seen some striking continuities.  Tony Tanner saw Mansfield Park as a choice between the ‘excitements of personality’ and the ‘heroism of principle’[10], and this is reflected in Emma’s final discovery that she loved Mr Knightley, not Frank Churchill.  Alistair Duckworth’s characterisation of Emma as being about the ‘Dangers of Individualism’ is consistent with this idea and he shows how Frank Churchill’s delight in performing is not a little reminiscent of Henry Crawford.[11]

Even before Churchill’s entry upon the Highbury scene, the episode of the charade, in exemplifying the concealment and opacity of a game world, had foreshadowed Churchill’s behaviour.  With his entry a whole vocabulary of concealment begins: nouns like riddle, enigma, conundrum, mystery, equivocation, puzzle, espionage, double-dealing; verbs such as guess, conceal, blind; adjectives such as hypocritical, insidious, suspicious.  There is “doubt in the case” [14.12] even of his arrival, and Churchill takes care to maintain a doubt as to his motivations and character, not merely because he is secretly engaged to Jane (a transgression of some magnitude in contemporary terms), but also in order to retain his sense of superior manipulation and secret power.  His unpredictability is particularly disliked by Knightley, who considers surprises to be “foolish things” [26.92]. […]

Churchill’s game-playing is not to be dismissed as venial.  It is symptomatic of a world in which once given certitudes of conduct are giving way to shifting standards and subjective orderings.  Churchill rejects an inherited body of morals and manners for a little world he himself creates.  He is at home in a world of opacity and of separation, preferring it indeed, indeed, to the older world where communication existed by way of public assumptions, for that world required responsibility and consistency, qualities conspicuous by their absence in his character.

Alistair M. Duckworth, The Improvement of the Estate, p. 166-8

Given this onslaught on the heroine, showing her up to be not at all above Mrs Elton and Frank Churchill, why does she hold our sympathy?  For the same reason that Knightley continues to love her for all her faults.

“Can you trust me with such flatterers?—Does my vain spirit ever tell me I am wrong?”

“Not your vain spirit, but your serious spirit.—If one leads you wrong, I am sure the other tells you of it.”

Emma, Vol. III, Ch. II (38.49-50)

It is Emma’s potential, her serious side, that rather than joining the flatterers tries to break out of the subjective prison, see herself more clearly and adjust that wins our final approval.  As Rosmarin (1984) shows Austen takes great care to give the reader not only a view from the outside but also take the reader inside the narrative, seeing things from Emma’s perspective but without the reader noticing.[12]  This is analogous to the problems we all have in getting from one end of the day to the other—we see things from a particular perspective but keep forgetting this believing that ourselves to have an omniscient, objective view, and this illusion will be all the more powerful the more clever we are, until we start bumping into reality as Emma does, and start to take seriously the need to acquire self-knowledge.  By allowing the reader to condemn and laugh at Emma’s matchmaking in the first volume the reader is subjected to the same hubristic pressures as Emma is by her flatterers (especially her indulgent father and governess).  Throughout the succeeding chapters, after Frank Churchill’s arrival, we lose our omniscience, ‘For, with Churchill’s entrance, Emma is no longer the puppet-mistress of Highbury but instead becomes a marionette in Churchill’s more subtle show.’[13] And so do we, and we begin to participate in the shortcomings of Emma’s that we were warned about at the start, joining in her dismissal of Miss Bates, her reserved niece, and the openhearted but undiscriminating Mr Weston, sneering at the vulgar Mrs Elton and condemning the unprincipled Frank Churchill.  And so we should (up to a point) but we have probably failed to recognise all the while that we have been partaking in their failures to a greater degree than we had realised, and unless we happen to be a saint, will have been doing so before we picked up the novel and will continue to do so once the book is put down; but maybe a little less with each rereading.  Gary Kelly sums it up in formulating his conception of the ‘Anglican romance’.

The consequences of misreading were much debated in Austen’s day, and still are.  Novels in general and ‘romances’ in particular were often condemned for furnishing readers with false images of life and encouraging fantasy and desire at the expense of the moral and intellectual discipline considered necessary for ‘real life’.  Austen allows her readers to indulge these desires by reading or misreading with the protagonist, despite the warnings of narratorial irony, and then teaches readers how to read better.  Chastened the reader can reread Austen’s novels with instructed interest.  Austen’s novels have indeed been found eminently rereadable, a fact which has made them into ‘classics’, or literature.  Thus it can be argued that Austen used the very seductions of the novel to teach readers to overcome them, and thereby transformed what was then considered ‘only a novel’ into literature, as it was then becoming understood[…].[14]

Gary Kelly, Religion and Politics, pp. 166-7

Austen reminds us that just as outer surfaces are unreliable, that appearances can be highly deceptive and must be subject to analysis (we have become exceptionally good at this in the physical sciences), so internal surfaces can also be highly deceptive, and must be subjected to analysis before they can be considered reliable, but this is something we moderns are not so good at.  Once the thoroughness of this programme is comprehended—Austen’s use of the techniques of sentimental fiction to encourage the reader to identify (initially at least) with Marianne Dashwood rather than Elinor Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennet instead of Jane Bennet, Mary Crawford instead of Fanny Price and Emma Woodhouse rather than Jane Fairfax, while demonstrating through the development of the action that these preferences are untenable as ethical judgements, so showing our modern propensity to allow the head and heart to become separated, and the problems this creates.  This may account for some of the passion in the critical literature of this most rationalist of authors.  By taking Sense and Sensibility as the first great novel in the Austen canon, rather than Pride and Prejudice, it is possible to arrive at a philosophical scheme that is consistent with all the novels that Jane Austen published, and may perhaps help us to better understand each of the novels individually.

Copyright © 2007 Chris Dornan
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