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Summary
Summary
'Her masterpiece, mixing the sparkle of her early books with a deep sensibility' Robert McCrum, Observer
Although described by Jane Austen as a character 'whom no one but myself will much like', the irrepressible Emma Woodhouse is one of her most beloved heroines. Clever, rich and beautiful, she sees no need for marriage, but loves interfering in the romantic lives of others, until her matchmaking plans unravel, with consequences that she never expected. Jane Austen's novel of youthful exuberance and gradual self-knowledge is a brilliant, sparkling comic masterpiece.
Edited with an Introduction by FIONA STAFFORD
Author Notes
Jane Austen's life is striking for the contrast between the great works she wrote in secret and the outward appearance of being quite dull and ordinary. Austen was born in the small English town of Steventon in Hampshire, and educated at home by her clergyman father. She was deeply devoted to her family. For a short time, the Austens lived in the resort city of Bath, but when her father died, they returned to Steventon, where Austen lived until her death at the age of 41.
Austen was drawn to literature early, she began writing novels that satirized both the writers and the manners of the 1790's. Her sharp sense of humor and keen eye for the ridiculous in human behavior gave her works lasting appeal. She is at her best in such books as Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816), in which she examines and often ridicules the behavior of small groups of middle-class characters. Austen relies heavily on conversations among her characters to reveal their personalities, and at times her novels read almost like plays. Several of them have, in fact, been made into films. She is considered to be one of the most beloved British authors.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Austen's unlikable and meddling leading lady gets the shuojo treatment in this manga adaptation of Emma. The match-making society lady, riding on the high of having recently paired up her governess and a wealthy neighbor, attempts to unite all of the single denizens of Highbury, in Regency-era England. The key players (Emma, Mr. Knightley, Harriet Smith, Jane Fairfax, and Frank Churchill) are given most of the screen time in this version. After some misunderstandings and entanglements, romances end happily and mysteries are solved. Chan keeps the essence of the original, complete with flirtatious banter, social commentary, and Emma's character growth from self-centered and condescending diva to slightly more humble and good-intentioned heroine. The work's Mr. Knightley is more self-righteous than the classic's, but the manga's dreamy depiction of him will quickly win over readers. Discerning teens will be able to catch the clues hidden within the gray-toned illustrations as to the characters' true feelings. The variation in panel design and use of the format's traditional chibi form add to the narrative's dynamic pacing. Many of the original title's interior monologue is presented in striking visuals, such as Emma's realization of the nature of her affection for Mr. Knightley, which is expressed in a wordless multiple-panel scene of her pricking herself with a rose and dropping its vase to the floor. Character sketches and adapter's and artist's notes give context for their creative choices, offering an in-depth look at the manga format. VERDICT A wonderful interpretation of the classic for reluctant readers and purists alike.-Shelley Diaz, School Library Journal © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
The story of a self-deluded heroine in a small village, Jane Austen's Emma hardly seems revolutionary. But, 200 years after it was first published, John Mullan argues that it belongs alongside the works of Flaubert, Joyce and Woolf as one of the great experimental novels In January 1814, Jane Austen sat down to write a revolutionary novel. Emma, the book she composed over the next year, was to change the shape of what is possible in fiction. Perhaps it seems odd to call Austen "revolutionary" -- certainly few of the other great pioneers in the history of the English novel have thought so. From Charlotte Bronte, who found only "neat borders" and elegant confinement in her fiction, to DH Lawrence, who called her "English in the bad, mean, snobbish sense of the word", many thought her limited to the small world and small concerns of her characters. Some of the great modernists were perplexed. "What is all this about Jane Austen?" Joseph Conrad asked HG Wells. "What is there in her? What is it all about?" "I dislike Jane ... Could never see anything in Pride and Prejudice," Vladimir Nabokov told the critic Edmund Wilson. Austen left behind no artistic manifesto, no account of her narrative methods beyond a few playful remarks in letters to her niece, Anna. This has made it easy for novelists and critics to follow Henry James's idea of her as "instinctive and charming". "For signal examples of what composition, distribution, arrangement can do, of how they intensify the life of a work of art, we have to go elsewhere." She hardly knew what she was doing, so, implicitly, the innovative novelist like James has nothing to learn from her. There have been scattered exceptions. The year after he published More Pricks Than Kicks, the young Samuel Beckett told his friend Thomas McGreevy, "Now I am reading the divine Jane. I think she has much to teach me." (One looks forward to the scholarly tome on the influence of Jane Austen on Samuel Beckett.) Contemporary novelists have been readier to acknowledge her genius and influence. Janeites felt a frisson of satisfaction to see that the most formally ingenious British postmodern novel of recent years, Ian McEwan's Atonement, opens with a lengthy epigraph from Northanger Abbey. McEwan alerts the reader to the fact that his own novel learns its tricks -- about a character who turns fictional imaginings into disastrous fact -- from the genteel and supposedly conservative Austen. Emma, published 200 years ago this month, was revolutionary not because of its subject matter: Austen's jesting description to Anna of the perfect subject for a novel -- "Three or four families in a country village" -- fits it well. It was certainly not revolutionary because of any intellectual or political content. But it was revolutionary in its form and technique. Its heroine is a self-deluded young woman with the leisure and power to meddle in the lives of her neighbours. The narrative was radically experimental because it was designed to share her delusions. The novel bent narration through the distorting lens of its protagonist's mind. Though little noticed by most of the pioneers of fiction for the next century and more, it belongs with the great experimental novels of Flaubert or Joyce or Woolf. Woolf wrote that if Austen had lived longer and written more, "She would have been the forerunner of Henry James and of Proust". In Emma, she is. To measure the audacity of the book, take a simple sentence that no novelist before her could have written. Our privileged heroine has befriended a sweet, open, deeply naive girl of 17 called Harriet Smith. It is a wholly unequal relationship: Emma is the richest and cleverest woman in Highbury; Harriet is the "natural daughter of someone", left as a permanent resident of the genteel girls' boarding school in the town. While cultivating their relationship, Emma knows very well that Harriet is her inferior. "But in every respect as she saw more of her, she was confirmed in all her kind designs." The sentence is in the third person, yet we are not exactly being told something by the author. "Kind designs" is Emma's complacent judgment of herself. Even the rhyme in the phrase makes it sound better to herself. In fact, the kindness is all in the mind of the beholder. Emma has set out to mould Harriet. Emma's former companion, Miss Taylor, has got married and become Mrs Weston, leaving her solitary and at a loose end. Harriet will be her project. Her plans are kind, she tells herself, because she will improve this uninstructed and wide-eyed young woman. We should be able to hear, however, that her designs are utterly self-serving. Soon she is persuading Harriet to refuse a marriage proposal from a farmer who loves her, and beguiling her with the wholly illusory prospect of marriage to the smooth young vicar, Mr Elton. Take another little sentence from much later in the novel. By now Emma is convinced that Harriet, scorned by Mr Elton, can be paired off with the highly eligible Frank Churchill. The only impediment seems to be the inflexible Mrs Churchill, Frank's adoptive mother, who expects him to find a much grander wife. Then news arrives of Mrs Churchill's sudden death. Emma meets Harriet, who has also heard. "Harriet behaved extremely well on the occasion, with great self-command." Obviously she is learning self-possession from her patron. "Emma was gratified to observe such a proof in her of strengthened character." Except that this is all twaddle. Harriet does not give a fig for Frank and never has. Emma has elaborately deluded herself again. The narration follows the path of Emma's errors. Indeed, the first-time reader will sometimes follow this path too, and then share the heroine's surprise when the truth rushes upon her. Yet it is still a third-person narrative; Emma is not telling her own story. We both share her judgments and watch her making them. Austen was the first novelist to manage this alchemy. She was perfecting a technique that she had begun developing in her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility. It was only in the early 20th century that critics began agreeing on a name for it: free indirect style (a translation from the original French: style indirect libre). It describes the way in which a writer imbues a third-person narration with the habits of thought or expression of a fictional character. Before Austen, novelists chose between first-person narrative (letting us into the mind of a character, but limiting us to his or her understanding) and third-person narrative (allowing us a God-like view of all the characters, but making them pieces in an authorial game). Austen miraculously combined the internal and the external. Scholars have raked through the fiction of predecessors and contemporaries such as Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth, and found a few flickerings of this technique, but nothing more. In our own time, novelists use it almost as second nature, without necessarily giving it a name or thinking that they have learned it from somewhere. Yet, though its pioneer, Austen used it with an assurance that has never been surpassed. David Lodge has observed how odd James's condescension is, given that he came to specialise in the very technique Austen had pioneered: "Telling the story through the consciousness of characters whose understanding of events is partial, mistaken, deceived, or self-deceived." It has been easy for sophisticated readers -- especially rival novelists -- to miss her sophistication. By the time that she began writing Emma, Austen was no longer responding to other novelists, she was in new territory, in dialogue with her own earlier novels. She had been steeped in the fiction of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and in her earliest work she wrote against the novels of sensibility or the gothic fiction that she knew so well. But in the creative furore that saw her complete her last four novels in five years, she left the conventions of existing fiction behind. She began work on Emma before she had even received the proofs of Mansfield Park. That novel's heroine, Fanny Price, was reticent, self-abnegating, powerless and often silent or absent. As if in response to her own experiment, she now created a heroine who is assertive, dominant, all too powerful. Emma Woodhouse thrusts herself forward in the novel's title and its very first sentence. Her viewpoint is so dominant that it takes several readings before you realise how subtly we are invited to imagine how Emma looks to some of the other characters. How Mr Elton imagines that she is egging him on to propose to her ("I think your manners to him encouraging", warns Mr John Knightley, to no avail). How Jane Fairfax dreads her inquisitiveness and hates her monopolising of Frank Churchill. How the Martin family must regard her as the heartless snob who has torn Harriet away from the man who loves her. All this is intimated through Emma's own glimmerings of insight -- which she duly crushes. Austen's narrative enacts her heroine's victories over her own better self. There is, however, one carefully calculated chapter in the whole novel narrated from another character's viewpoint. Deep in the third volume, Austen jolts the reader with a chapter from Mr Knightley's point of view. It comes at a crucial point, where Frank uncharacteristically blunders by mentioning an item of parochial gossip that he can only know from his secret correspondence with Jane: Mr Perry the apothecary is getting a carriage (because he is making so much money from the maladies imaginaries of Highbury). How could he know? "It must have been a dream," laughs Frank. Emma is "out of hearing", but Mr Knightley is observing. He watches as all the major characters sit down to play a word game (the novel is full of games and puzzles) and Frank selects the letters for the word "blunder". Mr Knightley sees and suspects. "Disingenuousness and double-dealing seemed to meet him at every turn." The spell of Emma's consciousness has been so powerful that Austen has to wake us up for a moment. But the chapter ends with Mr Knightley suggesting to Emma that there might be some intimate "degree of acquaintance" between Frank and Jane -- only to have his suspicions routed by her. "There is no admiration between them, I do assure you." No one can say she was not given the chance to see the truth. By the time she began Emma, Austen was in new territory. She had left existing fiction behind Austen has several different ways of getting us to read through Emma. At key moments, free indirect style becomes something closer to dramatised thought. Austen develops her own system of punctuation for this. Here is our heroine, back home after the Westons' Christmas Eve dinner party, reflecting on Mr Elton's marriage proposal ("actually making violent love to her") in the carriage home. She had persuaded herself that he was amorously interested in Harriet; worse, she had persuaded Harriet of this too. The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable.--It was a wretched business indeed!--Such an overthrow of every thing she had been wishing for!--Such a development of every thing most unwelcome!--Such a blow for Harriet!--that was the worst of all. Every part of it brought pain and humiliation, of some sort or other; but, compared with the evil to Harriet, all was light; and she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken--more in error--more disgraced by mis-judgment, than she actually was, could the effects of her blunders have been confined to herself. Austen's idiosyncratic punctuation, that system of exclamation marks and dashes, allows for a kind of dramatised thought process. Yet because it is still in the third person, we can judge Emma even as we share her thoughts. She is a person worth our sympathy because she is capable of acknowledging and feeling sorry for her mistakes. But, by the unprecedented subtlety of Austen's narrative technique, we sense that Emma regrets the scotching of her plans ("Such an overthrow of everything she had been wishing for!") as much as (or more than?) the impending pain for Harriet. We can even hear her trying to persuade herself ("she would gladly have submitted ... ") of her unselfishness. The novel's stylistic innovations allow it to explore not just a character's feelings, but, comically, her deep ignorance of her own feelings. Out of vanity, encouraged by the promptings of Mr and Mrs Weston, Emma has persuaded herself that Frank, whom she has never met, might be the perfect partner for her. When he finally turns up he proves handsome and humorous and intelligent. Understandably, she soon starts seeing the signs that he must be falling for her; better still, she also starts convincing herself that "she must be a little in love with him". A few amusing confidences shared with smooth Frank Churchill, and she presumes it is the real thing. "Emma continued to entertain no doubt of her being in love." Her capacity for self-congratulation deceives her about even the workings of her own heart. Austen does not tell us this, as George Eliot would eloquently tell us: she simply lets us inhabit Emma's consciousness, simply lets us see the world according to Emma. Even better is her self-deception about the man whom she does love. When Mrs Weston suggests that Mr Knightley's evident admiration of Jane presages their likely marriage, the narrative tells us of Emma's response, but also stages her self-deception. She could see nothing but evil in it. It would be a great disappointment to Mr. John Knightley; consequently to Isabella. A real injury to the children--a most mortifying change, and material loss to them all;--a very great deduction from her father's daily comfort--and, as to herself, she could not at all endure the idea of Jane Fairfax at Donwell Abbey. A Mrs. Knightley for them all to give way to!--No--Mr. Knightley must never marry. Little Henry must remain the heir of Donwell. How natural, then, that when our heroine does realise what love is, it is as a nasty shock. Her erstwhile puppet -- now her Frankenstein's monster -- Harriet reveals that she (no longer quite so modest) has her heart set on Mr Knightley and has good reason to think that he returns her affection. Why is the idea of Harriet marrying Mr Knightley so unacceptable? "It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!" What a brilliant sentence that is! With absolute daring, Austen shows us that love can be a discovery of what a person has unknowingly felt for many a long month or year. Now, suddenly and for the first time, Emma understands the plot of her own story. But even at this moment of self-knowledge Austen lets us hear or feel the character's imperiousness, her overpowering sense that events "must" meet her desires. Which is why those who condemn the novel by saying that its heroine is a snob miss the point. Of course she is. But Austen, with a refusal of moralism worthy of Flaubert, abandons her protagonist to her snobbery and confidently risks inciting foolish readers to think that the author must be a snob too. Emma's snobbery pervades the novel, from that moment when we hear Mrs Goddard, the mistress of the little girls' boarding school, and Mrs and Miss Bates described as "the most come-at-able" denizens of Highbury (meaning that they are at the beck and call of Emma and her hypochondriac father). Austen has the integrity to make Emma snobbish even when she is in the right. When Mr Elton proposes to her she recognises what the reader has always known: he is vain, cold-hearted and repulsive. But her enlightenment is also affronted dignity: Those who condemn the novel by saying that its heroine is a snob miss the point. Of course she is But--that he should talk of encouragement, should consider her as aware of his views, accepting his attentions, meaning (in short), to marry him!--should suppose himself her equal in connexion or mind!--look down upon her friend, so well understanding the gradations of rank below him, and be so blind to what rose above, as to fancy himself shewing no presumption in addressing her!--It was most provoking. Similarly, her run-ins with Mrs Elton, some of the best comic dialogues in all fiction, show her to be perceptive and socially arrogant in equal measure. Mrs Elton, newly arrived in Highbury, visits Emma and talks of her introduction to Mr Knightley. "I must do my caro sposo the justice to say that he need not be ashamed of his friend. Knightley is quite the gentleman. I like him very much. Decidedly, I think, a very gentleman-like man." Only when Mrs Elton leaves can Emma "breathe" her indignation. "A little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr. E., and her caro sposo, and her resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and underbred finery. Actually to discover that Mr. Knightley is a gentleman! I doubt whether he will return the compliment, and discover her to be a lady. I could not have believed it! And to propose that she and I should unite to form a musical club!" Emma is right -- and yet Emma too is full of herself. She even, unconsciously, uses the same vocabulary as her foe, who assures her, "I have quite a horror of upstarts". The magnificently ghastly Mrs Elton makes herself known through her voice and, in Emma, Austen discovers new and unprecedented ways of making a human voice live in print. Some of her techniques foresee the ingenuities of modernism. When Mrs Elton picks strawberries at Mr Knightley's party at Donwell Abbey, a paragraph of fractured monologue brilliantly dramatises what must be at least half an hour's worth of bossy babble. "The best fruit in England--everybody's favourite--always wholesome. These the finest beds and finest sorts.--Delightful to gather for one's self--the only way of really enjoying them. Morning decidedly the best time--never tired--every sort good--hautboy infinitely superior--no comparison--the others hardly eatable--hautboys very scarce--Chili preferred--white wood finest flavour of all--price of strawberries in London--abundance about Bristol--Maple Grove--cultivation--beds when to be renewed--gardeners thinking exactly different--no general rule--gardeners never to be put out of their way--delicious fruit--only too rich to be eaten much of--inferior to cherries--currants more refreshing--only objection to gathering strawberries the stooping--glaring sun--tired to death--could bear it no longer--must go and sit in the shade." A ludicrous progress from know-all enthusiasm to sun-struck exhaustion. For garrulous Miss Bates, Highbury's good-hearted resident bore, Austen invents a different kind of monologic outpouring that some have called Joycean. Here is just a little sample, as Miss Bates arrives for the ball at the Crown Inn. "Thank you, my mother is remarkably well. Gone to Mr. Woodhouse's. I made her take her shawl--for the evenings are not warm--her large new shawl-- Mrs. Dixon's wedding-present.--So kind of her to think of my mother! Bought at Weymouth, you know--Mr. Dixon's choice. There were three others, Jane says, which they hesitated about some time. Colonel Campbell rather preferred an olive. My dear Jane, are you sure you did not wet your feet?--It was but a drop or two, but I am so afraid:--but Mr. Frank Churchill was so extremely--and there was a mat to step upon--I shall never forget his extreme politeness." And so on. There are other people here, not just listening but speaking, or trying to speak. And yet Miss Bates's voice, self-generating and unstoppable, becomes for a while the only one you can hear. Emma hardly listens to her "prosing", and there have been readers who have likewise skipped the details of her speech. But one of Austen's tricks is to embed many a clue as to the real ruses of other characters in the unsuspicious outpourings of this much-ignored old maid. "What is before me, I see," she says, typically declaring herself incapable of perceiving what is indirect or implicit. But what she says is truer than what anyone hears: she is the reliable witness to what is really going on. Even that passage above offers clues as to what Frank is really up to. If this is a detective story, then Miss Bates is the foolish bit-part player offering the apparently trivial testimony that is dangerously ignored. Frank is, of course, conducting a covert romance with Jane, Miss Bates's orphan niece, but he is so clever that it is easy to miss his tricks. Sharing Emma's perspective, we sometimes get fooled too. Perhaps on a second reading of the novel we are properly suspicious of Frank's motives in volunteering to mend the rivet in Mrs Bates's spectacles: Jane is staying at the Bates's tiny flat and he is always finding excuses to visit. But it will probably take more than two readings for most readers to notice how he has managed to get Miss Bates out of the flat -- she bustles over the street to invite Emma in -- so that he is alone with Jane and the sleeping (and stone deaf) old Mrs Bates. When we enter the front door with Emma we see through her eyes. The appearance of the little sitting-room as they entered, was tranquillity itself; Mrs. Bates, deprived of her usual employment, slumbering on one side of the fire, Frank Churchill, at a table near her, most deedily occupied about her spectacles, and Jane, standing with her back to them, intent on her pianoforte. Emma sees nothing untoward -- but what has really been going on? Why is Frank so "deedily occupied" and Jane "intent" on a musical instrument? Surely they have been in a close embrace. It is as if there is a Charlotte Bronte story going on under Emma's nose. "The Passions are perfectly unknown to her," Bronte declared, sounding like a character whom Austen would have delighted in depicting. She had been recommended Pride and Prejudice by George Eliot's partner, George Henry Lewes, who was partly responsible for Eliot holding Austen in higher regard than most of the other great novelists of the 19th century. Lewes's 1859 essay in Blackwood's Magazine is still one of the most perceptive analyses of Austen's powers. But instead of description, the common and easy resource of novelists, she has the rare and difficult art of dramatic presentation: instead of telling us what her characters are, and what they feel, she presents the people, and they reveal themselves. In this she has never perhaps been surpassed, not even by Shakespeare himself. Yet Lewes was rare among serious writers in giving her this status. But then, with Emma, Austen almost seems to be tempting inattentive readers to overlook her technical audacity -- to miss her tricks. None of Austen's novels is as full of tricks as Emma, and many of them are carefully concealed to reward the rereader. I remember the moment, after many readings over the years, when I finally saw what she was doing with Mr Perry, the apothecary. Everyone is always quoting him, especially Emma's valetudinarian father Mr Woodhouse: "as Perry says ..."; "... This is just what Perry said"; "Ah! my dear, but Perry had many doubts about the sea doing her any good." Mr Perry is always being spotted passing by (all those lucrative house calls) and his views are always being reported. Yet not a single word that he ever says is actually given us in the novel. Of course not! He is the echo to every person's existing prejudices; no wonder he is so successful. It is a joke buried by Austen for posterity to discover. As she told her sister Cassandra, she only wrote for those who had "a great deal of ingenuity themselves". * What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved by John Mullan is published by Bloomsbury. - John Mullan.
Kirkus Review
A ""fragment"" of a story called Emma appeared in a magazine shortly after Charlotte Bronte's death. And certainly there are moments in the opening chapter of this comfy 18th-century tale--about a redeemed orphan child, perfidious plots, and silver arrows of romance--that burn with the Bronte genius. After that, however, convincing period tone flattens out (phrases like ""sense of security"" creep in), though the tale remains entertaining enough through to the end. The child Matilda, a ""wretched little soul,"" is brought to the ladies' school run by Miss Wilcox--a cool lady with thin lips and a fervor for the well-being of wealthy pupils--by handsome toff Conway Fitzgerald, who is apparently Matilda's father. But weeks later it becomes obvious that Fitzgerald has disappeared for good, and poor Matilda, hitherto given ""princess"" treatment, is ordered forth in a tattered hand-me-down. Her savior is kind Mr. Ellin, ""very harmless and quiet, not always perhaps so perfectly unreserved and comprehensible as might be wished."" He whisks Matilda off to young widow Arminel Chalfort (who narrates the story), and Ellin and Mrs. Chalfort attempt to discover the child's history despite the fact that Matilda is silenced by an unknown terror. Eventually, after initial detective work by Ellin and reminiscences by Mrs. Chalfort about her grim marriage and persecution by step-children (including the dreadful Emma), Matilda becomes a cheerful, happy little girl who adores her new guardians. Finally, then, there's a kidnapping, a secret tale about a dead baby, a night visit to a tomb, flights, two deaths, and blackmail. Plus: a fairy-tale ending. Some minor fun for literary detectives, some lively diversion for romance-gothic traditionalists. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Though very practical, Emma Woodhouse is often a proper romantic, trying to match her protégé Harriet with a worthy spouse. While Emma sincerely cares for her hypersensitive father, endures the minister's incredibly annoying wife, and maintains close relationships with family and friends, her matchmaking, though well intended, is sometimes misguided. However, Austen rewards readers with happy endings for all the story's couples, including Emma herself. Austen's adored classic paints a charming portrait of the social constraints of 18th-century English gentry. Anna Bentinck delivers an excellent narration, infusing a varied cast of characters with lively personalities. Verdict This beloved and enduring novel is a wise choice for all library collections.-Barbara Wysocki, formerly with Cora J. Belden Lib., Rocky Hill, CT © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter I Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father; and had, in consequence of her sister's marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses; and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection. Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Woodhouse's family, less as a governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly of Emma. Between them it was more the intimacy of sisters. Even before Miss Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess, the mildness of her temper had hardly allowed her to impose any restraint; and the shadow of authority being now long passed away, they had been living together as friend and friend very mutually attached, and Emma doing just what she liked; highly esteeming Miss Taylor's judgment, but directed chiefly by her own. The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her. Sorrow came--a gentle sorrow--but not at all in the shape of any disagreeable consciousness.--Miss Taylor married. It was Miss Taylor's loss which first brought grief. It was on the wedding-day of this beloved friend that Emma first sat in mournful thought of any continuance. The wedding over, and the bride-people gone, her father and herself were left to dine together, with no prospect of a third to cheer a long evening. Her father composed himself to sleep after dinner, as usual, and she had then only to sit and think of what she had lost. The event had every promise of happiness for her friend. Mr. Weston was a man of unexceptionable character, easy fortune, suitable age, and pleasant manners; and there was some satisfaction in considering with what self-denying, generous friendship she had always wished and promoted the match; but it was a black morning's work for her. The want of Miss Taylor would be felt every hour of every day. She recalled her past kindness--the kindness, the affection of sixteen years--how she had taught and how she had played with her from five years old--how she had devoted all her powers to attach and amuse her in health--and how nursed her through the various illnesses of childhood. A large debt of gratitude was owing here; but the intercourse of the last seven years, the equal footing and perfect unreserve which had soon followed Isabella's marriage, on their being left to each other, was yet a dearer, tenderer recollection. She had been a friend and companion such as few possessed: intelligent, well-informed, useful, gentle, knowing all the ways of the family, interested in all its concerns, and peculiarly interested in herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of hers--one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose, and who had such an affection for her as could never find fault. How was she to bear the change?--It was true that her friend was going only half a mile from them; but Emma was aware that great must be the difference between a Mrs. Weston, only half a mile from them, and a Miss Taylor in the house; and with all her advantages, natural and domestic, she was now in great danger of suffering from intellectual solitude. She dearly loved her father, but he was no companion for her. He could not meet her in conversation, rational or playful. The evil of the actual disparity in their ages (and Mr. Woodhouse had not married early) was much increased by his constitution and habits; for having been a valetudinarian all his life, without activity of mind or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years; and though everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable temper, his talents could not have recommended him at any time. Her sister, though comparatively but little removed by matrimony, being settled in London, only sixteen miles off, was much beyond her daily reach; and many a long October and November evening must be struggled through at Hartfield, before Christmas brought the next visit from Isabella and her husband, and their little children, to fill the house, and give her pleasant society again. Highbury, the large and populous village, almost amounting to a town, to which Hartfield, in spite of its separate lawn, and shrubberies, and name, did really belong, afforded her no equals. The Woodhouses were first in consequence there. All looked up to them. She had many acquaintance in the place, for her father was universally civil, but not one among them who could be accepted in lieu of Miss Taylor for even half a day. It was a melancholy change; and Emma could not but sigh over it, and wish for impossible things, till her father awoke, and made it necessary to be cheerful. His spirits required support. He was a nervous man, easily depressed; fond of every body that he was used to, and hating to part with them; hating change of every kind. Matrimony, as the origin of change, was always disagreeable; and he was by no means yet reconciled to his own daughter's marrying, nor could ever speak of her but with compassion, though it had been entirely a match of affection, when he was now obliged to part with Miss Taylor too; and from his habits of gentle selfishness, and of being never able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself, he was very much disposed to think Miss Taylor had done as sad a thing for herself as for them, and would have been a great deal happier if she had spent all the rest of her life at Hartfield. Emma smiled and chatted as cheerfully as she could, to keep him from such thoughts; but when tea came, it was impossible for him not to say exactly as he had said at dinner, "Poor Miss Taylor!--I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that Mr. Weston ever thought of her!" "I cannot agree with you, papa; you know I cannot. Mr. Weston is such a good-humoured, pleasant, excellent man, that he thoroughly deserves a good wife;--and you would not have had Miss Taylor live with us for ever, and bear all my odd humours, when she might have a house of her own?" "A house of her own!--But where is the advantage of a house of her own? This is three times as large.--And you have never any odd humours, my dear." "How often we shall be going to see them, and they coming to see us!--We shall be always meeting! We must begin; we must go and pay wedding visit very soon." "My dear, how am I to get so far? Randalls is such a distance. I could not walk half so far." "No, papa, nobody thought of your walking. We must go in the carriage, to be sure." "The carriage! But James will not like to put the horses to for such a little way;--and where are the poor horses to be while we are paying our visit?" "They are to be put into Mr. Weston's stable, papa. You know we have settled all that already. We talked it all over with Mr. Weston last night. And as for James, you may be very sure he will always like going to Randalls, because of his daughter's being housemaid there. I only doubt whether he will ever take us anywhere else. That was your doing, papa. You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you mentioned her--James is so obliged to you!" "I am very glad I did think of her. It was very lucky, for I would not have had poor James think himself slighted upon any account; and I am sure she will make a very good servant: she is a civil, pretty-spoken girl; I have a great opinion of her. Whenever I see her, she always curtseys and asks me how I do, in a very pretty manner; and when you have had her here to do needlework, I observe she always turns the lock of the door the right way and never bangs it. I am sure she will be an excellent servant; and it will be a great comfort to poor Miss Taylor to have somebody about her that she is used to see. Whenever James goes over to see his daughter, you know, she will be hearing of us. He will be able to tell her how we all are." Emma spared no exertions to maintain this happier flow of ideas, and hoped, by the help of backgammon, to get her father tolerably through the evening, and be attacked by no regrets but her own. The backgammon-table was placed; but a visitor immediately afterwards walked in and made it unnecessary. Mr. Knightley, a sensible man about seven or eight-and-thirty, was not only a very old and intimate friend of the family, but particularly connected with it, as the elder brother of Isabella's husband. He lived about a mile from Highbury, was a frequent visitor, and always welcome, and at this time more welcome than usual, as coming directly from their mutual connexions in London. He had returned to a late dinner, after some days' absence, and now walked up to Hartfield to say that all were well in Brunswick Square. It was a happy circumstance, and animated Mr. Woodhouse for some time. Mr. Knightley had a cheerful manner, which always did him good; and his many inquiries after "poor Isabella" and her children were answered most satisfactorily. When this was over, Mr. Woodhouse gratefully observed, "It is very kind of you, Mr. Knightley, to come out at this late hour to call upon us. I am afraid you must have had a shocking walk." "Not at all, sir. It is a beautiful moonlight night; and so mild that I must draw back from your great fire." "But you must have found it very damp and dirty. I wish you may not catch cold." "Dirty, sir! Look at my shoes. Not a speck on them." "Well! that is quite surprising, for we have had a vast deal of rain here. It rained dreadfully hard for half an hour while we were at breakfast. I wanted them to put off the wedding." "By the bye--I have not wished you joy. Being pretty well aware of what sort of joy you must both be feeling, I have been in no hurry with my congratulations; but I hope it all went off tolerably well. How did you all behave? Who cried most?" "Ah! poor Miss Taylor! 'Tis a sad business." "Poor Mr. and Miss Woodhouse, if you please; but I cannot possibly say poor Miss Taylor.' I have a great regard for you and Emma; but when it comes to the question of dependence or independence!--At any rate, it must be better to have only one to please than two." "Especially when one of those two is such a fanciful, troublesome creature!" said Emma playfully. "That is what you have in your head, I know--and what you would certainly say if my father were not by." "I believe it is very true, my dear, indeed," said Mr. Woodhouse, with a sigh. "I am afraid I am sometimes very fanciful and troublesome." "My dearest papa! You do not think I could mean you , or suppose Mr. Knightley to mean you . What a horrible idea! Oh no! I meant only myself. Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know-- in a joke--it is all a joke. We always say what we like to one another." Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them: and though this was not particularly agreeable to Emma herself, she knew it would be so much less so to her father, that she would not have him really suspect such a circumstance as her not being thought perfect by every body. "Emma knows I never flatter her," said Mr. Knightley, "but I meant no reflection on any body. Miss Taylor has been used to have two persons to please; she will now have but one. The chances are that she must be a gainer." "Well," said Emma, willing to let it pass--"you want to hear about the wedding; and I shall be happy to tell you, for we all behaved charmingly. Every body was punctual, every body in their best looks: not a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen. Oh no; we all felt that we were going to be only half a mile apart, and were sure of meeting every day." "Dear Emma bears every thing so well," said her father. "But, Mr. Knightley, she is really very sorry to lose poor Miss Taylor, and I am sure she will miss her more than she thinks for." Emma turned away her head, divided between tears and smiles. "It is impossible that Emma should not miss such a companion," said Mr. Knightley. "We should not like her so well as we do, sir, if we could suppose it; but she knows how much the marriage is to Miss Taylor's advantage; she knows how very acceptable it must be, at Miss Taylor's time of life, to be settled in a home of her own, and how important to her to be secure of a comfortable provision, and therefore cannot allow herself to feel so much pain as pleasure. Every friend of Miss Taylor must be glad to have her so happily married." "And you have forgotten one matter of joy to me," said Emma, "and a very considerable one--that I made the match myself. I made the match, you know, four years ago; and to have it take place, and be proved in the right, when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry again, may comfort me for any thing." Mr. Knightley shook his head at her. Her father fondly replied, "Ah! my dear, I wish you would not make matches and foretell things, for whatever you say always comes to pass. Pray do not make any more matches." "I promise you to make none for myself, papa; but I must, indeed, for other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world! And after such success, you know!--Every body said that Mr. Weston would never marry again. Oh dear, no! Mr. Weston, who had been a widower so long, and who seemed so perfectly comfortable without a wife, so constantly occupied either in his business in town or among his friends here, always acceptable wherever he went, always cheerful-- Mr. Weston need not spend a single evening in the year alone if he did not like it. Oh no! Mr. Weston certainly would never marry again. Some people even talked of a promise to his wife on her deathbed, and others of the son and the uncle not letting him. All manner of solemn nonsense was talked on the subject, but I believed none of it. "Ever since the day--about four years ago--that Miss Taylor and I met with him in Broadway Lane, when, because it began to drizzle, he darted away with so much gallantry, and borrowed two umbrellas for us from Farmer Mitchell's, I made up my mind on the subject. I planned the match from that hour; and when such success has blessed me in this instance, dear papa, you cannot think that I shall leave off match-making." "I do not understand what you mean by success,'" said Mr. Knightley. "Success supposes endeavour. Your time has been properly and delicately spent, if you have been endeavouring for the last four years to bring about this marriage. A worthy employment for a young lady's mind! But if, which I rather imagine, your making the match, as you call it, means only your planning it, your saying to yourself one idle day, I think it would be a very good thing for Miss Taylor if Mr. Weston were to marry her,' and saying it again to yourself every now and then afterwards, why do you talk of success? Where is your merit? What are you proud of? You made a lucky guess; and that is all that can be said." "And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?-- I pity you.--I thought you cleverer--for, depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it. And as to my poor word success,' which you quarrel with, I do not know that I am so entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn two pretty pictures; but I think there may be a third--a something between the do-nothing and the do-all. If I had not promoted Mr. Weston's visits here, and given many little encouragements, and smoothed many little matters, it might not have come to any thing after all. I think you must know Hartfield enough to comprehend that." "A straightforward, open-hearted man like Weston, and a rational, unaffected woman like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their own concerns. You are more likely to have done harm to yourself, than good to them, by interference." "Emma never thinks of herself, if she can do good to others," rejoined Mr. Woodhouse, understanding but in part. "But, my dear, pray do not make any more matches; they are silly things, and break up one's family circle grievously." "Only one more, papa; only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton! You like Mr. Elton, papa,--I must look about for a wife for him. There is nobody in Highbury who deserves him--and he has been here a whole year, and has fitted up his house so comfortably, that it would be a shame to have him single any longer--and I thought when he was joining their hands to-day, he looked so very much as if he would like to have the same kind office done for him! I think very well of Mr. Elton, and this is the only way I have of doing him a service." "Mr. Elton is a very pretty young man, to be sure, and a very good young man, and I have a great regard for him. But if you want to shew him any attention, my dear, ask him to come and dine with us some day. That will be a much better thing. I dare say Mr. Knightley will be so kind as to meet him." "With a great deal of pleasure, sir, at any time," said Mr. Knightley, laughing, "and I agree with you entirely, that it will be a much better thing. Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish and the chicken, but leave him to chuse his own wife. Depend upon it, a man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself." Excerpted from Emma by Jane Austen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| About the Series |
| About This Volume |
| About the Text |
| Part 1 Emma: The Complete Text in Cultural Context |
| Introduction: Biographical and Historical Contexts |
| The Complete Text |
| Cultural Documents and Illustrations |
| A RiddleDave Garrick |
| Unfortunate Situation of Females, Fashionably Educated, and Left without a Fortune (1787)Robin Adair Mary Wollestonecraft |
| Letter to his Son (1750)Philip Stanhope and Lord Chesterfield |
| Essay on the Picturesque (1810)Uvedale Price |
| Our Domestic Policy No. 1 (1829)Robert Southey |
| Opinions of Emma (Ca. 1816) |
| Crossed Letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra (June 20, 1808) |
| The Frolics of the Sphinx (1820) |
| Square Pianoforte (1805) |
| A Barouche Landau (1805) |
| A View of Box Hill, Surrey (1733)George Lambert |
| The Lincolnshire Ox (1790)George Stubbs |
| Part 2 Emma: A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism |
| A Critical History of Emma |
| Gender Studies and Emma |
| What Is Gender Studies? |
| Gender Studies: A Selected Bibliography |
| A Gender Studies Perspective: |
| âÇ£Not at all what a man should be!âÇ : Remaking English Manhood in EmmaClaudia L. John |
