Book 1,093: Emma – Jane Austen

This is the Austen novel I look forward to re-reading the least, but shockingly that may be changing. I guess I get older I can see Emma’s growth as a good thing and focus less on her being a spoiled busy body.

I also think, as Drabble says in the intro, we’re really starting to see Austen reach her stride. She’s using new narrative types, she’s moved past the overwhelming morality of Mansfield Park—while still keeping some of it—and brought humor and comedy of errors back in a different way.

It’s sad re-reading this knowing there’s only one more complete novel, Persuasion. Austen had so much more to give and so much potential to continue growing and refining her craft. I can’t help but wonder what her 8th or 9th novels would’ve been like, how much more cheeky and political would they have gotten, because every one of them has mention of politics, but if you don’t know the time you miss most of them.

Okay, let’s get two things out of the way and then jump to what I found to be most intriguing re-reading this novel.

First, as many have noted, including Margaret Drabble in my versions’ introduction, Emma is Austen’s smallest geographical novel:

It is a peculiarly insulated world, and although the longest of her novels, Emma is geographically more confined than any other Austen work. All its principal events, apart from a day’s outing to Box Hill and a day at neighboring Donwell Abbey, take place in Highbury itself, and when Frank Churchill goes to ?London or Richmond he travels beyond our knowing. Jane Austen’s habitual distrust of London society is parodied, but only slightly, in Mr. Woodhouses. Emma herself seems relatively happy to stay where she is; she has none of Elizabeth Bennet’s longing to see men and mountains, none of Anne Elliot’s active delight in a trip to Lyme Regis. Even the timid Fanny Price, with her unexpressed desire to see Southerton, is more of an adventurer than Emma, who has never seen the sea. The result should be claustrophobic, and some have found it so. Others have admired the extraordinary ingenuity with which common place events are rendered dramatic, and the riddles of human relationships are unravelled.  (Introduction, xv)

And I can’t help but wonder if this was a direct result of her shrinking world and perhaps even the impending sickness that ultimately killed her. She’d moved to Chawton in 1809 and while she had access to her brothers “great house,” she, her sister and mother were living much more frugally and probably in a smaller social set. We also, barring Mrs Bennet from Pride & Prejudice—who let’s be real is more of a caricature than an actual character, see for the first time Jane’s introduction of hypochondriacal/obsessed with doctors and sickness characters through Mr. Woodhouse and his daughter, Isabella Knightley. Knowing that looking back makes reading this a different experience.

Second, Austen was political. There are many interpretations of how much she included, but just the class and relationship between her characters on the surface level is political and then she brings in many other things that are less known today like land enclosure (think eminent domain if you’re from the USA) and entailments. But then there are VERY direct politics about wars and more particularly mentions of the slave trade in both Mansfield Park and Emma.

‘There are places in town, offices, where inquiry would soon produce something—offices for the sale not quite of human flesh, but of human intellect . . . I did not mean—I was not thinking of the slave-trade,’ replied Jane; ‘governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different, certainly, as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies.’ (264)

The comparison of slavery to the perceived indentured servitude of governesses reads more like a fantastical gothic tale from a Brontë sister rather than the domestic drama of Austen, but the above line cuts to the core of it. Whether we can read Austen as a first wave feminist is debatable and I’d like to think she was because as much as she wrote within the bounds of expected society her many female characters pushed what was acceptable on many occasions demanding more or less better/fair treatment. Some of this, for me personally, has been complicated by the many film adaptations that do lean into modern sensibilities over historic ones, but for the most part I do still think she would have been a vocal feminist if it was thoroughly established when she reached her peak and less in its nascent stages.

Okay, now for the final mind-blowing realization while re-reading Emma let’s turn to Volume 3, Chapter 5 of my edition (Signet Classic, 1996 edition with Margaret Drabble introduction). As far as I am aware, and after a quick internet search, I believe can confirm this is the ONLY Austen chapter written from the male point of view!!!! Like, WHAT?!

Seriously though, this is huge! In just under 2,000 pages across my editions of Austen’s six novels, she employs the use of third person omniscient narration with the occasional authorial intrusion (breaking the fourth wall). But across all of those there is exactly one chapter (~7 pages or 0.35%) written solely from the male point of view. Sure there are letters written by men and the occasional long interchange between male and female characters, but this is the only chapter of it’s kind and my brain is broken.

The chapter is written from George Knightley’s point of view and serves as a counter balance to all the nonsense we’ve read for hundreds of pages up to this point from Emma’s point of view. It’s providing a matter of fact interpretation of what he’s seen so far through the novel and a slightly different interpretation of events. It’s the moment where we as a reader have to make the decision of do we really believe Emma has changed and if so how much. It was a fascinating read and discovery and makes me look forward to re-reading this again in the future knowing the chapter is coming. Fascinating.

Recommendation: I enjoyed this a lot more this time around. Perhaps because I avoided it so long I never gave it a true chance to be enjoyed. Maybe, like Drabble says in the introduction, I found it claustrophobic. I think, however, I found Emma to be insufferable and I was never really sure she changed by the end of the novel that I would just rather skip it and go straight to the more romantic unrequited love story of Persuasion. As I look forward to my next read in 5-10 years I’m wondering if I will look forward to Emma with less trepidation now that I’ve found something in it that intrigues me. I can easily see looking for other hints of the male perspective as I re-read it to see if there was some hint or clue left by Austen that this big POV shift was coming.

Opening Line: “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.”

Closing Line: “But in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.” (Whited out.)

Additional Quotes from Emma
“It is notable that throughout the novel Jane Fairfax is seen in long shot, almost as though she were a character from another story. She could, one feels, become a figure in the Brontës’ world of thirty years on, which was peopled by governesses in deep, and on some levels successful, rebellion against society, by women who were unable and unwilling to accept their fate stoically.” (Introduction, xix)

“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 a sensible and pleasant as anybody 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 a illiberal and cross.” (93)

“The very want of such equality might prevent his perception of it; but he must know that in fortune and consequence she was greatly his superior.” (133)

“Could she but have given Harriet her feelings about it all! She had talked her into love; but, alas! she was not so easily to be talked out of it. The charm of an object to occupy the many vacancies of Harriet’s mind was not to be talked away. He might be superseded by another; he certainly would, indeed! nothing could be clearer; even a Robert Martin would have been sufficient; but nothing else, she feared, would cure her. Harriet was one of those who, having once begun, would be always in love.” (171)

“I know no man more likely than Mr. Knightley to do the sort of thing—to do anything—really good-natured, useful, considerate, or benevolent. He is not a gallant man, but he is a very humane one; and this, considering Jane Fairfax’s ill health, would appear a case of humanity to him; and for an act of unostentatious kindness there is nobody whom I would fix on more than on Mr. Knightley. I know he had horses to-day for we arrived together; and I laughed at him about it, but he said not a word that could betray.” (203)

“Emma listened and looked, and soon perceived that Frank Churchill’s state might be best defined by the expressive phrase of being out of humour. Some people were always cross when they were hot. Such might be his constitution; and as she knew that eating and drinking were often the cure of such incidental complaints, she recommended his taking some refreshment; he would find abundance of everything in the dining-room; and she humanely pointed out the door.” (315)

“To understand, thoroughly understand, her own heart, was the first endeavour. To that point went every leisure moment which her father’s claims on her allowed, and every moment of involuntary absence of mind.” (354)