false Wow. This picks right up in volume III. 0 2008-12-22T06:33:17-08:00 194403 320 2008-12-22T06:33:17-08:00 Mrs. Elton is first seen in church! 0 2008-12-21T15:00:53-08:00 193025 269 2008-12-21T15:00:53-08:00 Emma got the invitation! I was so worried. 0 2008-12-12T15:26:30-08:00 171202 225 2008-12-12T15:26:30-08:00 Emma has called on Miss Fairfax, and a letter has arrived. Exciting stuff! 0 2008-12-11T18:26:58-08:00 169045 174 2008-12-11T18:26:58-08:00 Miss Emma has dumped Mr. E. It picks up from here! 0 2008-12-09T18:04:40-08:00 163272 2008-12-09T18:04:40-08:00 It goes...slowly. Maybe I'll just watch Clueless again. 0 2008-11-20T12:23:30-08:00 114120 90 2008-11-20T12:23:30-08:00 I love Jane, but this one drives me crazy. 2 2008-11-11T19:04:22-08:00 89544 75 2008-11-11T19:04:22-08:00 0 2008-11-10T17:48:53-08:00 86339 35 2008-11-10T17:48:53-08:00 5 27 false false Wed Dec 24 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Apr 12 09:55:33 -0700 2008 Wed Dec 24 14:27:17 -0800 2008 2
Don't take that the wrong way. I don't like the character, Emma, not the book. I consider it yet another proof of Jane Austen's staggering abilities that I can't stand the protagonist, but love the book. Well, I sort of love the book.

It's an Austen novel, so it's got all the charm, wit, scathing pain, and tea-drinking of her other novels. I love those parts. Jane (for she is my very good friend, obviously,) writes of the most horrible things happening to people: having their hopes crushed in public; being embarrassed by someone they thought a friend; being ignored by a potential partner at a dance (don't tell me that isn't horrible - I was a teenager once). She can create the most vivid picture of a social climbing woman -- all airs and pretension -- who makes everyone around her miserable. Rachel McAdams in Means Girls has nothing on Mrs. Elton. It's truly amazing that after all this time these truths about people and society are still current and that one can recognize Mrs. Elton as a character in a Lindsey Lohan movie.

So that's what I love about this book. Jane is a genius. No one else pulls this off as well. But back to my original comment about Emma. As awed as I am by Jane's ability to create these characters, I don't want to hang out with this one. Emma is painful. She's the popular girl in school who is very clever but has no sense. Ever know one of those? She's rich, she's kind, she's talkative, she's amusing. I'm sure she'd get everyone's vote for homecoming queen, but she's so stupid. She's misguided. She's oblivious. She's petty. I couldn't possibly be her friend.

And why is that important, Elizabeth? You don't have to be friends with the protagonist. Do you really like Newland Archer in The Age of Innocence? Mrs. Dalloway? Emily L? Beowulf? (Well, I'd kind of like to meet Beowulf, but I acknowledge that we wouldn't have much to talk about). True, but there is a kind of book I think I should get to like the main character and Jane Austen writes it. Anne Eliot, Elizabeth Bennett, Marianne and Elinor Dashwood, and even Fanny Price are intelligent, clever women. They feel deeply. They think about the feelings of others. They may flirt but they don't get stupid about it (Marianne, I will point out, was absolutely assured of her suitor's affection, she wasn't fabricating anything, and her principles, not the lack of them, led to her behavior. It's wasn't meaningless flirting). I would want to hang out with them any time. With Emma, I want to shout "grow up" and leave as soon as possible.

Jane Austen wrote this book almost in response to the criticism of Mansfield Park. No one liked Fanny Price. They thought her a prig. They felt the book was overly moral and heavy. So Jane produces Emma which is five hundred pages of silliness that is funny, but it just doesn't have the complexity of her last book, or her next book, Persuasion (my personal favorite). There is some fantastic stuff in Emma: if you want to know how Jane felt about the slave trade, read Emma; if you want to write about the concept of "gentility" in nineteenth century England, it's in here; and I'm sure there's a dissertation or two about Harriet Smith, Mrs. Elton, and the politics of marriage. But all the social commentary, for which I love Jane, is caught up in the details of the misunderstanding about the poem, the misunderstanding of who likes whom, and whether or not Emma is going to get invited to the party at the Coles'. I'm convinced that it could have been so much more.

It's worth the read though. It is. It really is amazing. And it does actually pick up in volume III. It took me a month to read the first 300 pages and less than a week to read the last 200. Most satisfying. And now I think I'm going to watch Clueless again.]]>