Emma in Penguin Classics

Jan 06, 2010 Moppet rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Of all Austen's oeuvre, Emma is the work I re-read the least. Even the publisher thought it "wants incident and romance" and less happens in this book than in any other Austen wrote. There's also no change of scene whatsoever: the entire action is set in the Surrey village of Highbury. Highbury is large and prosperous, but has no local aristocracy and few who can claim to be gentry. As a result, heiress Emma Woodhouse is top of the social heap. She makes the most of it, manipulating those around Of all Austen's oeuvre, Emma is the work I re-read the least. Even the publisher thought it "wants incident and romance" and less happens in this book than in any other Austen wrote. There's also no change of scene whatsoever: the entire action is set in the Surrey village of Highbury. Highbury is large and prosperous, but has no local aristocracy and few who can claim to be gentry. As a result, heiress Emma Woodhouse is top of the social heap. She makes the most of it, manipulating those around her, especially her trusting friend Harriet Smith, with disastrous results. After an extended comedy of errors, the book ends happily with wedding bells all round.

I was absorbed in the book the first time I read it. The second time, I enjoyed following the trail of clues Austen had inserted as to who is really in love with who and why. Subsequent readings offered the opportunity to meet the characters again, to enjoy the social comedy and the picture of a pre-industrial England when villages were lively communities and not just dormitories for urban workers. And of course there's the romance - only I must be one of the few female readers who don't read Austen for the romance. In this case I feel the relationship between Emma and her brother-in-law Mr Knightley has dated rather unattractively. I was relieved at the end to find Emma planning a match between her ex-governess's baby daughter and her Knightley nephews, rather than between her future daughters and the nephews - who would be double first cousins and as closely genetically related as half-siblings. Also, Mr Knightley played a parental role as Emma grew up, and for that reason I found the match distasteful. They aren't equals in the way that Darcy and Elizabeth are.

As ever there are plenty of laughs, but two of the characters delighted me slightly too long: Emma's father, established early on as a hypochondriac and a very fussy eater, and Miss Bates, a sweet-natured but garrulous spinster. Their lengthy dialogues got tedious after a while (and sorry, critics, much of what Miss Bates has to say is not 'information the reader needs'. Quite a bit of it could be skimmed or skipped with no detriment to the story). On the other hand, I couldn't read enough of the posturings of Mrs Elton, the crass nouveau riche diva who sweeps into Highbury half way through the book and attempts with mixed success to wrest the title of Queen of the Village from Emma. I was constantly hoping that someone would ask her, "how are dear Selina and all at Maple Grove?" because her boastings about her wealthy relatives were so hilarious.

Despite my reservations, I couldn't give the book less than four stars. As we drift further and further away from the world Austen knew, the depth of her observation has increasingly to be extrapolated from what hasn't changed. The revelation of a secret engagement, for example, has nothing like the shock value it would have had at the time. Yet you only have to sample the fiction of her peers to see just how brilliant a writer she was. ...more

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