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Emma
Emma - Spine 2016
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Discussion - Week One - Emma - Chapter 1 - 12
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I'm sure I have read this but now this is all very unappealing to me, maybe tying it to bluebeard could do something interesting to it.ok, sorry
Mod
perrault+some morals that happen to just lie around:
Curio..."
I would like to kindly ask you to read the text if you're going to join the discussion. (see rule #3 for the group)
Emma declares early on that she will not marry, even though she is clearly a desirable partner for marriage - youth, beauty, position, and access to wealth. On the contrary, I think she has decided that the "golden prison" is not for her, and instead she'll send surrogates into marriage bondage, such as Harriet. Emma's position in her society gives her the power to choose to marry or not - Harriet has no such power available to her.
Cphe: It is exactly those qualities (especially the last two) that enable Emma to take such a position on marriage. For the semi-impoverished gentry (to which class Austen herself belonged) opportunities for financial security were--to say the least--scarce. Trade was OUT; for men, there was the military & the clergy. For women: marriage, and marriage only.
Poor Emma. It's true, she's a very spoiled girl, but I did always have the impression that at least part of her motivation for not marrying was to care for her father, or at least to not leave him lonely in his old age. I think it was a genuine thought for someone other than herself. I'm also not sure that she has a huge choice of intellectual women (or, indeed, men) with whom to surround herself. (Perhaps Jane Fairfax is a possible exception here?) There are certainly other complaints to be made about who she chooses to spend her time and attention on (and indeed Mr. Knightly will make some of them very forcefully), but I'm not entirely sure where she could realistically look for challenging women who are her intellectual equal or better. Her behavior with Harriet is appalling in many ways, but perhaps not in this specific one.
Cphe wrote: "Nicole - the thought did cross my mind that there was some "co-dependence" at play between Emma and her father which to my mind is understandable."This is why I love Austen. It's certainly true that Emma's father is kind of a giant pain in the ass, and that their relationship is perhaps not entirely healthy. At the same time, if Emma married and left, he really would be extremely lonely and would probably suffer very much.
I think this same complexity is true of Emma. She's rich, she's spoiled, she's basically never challenged. But I think Austen still sort of likes her for all that; at the very least, she hasn't written her off as a human being, despite being extremely clear-eyed about her many faults.
Mod
This is why I love Austen. It's cer..."
What would you say are Emma's many faults?
Jim wrote: "Nicole wrote: "Cphe wrote: "Nicole - the thought did cross my mind that there was some "co-dependence" at play between Emma and her father which to my mind is understandable."This is why I love A..."
Those detailed upthread: her tendency to treat other people's lives as a kind of amusement being perhaps the worst of these faults. And I think, as Cphe points out, that she is sometimes threatened by people who might be her equals (have you all gotten to Jane Fairfax yet? her reactions to Jane are pretty telling, I think).
She doesn't really spend a great deal of time thinking of others, and seems often largely incapable of imagining people who are not like her, though this is why I think her attachment to her father should maybe be counted in the plus column, instead of the negative. I think she actually cares about his comfort and happiness.
I think she's also maybe not the type of person to persevere when something is not immediately easy for her, also. Her drawing seems much more like a way to pass the time and impress others than it does any kind of real discipline or attachment. Jane and the piano seem like a slightly different model for participation in a discipline.
Mod
This is ..."
On the contrary, she seems to do nothing but think of others, albeit in a somewhat critical/analytical way.
Nicole: "seems often largely incapable of imagining people who are not like her." Austen actually says that her father is incapable of imagining people who not like himself (cf. the way he goes around begging people not to eat any of Miss Taylor's wedding cake!); an early lesson in genetics?
Jim wrote: "Nicole wrote: "Jim wrote: "Nicole wrote: "Cphe wrote: "Nicole - the thought did cross my mind that there was some "co-dependence" at play between Emma and her father which to my mind is understanda..."Yes, though I guess what I mean is that her conclusions aren't very accurate, on the whole, partly because she has maybe a slight empathy deficit.
And yes, Elizabeth, you're right, and her father is even worse. All his talk about poor so and so, when what he means is poor him. Projection at its finest.
Nicole wrote: "...I'm also not sure that she has a huge choice of intellectual women ... with whom to surround herself...."Thx for this, Nicole. I found myself wondering a) about this aspect of portrayal of women in literature, b) if it is only in first world twentieth century that society, in pockets, has begun to address this issue.
Mod
Emma-the-would-be-Queen-of-Higbury meddles with the lives of the commoners, not unlike the Greek gods manipulating the mortals, with her foil, Mr. Knightly, who is essentially her only real rival in the power department.
And so Austen is giving us parody. Is she critiquing her society? Poking fun at romance novels? Shining a light on the imbalance of power between the sexes? Maybe all of this....
Jim wrote: "One important topic hasn't come up yet - Emma is meant to be a comedy. Maybe subtle at first glance, but really, Austen is giving us caricatures rather than characters. Mr. Woodhouse, the lunatic h..."Yes, in a nutshell.
I sometimes wonder how Austen's entourage reacted to her portrayals, and if she kept her friends! Maybe they did not recognize themselves, or maybe the ones she parodied were not her friends anyway.
In her letters to Cassandra, her sister, Jane Austen displays her powers of observation. She had rich pickings, because some of the people around her did not appear to have any self knowledge. I suspect she played along to let them reveal their worst foibles. You can guess this from her turns of phrase.
We like her books because they shed a humorous light on the society of that time, with the added bonus of psychological insight. Not to mention the romance....
Speaking of psychological insight: realize how totally universal this quality is, of being unable to imagine another's point of view. So few people have this talent, really. Austen points this out so beautifully and skillfully...nothing can teach a lesson like fiction.& re Austen's portrayals...her nephew, in his reminiscences about her, claims that altho there were many colorful people in their circle of family and friends, no portrayals of them can be seen in her writing. Of course, he wrote this in his old age, based on his childhood memories, so who knows? As far as I know, she remained on good terms with all, and no one claimed a resemblance. Of course, if I thought I resembled Miss Bates, I'd keep quiet about it...
Well, Emma doesn't strike me as comedy so much in the humorous sense, although I am enjoying the dry humor, as in the "not tragedy" literary sense. Certainly today's reader can see Austen sticking her slender stiletto into the flesh of her society. To what extent that was artistically deliberate versus simply flowing from her extremely acute observation and recording skills, I have never explored and really don't know her life values well enough to comment upon. I haven't thought of Austen as an activist in any sense or even provocateur, but that may be shortchanging her -- or simply not understanding her and her art.At the same time, I have picked up Henry James' Golden Bowl again. We know James was deliberately probing moral finesse. Although they are very different characters (age, sophistication, ...), I am finding myself comparing dear Emma and Mrs. Assingham as they meddle in the romantic lives of their acquaintances.
The other place my head has been going is to ask what modern character would I consider to be similar enough to Emma to make comparisons across the decades. I haven't come up with one yet.
Okay, consider me weird, but here is one example of the dry humor that I enjoyed: "After these came a second set; among the most come-at-able of whom were Mrs. and Miss Bates, and Mrs. Goddard, three ladies almost always at the service of an invitation from Hartfield, and who were fetched and carried home so often, that Mr. Woodhouse thought it no hardship for either James or the horses. Had it taken place only once a year, it would have been a grievance." Chapter III
So long as it was part of the routine, part of the pattern....
I'm a little behind. I've just finished Chapter 6. I loved the description of Emma and her artistic efforts--wanting to try everything but not sticking with anything long enough to get good at it. The description reminded me so much of my daughter, who attempted four musical instruments but never practiced, tried any number of artistic mediums, and never met a craft she didn't want to try. Over the years I've seen her actually move sort of backwards. She used to knit or crochet, though I don't believe she ever finished anything. Then she acquired a drop-spindle and started to make her own wool. Not that she ever produced more than a small ball of it, of course. She and Emma are clearly kindred spirits.
"Had it taken place only once a year, it would have been a grievance." Chapter III.See that? One hardly feels the knife go in...
Mod
Austen doesn't intend us to "like" Emma, but instead uses her as an example of how one should not act. Surrogate parents Mrs. Weston and Mr. Knightley are there to underscore the comments Austen is making about Emma's behavior. I don't know where all of you are in the book, but there continue to be occasions where this dynamic plays out (I'm up to p. 269 at the moment). Mr. Woodhouse, Miss Bates, and to a lesser extent, Harriet, continue to serve as comic elements in the middle of rather mundane moments in the life of Highbury.
I'm not finding much that could be called romance. So far there is just a single scene with romantic potential - between Emma and X - but the romance is thwarted by outside forces and by the two combatants living up to their caricature-istics.
You shift my thinking about Austen/Emma in categorizing its characters as caricatures, Jim. One of the things I dislike about Dickens is that I feel so many of his characters are caricatures. In general, I think of myself as disliking caricature, except in humor or to make a point, to cut through the chaff. Caricature so often seems lacking in empathy and not subject to nuances or ranges or other possibilities. Extreme, rigid, provincial, even bigoted examples, sometimes, I have ascribed to Austen, but caricature was not a place I have gone previously in thinking about what she was doing artistically as a writer (except for Northanger Abbey, where she clearly was writing parody). Will have to assimilate this one -- I do see what you are saying.
Actually, I think we are meant to like her. I think we're meant to like her without thinking that she's perfect. Also I lean toward Lily's way of thinking: most of the characters do not seem like caricatures to me, and there is definitely a lot of empathy for a great many people. Even in Northanger Abbey -- which I love -- the people in it are not really caricatures, so much as the types of reading that its characters are doing, and the assumptions that they make about good and bad behavior when using those books as a guide.
Mod
Let's leave Northanger Abbey out of it...
Are you thinking that Emma does show empathy? Earlier you said the opposite.
I think she's empathetically challenged.
Mod
Agreed!
Chapter 8 is where she goes head to head with Mr. Knightley. He tries to mansplain why the proposal from Mr. Martin to Harriet had its merits, but Emma's view seems to be one-sided, and maybe a bit shallow - and certainly lacking in strong empathy on her part.
My own reaction is that there can be differences between the empathy evidenced by the author/narration and the empathy expressed by the characters. It seems to me that Austen frequently dings her characters for their lack of empathy, whether through humor or showing stereotypical or thoughtless characteristics, yet she manages to sustain an authorial empathy towards those characters, and somewhat asks her reader to do the same. The line between stereotype and caricature may be fine; to me, although I see Jim's point given that he has made it, caricature is not how I have read Austen nor specifically Emma. It is Emma as a (humanly flawed) person/character who irritates me, but I feel permitted, indeed encouraged, to understand the circumstances that have brought her to being who she is and the lessons she will probably have to endure. (My own mental contrast is Dickens' dreadful Mrs. Jellyby of Bleak House, where I might quite agree with the author's overall assessment of the woman's behavior, but I'm left without a sense of why she might be the way she is and what her dreams might have been, even if contrary to social norms and expectations of the day. Realistic as she may or may not be, for me she is exemplary of the use of caricature, and I resist.)But, I am finding it very useful to rethink the concept of character, what Austen may have been deliberately doing here, and what literary devices she was choosing to use. I think I am realizing caricature may be used by an author along a wide spectrum of subtlety.
Emma is not unlikeable, even though she displays a condescending attitude towards Harriet and can see foibles in others, without noticing any of her own. Why should she? She is beautiful, rich, intelligent. What convinces at first that there is something more to her than mere arrogance is that (dear) Mr. Knightly is willing to spend time with her and willing to point out where she is going wrong. The other point is that, in contrast to her inability to finish any task (see Casceil's comment), she is immensely patient with her tiresome father. That may be due to a sense of duty to parents that was very prevalent at the time (very strong in Russian novels). Irrespective of their beliefs, children on the whole respected the wishes of their parents.Comedy of manners, certainly. Austen's treatment of her story is realism with a light touch and with no real tragic upheaval. World events were as turbulent as at any time. They are kept at a distance.
I've found the quote from Jane's letter to Cassandra, where she shows her wit at its most mordant. It is more subtly conveyed in her characters and what they reveal in speech:
She wrote to Cassandra to tell her she had seen an Adultress, “She is not so pretty as Iexpected, her face has some of the defects of baldness as her sister’s. She was highly rouged.
Mrs Baldock was of the same party and was obliged to run round the room after her drunken husband. His avoidance and her pursuit with the probable intoxication of both, was an amusing scene”.
Elizabeth wrote: ""Had it taken place only once a year, it would have been a grievance." Chapter III.See that? One hardly feels the knife go in..."
Absolutely!!!
I am fascinated by Austen's ability to write such facile sequences of dialogue, in the sense of "comprehended with ease," but not in the sense of "easily achieved" or necessarily "superficial." Dialogue requires such a keen sense of how people use words in speech and how to translate those into words on paper.Seems to me dialogue is an area where Austen's skill makes the difficult to achieve look easy. I'm not sure how to define what makes it so unique or with whom I would compare her.
Sylvie wrote: "Elizabeth wrote: ""Had it taken place only once a year, it would have been a grievance." Chapter III.See that? One hardly feels the knife go in..."
Absolutely!!!" Exactly! X-acto ly? (Sorry....didn't resist a poor pun. "Stiletto" is still probably the better metaphor -- it historically could be twisted once inserted without necessarily leaving a mark on the surface. )
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