Emma - Background Information

[Everyman]

Edit -- moved to Croussants thread; wrote post before getting to Deborah's request.

[Lily]

Abigail wrote: "Hi, Jon, not sure what an HEA is, and as to your question about Jane Eyre and Villette, I would consider Jane Eyre at least a romance, albeit a very well written one and one laced with deeper theme..."

With due deference to Deborah, let me say to Abigail here that I had to turn to that ubiquitous reference source, Google, to figure out HEA: http://www.internetslang.com/HEA-mean...

("Happily Ever After"!)

Now the Croissant shop to continue any conversation.

[Janice (JG)]

Veronique wrote: "We take FIS for granted now but to think Austen really mastered it..."

I had this discussion about Mansfield Park in a group read, and read Mansfield Park with an eye towards this style. It was actually very interesting because I could see how she built towards the moment. The first part of the novel was third person and distantly observational, setting up characters and places with descriptions, etc. As the story rolls along, and begins to develop some tension, we suddenly know what Fanny Price is feeling -- Austin has pulled us inside.

I will be interested to see if Austen uses the same process in Emma (I just hope I can fit this read into my already overbooked schedule).

[Rose]

Austen is always so polemic! I am happy to see we are one week ahead of schedule and this topic already has so many comments!

This discussion is going to be awesome!

[Lily]

From the Folio Society site: Fay Weldon wrote the introductory material for the currently available Folio edition. I noted this:

"Her Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen (1984) has become a classic introduction to Austen’s fiction."

Any here (teachers or otherwise) familiar with it?

The following is from a reader review (Audrey Frances) on Amazon:
"...There are many wonderful passages, and I especially admired the analyses of Austen's work, but I would have liked more of this, and in more detail. At one point the author writes: '[Jane Austen] knows how to end a scene, an episode, a chapter, before beginning the next: when to allow the audience to rest, when to and how to underline a statement, when to mark time with idle paragraphs, allowing what went before to settle, before requiring it to inform what comes next. It is a very modern technique. It requires ... consciousness of audience, and audience reaction.' It should be evident from that passage that Weldon is an elegant, insightful and articulate writer, and I would have *loved* to have seen extended examples and analysis of specific Austen passages to illustrate the points made in the preceding excerpt."

Bold added.

[Lily]

A cross reference from another Goodreads discussion of Emma:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...

If you are reading Emma: for a second (or third or..) time, you may well enjoy using this article to confirm that another reader sees what you are seeing. It points out many of the writerly innovations and tricks of Jane.

(Thx, Sylvie, for the link.)

[Everyman]

Lily wrote: "A cross reference from another Goodreads discussion of Emma:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...

If you are reading Emma: for a second (or third or...."

Very interesting article. A subtlety I am still learning to appreciate in Austen.

[Deborah, Moderator]

Lily wrote: "From the Folio Society site: Fay Weldon wrote the introductory material for the currently available Folio edition. I noted this:

"Her [book:Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane A..."

I've got it in paperback but not with me

[Abigail]

Finally got a chance to skim the article posted by Lily—very interesting! Thank you for posting it. It makes a good case, but I think perhaps the author overdoes the emphasis on Emma as the place where Austen’s innovative style emerges; I would say rather that her tricks and techniques of revealing character and action may reach a culmination in that novel, but have been the work of a lifetime. I’ll put the rest in spoiler tags for those who have not read Emma before (or some of her other works).

(view spoiler)[Regarding this insight, for example: “The novel bent narration through the distorting lens of its protagonist’s mind.” I think JA figured this one out in her teens, when she wrote a lot of stories in the epistolary form. Without a narrator, characters in an epistolary fiction can be revealed only through the comments of others about them or—more commonly—through what they reveal about themselves in their own words.

The epistolary form is more like a play, pretty much all dialogue, though letters are more like extended monologues than actual dialogue between characters. Her earliest extended effort, “Love and Freindship,” written when she was fourteen and a half, reflects the dramatic origins of her writing. Letters early in the collection are full of parenthetical stage directions such as “(said my Mother),” “(added my Father),” and “(continued he taking my hand).”

However, even in this early work we see the glimmerings of the technique referred to above, bending the narration through the distorting lens of a character’s mind. Laura, the principal letter writer of “Love and Freindship,” says, for instance, “We returned a suitable answer to this affectionate Note & after thanking her for her kind invitation assured her that we would certainly avail ourselves of it, whenever we might have no other place to go.” As Jane Austen progresses through her teen years, she hones this technique of letting a character’s own words betray her flaws and blind spots.

She worked the potential of this technique within the epistolary form right up through Lady Susan, probably first composed in her late teens. By age twenty she was breaking out of epistolary fiction’s limitations and experimenting with more flexible narrative forms. We see outbreaks of self-revelatory monologue similar to that of Mrs. Elton (cited in the article) in Pride and Prejudice (Mr. Collins) and even in Sense and Sensibility (the Steele sisters)—in fact, the unreflecting nature of people is one of the most consistent sources of Austen’s comedy.

I’d agree that in Emma she puts it all together in a seamless package—but not that the novel is itself innovative, only that her entire body of work is! (hide spoiler)]

[Lily]

Abigail wrote: "Finally got a chance to skim the article posted by Lily—very interesting! Thank you for posting it. It makes a good case, but I think perhaps the author overdoes the emphasis on Emma as the place w..."

THANK YOU for your post, Abigail. I encourage all to read it when they ready to consider Austen's writing versus the plot of Emma.

[Lily]

Not truly an Emma post, but for those of you who are Austen fans and in the U.S., the movie "Love and Friendship" based on her early epistolary short novel "Lady Susan" is playing in selected theaters. Today (5/27) seems to be one of the days with particularly broad reach. (I hope to see it this afternoon.)

[Everyman]

As long as we're reading Austen, it may be worth noting that in a 2008 poll of favorite English writers, Austen was the winner among writers for adults (the top three places went to children's authors, with top place to Enid Blyton, showing that our first loves often remain our lifetime loves).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainm...

[Rosemarie, Moderator]

Thanks for the link, Everyman. The only author in the top ten that I have not read is Stephen King.

[Everyman]

Rosemarie wrote: "Thanks for the link, Everyman. The only author in the top ten that I have not read is Stephen King."

Ditto. Nor do I have any interest in ever reading him.

[Rosemarie, Moderator]

Same here!

[Mary Lou]

Everyman wrote: "Rosemarie wrote: "Thanks for the link, Everyman. The only author in the top ten that I have not read is Stephen King."

Ditto. Nor do I have any interest in ever reading him."

The only one on the list I've not read is in the #1 spot - Enid Blyton. I don't think I've ever even heard of her! But, of course, now she's moved to the top of my "must read" list. Is there a certain book she's best known for that I should start with?*

I read a lot of Steven King when I was in my 20s and 30s, and enjoyed it. Now that I'm older, his stories creep me out. There's enough real evil in the world that I no longer relish reading about it for amusement.

*I just checked my library website and we don't even carry any of Blyton's books! No wonder I've not heard of her! Another county has a few, so I've put in an order for one of them.

[Madge UK]

Your library may not stock Blyton because she may still be out of favour. This is the Wikipedia entry about the controversy surrounding her work:

'Blyton's work became increasingly controversial among literary critics, teachers and parents from the 1950s onwards, because of the alleged unchallenging nature of her writing and the themes of her books, particularly the Noddy series. Some libraries and schools banned her works, which the BBC had refused to broadcast from the 1930s until the 1950s because they were perceived to lack literary merit. Her books have been criticised as being elitist, sexist, racist,xenophobic and at odds with the more liberal environment emerging in post-war Britain, but they have continued to be best-sellers since her death in 1968.'

The Famous Five series are probably her most popular books.

[Rosemarie, Moderator]

Re Enid Blyton-- the books may not be considered literature, but the stories are interesting. They are definitely not "politically correct". When I was in elementary school I loved the "Adventure". Each book in the set was called The .... Of Adventure. I liked the Cave and the Island the most.

[Mary Lou]

Rosemarie wrote: "Re Enid Blyton-- the books may not be considered literature, but the stories are interesting. They are definitely not "politically correct"....."

Interesting. I don't shy away from things that aren't PC, especially if they're written in another era. I just read "I Try To Behave Myself" which was a humorous book on etiquette written by Peg Bracken back in 1960 or thereabouts. It had several pages devoted to smoking etiquette, not to mention what many people now would consider archaic notions of gallantry and being ladylike. That's what made it fun. I think entirely too many people read books written long ago who have 21st century ideas and expect the literature too, as well. History doesn't work that way.

I look forward to the Blyton book I ordered - it's called "Five on a Secret Trail". Oooooh.... intriguing!

[Everyman]

Mary Lou wrote: "The only one on the list I've not read is in the #1 spot - Enid Blyton. I don't think I've ever even heard of her! "

You must not have had English relatives whose idea of the best Christmas or Birthday present for an American grandchild or niece or nephew or cousin was a book. Fortunately my sister and I agreed! Enid Blyton and Arthur Ransome were the most commonly given authors.

She's not great literature. Some people would say that she's not even good literature. But she's a good read for a reading child.

She was prolific. You could read a book a week for twelve years and not have exhausted her output!

She is probably most famous for the Famous Five series, but I never liked those that much. Like Rosemarie, my favorites were the Adventure series.

[Lily]

Lily wrote: "Not truly an Emma post, but for those of you who are Austen fans and in the U.S., the movie "Love and Friendship" based on her early epistolary short novel "Lady Susan" is playing in selected theat..."

From the NYRB:

"The precarity of not having enough money, and the effort to maintain one’s self—either as a widow or spinster or wife—was Austen’s great subject, and it is also Stillman’s, whether in eighteenth-century Britain or 1980s New York."

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/05/...

We enjoyed the movie.

[Mary Lou]

Lily wrote: "Lily wrote: "Not truly an Emma post, but for those of you who are Austen fans and in the U.S., the movie "Love and Friendship" based on her early epistolary short novel "Lady Susan" is playing in s..."

I look forward to seeing it. I found the book laugh-out-loud funny, forgiving any flaws knowing that Austen wrote it as a teenager and would probably roll over in her grave to think that the public somehow got their hands on it!