A COMPREHENSIVE RICH VARIETY OF WOMEN CHARACTERS AND THEIR ATTITUDE

PORTRAYED IN THE NOVEL EMMA.

EMMA
By Jane Austen

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for
her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry
at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on
marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works
critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the
transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her use of biting irony, along with her realism,
humour, and social commentary, have long earned her acclaim among critics, scholars, and
popular audiences alike.

With the publications of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield
Park (1814) and Emma (1816), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two
additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818,
and began another, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. She also left
behind three volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript, a short epistolary novel Lady Susan,
and another unfinished novel, The Watsons. Her six full-length novels have rarely been out of
print, although they were published anonymously and brought her moderate success and
little fame during her lifetime.

A significant transition in her posthumous reputation occurred in 1833, when her novels were
republished in Richard Bentley's Standard Novels series, illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering,
and sold as a set. They gradually gained wider acclaim and popular readership. In 1869, fifty-
two years after her death, her nephew's publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced
a compelling version of her writing career and supposedly uneventful life to an eager
audience.

Austen has inspired many critical essays and literary anthologies. Her novels have inspired
many films, from 1940's Pride and Prejudice to more recent productions like Sense and
Sensibility (1995), Emma (1996), Mansfield Park (1999), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Love &
Friendship (2016), and Emma (2020).

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BOOK SUMMARY

Emma (1815), a rich comedy of manners is, arguably, Jane Austen’s finest novel – a blending of her
serious literary intentions with the effervescent charm of her most readable novels. The eponymous
heroine, Emma Woodhouse, is a young lady who has wanted for very little in her life, raised in
Highbury to believe she has few imperfections and is superior to just about everyone about her – in
short, she is a snob. After successfully finding a husband for her governess, she believes herself to be
an excellent matchmaker and, is soon bringing her powers to bear on the local community, attempting
to arrange more couplings. She makes a particular friend of Harriet Smith whom she believes to be of
high birth. She determines to find Harriet a suitable partner, rejecting in the process a perfectly good
proposal from a gentleman-farmer. While Emma is engaged in rearranging her charge’s romantic life,
a couple of visitors arrive at Highbury: Frank Churchill, a charming young man, and Jane Fairfax, a fairly
reserved girl. Although Emma feels no real connection with Jane, she strikes up a rather flirtatious
friendship with Frank Churchill. However, it is George Knightley – a neighbour who, being sixteen years
her senior, has known Emma since her birth – who provides a voice of reason to all Emma’s attempts
at matchmaking, a more sombre mentor figure who chastises where others turn a blind eye. Plenty of
other characters are drawn into the romantic entanglements that Emma weaves and observes, and
events play out through social minutiae as Emma is forced to learn a good deal about herself and her
own heart while attempting to direct the hearts of others.

Emma provides a vivid picture of rural and village life in the early nineteenth century and the
significant issues of growing up and picking a mate. As Emma manoeuvres men and women in her
attempts to make good matches, the importance of status become clear. Emma’s family is of very
good standing in her community, and she is acutely aware of where others sit in the grand scheme of
things. Emma might see innate qualities in Harriet which suggest high-birth, but in a society so tightly
structured around status, attempting to break from one class to another can be a hazardous thing as
Emma learns. Interestingly, in making her matches, Emma gives far greater concern to status than any
affection or suitability of temperament that there might be between two people. Unlike more
romantically-imagined heroines, here is a character whose conception of the marriage market is based
more firmly on economics than sentimentality (for others at least). It is perhaps not surprising then
that Emma, so assured of her opinion on so many topics, cannot be said to know her own heart with
any great intimacy. This makes for a delicious centre to the novel and exposes the problem of social
demands governing feelings.

As young people go about arranging their romantic lives there is an evident struggle against
expectation and the older generation. Although depicted in a particular time and space, it is a struggle
for independence and autonomy that has a universal interest. For Emma, who has inherited wealth in
her favour, marriage is a choice – for the other female characters, it is a financial necessity that will
see them secure a safe future for themselves. Emma is aware of her own, privileged position of relative
autonomy and, so voices her feeling that marriage, for her if not for others, must only be undertaken
based on her being in love. Marriage creates an interesting conflict at the centre of the novel: Emma
must be tamed and educated out of her fewer desirable habits by a (future-)husband. Entering a
marriage contract (if on even terms), then, sees Emma relinquish some of her autonomy and accept
the guidance of her mentor-lover. She is not the only woman in the novel who finds identity through

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marriage, and this raises interesting questions, particularly for feminist readers. While Emma plays
with the literary conventions of the novel of instruction, it is also bound by class-consciousness and
male instruction. This dynamic, between social forces and the individual, is a brilliantly subtle irony on
Austen’s part, a way of exploring some pretty radical questions about how society is organised.

The mentor-lover is a common trope in Austen’s writing, but here the instructive nature of female
friendships is more deeply explored too. Members of the leisure class to which Emma belongs have
such an abundance of time on their hands that it is inevitable they should occupy themselves with
constructed ideas of ‘work’, whether that be organising the romantic lives of others or enforcing the
small social mores that make up polite society. In this sense, the novel acts as a warning about
prescriptive advice and shows the messiness of attempting to enact ‘common wisdom’ in the real
world. For Austen, self-knowledge and nuanced solutions are the keys to navigating the various tests
life throws in front of one.

The small community of Highbury offers an excellent setting for Austen to explore the intricacies of
social hierarchy that interested her. The plotting is exquisitely controlled: through subtle misdirection
Austen weaves the stories of each character into a rather bewildering mix for the reader, leaving clues
to each character’s heart that are not easily spotted on first reading. It is artfully done and, it is in the
unravelling of both the tangled plot threads and Emma’s mind that the lasting enjoyment of Emma is
assured.

A comedy of manners, Emma revolves around these rather tangled communications and affairs of the
heart, with major scandal or tragedy never threatening to enter the small world of the novel. While
not a fan of the genre, Austen does not banish all tropes of Romantic fiction but merely moves them
from the centre of the story to the edges – in this way her fictional world allows romantic impulses
while decidedly insisting that they must not be centre stage in a novel or a life. This creates a fictional
world where realism and romanticism meet in a pleasing mesh of styles. Some of the finest pleasures
of Emma is in the small details. Austen brilliantly exposes how seemingly trivial events – a broken
bootlace, an afternoon’s picnic – can have far larger consequences than might be supposed. The
dialogue, too, turns on the smallest minutiae: the delicate unfurling of detailed conversation, far from
being dull as it might have been in another’s hands, shows Austen’s fine skill for dialogue and social
intricacy.

In the fictional world of Highbury, it is the characters who are not seen to participate in the community
and uphold their duties as a member of the small society that is invariably punished or looked down
upon by the author: for Austen, participation and preservation of the fabric of society is of the utmost
importance. With status comes responsibility, but there are more important things than appearance
or artificial measures of merit. Austen may believe in a hierarchical society but, such an arrangement
is shown to rely on the quality of people (humility, wisdom, etc.) more than class distinctions (money,
high-birth, etc.). The novel also addresses issues around the potential for female fulfilment in a society
structured around wealth and status, and where women were often seen simply as the property of
their husbands or fathers. There is an interesting discussion on the social construction of ideas of
womanhood too.

Emma herself is an excellent character: opinionated, meddlesome if well-intentioned, and with a mind
that subtly develops throughout the plot (a change which Austen’s prose reflects by small, nuanced

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shifts in tone as events unfold). She is one of Austen’s most complex characters and most satisfying
reads for the arc and depth of her personal story: her psychological depth has been pointed to as a
precursor for the psychological realism of George Eliot, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf amongst
others. Emma’s literary heritage can certainly be seen in her assuming a role similar to Puck’s in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream in overseeing the course of true love, but a more interesting literary
comparison is to be found in Austen’s canon, for Emma is, in some ways, a mirror to Darcy of Pride
and Prejudice. Wealthy and living in her mansion she does not require a partner and has been raised
to think rather a good deal of herself and less of others. Like Darcy, she is forced to undergo an
educative process that allows her to find eventual happiness and, throughout the text, there are
various examples of her assuming the traditionally male role. This offers an opportunity to test
readers’ reaction to similar behaviours when they are assumed by a male character or a female. Emma
is far more than a parody of Darcy, but it is an interesting side note to her character.

Published in 1815, Emma was written predominantly in the previous year (but finished as late as
March 1815) in a period after Austen had seen success and while she was at the peak of her powers.
A more mature novelist, Austen married the expectations of her growing readership (the book is,
famously, dedicated to the Prince Regent who was a fan) with her literary sensibilities to produce a
novel that displays some of her finest talents as a novelist. Here she has mastered free indirect speech,
which is so heavily associated with her writing, and developed a cast of characters that work
excellently for her purpose. The novel, too, is wholly English in its setting, concerns, and humour –
provincial yet worldly, amused and amusing, sparkling yet with a hint of pathos. It is Austen’s most
complete and well-worked novel.

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 EMMA – Through a feminist’s lens
‘All the literary training that a woman had in the early nineteenth century was training in the
observation of character, in the analysis of emotion. Her sensibilities had been educated for
centuries by the influence of the common sitting room” -Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own.

A classic masterpiece, Emma by Jane Austen is centred around ‘handsome, clever and rich’
Emma Woodhouse. While tracing her moral development, it offers a nuanced and insightful
account of the so-called ‘domestic’ milieu of the Victorian era. The limited scope of actions
within the plot involves the aristocratic section of society. It is a smoothly weaved penetrating
study of human’s vanity, self-deception, jealously with the backdrop of the 19th-century
socio-economic pressure and constrictions within the society. The light romantic tale is
ingeniously fused with the narrator’s irony and displays traits of mystery and comedy of
manner.

Depicted as a lively and independent woman who asserts her individuality, Emma is a new
kind of attractive femininity claiming equality. Emma considers herself a prodigious
matchmaker and connives to strike matches, on basis of her conjectures while remaining
immune to marriage prospects. With ‘a room of her own’, she does ‘just what she liked’ and
thus doesn’t have second thoughts about rejecting Mr Elton’s proposal. She remarks ‘it is
poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to generous public. A single woman with a
narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid’. And thus, conveys the possibility
of women living without the dependence on men. In this respect, Emma is a strong heroine
who takes actions irrespective of any social or economic consequence and seems to offer an
alternative to the conventional romantic plot.

All of Austen’s novels include love and attraction tied to wealth in a big way. Emma, too, is
structured around marriage. Significance of marriage lies in the attached possibility of ‘the
comfortable fortune, the respectable establishment, and the rise in the world which must
satisfy them’. With her handsome fortune, Emma is self-sufficient, but the author never lets
us forget the vulnerability of others without the backup of beauty and wealth in such a social
context. Miss Fairfax, ‘an equal of Miss Woodhouse’ with no fortune is a victim of this social
framework. Even Mr Weston had the determination ‘of never settling until he could purchase
Randalls. He had made his fortune, brought his house, and obtained his wife’. Miss Smithson
cannot reject Mr Elton’s proposal given women’s paucity of choices. Mr Woodhouse’s
character is unconventional for his constant reproach of marriage, employed to offer a
stringent critique of the marriage market.

The unhealthy education of women is underscored by referring to the Mrs Goggard’s

school ‘where girls might be out of the way, and scramble themselves into a little education,
without any danger of coming back prodigies. Similarly, the ‘project’ Miss Harriet taken by
Emma as for grooming and matchmaking is to be taught manners and elegance ‘to introduce
her into good society’. It reveals the process of internalization of patriarchal ideas by the
women characters. Interestingly, Emma’s efforts seem ‘doomed to blindness’ as she creates
problems for Harriet and herself. Harriet gets swayed by her beauty to fancy a wonderful
match for herself thereby ignoring her feelings for Martin. Austen is unleashing a stringent

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critique of the conduct books which ‘reduces women to creatures if feeling rather than reason
and that of female meekness and artificial grace’ (Mary Wollstonecraft). The condition of
working women is illustrated as no better than non- working women in the text so it is no
wonder that Miss Fairfax considers governess job to the act of slavery.

Is it a feminist text? Observations of feminists’ critics vary for the text is complicated with
myriad layers of questions of class, marriage, autonomy and patriarchal mannerism. Despite
the enormously gripping plot, the text’s closure remains disappointing. As the plot unfolds,
Emma’s character gets confined within the patriarchal structure. Austen brings in the class
angle through the mistakes committed by Emma due to her excessive pride, upper-class
insensitivity and arrogance. She explains “With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in
the secret of everybody’s feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed everybody’s
destiny. She was proved to have been universally mistaken. She had brought evil on Harriet,
on herself, and she too much feared, on Mr Knightley.” However, the text conveys the sense
that ‘real evil’ lies in Emma’s ‘power of having rather too much her way, and a disposition to
think too well of herself’. The power structure which relegates women to secondary status
remains intact as the text echoes patriarchal discourse in challenging the protagonist’s
exercise of power and authority. While it is unnerving to note that the dominancy of
masculine power goes unquestioned by the narrator.

Like Darcy who emerges as Elizabeth’s saviour in Pride and Prejudice, Mr Knightley is the
protective figure for Emma who educates her about her mistakes and Frank Churchill. Mr
Knightley resembles a paternal figure for Emma in offering guidance and criticism. Wendy
Moffat remarks that ‘for some critics, the problem is not marriage itself but marriage to
Knightley. Knightley’s suitability as a lover is an open question throughout Emma, and his
sudden shift from mentor to lover is itself a comic turn’. It is problematic that Emma’s moral
development is undertaken by Mr Knightley for it can be read as the re-establishment of
patriarchy over feminist ideology. Somewhere the feminist character of heroin comes into
question by her projection as imprudent and ignorant whereas Mr Knightley ‘as infinitely the
superior’. Emma’s constant self-reproaching and acceptance of inferiority to Mr Knightley’s
prudence can be judged as overemphasized given the fact that he errors in judging Emma’s
relationship with Frank Churchill. The narrator is amplifying the disparaging voice of Mr
Knightley throughout the text while examining Emma’s actions. The question arises if Emma’s
character changes to make to fit within the role of ‘wife’ in which her sister, Isabella perfectly
fits in.

The novels of Jane Austen have been read as ‘feminine texts’ by Showalter in her study of the
emergence of feminist literature by applying gynocriticism. Austen is remarkable in given
space to the ostensibly trivial affairs of the domestic life of ‘social visits, music and artistic
endeavours’ which characterized the life of women in literature. Reading the novel through a
feminist lens, one finds it revolutionary in presenting intelligent and powerful women
characters while illuminating the dark possibilities of economic considerations lurking in the
backdrop. However, the ending remains subscribed to the patriarchal narrative of finding
happiness only within marriage.

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