Austen's Emma is about a superficial young woman from an upper middle class home in the fictional village of Highbury. Regency-era English society, as we know, was fascinated with wealth and manners, and so, clearly, was Jane Austen. Austen ridicules the upper class even as her heros and heroines prize and cling to its values. It's a theme that is popular today--eviscerating the rich while seeking to be like them.
As a writer, I'm always curious to know what makes a novel "great." What makes writing worthy of posterity--what accounts for its staying power? Long after books by fashionable authors of the day are taken off the shelf, some books endure and go on to become classics. Of Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and her seminal Sense and Sensibility, I have no doubts--these are great books. Austen's wit, power of observation, her pithy turn of phrase are incomparable, and her plots generally don't disappoint. Having read a goodly number of her famous works, I was late coming to Emma, and looked forward to this one, Emma. You know the feeling--like dipping into a nearly empty chocolate box. But whoops--Emma was a bit like sinking your teeth into a peculiar-tasting turkish delight. I read on, thinking the novel would wax to that sweet witty prose, liberally laced with nuggets of wisdom, but what I found, page after page, was superficial dialogue. Parlour chat. Filler. Whole chapters of vapid nonsense. As in: "...I did not know she had any taste. Nobody talked about it. And I hate Italian singing -- There is no understanding a word of it. Besides, if she does play so very well, you know, it is no more than she is obliged to do, because she will have to teach. The Coxes were wondering last night whether she would get into any great family. How did you think the Coxes looked?' "Just as they always do--very vulgar." And so on. Young Emma, fancying herself a match-maker, an apparently common passtime for the rich and idle, decides to improve the marriage prospects of a young friend. Harriet Smith's breeding is "ignoble" but she eagerly follows her mentor's advice. Romantic misadventure ensues, hearts are broken, and Emma is reproofed by the man she will end up falling in love with. Meanwhile the rich carry on, and the poor and the downtrodden follow humbly in their wake. Women are pawns in the game of matrimony and entertainment. Almost everyone behaves badly. So why is Emma considered to be a classic? Well, yes, Austen manages to portray 18th century society and the importance of "propriety," as well as the facile rich and well-bred. And yes, she makes society look shallow and ridiculous, and the lowborn to appear good--but the pages and pages of empty chatter are excessive. I can't help thinking Austen needed a good editor. Marriage and social status appear to be all that women had to think about--rich and the poor alike. Austen does make some of her own opinions clear through Emma, who most of the time persists in being silly and small-minded. Here is an example: "A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! The proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman of good fortune, is always respectable , and may be quite as sensible and pleasant as anyone else. And the distinction is not quite so much against the candour and common sense of the world as appears at first ; for a very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small and generally very inferior society, may well be illiberal and cross. This does not however apply to Miss Bates; she is only too good natured and too silly to suit me; but in general she is very much to the taste of everybody, though single and though poor. Poverty has certainly not contracted her mind..." Emma goes on to make light-heartedly fun of unfortunate Miss Bates and her niece (for a few hundred pages or so,) though eventually she does come to feel ashamed of herself. In the meantime: the parlour and picnic chatter continues. At first I thought Austen's heavy use of dialogue (without so much as a "he said/she said") must have been a novel writing technique, but I reached back further (Maria Edgeworth of whom Austen was a fan), and see this wasn't new. Nor is it true, as some critics suggest, that Austen's ability to make readers "like" unlikable characters is unique. Here is another of Emma's viewpoints. "A young famer, whether on horseback or on foot, is the very last sort of person to raise my curiosity. The yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to do. A degree or two lower, and a credible appearance might interest me; I might hope to be useful to their families in some way or other. But a farmer can need none of my help and is therefore in one sense as much above my notice as in every other he is below it." There wasn't a single moment in this book when I liked Emma. Why was I knocking myself out over a 495 page book that could have amply concluded in 250. Why is Emma considered a masterpiece? Was Emma the first example of "chick lit?" (if you need a reference, chick lit reflects society and makes a joke of it while at the same time revelling in the status quo). To me, Emma is generally an empty narrative, full of "filler," premasticated easy-to-swallow fare. Mildly amusing at best, boring at worst. To be fair, Austen does paints a good picture of a narrow-minded girl with a lot of growing up to do. And what young woman who's been cosseted and sheltered from the world, told she is clever and knows herself attractive, is not a shallow dish, waiting to be filled? Emma leaves me cold and my only conclusion for its ongoing popularity is that Austen is a commercial blockbuster, her name commands visibility and visibility commands sales. Emma is one of the few examples where I've found the movie is better than the book. Austen's point can be made in 90 minutes.
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What started as a conversation about ordinary wisdom and a commitment to "voice" in story telling has morphed into a book review blog. Ordinary wisdom is still a theme (see March 2017) but I am challenging myself to write more about the literature I love... and sometimes question.Archives
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