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Friday, November 9, 2012

Jane Austen's Emma in the Social Milieu of a Sympathetic

"Ought to release him! My dear Harriet,

what do you mean? Are you in any doubt as to that?

. . . I certainly have been misunderstanding you, if

you feel in doubt to the purport of your answer. I had

imagined you were consulting me only as to the articulate

Whether Martin and Smith would be well-suited in their own eyes does not cross Emma's mind. She is preparing Harriet for society, taking it upon herself to instruct Harriet, who is easily manipulated. Emma has another suitor in mind for Harriet, and her pride will not rent to other options. When this second suitor turns his attentions to Emma, she is mortified. Her purposes atomic number 18 being prevent by others' autonomy. She cannot see why Harriet and Mr. Elton are not cooperating with her. Earlier, she is quite willing to take credit for matching her former governess with a beau:

"It is impossible that Emma should not miss such a companion," said Mr. Knightley. "But she knows how much the marriage is to Miss Taylor's payoff . . .

Every friend of Miss Taylor must be jocund to have her so happily married." "And you have forgotten superstar matter

of joy to me," said Emma, "and a very commodious integrity

--that I made the match myself" (Austen 5).

Yet now, she is now assumption embarrassing proof in the form of a comically awkward advance that she is not the matchmaker she believes herself to be. When Mr. Knightley first suggests that Mr.


As can be seen in these critical analyses, Emma poses significant challenges to the critic. While it is a puddle of prose that has been nigh universally recognized as genius, it is also a work that eludes conclusive interpretation. Paradoxically, it could be that the novel's resistance to definitive analysis is one of its greatest strengths.

McMaster draws attention to the disappearance of Emma's governess in the first chapter of the novel, an possibility which is immediately followed by the appearance of Mr. Knightley.
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From this point onward, according to McMaster, the novel's body structure is a working out of the issues between them regarding society, marriage, learning and graceful conduct, and in every hotshot instance "Knightley is right and Emma is misemploy" (McMaster, 410).

Johnson, Claudia. Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988.

The social misadventures that are put together in motion by Emma's well-meaning interference, and her subsequent remorse, are not reflective of gradual self-awakening, according to Butler: "none of these discoveries means that Emma is necessarily more 'right' in any single instance at the end of the novel than she was at the commence" (Butler 387). For Butler, Emma's popular land sense has always been commit. Emma has a "natural comparison with the truth" that, while sometimes led off-kilter, is always present in her "firm, strong tone when she talks to her natural equal, Mr. Knightley" (Butler 389). Emma does not move from superficiality to depth or insensitivity to grace, tho from undisciplined self-indulgence to responsibility. She simply gives her already present common sense a greater priority as she moves by the action closer in spirit to Mr. Knightley. She "matures by submitting her imaginings to common sense and to the evidence" (Butler 391).

Mary Poovey also interprets Emma to be a story about female power, yet the power is specifically in relationship to the act of marriage. Poovey asserts t
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