Emma is quite different from the other literary works we have read in this class, at least to my mind. It is more direct and explanatory as it unfolds itself, making it easy to follow and apppreciate. The story also seems to resemble the modern novel a little more closely as well. .
There is obviously a narrator in this story. It is the narrator's voice that interests me the most. It is ever-present, audible in the lines and pages of the story, yet is not like Behn's narrator. The reader does not seem to be told what to think. At least as far I have read, there do not seem to even be the vague suggestions on what the reader should take from the story as was present in Evelina. In my ears, I felt like I could hear the voice of the main character, Emma, as the narrator even when the reader was not seeing the story from over her shoulder.
The cover of the book (Penguin Classics copy) also struck me. Assuming the picture is Emma's, it seems quite fitting for Emma at least considering the personality painted by the story. She has a smug expression on her face, that is almost openly defying. The expression seems to defy the norms in a relatively subdued and almost submissive manner. One could surmise that her expression was borne of fatigue, if one had not been exposed to her as a character in the story.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Emma
Everything's Jane, or The Two Janes: Spencer & Austen and Women Writers
Jane Spencer argues in her article that women writers of the eighteenth-century moved toward a mode of writing that conflated the domestic, private world of women with the outward, public sphere of men by establishing their fiction in the emerging public sphere - a sphere that comprised private groups in public interaction. In doing so, women writers were able to meet the heretofore masculine tradition of political writing in the genre of romance and domesticity they had been more or less confined in.
Jane Austen deftly fits Spencer's model, and in several ways exemplifies it. Austen weaves her Emma in an environment of domestic middle-class English countryside life, following the meddling of Emma Woodhouse in the romantic affairs of others. Part of what makes the story so significant and engrossing is the terrible impact that such meddling can have. In nineteenth-century life, the social mobility of a woman or a man depended greatly on his or her marital match. The social and political weight of a man could be increased or decreased according to marriage - certainly it could make or break a woman. Emma's interference in the lives of others and the ensuing conflict that arises over it not only provides positive support for Spencer's thesis concerning the moral authority of women writers, but also illustrates her conception of the negative influence of the political and social authority of men. Emma's obsession with the act of marriage, and indeed her own disinclination for it, demonstrates the problems inherent in the masculine obsession over social class due to marriage. She tries to force poor Ms. Smith and poor Mr. Elton into naturally awkward social positions, and at the possible detriment of Harriet and herself. Emma is aware of the social danger of marriage and is personally unwilling to gamble with it (unless, as she admits, "were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing!"), but her willingness to interfere with the social standings of others emphasizes the blatant faults of the impersonal manipulation of social marriage over romantic marriage (82). Emma's progression in the novel reflects Austen's intentions for the reader - toward an understanding of the importance of proper action in domestic matters due to its reflection in social and political matters, and its reflection in the personal happiness or grief of individuals.