Emma

1816, 1980 New American Library edition
Jane Austen
Emma
Original price $1.95, bought used for $1.99
Very ratty paperback
A-

Austen on Emma:  "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like."  Little did she guess that snobbish, manipulative self-centred Emma Woodhouse would age better than sweet, sincere Fanny Price.  This is partly that the 20th and 21st centuries have more women like Emma than Fanny and partly that Emma is not just a self-centred, manipulative snob.  Like all Austen heroines, she has a good heart and head, although the latter is stronger in her than the former.  Emma is not just a gleeful bitch like Lady Susan.  She really does mean well.  She just has to learn that one, most people don't want their lives managed; and two, she's far too inexperienced to know how to manage anyone's life except perhaps her father's.

Twenty-one-year-old Emma is not at the beginning of the novel, when she's just said goodbye to her former governess, ready to manage her own life.  Yes, she has a great deal of freedom, but she has not yet learned responsibility.  Life, including love, is just a game to her, but not one she's mastered.  The experiences she has in the year-long story teach her enough that she is an adult by the end.  Oh, she'll always be snobbish, manipulative, and self-centred, but less so.

Mr. Knightley, who's probably number two on my "Austen hunks" list, often gets credit for teaching Emma, through his lectures.  He's sixteen years older and the only character in the book who's at her intellectual level.  (Mrs. Weston comes close but she's too indulgent to challenge Emma.)  Certainly, he has a great deal of both common sense and wisdom, but he has his own blind spots.  When Emma puts down Robert Martin, Knightley puts down Harriet.  When Emma is unfair to Jane Fairfax, Knightley is unfair to Frank Churchill.  He also can be a bit tactless, ironically most often to Miss Bates.  Knightley's big lecture is of course the one at Box Hill, when Emma mocks the kind but ludicrous spinster.  It's cathartic to have Emma called on for her insensitivity, and yet she is not so callous that she isn't affected by his scolding.  She makes a genuine effort to be nicer to Miss Bates, and others, from then on.

As with Lizzy & Darcy, they challenge each other, bring out the best in each other.  More than with the P & P couple, this is done with bantering on both sides, as they are both very witty.  (Darcy is well-spoken, but too serious to be witty most of the time, except when he's snarking back at Caroline Bingley.)  Even though Knightley has known Emma for ages, and "fell in love with her when she was thirteen," the age difference actually seems to matter less than in Sense and Sensibility.  They've long admired each other but their feelings don't turn romantic until jealousy comes along.  And yet this is handled much more expertly and realistically than in most romantic comedies.

There's a realism about Emma that most of Austen doesn't reach.  More than ever, these characters feel real, not just in their time but ours.  Amusingly, I think it's the work that most talks about "modern" times, like the part about the comfort of modern carriages, and the modern table Emma has managed to get her father to use.  Like Humphry Clinker, it's a snapshot of its times, but with characters who feel more developed than archetypes.

Let's talk about Miss Bates.  Austen parodies herself when Emma remarks, "A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid!"  (It's as if Emma has just finished reading P & P and adored it.)  However, even Emma concedes that Miss Bates isn't a stereotypical old maid.  Miss Bates is cheerful and open-hearted, liked by everyone.  I suppose she might be annoying in real life, but she's delightful on the page, not unlike Mrs. Bennet.  Within the story, she not only provides amusement and a lesson for Emma, but clues for the mystery.

J.K. Rowling said, "I have never set up a surprise ending in a Harry Potter book without knowing I can never, and will never, do it anywhere near as well as Austen did in Emma."  On the umpteenth reading, the Jane & Frank subplot seems pretty obvious, but it took me completely by surprise the first time.  True, I tend not to be able to solve mysteries, but usually I at least know that that's the genre I'm reading.  I thought this was a village comedy, and then Austen pulled the carpet out from under me by introducing a romance where I suspected nothing.  Oh, I might've thought, once Mr. Knightley pointed it out to me, that Frank was flirting with both Emma and Jane, but who knew they were engaged!  Fanny Price might've guessed it, but I imagine that Lizzy Bennet would've been as hoodwinked as Emma and everyone in Highbury.

Another character who serves multiple purposes is Mrs. Elton.  I was rereading Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (1920) a few months ago, and it struck me this time with Emma that Carol Kennicott has a very similar situation to Mrs. Elton.  Each lady is a pretty and talented (but not too talented) newlywed who hopes to expose her husband's small town to sophisticated city ways.  Of course, Carol is our heroine in Main Street and meant to be more sympathetic, but I did understand Mrs. Elton's situation better.  Of course, Mrs. Elton is in the novel to throw Emma's faults into relief.  Everything Emma dislikes about Mrs. Elton is an exaggeration of Emma's own faults.  Even Mrs. Elton choosing Jane as her protegee is similar to Emma's near adoption of Harriet.  The main difference is Emma, and Carol, would never deliberately hurt someone's feelings in the way that Mrs. Elton does, and encourages Mr. Elton to do.  As with young Mr. Dashwood in S & S, a man with serious faults has married a woman who amplifies these faults.

The simplest of the major characters in the novel is Mr. Woodhouse.  Like Mary Elliot in Persuasion, he's a hypochondriac, but he's not as grating.  There's an interesting theme in the book of how stupid = nice, as seen in Mr. W, his daughter Isabella, Miss Bates, and of course Harriet Smith.  This isn't true of course, even in the world of the novel, but many of the characters act as if it is.  Of course, there are also not very bright characters who are not nice, like the Eltons, and on the other side bright, nice folks like the Westons.  Emma herself has to learn that her intelligence does not allow her to be thoughtless.

A few words about the movies.  The best adaptation is Clueless, a wonderfully fun movie on its own terms that does capture the Austen spirit in a truly modern (well, mid 1990s) way.  Of the two more literal adaptations that came out in the year after, I prefer the Kate Beckinsdale one ("What about little Henry???"), although the Paltrow version has the more attractive Knightley.

So do I like this novel more than Pride and Prejudice?  Maybe a shade better.  It's equally quotable, with my favorite line being Emma's reply to her father's confusion about why his little grandsons like their uncle to toss them up in the air, "One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."  And that quote explains why I'd be more likely to recommend a reader start with P & P, like I did.  Emma and Emma are not for everyone.