Emma (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (78 page)

25
(p. 426)
“join their party the same evening to Astley’s”:
They are going to a circus founded by trick rider and theatrical manager Philip Astley (1742—1814) and held in the Royal Amphitheater of Arts.

In 1995 four of Jane Austen’s novels were made into films: Ang Lee’s
Sense and Sensibility;
Simon Langton’s four-and-a-half-hour miniseries
Pride and Prejudice;
the BBC’s production of
Persuasion;
and
Clueless,
a modernization of
Emma.

Clueless
is particularly innovative in its adaptation of Jane Austen. Written and directed by Amy Heckerling, the film shifts the story to a modern-day Beverly Hills high school and an environment furnished with liposuction, drug abuse, and Starbucks. Alicia Silverstone is irresistible as the charismatic Cher, the rich, spoiled, and totally irresponsible matchmaking character based on Emma. She is inviting, affectionate, warm-hearted, and well-intentioned as she wanders through her plastic world, always aiming to improve the lives of others. She acts as a matchmaker for her teachers, makes over a coarse Brooklyn transplant, and keeps her stressed father’s cholesterol at acceptable levels. The film reproduces the confused romances of the novel, and the change in period allows for humorous translations: In the novel, gypsies harass Harriet; in the movie, boys at the mall hang Tai over the railing. Both subtle and self-mocking,
Clueless
was such a hit that it led to a television series—though one that largely ignored its origins in Jane Austen.

Douglas McGrath’s
Emma
(1996) is a stricter adaptation of Austen. In this light and finely toned version, Gwyneth Paltrow shines in the title role, supported by Toni Collette as Harriet, Jeremy Northam as Mr. Knightley, Alan Cumming as Mr. Elton, and Ewan McGregor in the role of Frank Churchill. Paltrow brings to life the nuances of gesture, facial expression, and manner of Austen’s Emma. The film’s production design is subtle and precise: in one scene, potted orange trees in a lush room frame a posing Emma; the lace, curtains, and croquet sets adorning the estates are pitch-perfect. In the opening sequence, a globe of the world spins amid the stars as the credits roll by, an ironic gesture that underscores the unimportance of village life in the grand scheme of things.

Virginia Woolf invokes Jane Austen with reverence in her landmark feminist tract
A Room of One’s Own
(1929). Lamenting the paucity of great woman writers in history, Woolf ascribes the phenomenon partially to the fact that writers need privacy to compose their works—a room of their own, which Austen lacked. Woolf describes the remarkable conditions in which Austen composed her masterpieces: in the family sitting-room, subject to frequent interruption, hiding her works with blotting paper whenever visitors entered. Yet despite these impediments and the confining patriarchal society in which she lived, Austen was, as Woolf put it, able to compose “without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote.”

We ... bestow no mean compliment upon the author of
Emma,
when we say that, keeping close to common incidents, and to such characters as occupy the ordinary walks of life, she has produced sketches of such spirit and originality, that we never miss the excitation which depends upon a narrative of uncommon events, arising from the consideration of minds, manners, and sentiments, greatly above our own. In this class she stands almost alone; for the scenes of Miss Edgeworth are laid in higher life, varied by more romantic incident, and by her remarkable power of embodying and illustrating national character. But the author of
Emma
confines herself chiefly to the middling classes of society; her most distinguished characters do not rise greatly above well-bred country gentlemen and ladies; and those which are sketched with most originality and precision, belong to a class rather below that standard. The narrative of all her novels is composed of such common occurrences as may have fallen under the observation of most folks; and her dramatis personæ conduct themselves upon the motives and principles which the readers may recognize as ruling their own and that of most of their acquaintances. The kind of moral, also, which these novels inculcate, applies equally to the paths of common life.

—from
Quarterly Review
(October 1815)

I have likewise read one of Miss Austen’s works “Emma”—read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable—anything like warmth or enthusiasm; anything energetic, poignant, heart-felt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstration the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer.... Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands and feet; what sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study, but what is the unseen seat of Life and the sentient target of Death—
this
Miss Austen ignores.

—from a letter to W. S. Williams (April 12, 1850)

Jane Austen [is] the greatest artist that has ever written, using the term to signify the most perfect mastery over the means to her end. There are heights and depths in human nature Miss Austen has never scaled nor fathomed, there are worlds of passionate existence into which she has never set foot; but although this is obvious to every reader, it is equally obvious that she has risked no failures by attempting to delineate that which she had not seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a perfect orb, and vital. Life, as it presents itself to an English gentlewoman peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village, is mirrored in her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest for all time. To read one of her books is like an actual experience of life: you know the people as if you have lived with them. The marvellous reality and subtle distinctive traits noticeable in her portraits has led Macaulay to call her a prose Shakspeare. If the whole force of the distinction which lies in that epithet prose be fairly appreciated, no one, we think, will dispute the compliment; for out of Shakspeare it would be difficult to find characters so typical yet so nicely demarcated within the limits of their kind.

 

—from
Westminster Review
(July 1852)

 

Emma,
perhaps, is the work upon which most suffrages would meet as the most perfect of all [Miss Austen’s] performances.

—from
The Literary History of England
(1895)

 

Emma has more actual faults than any other of Miss Austen’s persons who are intended to gain the reader’s sympathy. She is something of a snob, understands perfectly the privileges of her social rank, and means to have others understand them as well. She thinks she understands human nature, and delights to act in the role of match-maker, in which capacity she is a failure. Best of all, she is ignorant of her own heart, as the most charming heroines in fiction are wont to be. She does not realise that she loves Knightley until the spark of jealousy sets her soul aflame. The curious thing is, that before we finish the book we actually like her all the better for her faults, and for her numerous mistakes; her heart is pure, sound, and good, and her sense of principle is as deeply rooted as the Rock of Gibraltar. She is, however, a snob; and this is the only instance in fiction that I can remember at this moment where a snob is not only attractive, but lovable.

—from
Essays on Books
(1914)

 

‘Emma’ is the very climax of Jane Austen’s work; and a real appreciation of ‘Emma’ is the final test of citizenship in her kingdom. For this is not an easy book to read; it should never be the beginner’s primer, nor be published without a prefatory synopsis. Only when the story has been thoroughly assimilated, can the infinite delights and subtleties of its workmanship begin to be appreciated, as you realise the manifold complexity of the book’s web, and find that every sentence, almost every epithet, has its definite reference to equally unemphasised points before and after in the development of the plot. Thus it is that, while twelve readings of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ give you twelve periods of pleasure repeated, as many readings of ‘Emma’ give you that pleasure, not repeated only, but squared and squared again with each perusal, till at every fresh reading you feel anew that you never understood anything like the widening sum of its delights. But, until you know the story, you are apt to find its movement dense and slow and obscure, difficult to follow, and not very obviously worth the following.

For this is
the
novel of character, and of character alone, and of one dominating character in particular. And many a rash reader, and some who are not rash, have been shut out on the threshold of Emma’s Comedy by a dislike of Emma herself. Well did Jane Austen know what she was about, when she said, ‘I am going to take a heroine whom nobody but myself will much like.’ And, in so far as she fails to make people like Emma, so far would her whole attempt have to be judged a failure, were it not that really the failure, like the loss, is theirs who have not taken the trouble to understand what is being attempted. Jane Austen loved tackling problems; her hardest of all, her most deliberate, and her most triumphantly solved, is Emma.

—from
Quarterly Review
(July 1917)

 

Jane Austen is ... a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet is composed of something that expands in the reader’s mind and endows with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial. Always the stress is laid upon character. How, we are made to wonder, will Emma behave when Lord Osborne and Tom Musgrave make their call at five minutes before three, just as Mary is bringing in the tray and the knife-case? It is an extremely awkward situation. The young men are accustomed to much greater refinement. Emma may prove herself ill-bred, vulgar, a nonentity. The turns and twists of the dialogue keep us on the tenterhooks of suspense. Our attention is half upon the present moment, half upon the future. And when, in the end, Emma behaves in such a way as to vindicate our highest hopes of her, we are moved as if we had been made witnesses of a matter of the highest importance.

—from
The Common Reader
(1925)

 

 

I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression and airs of personal immunity—how ill they set on the face, say, of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favorite author! I read and re-read, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.

 

—from
Abinger Harvest
( 1936)

1. Speaking of
Emma,
Jane Austen said “I am going to take a heroine whom nobody but myself will like much.” What would you say is likeable and what is hard to like about the character Emma?