Emma

Introduction

WHEN JANE AUSTEN EMBARKED on her novel Emma, she is said to have said, I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like. She could not have been more wrong. While hardly anybody has found a good word to say for Fanny Price, the heroine of the preceding novel, most readers and critics have joined in liking Emma and admiring the work. Mine is a dissenting voice. Much as I admire the novel, what I cannot do is like Emma. But then, one might argue, Jane Austen does not wholly intend that we should.

Emma was published on Jane Austen’s fortieth birthday, in December 1815, and was the last of her works to be published in her lifetime. It is a confident and, as her own comment suggests, in some ways slightly provocative performance. It opens with great panache, with one of those great first sentences that seems so effortless that it almost deludes one into thinking one could do it oneself: Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence. . . . The gauntlet thrown down in that word seemed is picked up at once by the attentive reader. Trouble is in store for the happy and comfortable Emma. As storytelling, this is magnificent.

It is also immediately obvious, to those readers (like its first) who have been following her work chronologically, that this new heroine will be as unlike her last as possible. Fanny Price, of Mansfield Park, had been unimposing in appearance (on her first introduction as a little girl we are told that at least there was nothing in her to disgust her relations), simple, and poor. Hers was a version of the Cinderella story: the poor waif, the orphan, the ward who wins the prince from her competitive sisters through patience and humility rather than through beauty or wit. Fanny’s role was to watch and wait and be silent. Emma’s is more active. She can speak, command, direct, manipulate. She has, as we are at once informed, the power of choice, a very rare gift for a woman, and, of course, far rarer then than now.

Emma is rich. She is, in fact, very rich. It has been calculated that the thirty thousand pounds with which she is blessed would be worth more than a million now. She is much the richest of Jane Austen’s heroines, and far richer than Austen herself had ever dreamed of being. (While writing this novel, Austen, her mother, and her sister Cassandra were in part dependent on the charity of her brothers, although by 1813 she was able to boast that from the sales of her first two published novels she had written herself into £250—which only makes me long for more.) Emma Woodhouse is thus intentionally elevated above the fears and mercenary ambitions that torment and distort the lives of so many of Austen’s female characters. She need not fear that she will remain an old maid. She has a handsome dowry. Offers will be made. She can choose to remain single, or she can wed. She knows she is a very lucky woman, and while she does not entirely take her good fortune for granted, she does not agonize over it, feel guilt about it, or attempt to spread it philanthropically around her as lavishly as later Victorian heroines were wont to do. She intends to enjoy it.

Her freedom of action is carefully contrasted in this most intricate of plots with the constraints under which most of the women and some of the men of her small neighborhood suffer. The first of these that we meet is Mrs. Weston, who had once been Emma’s governess, though we must not say so: if we do allude indelicately to this past commercial relationship (as Mrs. Elton does on one occasion) we will get a very cold look from Emma.

True, Miss Taylor had become almost one of the family during her sixteen years with the Woodhouses—more like a friend, more like a sister, we are told. But still, she had been a governess, and remained a dependent, until to everyone’s surprise the eligible widower Mr. Weston marries her. At once, she acquires a higher status. Mr. Woodhouse may refer to her continually as poor Miss Taylor, but everybody else knows that she has chosen very wisely. Emma in particular appreciates her friend’s good luck, although it acts against her own interest, and says to her father not entirely as a joke, You would not have had Miss Taylor live with us for ever and bear all my odd humours, when she might have a house of her own? That house of her own is very important for Mrs. Weston, and the welcoming, sociable atmosphere of Randalls plays a large part in the action—larger, one might think, than the eventual arrival of a baby daughter. (Jane Austen does not seem to have cared much for babies, although she concedes that others seem to, and generously allows Mrs. Weston a happy pregnancy and successful delivery.) We do not doubt that Mrs. Weston, with every domestic comfort, a pleasant husband, and a carriage of her own, has done better than she had expected. As poor Miss Taylor she must often have asked herself what her own fate would be when Emma married.

In Chapter 3, we are introduced to a new range of female characters in the persons of Mrs. and Miss Bates, Mrs. Goddard, and Harriet Smith, whom Emma is to adopt as a companion-replacement for Mrs. Weston. The first three at first meeting appear as subsidiary figures, small character parts required by the plot for the entertainment of Mr. Woodhouse and the creation of Highbury atmosphere. We expect our attention to focus more on Harriet, who being young and pretty and of mysterious provenance (she is the natural daughter of somebody, we are told) would seem to be more interesting material for fiction. And in a sense we are right, for Emma’s manipulation of Harriet’s matrimonial prospects forms one of the principal strands of the plot. Yet Harriet herself is not presented as a very interesting character, despite her interesting situation. Indeed, that is one of the points of Harriet. Her prettiness, her amiable sweetness of nature, her malleability, ignorance, and indeed stupidity are all seized upon by Emma as a foil for her own very different attractions. There is surely something ominous in the first description of her appearance: Her beauty happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair, with a fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of great sweetness. Discounting the fact that the word plump was used more favorably in those pre-anorexic days, Harriet nevertheless does not appear as a very strong contender for our affection or for that of any potential hero. She is firmly put in her place by her author, and remains very nearly as insipid and silly as when the novel begins (although we are told, damningly, that at least under Emma’s influence she loses her schoolgirl giggle). Her fate is of little real interest, to Emma or to us. She is a diversion from the real plot, and an occasion for a display of Emma’s faults and virtues: as a character, her freedom of movement and independence of thought are strictly limited.

The case of Miss Bates is somewhat different. Miss Bates is a character of great interest and originality, although she is neither young nor pretty and therefore has no active part to play in the dominant and highly conspicuous plot of matchmaking and marriageableness (Emerson’s dismissive term). She has almost no choices to make. The passage that introduces her is incisive in its assessment:

[S]he had no intellectual superiority to make atonement to herself or frighten those who might hate her into outward respect. She had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother and the endeavour to make a small income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without goodwill. . . . She . . . thought herself a most fortunate creature . . . was a great talker upon little matters, which exactly suited Mr. Woodhouse, full of trivial communications and harmless gossip.

The spectacle of Miss Bates, vulnerable, powerless, foolish and happy, acts both as a scarecrow and as a moral touchstone for the conduct of others. We now tend to find her one of the most significant portraits in the book, partly because we have been alerted to the dark Jane Austen, the less kindly Jane rescued from the Janeites and revealed by D. W. Harding’s seminal essay in Scrutiny. Harding and his critical successors invite us to consider not the coziness of Highbury but its spitefulness, and to pick up from Austen’s other novels what he describes as almost paranoid comments on small town and rural gossip, malice, hatred, and domestic espionage: he suggests that Austen herself used her own unquestioned intellectual superiority to frighten those who might hate her into respect. Her satire, he argues, is a means of self-preservation in the society in which she was trapped, but of which she was intensely critical.

Miss Bates, then, in this reading, is Austen herself, stripped of her intellectual defenses, and laughed at, indeed possibly hated, by her neighbors? Well, not quite. For we are told, and most convincingly shown, that Miss Bates is not hated but loved. She is a welcome guest wherever she goes, and her social function is prized in a small community in need of harmless gossip and quiet prosing. She talks too much, but we are never in any doubt that Emma is wrong to mock her; when Emma’s cleverness is exposed as malice at the famous Box Hill outing, we are surely meant to feel deeply for Miss Bates. Some have argued that Emma is punished too severely by Mr. Knightley and her author for a momentary loss of temper, and that it is priggish to expect unfailing tolerance from a high-spirited young woman for a character who in real life, outside the pages of the book, would have been an intolerable bore. But this neglects the evidence that Emma herself has consistently neglected Miss Bates: her rudeness at Box Hill is the culmination of a series of little incidents of short-changing and thoughtlessness and dismissive thinking. It is Emma’s inability to suffer Miss Bates gladly that throws Miss Bates and Jane Fairfax into the competitive clutches of Mrs. Elton. With which does Austen most wish us to sympathize and identify—the low boredom threshold of clever Emma, or the spinster-vulnerability and poverty of good Miss Bates, who is so quick-sighted to everybody’s merits?

This seems to me to be one of the key questions of the book, and it has no very obvious answer. In Mansfield Park Austen, through the persons of Fanny Price and Mary Crawford, had obliged us to see the virtues of the quiet and the immorality of the clever: the moral balance, if far from comfortable, is clear. The lineup of opposing qualities here is very different. Emma far more resembles Mary than Fanny; simplicity and humility are qualities she notably lacks. Yet she is our heroine and our viewpoint on the action, if not our touchstone—indeed, she is almost the reverse of a touchstone, for she is almost invariably wrong. She leaps from error to error, sometimes taking the clever reader with her, sometimes not (the ingenuity and complexity of the plot as detective story, with its many clues, is dazzling), but through each turn and twist it is through Emma’s eyes that we observe, through her heart that we feel, and most notably, with her thoughts that we think. The novel has long passages of introspection in which Emma minutely investigates her own motives and those of others: and yet, throughout, we are held at arm’s length from her. We observe rather than participate in her thought processes. She may be clever, but her author is yet more clever, and we are invited to see her through the author’s eyes. We cannot identify with Emma, however closely we follow her thoughts, because we know her thoughts to be mistaken: we are not permitted to suffer with her humiliations, or rejoice in her triumphs. We see her from outside, from a Mr. Knightley-observer-viewpoint, even while entering into the intimacies of her own delusions. It is an uncanny and puzzling performance.

Take, for instance, the events and tone of Volume I, Chapter 10, when Harriet and Emma visit the poor. Emma at this stage is already well advanced in her scheme of marrying Harriet off to Mr. Elton, and as they walk along Vicarage Lane past Mr. Elton’s residence she makes pointed remarks about there go you and your riddle-book one of these days—remarks which may seem to have all the archness and indeed vulgarity of the future Mrs. Elton herself. We are to discover that Emma’s encouragement of Harriet to fall in love is both cruel and stupid, but even had she been successful, surely she would still have been ill-advised? (Her interfering with Harriet’s affection for Robert Martin we have already witnessed, and, by the very different standards of her society and of our own, condemned.)

As the walk progresses, Harriet proceeds to cross-question Emma about her own matrimonial plans, which seems natural enough on her part, as Emma’s mind as revealed to Harriet and the reader clearly runs on little but other people’s marriages. Emma replies that she has very little intention of ever marrying at all, partly because she has never met anybody superior enough for her, and partly because she has none of the usual inducements to marry: Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want. She comes first with her father and is mistress of her own house: why change? (Emma, as we discover, is extremely eager to take precedence, and is very put out by the appearance in her little kingdom of the newly wed Mrs. Elton.) Harriet raises the specter of Miss Bates, which prompts Emma to reassure her friend that although Miss Bates is indeed ridiculous—so silly—so satisfied—so smiling—so prosing—so undistinguishing and unfastidious—there is little danger of her ever resembling Miss Bates, because she has money of her own. Then comes her most devastating generalization: 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 as sensible and pleasant as anybody else. She even goes on to justify the common prejudice by saying that a narrow income may indeed contract the mind and sour the temper. Remembering the reality of the generous-hearted Miss Bates, she has the grace to retract this at once, but she does leave us with a question mark against her own contracted life and mind.

Harriet does not give up her catechism easily, despite Emma’s decisive replies, and asks how Emma will employ her solitary middle and old age. Emma replies that she will occupy herself with drawing, music, carpet-work, and nieces; her confidence in her own powers is as great as the pride that the much-mocked Mrs. Elton takes in her own resources. (Neither Emma nor Mrs. Elton, we may note, practice the piano much, or read much, or do anything very much: both are dilettantes and talk more than they perform.) The conversation meanders on, taking in the subject of nieces and the truly accomplished niece Jane Fairfax (One is sick of the very name of Jane Fairfax, says Emma) until the young women reach the cottage of poverty and sickness. Emma, we are told, was very compassionate, and yet was without romantic expectations of extraordinary virtue from the poor, so she is able to offer personal attention, counsel, sympathy, comfort, and advice as well as her purse; and as she leaves she says These are the sights, Harriet, to do one good. How trifling they make everything else appear! I feel now as if I could think of nothing but these poor creatures all the rest of the day; and yet, who can say how soon it may all vanish from my mind?

Very true, says Harriet, and, of course, within two minutes the poor are utterly forgotten and Emma is back at her trifling matchmaking, even going so far as to break her own bootlace on purpose as part of her plan to trap Mr. Elton into a proposal—for this accidental meeting with Mr. Elton while engaged on a charitable scheme must, she thinks, bring a great increase of love. Thus even the sick and the poor are pressed to play a part in Emma’s plot.

It is difficult to know quite what the author’s intentions are here. We are clearly permitted to dismiss Emma’s dismissal of marriage for herself as mere self-deluded bravado, young-woman talk that a serious love affair will easily dispel; equally clearly, its sociological content (particularly interesting to a feminist readership) is valid. Emma need not marry for status, as she already comes first at home and in Highbury—and it is worth bearing in mind here that although marriage was the goal of most women at this period, it too brought its disadvantages. Until the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, a woman’s fortune became on marriage the property of her husband. There were other hazards in the risks of childbed and the duties of providing an heir. Mrs. Bennet must have been desperate by the time she produced her fifth unwanted daughter, and Jane Austen characteristically comments of her pregnant niece Anna Lefroy: Poor Animal, she will be worn out before she is thirty.—I am very sorry for her.—Mrs Clement too is in that way again. I am quite tired of so many children. Mrs Benn has a 13th. At thirty-nine, Austen might well prefer visiting nieces to the notion of children of her own, and she writes again to her own favorite niece, Fanny Knight:

You are inimitable, irresistible. . . . Who can keep pace with the fluctuations of your Fancy, the Capprizios of your Taste, the Contradictions of your Feelings? . . . Oh! what a loss it will be when you are married. . . . I shall hate you when your delicious play of Mind is all settled down into conjugal and maternal affections.

Unmarried Fanny is clearly more entertaining than married Anna; Emma Woodhouse is more entertaining than her hypochondriac married sister Isabella. Emma’s anti-marriage manifesto has a grain of hard sense in it, although we are not meant to take it entirely at its face value.

Her comments on the status of Miss Bates are harder to place. Should we judge Emma seriously for them or do we take them too as the idle lighthearted talk of twenty-one years? Do we judge the society that finds celibacy contemptible? Does Emma judge it, or does she accept its values without questioning them? And what is our attitude to be towards Emma’s own portrait of herself as a maiden aunt? Are we to find this comic, are we to find it yet another aspect of Emma’s own habitual lack of self-knowledge, or are we, as suggested above, to see in it a viable prospect for our heroine?

I am not quite sure of the answers to any of these queries. It would be possible to argue that Austen’s attitude towards her heroine is ironic throughout, but when we move to the short (and, of course, indirectly narrated) episode in the cottage, we are on even more uncertain ground—an uncertainty, paradoxically, caused partly by Austen’s own sudden switch towards direct authorial control. When she describes Emma’s attitude to the poor, there seems to be no irony at play. Emma is both compassionate and practical: so we are told, and so we must accept. Her sigh about these sights doing one good strikes a modern ear more offensively than it would have struck readers in an age when private charity was considered a natural and acceptable activity for the rich, but even taking that into account, Emma’s knowledge that she will (as she does) forget these poor creatures more or less instantly is a little worrying. Are we to admire her, at this point, for her self-knowledge, a quality in which she is so often deficient? I suspect we are: Emma’s astringently quick placing and forgetting of an uncomfortable out-of-frame experience is held up for our admiration, and contrasted favorably with the sentimental vacuity of Harriet’s echo, Poor creatures! One can think of nothing else.

Emma, then, is a mixture of self-deception and self-knowledge: sometimes we see through her, sometimes she sees through herself. But where does that leave her and our attitude to the society she inhabits, with its cast of visible and invisible poor, with its small group of acceptable families, with its not-quite-acceptable but worthy yeomen, with its wealthy and respectable tradesmen (friendly, good sort of people) who can after ten years be allowed with much deference to ask Miss Woodhouse to a dance? (We will not mention the gypsies who frighten Harriet and her friend Miss Bickerton in Volume III, Chapter 3; they are not of Highbury, and seem to come from another planet. Nor will we do more than allude to the fact that Austen was completing her final draft of Emma in March 1815 while Napoleon was escaping from Elba and preparing for Waterloo.) Highbury, it has been argued, is a microcosm, but a microcosm of what?

It is a peculiarly insulated world, and although the longest of her novels, Emma is geographically more confined than any other Austen work. All its principal events, apart from a day’s outing to Box Hill and a day at neighboring Donwell Abbey, take place in Highbury itself, and when Frank Churchill goes to London or Richmond he travels beyond our knowing. Jane Austen’s habitual distrust of London society is parodied, but only slightly, in Mr. Woodhouse. Emma herself seems relatively happy to stay where she is; she has none of Elizabeth Bennet’s longing to see men and mountains, none of Anne Elliot’s active delight in a trip to Lyme Regis. Even the timid Fanny Price, with her unexpressed desire to see Sotherton, is more of an adventurer than Emma, who has never seen the sea. The result should be claustrophobic, and some have found it so. Others have admired the extraordinary ingenuity with which commonplace events are rendered dramatic, and the riddles of human relationships are unravelled. (The book is full of riddles, guessing games, and word games.) But admiration for the plot can go hand in hand with certain impatience with its confines: Is that famous little piece of ivory here too small even for its author?

Great claims have been made for the profundity, range and moral content of Emma, but I must confess to finding it more and more ambiguous and unsatisfactory. Austen’s attitude towards her quick and clever heroine (who is so often so slow) remains unresolved: sometimes she is indulged by the author, sometimes reprimanded, like the spoiled child Mr. Knightley believes her to be. The weight given to Emma’s traditional and highly conservative social values or to her personal judgment is by no means clear. As we have seen, she finds it hard to tolerate Miss Bates, and she is jealous of Jane Fairfax, with whom she sees herself in competition. Her contempt for the Eltons is largely condoned by the author, but her sense of her own dignity with regard to the nouveaux riches Coles is mildly mocked. When she hears the Coles are giving a dinner she looks forward to refusing, and regretted that her father’s known habits would be giving her refusal less meaning than she could wish. When, however, no invitation arrives, she is disappointed, is irritated by the prospect of being left in solitary grandeur, even supposing the omission intended as a compliment, and accepts with something like relief and alacrity when a properly expressed invitation finally arrives.

This is comedy, and at her expense. But what are we to make of her reflections as she views Mr. Knightley’s home, Donwell Abbey? Here she is filled with all the honest pride and complacency which her alliance with the present and future proprietor could fairly warrant, and she inspects the estate with an increasing respect for it, as the residence of a family of such true gentility, untainted in blood and understanding. She reflects that her sister Isabella, in marrying Mr. Knightley’s brother John, had connected herself unexceptionably. She had given them neither men, nor names, nor places that could raise a blush.

Is there also comedy at Emma’s expense here? Are we to read through Emma’s patronizing approval of her sister’s choice of husband to her own half-formed intention of marrying Mr. Knightley and becoming the mistress of Donwell? Certainly her competitive instincts in this sequence are strongly roused by Mrs. Elton’s possessive over-familiarity with Knightley. Maybe this country house visit is intended as a comic counterpart to Elizabeth Bennet’s clearly playful claim that she began to fall in love with Darcy when she first saw the riches of Pemberley? If so, the narrative is even more double-edged, more devious than it appears, and hedges its bets so thoroughly that it almost negates itself. There are ironies in Emma’s attitude towards the property of Donwell, expressed in her occasional (and false) solicitude about her little nephew’s inheritance, a solicitude that fades away as soon as she finds herself in line to produce heirs to inherit. But we cannot be sure that the language of honest pride and untainted blood is intended satirically. Donwell does indeed house, in Mr. Knightley, the values that Austen and Emma admire, and we are meant to share Emma’s view that a Harriet Smith is unworthy of them. Emma’s feelings, when she discovers that she has unwittingly encouraged Harriet to hope for Mr. Knightley’s affection, are appalled and appalling, and the cruelty with which she behaves to her onetime friend is truly shocking. Harriet, with her tainted blood, unfortunate name, and lack of understanding, is despatched to London, out of reach of the reproach of Emma’s conscience, and we can only forgive Emma because we know Harriet is shallow, fickle, and simple, and will soon be consoled. This, of course, does not begin to excuse or to explain why Emma found her company acceptable in the first place. For this, we must judge her, but it is by no means clear that her creator does. On the contrary, when we are told in the last chapter that Harriet is the daughter of a tradesman decent enough to have always wished for concealment, there seems to be no mockery in the judgment that the stain of illegitimacy, unbleached by nobility or wealth, would have been a stain indeed. The double standards whereby concealment is wrong for Frank Churchill, but decent for a tradesman, are not even discussed. They are merely, baldly accepted, as is the curious nature of the unbleached stain.

Emma is, of course, judged by Mr. Knightley for befriending and misleading Harriet, and for being rude to Miss Bates. His speech after Box Hill, when he reproaches Emma for her unkind wit, is one of the strongest in the book, as he reminds Emma that Miss Bates is poor; she has sunk from the comforts she was born to; and, if she live to old age, must probably sink more. But what really takes us aback here is neither Emma’s thoughtlessness nor Mr. Knightley’s imaginative compassion and consideration—it is the brutal nature of the society that they and their author all accept as a given fact. That phrase, if she live to old age, must probably sink more, is casually if considerately uttered and frankly acknowledged as fair comment; it reminds us what life was like before the old-age pension. We have already seen, in the little vignettes of the Bates’s domestic life, that they live very near the edge of discomfort, worried about heat and food and doctor’s bills. Yet neither Mr. Knightley nor Emma questions the priorities of this world. Indeed, they uphold the distinctions of the past, and resent the threat to the established order represented by Mrs. Elton and the Sucklings of Maple Grove.

Even the extreme situation of Jane Fairfax does not suggest any way out of this narrow cul-de-sac of vision, or any shaking of the beliefs of its inhabitants. Jane, we are told, is extremely gifted as a musician; she is highly educated and highly intelligent. Yet the only prospect conceived for her by herself, her author, or her relatives is to become a governess, a fate always painted by Austen in grim tones, and here perhaps more grimly than ever. Jane refers to the agencies that find posts for people like herself as offices for the sale—not quite of human flesh—but of human intellect and compares the governess trade to the slave trade. (Agitation against the slave trade was already widespread: agitation against the exploitation of governesses did not begin in earnest for another forty years.) Emma, although she does not like Jane, is disturbed by what appears to be her fate, and muses sympathetically on the difference of woman’s destiny—without, however, doing anything about it at all beyond sending round a little arrowroot from Hartfield. It is notable that throughout the novel Jane Fairfax is seen in long shot, almost as though she were a character from another story. She could, one feels, become a figure in the Brontës’ world of thirty years on, which was peopled by governesses in deep, and on some levels successful, rebellion against society, by women who were unable and unwilling to accept their fate stoically. Jane Fairfax, who was seen wandering about the meadows, at some distance from Highbury, was on her way out of Highbury towards the frame of mind that produced Jane Eyre—but, of course, this being an Austen novel, she is reprieved from such turmoil of the spirit by a convenient marriage. She could never have been condemned to earning her own living. Emma has choice: Jane Fairfax has no choice but to move into another style, another plot, another author’s books (and indeed, at least one writer, Naomi Royde-Smith, has tried her hand at telling her hidden story, in Jane Fairfax).

There are undercurrents, then, in the safe little world of Highbury: there are hints of misery, poverty, penury, as well as of boredom and confinement and the triviality of social intercourse. But by and large, the novel endorses its own scope and values. There are no villains and seducers here, no Wickhams and Henry Crawfords and Willoughbys: Frank Churchill’s worst offences are to conceal his engagement, flirt with Emma, tease his betrothed, and embarrass her by the unexplained gift of a piano. There is no melodrama, no sudden illnesses or broken limbs, and the only convenient coincidence is the death of Mrs. Churchill. This is domestic realism almost with a vengeance. In Austen’s own terms, it ought to be the most satisfying of her works, and indeed many have found it so, and have argued that here, at the height of her powers, and with a fair prospect of personal success before her, she managed to produce her most complete and polished work.

All this is true, and yet there is something in it that fails to satisfy, almost as a result of its artistic and narrative expertise. It grips the reader, but to what end? In some way it turns circle upon itself, as Emma discovers that the great unknown lover is the old friend and mentor of her childhood, and that the great adventure of sex and marriage will take place within her own childhood home. Is not this playing it too safe? This is an enclosed, endogamous conclusion. There is no way out of the Highbury circuit: one marries one’s brother-in-law and sets up house with one’s father. It almost seems that Jane Austen, even while gently mocking Mr. Woodhouse’s terror of the unknown, endorses it. There will be a great many people talking at once. You will not like the noise, he says, deploring a projected dinner party, and one suspects the author half-agrees with her caricature valetudinarian. Is not Mr. Woodhouse, after all, too much indulged? Sometimes we feel we could do with a little more noise, a little less talk about colds and chills and sore throats. Mr. Woodhouse’s old-world manners and courtesies are upheld, while those of the noisier invaders—Frank Churchill, Mrs. Elton—are condemned. And Mr. Knightley’s role as bearer of those values cannot be overestimated. As a hero, he presents serious problems to the reader.

Throughout the novel, Mr. Knightley is presented as a touchstone for good sense and judgment—except, perhaps, on the rare occasions when we are allowed to see that sexual jealousy is making him overreact in his dislike of Frank Churchill. He is right about Harriet, right about Mr. Elton, right about Jane Fairfax. Where Emma guesses wrong, he, the watchful observer, guesses right. He is more modest, more unassuming, less overtly snobbish than Emma, and we are given to believe he manages his estate responsibly. Yet we should note that his values are as hierarchical as hers. It is simply that, as in the case of Robert Martin, he reads the fine details of the hierarchy better. His kindness and thoughtful generosity towards the Bateses and Harriet spring from a sense of his own social obligations as well as from his natural goodness—social obligations which he wishes Emma also, in her position of patronage, to shoulder. And what has he been doing, may we ask, from an impertinent twentieth-century perspective, so long unmarried? Has he really been waiting all this time for Emma, so many years his junior, to become nubile?

Austen’s other principal couples are, by and large, much better matched. It is ironic that in this novel, so concerned with the heroine’s misguided and rather unattractive zeal for matchmaking, the author herself should have failed, as matchmaker, to convince. Is there an intended irony in this? I fear not. It is much easier to imagine the Darcys, the Tilneys, the Bertrams, the Wentworths at home than the Knightleys. There is something too schematic, too managed in this marriage of Wit and Wisdom. Emma has been given only the illusion of choice, of liberty. Too much has been sacrificed by the author, too little risked. It is as though, in this work, Austen had settled for too little—for what she knew she could do perfectly, rather than what she dared (as in her next novel) to attempt. The domestic atmosphere, the narrow round and common task, both comfort and stifle, and they lack here the arduous spiritual dimension of Fanny’s hard choices in Mansfield Park. Emma, with her thirty thousand and the world before her, chooses the man next door.

And, moreover, she at first, in a parody of filial docility, is determined not to marry at all until her father dies (remember that Jane Austen’s ailing hypochondriac mother lived to be eighty-eight)—a resolution to which Mr. Knightley rightly objects. But even he settles for living with his father-in-law, and only manages to fix a wedding day when, on the last page, Mrs. Weston’s poultry-house is providentially robbed and Mr. Knightley can be introduced to Hartfield not as a daughter-snatcher but as a poultry-preserver. This is a joke, but it is only half a joke. The atmosphere of Highbury—parochial, timid, inward-looking, change-resisting—has won. One fears for Emma and Mr. Knightley. There has been too much compromise. Society has triumphed, and we can tell, reading with the hindsight of history, that the triumph is only temporary: its preservers will be its victims.

—Margaret Drabble

VOLUME I

Chapter One

EMMA WOODHOUSE, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence, and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father, and had, in consequence of her sister’s marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses, and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection.

Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Woodhouse’s family, less as a governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly of Emma. Between them it was more the intimacy of sisters. Even before Miss Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess, the mildness of her temper had hardly allowed her to impose any restraint; and the shadow of authority being now long passed away, they had been living together as friend and friend very mutually attached, and Emma doing just what she liked, highly esteeming Miss Taylor’s judgement, but directed chiefly by her own.

The real evils indeed of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.

Sorrow came—a gentle sorrow—but not at all in the shape of any disagreeable consciousness. Miss Taylor married. It was Miss Taylor’s loss which first brought grief. It was on the wedding day of this beloved friend that Emma first sat in mournful thought of any continuance. The wedding over and the bride-people gone, her father and herself were left to dine together, with no prospect of a third to cheer a long evening. Her father composed himself to sleep after dinner, as usual, and she had then only to sit and think of what she had lost.

The event had every promise of happiness for her friend. Mr. Weston was a man of unexceptionable character, easy fortune, suitable age, and pleasant manners; and there was some satisfaction in considering with what self-denying, generous friendship she had always wished and promoted the match; but it was a black morning’s work for her. The want of Miss Taylor would be felt every hour of every day. She recalled her past kindness—the kindness, the affection of sixteen years—how she had taught and how she had played with her from five years old—how she had devoted all her powers to attach and amuse her in health—and how nursed her through the various illnesses of childhood. A large debt of gratitude was owing here; but the intercourse of the last seven years, the equal footing and perfect unreserve which had soon followed Isabella’s marriage on their being left to each other, was yet a dearer, tenderer recollection. It had been a friend and companion such as few possessed, intelligent, well informed, useful, gentle, knowing all the ways of the family, interested in all its concerns, and peculiarly interested in herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of hers—one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose, and who had such an affection for her as could never find fault.

How was she to bear the change? It was true that her friend was going only half a mile from them; but Emma was aware that great must be the difference between a Mrs. Weston only half a mile from them and a Miss Taylor in the house; and with all her advantages, natural and domestic, she was now in great danger of suffering from intellectual solitude. She dearly loved her father, but he was no companion for her. He could not meet her in conversation, rational or playful.

The evil of the actual disparity in their ages (and Mr. Woodhouse had not married early) was much increased by his constitution and habits; for having been a valetudinarian all his life, without activity of mind or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years; and though everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable temper, his talents could not have recommended him at any time.

Her sister, though comparatively but little removed by matrimony, being settled in London, only sixteen miles off, was much beyond her daily reach; and many a long October and November evening must be struggled through at Hartfield before Christmas brought the next visit from Isabella and her husband and their little children to fill the house and give her pleasant society again.

Highbury, the large and populous village almost amounting to a town, to which Hartfield, in spite of its separate lawn and shrubberies and name, did really belong, afforded her no equals. The Woodhouses were first in consequence there. All looked up to them. She had many acquaintance in the place, for her father was universally civil, but not one among them who could be accepted in lieu of Miss Taylor for even half a day. It was a melancholy change; and Emma could not but sigh over it and wish for impossible things, till her father awoke and made it necessary to be cheerful. His spirits required support. He was a nervous man, easily depressed; fond of everybody that he was used to and hating to part with them, hating change of every kind. Matrimony, as the origin of change, was always disagreeable; and he was by no means yet reconciled to his own daughter’s marrying, nor could ever speak of her but with compassion, though it had been entirely a match of affection, when he was now obliged to part with Miss Taylor too; and from his habits of gentle selfishness and of being never able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself, he was very much disposed to think Miss Taylor had done as sad a thing for herself as for them, and would have been a great deal happier if she had spent all the rest of her life at Hartfield. Emma smiled and chatted as cheerfully as she could to keep him from such thoughts; but when tea came, it was impossible for him not to say exactly as he had said at dinner: Poor Miss Taylor! I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that Mr. Weston ever thought of her!

I cannot agree with you, Papa; you know I cannot. Mr. Weston is such a good humoured, pleasant, excellent man that he thoroughly deserves a good wife—and you would not have had Miss Taylor live with us forever and bear all my odd humours when she might have a house of her own?

A house of her own! But where is the advantage of a house of her own? This is three times as large. And you have never any odd humours, my dear.

"How often we shall be going to see them and they coming to see us! We shall be always meeting! We must begin, we must go and pay our wedding-visit very soon."

My dear, how am I to get so far? Randalls is such a distance, I could not walk half so far.

No, Papa, nobody thought of your walking. We must go in the carriage, to be sure.

The carriage! But James will not like to put the horses to for such a little way; and where are the poor horses to be while we are paying our visit?

They are to be put into Mr. Weston’s stable, Papa. You know we have settled all that already. We talked it all over with Mr. Weston last night. And as for James, you may be very sure he will always like going to Randalls, because of his daughter’s being housemaid there. I only doubt whether he will ever take us anywhere else. That was your doing, Papa. You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you mentioned her—James is so obliged to you!

I am very glad I did think of her. It was very lucky, for I would not have had poor James think himself slighted upon any account; and I am sure she will make a very good servant; she is a civil, pretty-spoken girl; I have a great opinion of her. Whenever I see her, she always curtsys and asks me how I do, in a very pretty manner; and when you have had her here to do needle-work, I observe she always turns the lock of the door the right way and never bangs it. I am sure she will be an excellent servant; and it will be a great comfort to poor Miss Taylor to have somebody about her that she is used to see. Whenever James goes over to see his daughter, you know, she will be hearing of us. He will be able to tell her how we all are.

Emma spared no exertions to maintain this happier flow of ideas, and hoped by the help of backgammon to get her father tolerably through the evening, and be attacked by no regrets but her own. The backgammon-table was placed, but a visitor immediately afterwards walked in and made it unnecessary.

Mr. Knightley, a sensible man about seven- or eight-and-thirty, was not only a very old and intimate friend of the family, but particularly connected with it as the elder brother of Isabella’s husband. He lived about a mile from Highbury, was a frequent visitor, and always welcome, and at this time more welcome than usual, as coming directly from their mutual connexions in London. He had returned to a late dinner after some days’ absence and now walked up to Hartfield to say that all were well in Brunswick Square. It was a happy circumstance and animated Mr. Woodhouse for some time. Mr. Knightley had a cheerful manner which always did him good; and his many inquiries after poor Isabella and her children were answered most satisfactorily. When this was over, Mr. Woodhouse gratefully observed, It is very kind of you, Mr. Knightley, to come out at this late hour to call upon us. I am afraid you must have had a shocking walk.

Not at all, sir. It is a beautiful, moonlight night, and so mild that I must draw back from your great fire.

But you must have found it very damp and dirty. I wish you may not catch cold.

Dirty, sir! Look at my shoes. Not a speck on them.

Well! that is quite surprising, for we have had a vast deal of rain here. It rained dreadfully hard for half an hour while we were at breakfast. I wanted them to put off the wedding.

By the by—I have not wished you joy. Being pretty well aware of what sort of joy you must both be feeling. I have been in no hurry with my congratulations. But I hope it all went off tolerably well. How did you all behave? Who cried most?

Ah! Poor Miss Taylor! ’Tis a sad business.

Poor Mr. and Miss Woodhouse, if you please; but I cannot possibly say ‘poor Miss Taylor.’ I have a great regard for you and Emma, but when it comes to the question of dependence or independence! At any rate, it must be better to have only one to please than two.

"Especially when one of those two is such a fanciful, troublesome creature! said Emma playfully. That is what you have in your head, I know—and what you would certainly say if my father were not by."

I believe it is very true, my dear, indeed, said Mr. Woodhouse with a sigh. I am afraid I am sometimes very fanciful and troublesome.

"My dearest papa! You do not think I could mean you or suppose Mr. Knightley to mean you. What a horrible idea! Oh, no! I meant only myself. Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know—in a joke—it is all a joke. We always say what we like to one another."

Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them; and though this was not particularly agreeable to Emma herself, she knew it would be so much less so to her father, that she would not have him really suspect such a circumstance as her not being thought perfect by everybody.

Emma knows I never flatter her, said Mr. Knightley, but I meant no reflection on anybody. Miss Taylor has been used to have two persons to please; she will now have but one. The chances are that she must be a gainer.

Well, said Emma, willing to let it pass, you want to hear about the wedding, and I shall be happy to tell you, for we all behaved charmingly. Everybody was punctual, everybody in their best looks. Not a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen. Oh, no! We all felt that we were going to be only half a mile apart, and were sure of meeting every day.

Dear Emma bears everything so well, said her father. "But, Mr. Knightley, she is really very sorry to lose poor Miss Taylor, and I am sure she will miss her more than she thinks for."

Emma turned away her head, divided between tears and smiles.

It is impossible that Emma should not miss such a companion, said Mr. Knightley. "We should not like her so well as we do, sir, if we could suppose it. But she knows how much the marriage is to Miss Taylor’s advantage; she knows how very acceptable it must be at Miss Taylor’s time of life to be settled in a home of her own, and how important to her to be secure of a comfortable provision, and therefore cannot allow herself to feel so much pain as pleasure. Every friend of Miss Taylor must be glad to have her so