Wisconsin College of the Air; 2; Jane Austen; English novel in the Nineteenth century

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. These are the famous opening lines of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Here's the way her fourth novel Mansfield Park begins about 30 years ago. Miss Mariah ward of Huntington but only 7000 pounds had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Park in the county of North Hampton and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady with all the comforts and consequences of a handsome house and large income since insensibility the first of Jane Austen's novels to be published in 1811 begins this way. The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. Their estate was large and their residence was at Norland park in the center of their property where for many generations they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance and the rounded off. Here is the opening paragraph of Emma Emma Woodhouse

handsome clever and rich with a comfortable home and a 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. Such a sampling from Jane Austen's novels. Even if you were to go no further in them gives us the strongest hint possible as to what the limits of her material are the boundaries of her fictional or imaginative world. The little bit two inches wide of ivory she called it in a letter to her brother and do are nice. She wrote three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on. She had occasion to elaborate on this theme in the course of an amusing correspondence with a Rev. Mr. Clark a clergyman connected with the Court of the Prince Regent to whom she had written to ask if it would be acceptable for her to dedicate one of her novels to His Royal Highness.

In answer after granting her request he urges her deceiving no one but himself quote to delineate in some future work the habits of life and character and enthusiasm of a clergyman who also should pass his time between the metropolis and the country who should be something like BTS minstrel silent one glad affectionate though shy and now his look most demurely sad and now he laughed aloud yet none knew why neither Goldsmith nor LaFountain and his Tablo defy me and have in my mind quite delineated an English clergyman in literature and no man's anybody's own. Pray Madam think of these things. Here is part of her reply to the Rev. Mr. CLARK. I'm quite honored by your thinking me capable of drawing such a clergyman as you gave the sketch of. In your note of the member 16. But I assure you I am not the comic part of the character I might be equal to but not the good the enthusiastic the

literary. Such a man's conversation must at times be on subjects of science and philosophy of which I know nothing or at least occasionally abundant in potations and allusions which a woman who like me knows only her mother own mother tongue and has read little in that would be totally without the power of giving a classical education or at any rate a very extensive acquaintance with English Literature ancient and modern appears to me quite indispensable for the person who would do any justice to your clergyman. And I think I may boast myself to be with all possible vanity the most learned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress. But the old Reverend couldn't let the matter drop. In the following March he writes again this time with another suggestion. Any historical romance illustrative of the history of the august House of Coburg would just now be very interesting. Jane Austin firmly but courteously and to the correspondence. Thus

you are very very kind in your hints as to the sort of composition which might recommend me at present. But I am fully sensible that an historical romance founded on the House of Saxe-Coburg might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life and country villages as ideal in. But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life. And if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way. And though I may never succeed again in that I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other. Such evidence and there is considerable leads one to conclude that perhaps more than any other great writer Jane Austen knew what she could do and what she could not do.

And one cannot argue with this fact. She had no failures no bombs. Each of her novels all of her novels have been read continually from the day they were published till today for no novelist to live before her. Can such a claim be made and for few if any who lived since the road to literary fame is choked with the failures the corpses of works which never should have been attempted the sixteenth century poets ground out sonnet sequences as if from a sausage machine. Whether they had any talent for them or not because it was the thing to do. The seventeenth century poet was not satisfied until he had tried his hand in an epic poem the Augustan eighteenth century must turn out uninspired imitations of Horace and Virgil and Perseus in the 1903 Keats Tennyson Swinburne all felt the need to aspire toward blank verse drama in the manner of the great Shakespeare and all failed miserably. Fact of the matter is that the best comedian has no interest in playing Hamlet

and this does have something to do with the matter at hand. For Jane Austen was a comedian. She chose to find life amusing to observe with a clear eye the terrible gap between the ideal and the real between the illusion and the reality and to find it not tragic but funny. Her laughter of course may be hiding a breaking heart but if it is her tears are never allowed to stain the pages of her novels. But Jane Austen is a particular kind of comedian and ironist let me explain irony as either a method or a result is not necessarily linked with comedy although it often is. The ironic man may look at the contradictions in human experience tragically or comically. The basis of both Sophocles Oedipus and Shakespeare's King Lear is a deep and tragic irony man cannot will not see until he is blind.

But in Twelfth Night Shakespeare the ironist draws in his part of the self-serving fatuous Malveaux Leo a man just as incapable as Oedipus or later of seeing the truth about himself in relation to the world he inhabits. But the truth that he fails to see is quite different from King Lear is true. He Malveaux Leo cannot see that he is simply a fool if he can see it of course he wouldn't be one. The ironic vision sees the income group that he and man between what he is and what he thinks he is between expectation and fulfillment. Pretense and actuality. The tragic ironist sees such in Congress as irremediable irreconcilable. The comic ironist sees it merely as Finally perhaps a lack of common sense. In writing to her sister Cassandra during the Peninsular War Jane Austin remarks how horrible to have so many people killed and what a blessing that one cares for none of them.

It is certainly a tough minded remark but it is also isn't it the truth. The writer has matched bourgeois humanitarianism against the reality of personal life has perceived the ironic truth and admitted it in the light of that remark of hers. One is perhaps more relieved than anything else that Jane Austen didn't used to write about the Napoleonic Wars. This toughness of vision this cold eye if you will can be observed in Jane Austen's so-called juvenilia. The writing that she did as a young girl in her teens which has been collected and printed in four small volumes the first one is called Love and friendship and other early works and the other three simply volume the first volume the second volume the third. What strikes one about these writings. After an impulse to murmur to oneself Thank God she wasn't my daughter. Is their vitality their exuberance. But as G.K. Chesterton says in his preface to love and friendship. Her power comes as all power comes from the control and direction of exuberance. The

presence and pressure of vitality behind her thousand trivialities. She was the very reverse of a starved or starved spinsters she could have been a buffoon like the Wife of Bath. If she chose. This is what gives an infallible force to her irony. This is what gives a stunning weight to her understatements at the back of this artist also counted as patient lists. There was passion but her original passion was a sort of joyous scorn and a fighting spirit against all she regarded as morbid and relax and poisonously silly. The major share of this juvenalia written for the amusement of her family is made up of parodies and burlesques of the sentimental and melodramatic novels and plays that were so popular at the turn of the century. For example in Jack and Alice the longest piece in volume the first and written probably somewhere between 1791 and 1793 she neatly demolish is the elegant vain pseudo sentimental hero type of such

novels. Charles Addams is so dazzling in beauty that none but Eagles could look him in the face of all the beings that darted from his eyes were so strong that no one dared venture within half a mile of them than a tea with Charles as a high romantic beauty. I imagine my manners and address to be of the most polished kind. There was a certain elegance a peculiar sweetness in them that I never saw equalled and cannot describe. Then turning his candor upon the father of the girl who wishes to marry him Charles observes I look upon you sir to be a very good sort of man in the main. A drunken old dog to be sure but that's nothing to me. Your daughter sir is neither sufficiently beautiful sufficiently amiable sufficiently witty nor sufficiently rich for me. I expect nothing more in my wife than my wife will find in me perfection. Time doesn't permit any further sampling of these small innocent looking plum cakes stuffed with

lighted firecrackers. But I want to read you just a bit of one of my favorites. The History of England from the reign of Henry the Fourth to the death of Charles the First by a partial prejudiced and ignorant historian. All the knowledge of what isn't being made fun of and it isn't at all necessary to enjoy it. Jane Austin's history having been written when she was 15 years old is a parody of Oliver Goldsmith's history of England and a gossipy potboiler as one critic has called it masquerading as history. The form of Jane Austen's history is simple enough. She takes up the rulers of England one by one and read the Fourth. And the fourth ascended the throne of England much to his own satisfaction in the year 13 ninety nine after having prevailed on his cousin and predecessor Richard the second to resign it to him and to retire for the rest of his life to palm for the castle where he happened to be murdered. It is to be supposed that Henry was married since he had certainly four

sons. But it is not in my power to inform the reader who is his wife. Be this as it may he did not live forever but falling ill. His son the Prince of Wales came and took away the crown. Whereupon the king made a long speech for which I must refer the reader to Shakespeare's plays and the Prince made a still longer. Things being thus settled between them the king died and was succeeded by his son Henry who had previously beets or William guess going and be the fifth this prince after he succeeded to the throne grew quite reformed unamiable for saving all his dissipated companions and never threshing so with him again during his reign. Lord Cobham was burnt alive but I forget but for His Majesty then turned his thoughts to France where he went and fought the famous Battle of Agincourt. He afterwards married the king's daughter Catherine a very agreeable woman by Shakespeare's account. Spite of all this however he died and was succeeded by his son and Henry the Sixth. I can't say much for this monarch sense

nor would I if I could for he was a Lancaster Ian. I suppose you know all about the wars between him and the Duke of York who was of the right side. If you do not you better read some other history for I shall not be very diffuse in this meaning it buy it only do vent my spleen against and show my hatred to all those people whose parties or principles do not suit with mine and not to get information. This king married Margaret of Anjou a woman whose distresses and whose fortunes were so great as almost to make me who hate her pity her. It was in this rain that Joan of Arc lived and made such a RA among the English. They should not have burned her but they did. There were several battles between the Orca's and the Lancaster aeons in which the former as they are not usually conquered at length they were entirely overcome. The King was murdered. The queen was sent home and Edward the fourth ascended the throne. And so she moves smoothly and confidently among the royal heads of England down

to and including Charles the first stopping on the way to remark of Henry the Eighth that the crimes and cruelties of this prince were too numerous to mention and nothing can be said in his vindication. But that he's abolishing religious houses and leaving them to the ruinous depredations of time has been of infinite use to the landscape of England in general which probably was a principal motive for his doing it since otherwise why should a man who was of no religion and religion himself be at so much trouble to abolish one. She heaps infamy upon Elizabeth the destroyer of all comfort the deceitful betrayer of trust reposed in her and the murderous of her cousin and she defends that Cousin Mary Queen of Scots which it turns out had been or avowed purpose for she says near the end. The events of this monarch's Charles the First's reign are too numerous for my pen and indeed the recital of any events except what I make myself is an interesting to me. My principal reason for undertaking the history of England being to prove the innocence of the

Queen of Scotland which I flatter myself with having effectually done and to abuse Elizabeth though I am rather fearful of having fallen short in the latter part of my scheme. Of course this is the broad a sort of comedy and to put too much stock in these childhood squibs and jokes is foolish. But quite apart from the often hilarious fun in them they do suggest two things about their author. One that since they are dedicated to various members of her family and circle of friends and since the family and friends took great pains that they should not be destroyed or lost. It is plain to see that almost from the beginning Jane Austen's writing was taken seriously by her intimates. The story that she was always careful to hide her writing beneath her sewing basket when anyone came in the room is probably pure fiction. In the second place looking her at her writing as a whole one can see her moving from the unrestrained exuberance of these juvenile pieces which often took the form of rather blood curdling and heartless satire to the beautifully controlled but highly resonant

harmony of the last novels. Emma and persuasion. In her first completed novel Sense and Sensibility one can feel her own impatience with both her heroines Elinor and Marianne. She seems to be alternating between berating them for their obtuseness and apologizing to us for getting them into such predicaments in North Inger Abbey. She is finally not able to curb the extravagance of her attack upon the Gothic gothic novel to fit the delicately moral pattern of the domestic tale in which she tries to enclose it even in Pride and Prejudice. She could not resist making Elizabeth's arch enemy Lady Catherine de Bourg a kind of outrageous parody of all the overbearing dowagers who ever lived. And her hero there the redoubtable Mr Darcy is occasionally too close for comfort to those very mock heroes she made fun of in her teens. One can hear almost Darcy himself saying I expect nothing more in my wife than my wife will find me perfection.

But in emma there is nothing to warrant this kind of observation. The slashing energy the flashing eyes the knife sharp tongue all are tempered to the occasion. Nothing in excess. My point is that without the exuberance the high spirits that we see in our early work and also often in the letters to riff Emily that are still like stand without this exuberance. We could not have had the control the absolute subjugation if you will of her material to her intention. As a matter of fact without this curious exploratory spirit trying to see how far out into left field she could go and still make it work. Without this there would have been nothing to control. Nothing to subjugate. Jane Austin was born in 1775 in Steventon a pleasant little village in the county of Hampshire. The Austin family was large. She was the seventh of eight children. Her father was the rector of the village and as well a classical scholar as it is reflected in Jane Austen's

letters and in the recollections of their famous relatives that some members of the Austin clan fortunately left us. Life in the Austin family was pleasant closely knit and affectionate. Jane was greatly attached to her brothers especially to the two that went into the Navy where they both had distinguished careers. One of the nicest moments in her earlier mention history of England is a sly tribute to one of these brothers. She mentions they are Sir Francis Drake and calls him the ornament of his country and his profession. Yet great as he was she goes on to say and justly celebrated as a sailor. I cannot help foreseeing that he will be equalled in this or the next generation by one who though now but young already promises to answer all the ardent and sanguine expectations of his relations and friends. But her greatest intimacy was with her sister Cassandra three years older than she. It was said by their mother that if Cassandra were to have her head cut off Jane would insist on having her as kind of two. And 18:1 Jane Austin's father retired from the rectory at Steventon and settled in Bath the

fashionable watering place which you will discover is the setting for a major share of nothing or Abby and the Austin family lived for five years until the death of her father and 89 after two and a half years in Southampton. Jane Cassandra and their mother were settled by their brother Edward in a pleasant cottage of his a trot in a little village in Hampshire. This cottage is now open to tourists. A touching little museum full of things like the quill pen that Jane Austen might have used in a rocking chair just like the one that Jane Austen might have sat in. She died in the city of Winchester in 1879 at the age of forty two and is buried in Winchester Cathedral which is not very appropriately the largest cathedral in England. As you can see if you look at these dates carefully Jane Austen's life runs parallel to and in a sense is enclosed by the period of the American Revolution the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. She was born the year before that small affair that

almost no English novelist even mentions assigning in the American colonies of the Declaration of Independence. And she died only two years after the Battle of Waterloo. As the century opened when she was in her early 20s and had already completed the first version of Pride and Prejudice George third was completing his 40th year on the throne and already had several bouts with the insanity that had appeared briefly as early as 1765 in which an 811 became permanent and the old king remained in seclusion blind as well as mad until his death in 1820. Although he is always cast as the villain in American history textbooks he was as a matter of fact the best of the Georges. Perhaps however a dubious distinction in 1811 his son the Prince of Wales became Prince Regent and then upon his father's death ascended the throne as George the Fourth in hundred twenty as regent. He put his stamp indelibly upon the period to which he gave his title the Regency. He was in his own estimation and those of his sycophants and hangers on of which there were many.

The first gentleman of Europe. He died in 830 after 10 years of rule and 30 years later was characterized us by Thackeray in his rather malicious but very entertaining study of the hand of Arion kings. The four Georges. To make a portrait of him writes that accuracy at first seemed a matter of small difficulty. There is his coat his star his wig his countenance simpering under it with a slate in a piece of chalk I could at this very desk perform a recognizable likeness of him. And yet after reading of him in scores of volumes hunting in through old magazines and newspapers having him here at a ball there at a public dinner there at races and so forth. You find you have nothing. Nothing but a coat and a wig and a mask smiling below it. Nothing but a great simulate groom his sire and grandsire as were men one knows what they were like what they would do in a given circumstances and that on

occasion they fought and demean themselves like tough good soldiers. But this George what was he. I looked through all his life and recognized but a bottle and a grin. I try and take him to pieces in fine stockings padding stays with frogs in a fur collar a star and blue ribbon a pocket handkerchief prodigious Lee scented one of truth it's best not he brown wigs reeking with Oil a set of teeth and a huge black stock under waistcoats or under waist coats and then I think he must have had an individuality. The Dancing Master whom he emulated in nay surpassed the wig maker who has to pay for him the tailor cut his coats had that. But about George one can get at nothing actually. That outside I am certain is Peden Taylor's work. There may be something behind it but what we cannot get at that character no doubt never shall.

Will men of the future have nothing better to do than to one swathe interpret that royal old mummy. I own I once used to think it would be good sport to pursue him fasten on him and pull him down. But now I am ashamed to mount inlay good dogs on to someone a full field and then to hunt the poor game. And this was the first gentleman of Europe the royal image. He was a figure of fun in his own day and we can see from Thacher a stinging portrait in the years after his death. But his influence on the pattern of life particularly of course high life is undeniable and even upon a country amenities incivilities in the little village of Highbury. Needless to say in swinging bath notice in Emma and in North Inger Abbey the constant use of the term elegance the emphasis on exactness in dress and the proper arrangements and protocol for the ball or even for the strawberry fatten on the laddie and specifically that awful moment when it looks as if Frank Churchill might not be a gentleman at

all but a regency buck going off to London to get his hair cut indeed. Upon the death of George the Third the Duke of Clarence his brother became King William for in 1830 and during the first two years of his reign he was faced with what one historian has characterized as a crisis more violent than any from which the nation suffered since 16 88 and brought the country to the very edge of revolution. Although of liberal tendencies in his days as Duke of Clarence William opposed the passage of the reform bill until by means of a kind of squeeze play Lord Grey forced him to exceed and the first reform bill was passed in 1030 to broadening the franchise and bringing about the desperately needed reform of the representative system in parliament. When the fourth Silly Willy died 837 and was succeeded by his niece Victoria. Offstage before the curtain went up in the 1903 had occurred the American Revolution in the French Revolution the latter turning

swiftly into the war against Napoleon. A war which any number of people will be quick to point out is in her novels not mentioned by Jane Austin who lived through it as the war ended in 1015 with the Battle of Waterloo. Two years before Jane Austen herself died in England the war fed economy began to collapse high taxes bankruptcies and falling wages caused widespread discontent. And in the words of one historian Britain which had deposed the Imperial heir of the French Revolution now had to grapple with her own industrial revolution. For during these 21 years of war the Wonder Working inventions of Arkwright Watt and Stevenson were multiplying steam factories and laying out the first primitive railways. A change which drew the population toward the coal fields in the city. It's the post-war years from the time of Jane Austen's death to the mid century where years of unrest both among the lower classes in their attempts to improve their truly hideous living in working conditions and among the middle and upper classes who

were discovering in the new industrialism the enormous possibilities for wealth and governmental influence. But more of this in later lectures. The world of the Regency and specifically Jane Austen's world is no matter what they say. Reflected in Jane Austen's novels in Emma the landed Whig gentry are still in charge the possession of land and income from land are still the first requirements for a gentleman and the security and or aggrandizement of this income through marriage or inheritance is it must be admitted. A topic that dominates much of the action in Jane Austen's novels in Emma. Mr Knightley manages his huge estate darn well Abbey and puts in considerable time at it and helps Emma's father Mr Woodhouse to expose the modern equivalent would be clipping coupons. Emma herself is a wealthy young woman. The Reverend Elton securing a good living as it was called and hopes to parlay it into something better by a good marriage.

Impoverished gentlewomen like Mrs. Bates and her mother depend upon the benevolent largess of their friends for anything beyond their daily bread. You are too kind. Miss Woodhouse Jane Fairfax well-born lovely but poor is faced with a terrible extremity. It was terrible for her of having to hire out as a governess. For the most part the rest of Highbury is beneath Emma's attention. Notice here that I say beneath Emma's attention not Jane Austen's for example as Emma considers the coals and the possibility that she must face of being invited by them to an evening party. She has this to say about them. They had been settled some years in Highbury and were very good sort of people friendly liberal and unpretending. But on the other hand they were of low origin in trade and only moderately genteel. Very respectable in their way but they ought to be taught that it was not for them to arrange the terms on which the superior families would visit them.

I emphasize that this is Emma's appraisal of the coals Jane Austin very wisely never tells us what she herself thinks of them. Because what the novel is about is Emma's education what Emma finds out about herself and her failure in placing values and making judgments. Like Oedipus in King Lear Emma can only see what she is when she has come within a hair of catastrophe when she has interfered almost fatally for a comedy in the lives of those around her. This sounds pretentious and gloomy and pompous but of course the novel is none of these. It's a comedy. What makes it a comedy is of course that the stakes are so low because Lear misunderstands his daughter criteria. Bloody war tears ancient Britain apart the innocent the guilty are alike are killed and Cordy is hanged. You know emma the heroine misunderstands the amorous intentions of three men toward her and as a result she marries one of them and lives happily ever after. What fortunate errors

what happy mistakes. The Rev. Mr. Elton gets Mrs. Elton. No more than he deserves the sophisticated Frank Churchill gets the equally sophisticated but less worldly. Jane Fairfax Harriet Smith gets Mr. Martin who strangely enough once the silly girl and Emma gets Mr. Knightley get seen by merely realizing finally that she wants him. The English speaking world has never been attracted to the well made the classical tragedy. Witness our antipathy toward the smoothly balanced and symmetrical tragedies of Rez scene. We like in the midst of disaster to have a scatter shot of a drunken porter and a grave digger talking body or the high nonsense of a fool. But on the other hand we like our comedies neat. Moliere is the only French drama has be really taken to heart. No loose ends and at least until this century no black undercurrent of implications beneath the surface. In the traditional English comedy nothing is impossible and it all moves toward a golden celebration of

the end. Twelfth night as you like it she stoops to conquer the Importance of Being Earnest. These have been the most loved anguish comedies and Emma looks in its construction its pace and in the almost geometrical precision of the organization of its characters. Emma looks toward this kind of rather traditional comedy for contrary to generally accepted opinion. I believe that the essence of comedy is its inevitable ness. At least until the middle of the last act Hamlet can escape from his responsibility and go scot free. Claudius may have a heart attack. Macbeth does have an option and he can say Paige to the witches. But from the moment they step into the novel Emma and Mr. knightly must absolutely. There is no alternative. Find that they are in love and get married for the suspense. The interest in the best comedies lies not in what happens but in how it happens. And this is where Jane Austin genius shows itself I think the greatest advantage.

Well it isn't quite true to say that anyone can be witty. Nevertheless there have always been witty people around. And while it isn't Admittedly the easiest trick in the world. Many other writers have been able to catch the nuances of individual speech patterns and the idiosyncrasies and absurdities there. But how many writers could make us care so passionately about finding out just how Jane Fairfax acquired that damn piano. When you read Emma for the first time you will hardly notice or care how Jane Austen does it which is as it should be. Second third time around you will begin I hope to observe the consummate skill with which she has selected her cast of characters and with what craft she has put them in motion to do and say what she wants them to do and say without the slightest suggestion on her part that she has had anything to do with it. And you get to Dickens you will discover that he can create characters as easily as one breathes brilliant individual like no one else ever. But you will also discover I think that to a large degree Dickens characters exist almost in isolation

wrapped in plastic and wired for sound. And the dickens is often hard put to find a plot for them. Jane Austen's characters on the other hand are her plot. They have an existence only in relation to each other and out of this relation comes the plot the action the how it happens. Let me try to show you. Emmas characterized in the first sentence in the book as handsome clever and rich with a comfortable home and a happy disposition and with very little to distress or vex or plainly if this were all there is to Emma she would be a pussy. But before Austin begins to introduce to us characters who will prove Emma more than a putting she shows us the two characters who have been closest to Emma through most of her young life. Miss Taylor poor Miss Taylor is Mr Woodhouse always calls her but now Mrs Weston newly married and moved to a nearby house who had been Emma's governess and companion since her childhood and the author tells us bluntly who's mildness of temper had hardly allowed her to impose any

restraint. And Mr Woodhouse Emma's father whose household she administers and whose physical and spiritual health is her primary concern. Mr Woodhouse is introduced by Jane Austin as almost an absolute nothing. But Mr Woodhouse is not quite a nothing. Not quite a cipher for his function in the novel and the action is to present to us the best in Emma. Her devotion to her father is absolute and in its way truly remarkable devotion to a reasonably adult reasonably adjusted human beings easy enough devotion to a peanut head like Mr Woodhouse is something else again. His comfort his peace of mind his diversion are uppermost always in her thoughts. And most remarkable of all she is infinitely patient with him. Thus with these two characters and through them we have an initial glimpse of Emma the slightly spoiled young princess and as well the truly loving daughter. With the introduction of Mr. Knightley the inner circle is complete. To this

Mrs. Weston and Mr. Woodhouse who worship and one Mr. Knightley who knows Emma's weaknesses one of the few people the author tells us who can see her faults and the only one who ever told her of them. Well if one like Emma Woodhouse has little to distress or backs her what does she do. She plays at being king. Or to put it less grandly she meddles in other people's affairs perhaps of all human failings to see people only in relation to oneself is the hardest to understand and to forgive. As we watch Emma move in on Harriet Smith who the author tells us frankly enough was the natural daughter of somebody and try to match her in matrimony with Mr. Elton. The Vicar of Highbury a young man living alone and not liking it. We begin to understand why Jane Austin wrote to her sister that in Emma she had created a character that no one would like but herself. After the introductory chapters then begins the Rondo of mistaken motives and misplaced affections

that has occupied the center of the comedy of loves and I suppose that peculiarly Western form of entertainment got its start. Harriet dummy that she is susceptible to the flattery of one higher in station than she and far more sophisticated allows Emma to convince her that she is loved by Mr Elton and that therefore she must be in love with him. Mr. Elton not unreasonably interprets Emma's attention as evidence of her own interest in him. The first movement comes to a fine climax as Mr Elton to Emma's horror of absolute amazement and a carriage ride through a snowstorm seizes her hand and professes his undying love blinded by her own snobbery. Emma has not seen that all those below her in rank are hardly willing to regard themselves as merely equal to each other. Mr Elton scar and Harriet Smith as nobody with whom he would think of forming an attachment. I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my existence never paid any attention. But as your friend never cared whether you were dead or alive but as your friend

it is Emma who has the elegance the position let's face it the money to which he aspires. Emma is contracted and here as in her conduct toward her father she gains our respect by the completeness of our acknowledgement of our ill judged meddling. But more important we see an Emma a lack of vanity a lack of sexual vanity if you will. It is a refreshing and ingratiating But even here Jane Austin is too subtle to allow us to settle back comfortable in our assurance of this value at least in Emma for Emma goes too far. Of course contrary to the usual course of things Mr Elton's wanting to pay his addresses to her had sunk him. In her opinion his professions and proposals did him no service she thought nothing of his attachment and was insulted by his hopes. She need not trouble herself to pity him. He only wanted to aggrandize enrich himself but that he should consider her as aware of his views. Accepting his attentions meaning in chart to marry him I should suppose

himself her equal in connection of mine and looked down upon her friend so well understand the gradations of rank below him and be so blind to what rose above as to fancy himself showing no presumption in addressing her. It was most provoking what she has failed to see of course is that Mr. Elton's misjudgment of her is no different from her misjudgment of Harriet Smith whom she has cruelly advised against permitting the addresses of a fine upstanding farmer who has fallen in love with her. For Emma is not vain or proud in the usual sense. But she is full of a kind of self-love that demands as the shock of what she has done wears off that she see those whom she has wounded as not sensitive enough sensitive enough quite to be fully aware of the nature of their wounds and we are struck first by her blindness and then we shudder because we recognize in it our own. This first pebble dropped into the quiet waters of Highbury begins to send out its small

circles of disturbance and new characters are introduced new characters on whom Emma can experiment. But this time with young Frank Churchill Jane Austen reverses the situation rings new changes on the theme of misinterpreted biases and misleading side. She Emma is used by Frank Churchill to disguise his own relationship with another girl Jane Fairfax. Emma becomes the dupe but dollar gold. She's no brighter than the ninny Harriet Smith. The sense of how these characters find their vitality in each other is most strongly and brilliantly demonstrated in the relationship established between Frank Churchill and Emma. They are the most worldly pair in the book and they bring out the worst in each other. Frank Churchill becomes almost hysterical in his third taken with Emma and Emma responds in kind. Both are blinded by self love which takes the form here of a struggle for power. Each must nominate the other because each recognizes that they are both cut from the same

cloth that they deserve each other. At the end when all the mysteries have been cleared up the two of them admit dickens with considerable relish to what they've been doing. I do suspect and I says to Frank that in the midst of your perplexities at that time you had a very great amusement in tricking us all. I'm sure you had. I'm sure it was a consolation to you. Oh no no no how can you suspect me of such a thing. I was the most miserable wretch. Not quite so miserable as to be insensible to mirth. I am sure it was a source of high entertainment to you to feel that you were taking us all in. Perhaps I am the readier to suspect because to tell you the truth I think it might have been some amusement to myself in the same situation. I think there is a little likeness between us. He bowed. If not in our dispositions she presently added with a look of true sensibility