Jane Austen memorably summed up her creative challenge in her characterization of Emma Woodhouse.” I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.”Austen was right: Emma does test her readers. She is interfering, opinionated and frequently fallible. Yet for all her mistakes, we do warm to Emma because she is also spirited and essentially good-hearted despite her fallibilities. Of course, Emma’s desire to engineer “happiness” for others is both dangerous and exasperating. Her interference in the romantic dreams of her fellow townsfolk, also nearly blinds her to her own chance of fulfilment with her watchful mentor Mr Knightley.
Emma’s foibles push the reader’s tolerance at times yet we forgive her whereas we loathe her rival Mrs Elton whose crimes at times, are uneasily like those of Emma. But Mrs Elton fails to endear herself despite the parallels between her engineering behaviour with Jane Fairfax and Emmas with Harriet. Both Emma and Mrs Elton lack imagination and consequently insight where their “protegees” are concerned. However, Emma recognises her shortcomings whilst Mrs Elton remains arrogant and patronising to the end of the novel. Mrs Elton’s interior life remains significantly obscured from the readers view of course and this is because it is Emmas novel rather than Augusta Hawkins’ aka Mrs Elton’s!
When Emma is faced by the (unsurprising) revelation that the unctuous, status conscious Mr Elton, desires her, rather than her protegee, Harriet, Jane Austen delivers one of the wittiest and perceptively brilliant observations in the novel:‘ The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable.”
Here Emma’s sorrow is arranged in a revealing sequence, underlining the studied, decidedly unspontaneous ” process of Emmas feelings. Austen is suggesting Emma’s innate theatricality- even in private! Emma is described arranging to be upset after she has arranged other things; notably her hair and toilette!Emma respects her orderly arrangements before she gives herself any opportunity or space to be upset. This scene has definite echoes of the century earlier ‘mock heroic’ poem by Poe ‘The Rape of the Lock’ where hyperbole, irony and bathos reign around the habits of the wardrobe and daily toilette:
And now, unveil’d, the toilet stands display’d,
Each silver vase in mystic order laid.
First, rob’d in white, the nymph intent adores
With head uncover’d, the cosmetic pow’rs.
A heav’nly image in the glass appears,
To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;
Th’ inferior priestess, at her altar’s side,
Trembling, begins the sacred rites of pride.
In Austen’s novel, Emma’s incipient learning arc is in keeping with her character and class. Austen does not use Emma as a mere mouthpiece of her own mora views, thereby forcing feelings upon Emma which do not truly belong to her. She describes Emma as Emma would behave if she acts consistently with her headstrong, vain yet sympathetic characterization. We believe in the independence of Emma as an individual character who reacts and behaves in a way entirely consistent with Austen’s characterization.
