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Emma: Character and Construction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Edgar F. Shannon Jr.
Edgar F. Shannon Jr.*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Mass.
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Extract

Emma, justly described by Lord David Cecil as “Jane Austen's profoundest comedy,” has frequently been mistaken for mere “escape literature.” It has been applauded for its “engaging, dear, delicious, idiotic heroine,” moving in “a place of laughter and nonsense,” and excoriated because “it does not instruct … does not teach the modern reader … how to be and move in our world.” At the other extreme, it has lately provoked the sophisticated interpretation of Marvin Mudrick, who sees Emma as a disagreeable, even sinister, creature. A latent Lesbian, unwilling to commit her emotions, and devoid of tenderness, Emma, he believes, attains at the end of the novel simply “relief and temporary awareness.” The transcendent irony of the book for Mudrick is the author's having shown an apparently reformed Emma, whereas actually she remains imperious and ruthless. Joseph M. Duffy, Jr., who describes the novel as concerned with “the awakening of a normal, intelligent young woman to the possibilities of physical love,” has produced the most apposite recent study. But knowledge of physical love is only one aspect of Emma's awakening, and even Duffy is uncertain whether she is truly regenerate.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 71 , Issue 4-Part-1 , September 1956 , pp. 637 - 650
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1956

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References

1 Jane Austen (Cambridge, England, 1935), p. 39. Subsequent quotations in the paragraph are from Sheila Kaye-Smith and G. B. Stern, Speaking of Jane Austen (New York and London, 1944), p. 263; E. N. Hayes, “ ‘Emma’: A Dissenting Opinion,” NCF, iv (June 1949), 20; Mudrick, Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery (Princeton, 1952), p. 200; and Duffy, “Emma: The Awakening from Innocence,” FLH, xxi (March 1954), 40.

2 James Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford, 1926), p. 157.

3 Reginald Ferrers, “Jane Austen, ob. July 18, 1817,” Quart. Rev., ccxxvin (July 1917), 24.

4 Parenthetical page references are to Emma in The Novels of Jane Austen, ed. R. W. Chapman, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1948).

5 Rambler, No. 110.

6 At this time Emma is, of course, unaware of Jane Fairfax's engagement to Frank Churchill and of the consequent element of jealousy in Jane's conduct.

7 Jane Austen: A Biography (London, 1938), p. 254; Speaking of Jane Austen, p. 242.

8 E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (New York, 1927), p. 240. For an expanded treatment, see E. K. Brown, Rhythm in the Novel (Toronto, 1950).

9 Duffy notes a “no doubt coincidental” contrast between the black night of Mr. Elton's proposal and the pleasant day of Mr. Knightley's.

10 Three couples married in 3 successive months, Aug., Sept. and Oct., continue the triple pattern.

11 William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters: A Family Record (London, 1913), p. 307.

12 Quart. Rev., ccxxviii, 24.