Just Finished Reading: Emma by Jane Austen

Emma is young, rich, spoilt and of the opinion, after apparently engineering the marriage of her governess, that it is her mission in life to assist those around her into the state of matrimony – a state she herself has declined to pursue. When the orphan Harriet enters her sphere she decides on Mr Elton – the curate – as the ideal partner for her new friend and begins her campaign to put them together. Almost from the outset things start to go wrong as Mr Elton is clearly more interested in Emma herself (as she shockingly finds out one Christmas). In her attempt to make things right for Harriet, Emma spins more and more fantastic plots and causes more chaos in her small select community until she realises the many errors of her ways. As she matures she realises that she too is looking for love and finds it where she least expects.

I am becoming quite a fan of Miss Austen now having read three of her six novels and watched TV and movie adaptations of her works as well as some of the many ‘spin-offs’ on offer. I actually watched the movie adaptation of Emma (starring Gwyneth Paltrow) just yesterday. I’m glad I insisted on reading the book first though, it was much better. This might, however, at least partially explain why I initially struggled with the book – I had no idea what it was about apart from the brief blurb on the back of my Vintage Press edition. For at least the first quarter of the novel I slogged through the text with little overall enjoyment. In my earlier days, and certainly before I had read any other Austen novels, I would have abandoned it at that point. I found very little to recommend it. Not very much was happening, though to be honest not very much of note actually happens in Austen’s novels, and very few of the characters were in the least likable. Emma herself was awful. She had no idea just how lucky she was. She had led a sheltered and privileged life which had produced a character so wrapped up in herself and her own schemes that she was often completely oblivious to the damage her words and actions caused around her. She had talent but little application never having had to do anything she didn’t want to. She was in a word obnoxious and on more than one occasion I could have happily slapped her for her unthinking behaviours but that is the genius of the work. Over the length of the book – about 12-18 months in ‘real-time’ the character of Emma is transformed from someone you would have little to do with beyond the first encounter to someone you could happily spend time with. As her schemes and behaviour bumps up against unforgiving reality Emma is forced time and again to think about what she is doing and the results of her meddling. The strength of her character is that she realises what a fool she has been and does whatever she can to rectify matters – not for some kind of acclaim from society but because of her empathy for those around her. Once out of her sheltered environment she grows from a spoilt brat into a considerate, kind and thoughtful young woman. The genius of Austen, and genius is not a word I use lightly, is to portray this metamorphosis in such a way as to make the reader move from loathing Emma to loving her. As layers of her character are exposed, examined, found faulty and rectified Emma grows before your eyes into the kind of person she was always capable of being. The story itself, with its other minor players, is almost superfluous other than as a mechanism to chip away at Emma’s persona to reveal, finally after much effort, a work of art in human form. Whilst she is far from my favourite Austen character as I still have issues getting over her initial significant character flaws I can’t help but admire her ability to grow as a person.

If you do attempt this book I can only recommend that you persevere with it. To begin with you may find yourself, like me, expending more effort than usual in working your way through the first third of the book. But take my word for it the effort will pay off handsomely in the end. One more thing: I read quite a bit of this during my lunch breaks at work. Rather inevitably it caused a modicum of surprise as most people see me reading SF or other ‘weird’ books. It also caused more than a little discussion as I found five other people who had actually read it or, in one case, was reading it at the same time as I was. I found it a lot of fun exchanging ideas about the book with the other people. It actually felt a little like the movie ‘The Jane Austen Book Club’ as, just like the movie, I was the only male in the group.