Emma. Jane Austen.

Emma
Jane Austen
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1816.

The following summary appears in The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Ed. Sir Paul Harvey. Fourth Edition. Revised by Dorothy Eagle. New York: Oxford University Press. 1967.

Emma, a clever and very self-satisfied young lady, is the daughter and mistress of the house of Mr. Woodhouse, an amiable valetudinarian [sickly]. Her former governess and companion, Miss Anne Taylor, beloved of both father and daughter, has just left them to marry a neighbor, Mr. Weston. Missing her companionship, Emma takes under her wing Harriet Smith, parlor-boarder at Mrs. Goddard's School in the neighboring village of Highbury, the natural daughter of some person unknown, a pretty but foolish girl of 17.

Emma's active mind sets to work on schemes for Harriet's advancement, and the story is mainly occpied with the mortifications to which Emma is subjected as a result of her injudicious attempts in this connection. She first prevents Harriet from accepting an eligible offer from Robert Martin, a young farmer, as being beneath her, much to the annoyance of Mr. Knightley, the bachelor owner of Donwell Abbey, Martin's landlord, the friend of the Woodhouses, and one of the few people who can see faults in Emma.

She has hopes of effecting a match between Harriet and Mr. Elton, the young vicar, only to find that Elton despises Harriet, and Harriet has the presumption to aspire to her own hand. Frank Churchill, the son of Mr. Weston by a former marriage, an attractive but thoughtless young man, now appears on the scene. Emma at first fancies him in love with herself, but presently thinks that Harriet might attract him, and encourages her not to despair, encouragement which Harriet applies not to Frank Churchill, of whom she has no thought, but the great Mr. Knightley himself, with whom Emma is unconsciously in love.

Emma has the double mortification of discovering, first, that Frank Churchill is already secretly engaged to Jane Fairfax, niece of Miss Bates, the kindly garrulous daughter of a former vicar of Highbury, and secondly, that Harriet has hopes, which appear to have some foundation, of supplanting her in Mr. Knightley's affections. But all ends well, for Mr. Knightley proposes to a humiliated and repentant Emma, and Harriet is easily consoled with Robert Martin, on his proposing to her a second time.

RayS. I couldn't write a better summary of the relatively complicated plot than that, so I didn't try.

In short, Emma is an amateur matchmaker who makes some serious mistakes in judgments about people who want to do what they want to do, not what she wants to direct them to do--and almost loses the love of her life, Mr. Knightley, who is the strong, fatherly, keep-her-in-line type that Emma needs. In my opinion, they are both social snobs and deserve each other.

The reviewers point out Miss Bates, not just because she has some role to play in the plot but because she virtually defines "garrulousness," "a great talker upon little matters." Here's an example: "So obliging of you! No, we should not have heard, it it had not been for this particular circumstance, of her being able to come here so soon. My mother is so delighted! For she is to be three months with us at least. Three months, she says so, positively, as I am going to have the pleasure of reading to you. The case is, you see, that the Campbells are going to Ireland. Mrs. Dixon has persuaded her father and mother to come over and see her directly. I was going to say, but, however, different countries, and so she wrote a very urgent letter to her mother, or her father, I declare I do not know which it was, but we shall see presently in Jane's letter...."

Come to think of it, the review at the beginning of this summary sounds a good bit like Miss Bates.

The gradations of English society at Austen's time make Emma superior to Robert Martin, a farmer, but, Mr. Knightley's comments on Harriet are devastating: 'What are Harriet Smith's claims, either of birth, nature or eduction, to any connection higher than Robert Martin...she is the natural daughter of nobody knows whom, with probably no settled provision at all, and certainly no respectable relations...is not a sensible girl, nor a girl of any information...has been taught nothing useful...is pretty and good tempered and that is all...."

Frankly, I find all this chatter about social class superiority and inferiority, people defined as gentlemen and ladies, etc., because they belong to a certain class, not because of their personalities, one of the more boring topics in Austen's novels, but she can't help it. That was English society in her day. And in the book, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, by Daniel Pool, the distinctions among the various classes are described as quite complex, separated by gradations that are often minuscule.