Jane Austen's Emma

Most seriously of all, she commits an ostensibly little and playful social faux pas at the stroke hillock picnic by "limiting" the poor, mindlessly sound fall back Bates to three dull comments (Austen 238-9), which has the apparently trivial importation of embarrassing Miss Bates just now exposes once and for all her real number misadventure as a human world: being oblivious of the benefits conferred by having material, physical, emotional, and social advantage. Within that failure is a blindness to the fact that actions have consequences; only aft(prenominal) she witnesses Harriet's inanely romantic infatuation with Mr. Knightley does it occur to her, "with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must link up no one but herself" (Austen 263). Having in her own apathy toward others conceived it "her duty to set the world to rights" (Allen 124), but repeatedly and programmatically, as she finds out, she gets it wrong. Emma gradually comes to all-encompassing knowledge of her own foibles, a full appreciation of the fact that, however young and foolish she may be, as Mr. Knightley tells her when scolding her for insulting Miss Bates, she is extraordinarily favor and on that account has enormous social advantage: "You . . . express mirth at her . . . before others, many of whom, certainly some,) should be only if guided by your treatment of her" (Austen 242). Such insight confers line up of "otherness" and appreciation of the worth and dignity of others per se, as unconnected to th

eir status as instruments upright for her manipulation.

Watt, Ian. "Jane Austen and the Traditions of Comic Aggression." Emma. A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Stephen M. Parrish. 2d ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993. 414-416.

What Austen does is constrain a line of narrative action that is perceived, however im utterly, by means of the third-person eyes of a central share whose limited focalise of view also serves as a touchstone of character development; as Emma's perceptions are gradually corrected by experience, the reader experiences her growth in stature and a liquidation of the emotional content of the story. It is another way of saying that Emma learns from her mistakes, but Austen's narrative strategy is more complex than this.

The Box Hill insult to Miss Bates, which incites Emma's real and painful maturation after Mr. Knightley takes her to task, is from one point of view very much as Emma says, "not so very bad" (Austen 240). Certainly it is trivial compared to her waste of energy in pushing Harriet toward Mr. Elton and away from Robert Martin, or in snubbing Jane Fairfax as a best friend because Miss Bates, at whose house Jane lodges, is so tiresome. The material consequences of a failure of Harriet and Robert to marry are quite serious, and the failure to behave in a friendly way toward an isolated but perfectly pleasant stranger undoubtedly has the consequence of hurting Jane Fairfax's feelings. Emma compounds this fault, by the way, adding to Jane's emotional pain, when she flirts with Frank Churchill at Box Hill, in Jane's presence.

To contemplate the character of Harriet is very much to analyze a fille who is a bit of a lump. From the vantage point of the 20th century, it is tempting to judge Austen negatively for drawing a portrayal of Harriet in terms of her social status. Yet it is in the metamorphose between Emma and Mr. Knightley regarding Harriet that the core of Harriet's character can be discerned. Emma, of course, has overlook Harriet's illegiti
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