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Emma is a literary classic by Jane Austen following the genteel women of Georgian-Regency England in their most cherished sport: matchmaking. Emma is spoiled, headstrong, and self-satisfied. After a couple she has introduced gets married, she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities and, blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives, proceeds to forge ahead in her new interest despite objections. What follows is a comedy of manners, in which Emma repeatedly counsels her friends for or against their marriage prospects, absent any notice of their true emotions or desires. This story is often cited as a personal favorite of critics and literary historians, and Emma is set apart from other Austen heroines by her seeming immunity to romantic attraction.… (more)
Sarasamsara: Like Austen's novels, The Makioka Sisters traces the daily lives and romances of an upper-class family-- the only difference is that this is pre-war Japan, not Regency England. Like in one of Austen's works, when you close the novel you feel like you are closing the door on someone's life.… (more)
kara.shamy: In some ways the heroines in these two novels are alike, but they are very different in other respects, and more strikingly, their respective journeys to the altar/married life go in diametrically opposite ways, in a sense! Both are true classics in my estimation; reading these two novels exposes the reader to two of the greatest English-language novelists of all time in the height of their respective powers. While all readers and critics do not and will not share this superlative view, few would dispute these are two early female masters of the form and are well worth a read on that humbler basis ;) Enjoy!… (more)
nessreader: Both Emma and Miss M are about ambitious, capable upper class women who can only express themselves as social hostesses. Both heroines are managing and bossy - Miss M, a generation younger, is played more for laughs, but there is a strong parallel. And both end in utter satisfaction for heroine and reader alike.… (more)
Everything that Miss Bates said should have been cut down by 3/4. I understand that her character is irritatingly longwinded, and to show is better writing than to tell, but come on! By the end I was only reading a sentence or two of Miss Bates's page-long-or-more monologues, and then moving on; her words contained no useful content, and were merely there to demonstrate the high level of kindness and tolerance of Jane Fairfax et al.
For that matter, most of Emma's internal monologues could have been trimmed quite a bit too and not suffered for it.
I found the sudden rift between Emma and Harriet, after Harriet tells Emma that she has a thing for Mr. Knightley, a little odd. Okay, Emma is appalled at the idea of those two getting married because Harriet is in a lower caste, and because Emma is discovering she herself loves Knightley. But they were very good friends, spending every day together, and now after that single talk they are both done with each other? And Emma actually putting it in writing that they shouldn't hang out anymore? That type of behavior might fit with girls of 13 or 14, but not grown women. I thought it was a little slapdash.
I liked "Pride and Prejudice" quite a bit, and had expected to like "Emma" just as much, but the former had much tighter (better) writing. The flowery language of the time was really let loose in "Emma" and I think it suffers because of it. This is more a 2.5 star book, but skipping/skimming over vast chunks of monologues improves the flow of the story and nudges this up to 3 stars. ( )
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. (78) … but it is not every man’s fate to marry the woman who loves him best. (249)
Geometrically speaking: Austen usually adopts the triangle but this time take the circle: all feeling goes round and round (the answer to the question of who is in love with whom (sparknotes)).
… no one possesses complete enough information to interpret correctly everything that is going on. (sparknotes)
the novel’s suggestion that social intercourse is a game with particular rules. (sparknotes)
That is to say, it represents with unprecedented fullness the interpenetration of these large, stipulated spheres of existence—the domain of individual, reflective consciousness and emotions as it engages, mediates, and is modified by external and public pressures. (Kindle Locations 228-230)
As for Emma herself, Jane Austen famously declared that “I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.” (Kindle Locations 363-364)
Emma is deeply implicated in these antagonistic tendencies of impulse and attitude. (Kindle Locations 985-986)
Nevertheless, such narrative details serve to point toward the sub-textual conflict and ambivalence in which for most of the novel Emma is suspended. (Kindle Locations 1042-1043)
This had just taken place and with great cordiality, when John Knightley made his appearance, and “How d’ye do, George?” and “John, how are you?” succeeded in the true English style, burying under a calmness that seemed all but indifference, the real attachment which would have led either of them, if requisite, to do everything for the good of the other. (94-5)
The institution of marriage, like the novel itself, has changed greatly since Austen’s time; but as long as human beings long for this kind of mutual recognition and understanding, “Emma” will live.
“Perhaps the key to Emma’s perfection, however, is that it is a comic novel, written in a mode that rarely gets much respect. It’s exquisitely ironic.”
“The presiding message of the novel is that we must forgive Emma for her shortcomings just as she can and does learn to excuse the sometimes vexing people around her. There is, I believe, more wisdom in that than in many, many more portentous and ambitious novels. Emma is flawed, but ‘Emma’ is flawless."
It’s a small but striking and instructive demonstration, the careful way Emma appraises the character of the various men who jockey for her attentions and those of the women around her. We could all learn from her example.
"In January 1814, Jane Austen sat down to write a revolutionary novel. Emma, the book she composed over the next year, was to change the shape of what is possible in fiction."
"The novel’s stylistic innovations allow it to explore not just a character’s feelings, but, comically, her deep ignorance of her own feelings. "
"Those who condemn the novel by saying that its heroine is a snob miss the point. Of course she is. But Austen, with a refusal of moralism worthy of Flaubert, abandons her protagonist to her snobbery and confidently risks inciting foolish readers to think that the author must be a snob too"
To His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, this work is, by His Royal Highness's permission, most respectfully dedicated, by His Royal Highness's dutiful and obedient humble servant, the author.
First words
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
Quotations
Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.
"I thank you; but I assure you, you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and I are very good friends, and nothing more, and she walked on, amusing herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgment are for every falling into..." (Emma)
"I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other."
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure.
I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through--and very good books they were--very well chosen and very neatly arranged--sometimes alphabetically and sometimes by some other rule.
How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation? (Frank Weston Churchill)
Oh! The blessing of a female correspondent when one is really interested in the absent! (Frank Weston Churchill)
"I cannot make speeches, Emma...If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more." (Mr. Knightley)
It will be natural for me...to speak my opinion aloud as I read. (Mr. Knightley)
These matters are always a secret till it is found out that everybody knows them. (Mr. Weston)
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
[...] a sanguine temper, though for ever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. it soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again.
Last words
But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.
Emma is a literary classic by Jane Austen following the genteel women of Georgian-Regency England in their most cherished sport: matchmaking. Emma is spoiled, headstrong, and self-satisfied. After a couple she has introduced gets married, she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities and, blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives, proceeds to forge ahead in her new interest despite objections. What follows is a comedy of manners, in which Emma repeatedly counsels her friends for or against their marriage prospects, absent any notice of their true emotions or desires. This story is often cited as a personal favorite of critics and literary historians, and Emma is set apart from other Austen heroines by her seeming immunity to romantic attraction.
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Haiku summary
Mix-match my neighbors Cutest narcissist am I Don't listen to me (city girl)
Bossy know-it-all Privileged and doted on Meddles. Learns lessons. (pickupsticks)
She can do no wrong Matchmaking busybody Knightley sets things right. (pickupsticks)
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Discussion Thread: Emma
Wikipedia in English (1)
5
A good read the second time around, though I felt the last 1/4 had lots of repetition and needed some cutting down. (