A Women’s Quest for Power in Jane Austen’s Emma

1563 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Gender as a theme in pride and prejudice bt jane austen

In the ordered English town of Highbury in Jane Austen’s Emma, people live a well constructed life, which shapes the views of social classes in their world. Despite the fact that Emma is a nineteenth-century novel, it represents a time when women depended on economic support from men. This method is observed through the main character Emma, who spends a great deal of her time agonizing about wealth and potential power. In the novel, readers are introduced to Emma as a young prosperous woman who manages her father’s house. Since she is younger than her two sisters, she is introduced to various female characters, which influence her social development and exemplify a range of gender roles available to her. In Emma’s household women are superior to men, as her father demonstrates feminine tendencies and the women are portrayed as masculine. This could be the reason Emma prides herself in being an advocate of structuring prosperous relationships within her community. When Emma considers prosperous relationship, she begins by categories people by their power and beauty. In Emma’s mind, power and beauty is the ideal combination to developing a perfect society. In Jane Austen‘s Emma, the main character Emma uses her obsession with beauty and power to create her own utopia. Emma’s utopia reconfigures the social system so that hierarchy is defined by looks and character instead of birthrights. However, when Emma’s attempt to create her own utopia fails, Austen challenges readers to accept the existing order and structure of the early nineteenth century English society.

Due to Emma’s wealth and being a masculine figure in her household these effects ruptures her understanding of the possibilities and limitations placed on women. Born in ...

... middle of paper ...

... But in fact her powers and beauty cannot change the foundation of her society. Emma’s circumscription within the boundaries of her class kept her world under control. This prevents her from considering another society beyond her existence. The confusion from her failed attempts with Harriet due to her guidance, allows her to embrace reality. Jane Austen uses Emma’s character to reveal the quality in the structures of the nineteenth century society. Based on the conclusion of the novel, when Emma is forced to look beyond the limited power and beauty she has and acknowledge the existing order and structure of the early nineteenth century English society.

Work Cited

Austen, Jane. Emma. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1816. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Compare the Representation of Relationships in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Rapunzstiltskin’

    1280 Words  | 3 Pages

    Women in the time of Jane Austen dedicated their lives to being good-looking (seen in the vanity of Lydia and Kitty especially) and accomplished to ensure they were marriage material, just as the maiden tried to be enchanting and desirable for The Prince. Both texts illustrate an imbalance and struggle for equality within the oppressive rules and expectations that revolve around women’s lives, and so, their relationships.

    Read More

  • Mothers in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility

    1504 Words  | 4 Pages

    "I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her suckling child". Jane Austen wrote these words about her novel, Sense and Sensibility, in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1811. Such a maternal feeling in Austen is interesting to note, particularly because any reader of hers is well aware of a lack of mothers in her novels. Frequently we encounter heroines and other major characters whom, if not motherless, have mothers who are deficient in maturity, showing affection, and/or common sense. Specifically, I would like to look at Sense and Sensibility, which, according to Ros Ballaster's introduction to the novel, "is full of, indeed over-crowded with, mothers" (vii). By discussing the maternal figures in this work, I hope to illustrate the varying possibilities of what mothering and motherhood can entail in Austen, and what this curious spectrum of strengths and weaknesses means for the heroine involved.

    Read More

  • Role of Jane Fairfax in Jane Austen's Emma

    1997 Words  | 4 Pages

    Jane Fairfax plays a significant role as a rival towards Emma in terms of intelligence and beauty in the novel Emma by Jane Austen. Jane Fairfax is born to Mrs. Bates youngest daughter and Lieut. Fairfax. Jane’s father Lieut. Fairfax died and Jane was left with a widow mother who also died when Jane was three years old. After the death of Jane’s parents, Jane was took care by Colonel Campbell who was a good friend to Mr. Fairfax where Mr. Campbell believed that Mr. Fairfax has saved his life (p.128). Jane was loved by Mrs. and Miss Bates but if she lived with them, she would have had limited opportunities through her education and her social level. From Campbells kindness Jane was educated at high standards in London by Campbells support taught by the first-rate masters. However, because Campbells could not financially support Jane forever as their fortune belonged to their daughter and from Miss Campbell’s marriage with Mr. Dixon, Jane finally comes back to Highbury where her relatives Mrs. and Miss Bates live. Jane is a character in the book Emma as an only character who could be contrasted to Emma through many natures. This essay will discuss the role of Jane Fairfax through issues such as Jane and Emma’s relationship, Jane’s relationship with Mrs. Elton in contrast to Emma’s relationship with Harriet Smith, Jane’s love relationship with Mr. Frank Churchill and discuss why Jane is the conventional heroine where Emma is not.

    Read More

  • Emma: the Turning Point at Box Hill

    1324 Words  | 3 Pages

    Emma, a novel by Jane Austen, is the story of a young woman, Emma, who is rich, stubborn, conniving, and occupies her time meddling into others' business. There are several recurring themes throughout the novel; the ideas of marriage, social class, women's confinement, and the power of imagination to blind the one from the truth, which all become delineated and reach a climax during the trip to Box Hill. The scene at Box Hill exposes many underlying emotions that have been built up throughout the novel, and sets the stage for the events that conclude it.

    Read More

  • Theme of Transformation in Emma

    1224 Words  | 3 Pages

    Another form of Emma’s neglect is one of manipulation, mostly through her control over Harriet Smith. Emma is “willful, manipulative, an arranger or rather a misarranger of other people’s lives. Much of the time she fails to see things clearly and truly, and her self-knowledge is uncertain” (Goodheart)25. “One significant effect of harping on Emma's snobbery is to set in relief her romantic notions of Harriet's origin and destiny” (Brooke)26. Although to Harriet, Emma’s “help” to her is one that will reveal optimistic results and a proper husband, Harriet is incapable to taking up for herself against Emma, but if “[s]he would form her opinions...

    Read More

  • Stereotypes Of Marriage In Pride And Prejudice By Jane Austen

    1211 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jane Austen writes about the society of her time, achievements, behaviors, values​​, prejudices, aspirations. She belongs to the middle class within the social class system in. The novel is set during the time of the regency, which is a bridge between the Georgian and Victorian period. The eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries from part of the perspective of the European history. At this time they were having a lot of changes in economic, political, social and cultural. “Austen herself notes that she knows little of the world at large and instead chooses to write about what she does know.”

    Read More

  • Feminism and Jane Austen's Emma

    1140 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the term of realism, Emma’s society value view represented the problematic old society. Austen was very suspicious to sustain the significance of social class construction in “Emma.” The exi...

    Read More

  • Brief Look at Emma by Jane Austen

    4707 Words  | 10 Pages

    Mr. Frank Churchill was one of the boasts of Highbury, and a lively curiosity to see him prevailed, though the compliment was so little returned that he had never been there in his life.

    Read More

  • Social Class in Sense and Sensibility

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...f society and the desire to marry into a higher class, she is able to expose her own feelings toward her society through her characters. Through Marianne and Elinor she displays a sense of knowing the rules of society, what is respectable and what is not, yet not always accepting them or abiding by them. Yet, she hints at the triviality and fakeness of the society in which she lived subtly and clearly through Willoughby, John Dashwood and Edward Ferrars. Austen expertly reveals many layers to the 19th century English society and the importance of having both sense and sensibility in such a shallow system.

    Read More

  • A Character Analysis Of Jane Austen's Emma

    1464 Words  | 3 Pages

    To be a mentor is to hold influence over a person’s actions or education. Overall, “Emma” is a novel about the influence that people hold over each other, and how that influence can affect people. Conflict is built by different characters who view themselves as mentors struggling to assert their opinions over others and pupil characters who accept their mentor’s opinions without bothering to form their own.

    Read More

  • Jane Austen's Emma

    933 Words  | 2 Pages

    Author Jane Austen had porttryal of arrogance that existed in upper class society. She uses Emma as a representative of the faults and lack of values of her society. Just as Emma contains these many faults, the upper class society as a whole also contains these many faults. Additionally, in Emma, Austen depicts the distorted views of gentility. Austen depicts her own message of true gentility by creating characters of differing class ranks. Bradbury relates that the characters that are socially high seem to be morally inferior and those of lower rank are "elevated" by their actions (Austen 81). Austen's development of characters, especially Emma, is very effective in relaying her message about the snobbery and lack of gentility that existed in upper class society.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Patriarchy In Jane Austen's Emma

    1968 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the novel, Emma, Austen introduced her audience to a new idea of patriarchy. While she is known to satirize society for the “faulty education of female children, limited expectations for girls and women, and the perils of the marriage market” (“Austen, Jane”). Austen expresses the irony of the men of her patriarchal society and proposes the ideal gentleman in Mr. Knightley. In Emma, Austen moves away from “a traditional idea of 'natural' male supremacy towards a 'modern' notion of gender equity” (Marsh). Jane Austen is a revolutionary in the way she transforms the idea of Nineteenth Century patriarchy by not “reinforcing the traditional gender stereotypes” (Rosenbury) but instead challenging the status quo. While her characters still hold some ties to traditional ideals, Austen proves to be ahead of her time, influencing the way gender is regarded today.

    Read More

  • Class System In Jane Austen's Emma And Persuasion

    959 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jane Austen’s works are characterized by their classic portrayals of love among the gentry of England. Most of Austen’s novels use the lens of romance in order to provide social commentary through both realism and irony. Austen’s first published bookThe central conflicts in both of Jane Austen’s novels Emma and Persuasion are founded on the structure of class systems and the ensuing societal differences between the gentry and the proletariat. Although Emma and Persuasion were written only a year apart, Austen’s treatment of social class systems differs greatly between the two novels, thus allowing us to trace the development of her beliefs regarding the gentry and their role in society through the analysis of Austen’s differing treatment of class systems in the Emma and Persuasion. The society depicted in Emma is based on a far more rigid social structure than that of the naval society of Persuasion, which Austen embodies through her strikingly different female protagonists, Emma Woodhouse and Anne Eliot, and their respective conflicts. In her final novel, Persuasion, Austen explores the emerging idea of a meritocracy through her portrayal of the male protagonist, Captain Wentworth. The evolution from a traditional aristocracy-based society in Emma to that of a contemporary meritocracy-based society in Persuasion embodies Austen’s own development and illustrates her subversion of almost all the social attitudes and institutions that were central to her initial novels.

    Read More

  • Emma by Jane Austen

    2037 Words  | 5 Pages

    Emma by Jane Austen Setting Emma took place in a small town called Highbury in 18th century England. During the time period set in the novel, there was a definite social rank, or hierarchy. Almost all of the scenes in the book take place in or around the estates of the characters. Their property determines their social status.

    Read More

  • Emma By Jane Austen Analysis

    1247 Words  | 3 Pages

    Matchmaking now days consists of game shows and blind dates; but in Emma, a novel written by Jane Austen, it was composed of a lonesome and bored women who is convinced she is the reason for the marriage of her old governess and the village widow. She also believes she can find her new friend the perfect husband; but she will go to the extremes to find this ideal match for her newly found companion.

    Read More

More about A Women’s Quest for Power in Jane Austen’s Emma

Open Document