This paper presents the two of the four main reading approaches to
reading a text. In this paper, Jane Austen’s novel Emma will be used
to demonstrate these approaches; providing a detailed description into
both reading practice, including reader-centred and author-centred. As
it is now widely acknowledged that no text is neutral, these practices
are one way of conceptualising changes in the theories and practices
of literary study that have occurred during the twentieth century.
Each approach is characterised by particular assumptions and values
and therefore places greater or lesser emphasis on the interactions
that occur between both the author and the reader as we read. To
justify these approaches, I have also used defenses.
Reader-Centred Approach
Since its release in the early years of the nineteenth century, the
novel Emma has never ceased to impress and intrigue. While being
criticised for its lack of action and development, the novel, I found,
provides the reader with a remarkably accurate and surprisingly
hilarious portrayal of life in the upper middle class during the
Victorian period. With the ability to one minute have me ready to pull
out my hair and the next be in hysterics as Jane Austen repeatedly
pokes fun at the characters and their unanticipated antics and
imperfections, this book is a work of art. Events are miscalculated,
actions are misinterpreted and emotions are toiled with, but as with
many of Jane’s novels, a neatly tied (even teary) ending is produced
and all that should live happily ever after do. In the end, what I had
presumed to be both dull and strenuous turned out quite the opposite,
and my immense appreciation for the novel, as you will no-doubt
discover, clearly dem...
... middle of paper ...
... glossary.
Chalkface Press: Cottesloe, Western Australia.
* Queensland Studies Authority, (QSA). (2002). English Extension:
Reading Approaches, QSA, Queensland.
* Ricoeur, Paul (1991). From Text to Action, Essays in hermeneutics
2. Kathleen Blamey and John B Thompson, trans. Northwestern
University Press: Evanston, Illinois.
* Robina State High School-Senior English Extension (Literature).
(draft syllabus, 5.3.2).
* Rosenblatt, Louise (1968). Literature as Exploration, revised
edition. Nobel and Nobel: New York.
* Thomson, J. (1992). Reconstructing Literature Teaching. Australian
Association for the Teaching of English.
Websites:
* (1) Fitzgerald, C.
http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/emma2.asp.
* (2) Jalic, L, 2000-2004.
www.online-literature.com/austen/emma/
* (3) Wilber, A.
www.amazon.com
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.
After reading Jane Austen's Emma, then viewing the BBC production and Miramax films based on the novel one can understand why most authors are horrified over the translation of their novels into film. The two film versions are quite different from one another, but both take such liberties with the original text as to wonder why the film makers of each even bothered with Austen's work. The BBC production encompasses more of the tone and atmosphere of the text, the polite, mannered, upper-class social milieu of Victorian England than does the Miramax version, but both make interpretations of the text that belie the filmmakers' agenda than they do of Austen's own. The films are different from the novel in many ways, including characterization, setting, action, dialogue and theme. For example, the Miramax version of Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow portrays an Emma who is more like cupid armed with the bow of modern feminism. In the BBC version, Emma is not portrayed as lightly and as humorous. Instead, she is turned into a bantering harpy who lacks much of the charm of Austen's Emma. This analysis will compare the first chapter of Emma with the corresponding opening scene in each film. By doing so, we will see not only many differences among them (including some obtrusive additions on behalf of the films), but we will also see how the filmmakers differed in their interpretation of Austen's original.
The 2009 miniseries adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, directed by Jim O’Hanlon and adapted for the screen by Sandy Welch, pulls themes of travel, community, and homecoming from the novel and presents them in a way that offers new insight and perspective on the novel itself. This adaptation stars Romola Garai as Emma and Jonny Lee Miller as Mr. Knightley and, unlike other adaptations of Austen novels focuses less on the romance between the hero and heroine, and more on the circumstances and themes that link Emma, Jane Fairfax (Laura Pyper), and Frank Churchill (Rupert Evans). Through the use of opening backstory and dialogue, the film highlights this link in a way that offers new and interesting insight not only into the relationship between
Jane Austen was a stellar English author. Though she only wrote six novels, her unique and effective style of writing was evident to all who read her works. The elements used by Austen are still relevant in today’s day and age. Austen’s stories are full of allusions to geography, history, literature, philosophy, and mythology. Her novels are full of themes pertaining to love, marriage, and society fitting in to the genre of romantic fiction. All of her stories take place in nineteenth century England. Austen maintains a tone of irony and sympathy throughout her literary works making them seem, to an extent, almost comical. She effectively uses symbols and motifs to build underlying meaning into her stories much greater than that of the upfront
It is the aim of this piece to consider how two elements are developed in the opening chapters of three classic novels written by 19th century English women: Emma, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre, respectively. The elements to be considered are a) character; and b) character relationships. Consideration will be given to see how each opening chapter develops these two aspects, and the various approaches will be compared and contrasted as well.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing” (Good Reads). According to the President, people often mistake things for what they appear to be not for what they actually are, yet this quote also can be interpreted as to saying that people are too often judged by their reputation instead of their character. The misconception of others is a reoccurring theme in many works of literature as well as the themes of marriage and confinement of women, and society. In Jane Austen’s novel, Emma, the themes of appearance versus reality, marriage and confinement of women and social status are seen in her novel through characters such as Emma, Harriet, and Mr. Knightley.
Even though today Jane Austen is regarded for her writing, during her time she couldn’t even publish her work under her own name, because it was considered unladylike for women to be intellectual figures. Unlike J. K. Rowling and other English female writers today, who are well known for their works even without using their full names, Jane Austen lived within the sanctuary of a close-knit family and always published her works under a pseudonym that could not be traced back to her (jasna.org). Writing at the time was a male-dominated profession and women depended completely on men for their livelihood. During her upbringing she knew the importance of money to women in a severely classist and patriarchal society, and so marriage was the answer to the survival of women during this time (Helms 32). Even knowing these qualities were important in her life she criticized them. Jane’s writing is somewhat comical, because even while criticising those normal discriminations in her book Pride and Prejudice, the book was published with a prejudiced nameless cover, shedding even greater light on the lack of sense and shortcoming of sensibility of eighteenth century Great Britain. So in order for women to hide their identity while writing about things that were highly controversial they used male pen names. Female authors resorted to pseudonyms to become published and to not be shunned away by their readers, and only after they did this their work was taken as serious literature. Although we ask why do we see Jane Austen’s name printed on all her classical works? That is because we see it “today” in the current year. During her lifetime Jane Austen remained pretty much unidentified because all her novels were published anonymously unde...
The theme of social status and society is prevalent in the novel of Emma, through the characters Emma, Mr. Knightley, Mr. Churchill, and their situations and perspectives on life. Austen describes Emma as, “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” makes her outlook disparate from characters such as Harriet (Austen, Emma 3). Immediately through her description, Austen indicates Emma’s haughty perspective on society through her referencing her friends as “first set” and “second set.” Through Emma’s classification of her friends by their social status and importance, first set being the superior and second set being the inferior and locum, the reader is able to have a glimpse of Emma’s outlook on society and it’s classes. (Knowledge Notes). Emma once again portrays the theme of social status and society through her views of people in lower classes than she such as Harriet and Mr. Martin. After Emma meets Harriet for the first time, she immediately decides that Harriet’s “soft blue eyes, and all those natural graces, should not be wasted on the inferior society of Highbury, and its connections” (Austen, Emma 20). Because of the social class difference between her and Mr. Martin, Emma regards him as someone who is inferior and advises Harriet to refuse his proposal. She claims that though “his appearance was very neat, and he looked like a sensible young man, but his person had no other advantage; and when he came to be contrasted with a gentleman, she thought he must lose all the ground…” (Austen, Emma 27) and that Harriet deserves someone more advantageo...
Austen was a recondite writer with a new inside perspective with an outside view on life in the early 19th century. Born on December 16, 1775, Austen was a curious child given the unseal luxury of an education. Her father was a part of the gentry class and raised a family of ten, but was not well off by any means (Grochowski). Sense and Sensibility, written by Jane Austen, tells a dramatic story of three sisters and their emotional journey where they encounter love and betrayal. Because Jane Austen was raised in a liberal family and received a comprehensive education, her dramatic analysis of societal behavior in Sense and Sensibility was comparable to the hidden truths of social and class distinctions in 18th and 19th century Europe.
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.
In Jane Austen’s social class and coming of age novel, Emma, the relationships between irony, insight and education are based upon the premise of the character of Emma Woodhouse herself. The persona of Emma is portrayed through her ironic and naive tone as she is perceived as a character that seems to know everything, which brings out the comedic disparities of ironies within the narrative. Emma is seen as a little fish in a larger pond, a subject of manipulating people in order to reflect her own perceptions and judgments. Her education is her moral recognition to love outside her own sheltered fancies and her understandings of her society as a whole.
In Jane Austen's Emma the eponymous heroine is "handsome, clever, and rich" but she also suffers from arrogance and self-deception. With the good judgement of Mr Knightley, and her own self scrutiny, Emma experiences a movement of psyche, from arrogance and vanity through the humiliation of self knowledge to clarity of judgement and fulfilment in marriage. The tone of the novel and the episodes where Emma is self deceived progresses from the light comedy of Mr Elton's gallantry and the eventual mortification to the sombre depression of Emma's belief that she has ruined her own chances of happiness by bringing Mr Knightley and Harriet together. Although at times the reader is able to laugh at her mistakes, as she moves slowly and uncertainly to self knowledge and maturity, the reader, like Mr Knightley, comes to take her seriously, for in the novel serious moral and social issues are dealt with, issues which directly concern her. While we may be 'put off' by her mistakes, and flights of illogical fancy, these are also the very qualities which endear her to us.
Jane Austen’s Influence on Literature “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.” This was one of many austere comments made by Jane Austen in her book Mansfield Park. It was this radical way of writing that captured the attention of readers from all over, and made a lasting impression on scholars, critics, and readers for centuries. Austen tremendously impacted the world of literature by introducing a new style of writing, using new literary devices to describe her daily life, and continuing to remain current throughout the centuries. Jane Austen was one of the first writers to introduce an entirely new style of writing.
Jane Austen's writing style is a mix of neoclassicism and romanticism. Austen created a transition into Romanticism which encourages passion and imagination in writing instead of a strict and stale writing style. It is very emotional and follows a flowing not structured form. Mixing these two styles was one of Austen's strongest talents, which gave her an edge in the literary world. No other author in her time was able to create such a strong transition between writing styles. Austen used her sharp and sarcastic wit in all of her writing including in one of her most famous works; Pride and Prejudice. She could create a powerful and dramatic scene and immediately lead it into a satirical cathartic scene. We see these in various locations in Pride and Prejudice. She was able to use her experiences as well as her intense knowledge to create meaningful insights into her words, regardless of what topic she would be discussing. She often talks about marriage, or breaking the roles of what a person should be. She made controversial works that praised imperfections which praised the...
In eighteenth century which feminist in social status was not popular by that time, author can only through literature to express her thought and discontented about society. Jane Austen’s Emma advocates a concept about the equality of men and women. Also satirizes women would depend on marriage in exchange to make a living or money in that era. By the effect of society bourgeois, Emma has little self-arrogant. She is a middle class that everyone could admire, “Young, pretty, rich and clever”, she has whatever she needs. She disdains to have friends with lower levels. However, she is soon reach satisfaction with matchmaking for her friend. Story characterizes a distorted society images and the superiority of higher class status. It brought out the importance of class divided over that time. Story Emma is female bildungsroman. In this thesis will explore the essentials of old society, feminism and the fear of marriage and how main character’s spiritual growth to transform distorted ethic on social value and value of marriage.