Emma's Management of Harriet's Affairs in Jane Austen's Emma
In this novel, Jane Austen uses the relationship between Emma and
Harriet to highlight the important issues. She uses Emma's management
of Harriet to do this. She creates contrast between Emma and Harriet,
she portrays Emma as beautiful and intelligent though we can still see
faults in her personality. The main fault is her desire to control
people and matchmake them. This also raises issues, including the
position of women and Emma's social status, marriage and comedy which
is shown through irony, especially in the relationship between Emma
and Harriet.
The first thing we read is 'Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and
rich'. By beginning the novel with this quote, we can see the
qualities considered important at that time and how Emma has a high
social status. When we first hear of Harriet, we can see a contrast
between the two characters. 'Harriet was the natural daughter of
somebody. Somebody had placed her several years back at Mrs Goddard's
school.' We see that Harriet is an orphan which automatically
contrasts with Emma's strong family history. The way Austen says
'natural daughter of somebody' suggests her unimportance and lack of
family history which was considered important in Austen's time. Also,
the way the word 'placed' is used makes her seem like an inanimate
object. The reader sees from the beginning that these two characters
are extremely different and therefore not a natural friendship. This
raises the theme of social class.
Another main theme in the novel is marriage. Emma's attitude to this
reveals Austen's thoughts. In Austen's time, marriage was ba...
... middle of paper ...
...In this quote we see how Emma is analysing and
planning to make Harriet her next project.
Austen expresses her views on women and marriage. There is a key quote
in the novel which I feel expresses Austen's feelings - 'Never mind,
Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid, and it is poverty only which
makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with
a very narrow income, must b a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! The
proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune,
is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody
else. And the distinction is not quite so much against the candour and
common sense of the world as appears at first.' Here Austen is saying
how stereotypical society was at that time, she is raising what she
feels were the key issues of her time.
In the earliest part of Harriet?s life the whole idea of slavery was foreign to her. As all little girls she was born with a mind that only told her place in the world was that of a little girl. She had no capacity to understand the hardships that she inherited. She explains how her, ?heart was as free from care as that of any free-born white child.?(Jacobs p. 7) She explains this blissful ignorance by not understanding that she was condemned at birth to a life of the worst kind oppression. Even at six when she first became familiar with the realization that people regarded her as a slave, Harriet could not conceptualize the weight of what this meant. She say?s that her circumstances as slave girl were unusua...
In a novel by William Styron, a father tells his son that life “ is a search for justice.” In Earnest J. Gaines novel Mrs. Emma, the godmother of Jefferson a black man convicted of murder in a crime he unwittingly took a part in, response to Jefferson’s conviction and death sentence by working outside of the legal system to find his redemption. In her own way she used the connections she had to make him see that he was more than a crime that he had committed, and more than the color of his skin. She was a motor throughout the story silently pushing people to do what she needed them to so that she could show others in the community she loved their own potential through Jefferson’s final moments, by making him accept that
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.
In the “Happiest Laboring Class”, the first slaveholder explains that a slave should be obedient at all times under all circumstances. Harriet displays this submissive attitude to both Mr. Flint and even her Aunt Martha. This inferior attitude holds her back from attaining her end goal, which is to have her own home with her children. Eventually she breaks free from this attitude when she runs away from Mr. Flint, and leaves her Aunt Martha to make it on her way to personal
children. Harriet was living during the times of slavery but she believed that equality is for
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.
Mothers in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility "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).
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.
The Role of Women in the Society Depicted by Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice
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.
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 novel, Emma, can be construed as a novel about games; the characters that love to play them and their pitfalls. The importance of games in Emma may not be as intelligible when first reading the novel, like games, their role may appear trivial. On the contrary, scenes in which the characters take part in various games and riddles are some of the more didactic scenes in the text. It is often the case that there is a game played by the characters, within the game or riddle presented in the scene. In Emma, Austen uses games, both physical and mental, as vehicles to expose the flaws and subtext of characters, as well as a means to drive the plot in this dialogue heavy tale. Furthermore, through analysis of the scenes involving Mr. Elton’s riddle, the word game at Donwell Abbey and the conundrum at Box Hill, it can be argued the games and riddles are representative of the mental games played by the characters.
In Jane Austen’s Emma, an emphasis is placed on the importance of female friendships. In particular, Austen places a great deal of emphasis on how Emma treats the women she calls her friends. In many ways, Emma manipulates the people in her life to fit her specific expectations for them. This can be seen in her matchmaking, especially Harriet’s relationship with Mr. Martin. Emma’s manipulation of various relationships serves as a way to control the friendships she has with the women in her life. By matching her friends with the men she has chosen for them, Emma can not only elevate their status but also keep these women in her life as well. It is only when her friendships are affected by marriage that Emma re-evaluates the role of marriage in her own life.
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.
Mansfield Park is a complete socially oriented novel. In this novel Jane Austen closely describe the everyday life of rural middle class society, its gaieties and hardships, describing a distinct system of moral and social principles influencing people’s lives in that period, women status in the system and female life expectations. In the novel Austen shows the efforts of some trying to break the predetermined limitations in order to improve their social class and rank. Austen pointed out the social threats that might ruin the women’s lives permanently (Johnson, Jane Austen: women, politics, and the novel / Claudia L. Johnson 1988). Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park is a classic text. The text almost absolutory concentrated on a small section of society including, the upper middle class of rural England, to which Jane Austen was belonged to Jane Austen’s writing demonstrate beliefs, values and represent an ideology that accentuate devoting principles along with economic and social power, with little citation to the miseries of the working class.