Examples Of Vulnerability To Error In Jane Austen's Emma

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Jennifer Flippin
Mr. Nantz
English IV
30 March 2017
Emma’s Vulnerability to Error.
Emma by Jane Austen is usually stereotyped as a novel of manners involving a young girl who has been fortunate enough to have little to vex her, and who allegedly has a forte for matchmaking those around her not realizing the mistakes she is making along the way seeing as she is not really helping anyone so much as hurting them and herself. Although, “A more adequate answer might be that Emma is about the process by which Emma Woodhouse, motivated by love of power and pride in her own intellectual and social superiority meddles arrogantly and ignorantly in the affairs of various people both in her circle and out of it, at the risk of their happiness and ultimately …show more content…

Emma, who had hated Jane since the day she arrived because Jane "tires [her] to death," (Austen 78), actually felt an ounce of sympathy towards her at one point. “She begins to develop in sensitivity, however, as she experiences her own humiliations. While still disliking Jane, she is capable of entering into her feelings and granting a moment of privacy” (Laurence 1989). Granting privacy towards someone is a huge step for Emma because it means she is actually taking into accounts someone else’s feelings and showing respect towards that person for having them, rather than finding fault in them or simply not caring at all. Besides Jane she also shows sympathy for Harriet after finding out things had gone wrong with Mr. Elton, the man Emma essentially forced Harriet to love. Emma felt bad about this and knows Harriet must have felt lachrymose about the situation because she was led to believe things would work out between them and that it they did work out it would finally make Emma respect her as an equal. Later on in the novel when Harriet becomes convinced of Mr. Knightley’s love for her, Emma cuts herself off from him, and chooses to put aside her comfort in the situation and let Mr. Knightley think for himself. Emma seems willing to “suffer anything, endure any “cost” if it helps him to overcome the terrible state of indecision that she imagines him to be in because, as she believes, he is so reluctant to inflict the pain on her that the revelation about himself and Harriet will incur,the pain of his final turning away from her,and of her final loss of him” (Austen lxxvii). Emma is showing awareness for how Mr. Knightley feels which is something that might not have been felt towards him during the beginning of the book when Emma was too focused on herself to realize her true feelings for others. The

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