The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0123/01239.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 21KB | 330 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01239}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Works of Jane Austen
Essay Questions And Answers}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Austen, Jane}
$Affiliation{Instructor Of English, Rutgers University}
$Subject{emma
knightley
emma's
harriet
social
jane
herself
marry
reader
frank}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Works of Jane Austen
Book:        Emma
Author:      Austen, Jane
Critic:      Fitzpatrick, William J.
Affiliation: Instructor Of English, Rutgers University

Essay Questions And Answers

     1. Show how Jane Austen establishes the connection between moral defects
and failures in awareness.

     Emma is a complex study of human deception and self-deception. Throughout
the book, characters are deceived by appearances, fool themselves and others,
pretend to be what they are not. Their expectations are mistaken; their
actions grounded in false premises. The author reveals the motives and
consequences of these failures in perception by having their false
understanding culminate in actions whose effects are the opposite of what is
intended. The consequent social disorder forces the reader (and some of the
characters - especially Emma) to see the moral fault which causes the
character to choose to live in illusion.

     This sharp contrast between thought and truth, between what the
characters understand and what the reader understands, between intention or
expectation and fulfillment, is sometimes called dramatic irony. Dramatic
irony may have an objective or a subjective foundation, or both. Appearances
may lie, may suggest the opposite of what actually is. Thus, Frank Churchill
uses Emma as a "blind," gives everyone the impression that he is romantically
interested in her - even though he suspects that she is aware of his motive.
What Mr. Elton intends as compliments to Emma are easily interpreted as being
directed at Harriet. And Emma's attentions to Mr. Elton - though intended to
make it convenient for him to meet Harriet - are easily mistaken to be
encouraging his interest in Emma. Emma's encouraging Harriet to be optimistic
about a socially superior match (XL) is interpreted by Harriet as encouraging
her to hope for Mr. Knightley; and Harriet's declared interest in a person of
higher rank is interpreted by Emma as an interest in Frank Churchill.
The story that Miss Bates tells about Jane and Mr. Dixon seems to solicit
Emma's interpretation of it (XIX). Emma's harmless flirtation on Box Hill
with Frank easily leads Mr. Knightley to conclude that she is in love with
him. Everyone expects that Jane Fairfax will have to become a governess.
In these and other situations, things are not as they would seem. Reality
wears a mask which solicits mistaken judgments.

     But although there are objective occasions for superficial (and
erroneous) opinion, a more cautious scrutiny of the facts would sometimes
avoid this discrepancy between estimation and actuality. Mr. Knightley
believes that Emma is in love with Frank Churchill. What he takes for the
truth (that Emma is in need of consolation because of the news of Frank's
engagement to Jane) is directly contrary to the truth (XLIX). : Emma is not in
the least in love with Frank, but very much in love with Mr. Knightley. The
source of his ironic error, however, lies in the circumstances rather than in
himself (the reader will recall that it was after Emma's and Frank's open
flirtation on Box Hill that Mr. Knightley ran off to London).

     On the other hand, Emma is wrong about Harriet's father, about Jane and
Frank, about Mr. Elton, about herself, because she has disposed herself to be
deceived. Her egotism, her sense of her own superiority, her desire to
arrange other persons' lives so she will not have to run any risks herself,
her refusal honestly to face her own deepest feelings - all of these moral and
psychological failures have blinded her judgment. Things are very nearly the
opposite of what she supposes (she is destined to marry within a year rather
than not at all [X], and she is being very easily fooled by Frank when she
thinks she is being most shrewdly perceptive in detecting Jane's "hidden"
romance with Mr. Dixon.) The irony here is compounded because Emma prides
herself on her intelligence and perception. ("In one who sets up as I do for
understanding" [XLIX].)  When ignorance thus pretends to knowledge, it is
evidence of a moral failure. When Mr. Elton understands Emma's cordiality as
an encouragement to pursue her, his mistake is only partially explained by
Emma's behavior. Any honest assessment of their relative social and
intellectual places would have concluded that the match was out of the
question in spite of Emma's apparent condescension. When Harriet believes
that Mr. Knightley wishes to marry her, she is scarcely justified by
appearances. (Actually, he merely did what any gentleman should [XXXVIII], and
he was inquiring for Robert Martin [XLII].)  Her blindness to the plain
reality is a comment on her vanity (which Emma has unwittingly cultivated),
her exaggeration of her own importance and appeal. In the cases of Emma and
Harriet, especially, the ironic misapprehension of reality is a self-deception
indicative of a will to live in a flattering or comfortable illusion instead
of reality.

     In order to dramatize comically the sham and pretense of some of the
persons in the book, the author juxtaposes their interpretations of themselves
and their actual behavior. Emma's and Mrs. Elton's and even Harriet's pride
in their social status is shown to be exaggerated to the point of a ludicrous
snobbery. The contrast between, for example, Emma's desire to put the Coles in
their place (XXIV) and the Coles' consideration for her and her father (to say
nothing of Emma's subsequent enjoyment of the party) ironically chastizes
Emma's snobbery. The discrepancy between Mrs. Elton's pompous claims to being
in possession of a superior social background and her crude and vulgar
behavior in interfering in Jane Fairfax's life (XXIV, XLII, XLIV), in putting
on airs in public, makes her an ironic figure whose words praise and whose
actions condemn herself. And Harriet, who earlier was humble, timid and
grateful at the thought that Mr. Elton "who might marry anybody" might marry
her, later announces that she (lightheaded, fickle, superficial, without
social graces) is above the worthy Robert Martin (and then she marries him
anyway). The pretensions of these characters are the inverse of what their
behavior shows them really to be.

     The author frequently calls attention to a character's faults by having
him say something in jest which later proves true, or deny something which he
later has to affirm. For example, Emma thinks that "it would be safer for both
(Harriet and herself) to have the judicious law of her own brain laid down
with speed" (XL), and later must admit that her own judgment has been far from
judicious and in fact harmful to "both." Early in the novel Emma says to Mr.
Knightley (without any seriousness) that "were you ever to marry, she is the
very woman for you" (VIII), and later she is desolate at the thought that Mr.
Knightley might, in fact, be thinking that Harriet is the "very woman" for him
(XLVIII, XLIX). When Harriet says, "Oh Miss Woodhouse, how ungrateful I have
been!" (XXXI), we (and Emma) are thereby reminded that Harriet has nothing to
be grateful to Emma for - on the contrary! After John Knightley suggests to
her that Mr. Elton may be in love with her, Emma is amused by 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 ever falling into; and not very well pleased with her brother for
imagining her blind and ignorant and in want of counsel" (XII). But later
(XVI) Emma must apply this speech to herself. Emma frequently thinks that if
she were to marry, Frank Churchill was "the very person to suit her in age,
character, and condition" (XIV). Later, she comes to judge Frank in harsh
terms and finds him very unsuitable indeed (XXXI