$Unique_ID{bob01231}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Works of Jane Austen
Introduction}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Austen, Jane}
$Affiliation{Instructor Of English, Rutgers University}
$Subject{jane
moral
emma
novel
austen
emma's

}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Works of Jane Austen
Book:        Introduction to Jane Austen
Author:      Austen, Jane
Critic:      Fitzpatrick, William J.
Affiliation: Instructor Of English, Rutgers University

Introduction

     Jane Austen (1775-1817) was born in Steventon, in Hampshire, England,
into a family of eight children. Her father was the village priest and was
amply qualified to educate his literary daughter. It appears that Jane Austen
wrote incessantly from an early age, beginning with burlesques of popular
writers. All six of her novels deal with "the business of getting married."
They are comedies involving either solitary heroines or young women educated
by events to cast off their illusions. Her presentation of "personality," of
the individual consciousness and point of view, mark her as one of the first
English novelists who project a world the contemporary reader can recognize as
familiar. Emma was written in the two years prior to its publication in 1816.
The first thing that attracts the reader is the wonderfully vivid presentation
of character - achieved dramatically through dialogue and carefully staged
scenes. Very seldom in the novel does Jane Austen depart from the presentation
of events through Emma's point of view. The characters in this novel, as in
her others, come in the main from the landed gentry, the middle class of
gentlemen and ladies who do not have to work for a living.

     It is sometimes said that Jane Austen's work is severely limited, and in
a superficial sense this is true. Her settings and subjects are always
similar. The Highbury world lacks the complexity of experience we find in so
many other novels. We do not encounter the extremes of emotion or thought nor
the upper or lower reaches of society. But within Jane Austen's chosen area of
experience there is a satisfying variety of human types. Elizabeth Drew has
described the dramatic oppositions admirably:

     [Emma's] obstinately choosing Harriet as her intimate is set against Jane
Fairfax who has no one to turn to except Miss Bates on the one hand and Mrs.
Elton on the other, and yet keeps her dignity throughout. In individual
portraits she puts the quiet, courteous Mrs. Weston opposite the vulgar Mrs.
Elton; the indiscriminately sociable Mr. Weston against the taciturn Mr. John
Knightley; the lightweight but charming Frank Churchill against the solid
integrity of Mr. George Knightley; Mrs. Elton's kind of egotistical babble
against Miss Bates's silly but good-natured garrulity. Finally, the whole
situation of Miss Bates and her poor old deaf mother in their extreme
"genteel" poverty is contrasted with the luxurious invalidism of Mr. Woodhouse
and his "habits of gentle selfishness."

     And the issues are basically those of identity - psychological and moral.
The action of Emma is the action of self-definition. The source of the
intensity of feeling and dramatic excitement in the novel derives from
watching Emma's complex sensibility suffer the dialectics of humiliation and
humility to achieve a kind of moral perfection of self-awareness. There are
not many more important themes than the "development of self" with no moral
issue shirked. (In Emma the one dimension lacking from Emma's spiritual life
is the religious one.) The interest in Emma thus transcends the exposure and
satire of human limitations as revealed in social behavior - though there is
much of this. After a century and a half, readers return to the novel because
it increases their knowledge of the precarious balance of self-awareness,
prudence, moral courage, and honesty needed to see through self-deception,
become acquainted with one's heart, and find self-fulfillment.

     But with all the seriousness of Jane Austen's moral concern, with all the
social crudities, bad manners, egotism, vanity, and self-deceit in the novel,
Emma is a comedy. Though some of the characters are condemned to continue
being their ignorant and unattractive (if ridiculous) selves, Emma's
successful self-scrutiny and moral rebirth and Mr. Knightley's exemplary
morality and manliness redeem the world of the novel. And beyond even this,
there is the marvelous unity of experience and pattern: every word uttered
contributes to the developing action; yet never does there appear to be an
interfering novelist pulling strings. This unity of plot and moral
significance and psychological action accounts for the perdurable beauty of
Emma.