Emma (1816)
"And you have forgotten one matter of joy to me,"
said Emma, "and a very considerable one--that I
made the match myself. I made the match, you know,
four years ago; and to have it take place, and
be proved in the right, when so many people said
Mr. Weston would never marry again, may
comfort me for any thing."
Mr. Knightley shook his head at her. Her father fondly
replied, "Ah! my dear, I wish you would
not make matches and foretell things, for whatever
you say always comes to pass. Pray do not make
any more matches."
"I promise you to make none for myself, papa; but
I must, indeed, for other people. It is the
greatest amusement in the world!"
-Jane Austen, Emma
The edition of Emma that I just finished has a lovely portrait of a young woman on the cover painted by Josef Stieler. So as a coworker walked by my desk she asked : Are you reading a chick book !?
I quickly protested it was not a chick book--one has one's pride after all--but the cover and her question raise the question : why is it not a chick book ? Why are the novels of Jane Austen, dealing as they do with the machinations of English gentry of marriageable age and their convoluted courtships, so popular among all readers ? We well understand why she should have been a favorite of Henry James, but why did Winston Churchill continually reread her also ? These questions are directly related to another which plagues modern arguments over Jane Austen : do her novels have political ramifications ? The answers to all these questions are to be found in Emma, which is my favorite of her novels.
At the outset let me admit that this only became clear to me when watching the terrific movie Clueless, which is based on this novel, but I now believe Emma to be one of the greatest political novels ever written. Austen predicted of Emma Woodhouse : "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." She was quite wrong; Emma is exactly the kind of misguided busybody with a heart of gold for whom, unfortunately, we have trouble nursing much dislike. The plot of the tale is presumably too well known to need much rehashing here : suffice it to say that Emma is a pleasant and well-intentioned young woman who fancies herself a matchmaker, having successfully joined her governess and Mr. Weston, and so proceeds to meddle in the romantic lives of those around her despite eschewing the idea of marriage for herself. In particular, she takes Harriet Smith, a pretty young girl of dubious social station, under her wing and tries finding her a husband. There follow the expected misunderstandings and hurt feelings before true love finally outs and Emma realizes that not only did she not know what was best for others, in fact she did not understand her own heart's desires.
Now, at first blush that may not sound all that political, but the fundamental point Ms Austen conveys is actually not dissimilar to the argument of the great political philosopher F. A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom (read Orrin's review). Hayek's devastating critique of the modern state and centrally controlled economies argued that no government bureaucrat could ever effectively make decisions for other people because it is impossible to process all of the information that goes into other people's decision-making. Only the free market, which allows for the greatest flow of information that humans have thus far devised, can even begin to approach the levels of efficiency that a complex economy requires to function smoothly. Likewise, Jane Austen, over a hundred years earlier, warned us of the unsatisfactory results to expect when one person sought to make decisions for others, even when acting with their best interests at heart. There will always be those among us, like Emma or like Hilary Clinton, who wish to manipulate our lives (always, we are assured, for our benefit rather than for the joy they take in the exercise), but the results are seldom salutary and never what the manipulators intended.
The idea of poor Jane Austen having to hide her writing when a family
member entered the room and confined to the novel of manners is nearly
totemic
to feminists. They decry the system of oppression which restrained
her talents to insignificant topics and sentenced her to writing about
romance. In reality, Austen, at least in Emma, demonstrates that
simple human wisdom knows no bounds and is as likely to be found in a comedy
of manners as in any scholarly journal. In its own way Emma is as
stern a rebuke to centralization and authoritarianism as can be found in
the Western Canon. That her books are wonderfully witty and evoke
images of an inviting pastoral past is merely icing on the cake.
(Reviewed:21-Jan-01)
Grade: (A+)
