Emma - Jane Austen - Episode 3 - The Strategies Of Romantic Intrigue Go Awry! - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

Emma - Jane Austen - Episode 3 - The Strategies Of Romantic Intrigue Go Awry!

 

Emma- Episode 3

 

I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.  This is our 100th episode.  Woohoo.  It’s hard to believe- but it’s true!  We’ve been doing this for 100 weeks- almost two years. We’d love to hear from you via any social media you use.  We’ve certainly enjoyed bringing our best analysis of some of the world’s greatest lit.  If you’d like to celebrate with us, forward a favorite episode to a friend.  Tell them this is your favorite podcast, ever..even if it isn’t, we won’t tell Rogan.

 

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. And Christy, are we competing with joe rogan? 

 

I think we are.  We don’t have a billion downloads yet, but doesn’t mean we’re not in the game. 

 

  It is crazy that we’ve been at this for two years.  This is our 40th piece of literature- this is episode three in our four part series of Jane Austen’s masterpiece, Emma. Week 1, we introduced Regency England, discussed the idea of Emma as a coming of age novel and got through the first page.  Last week, we galloped through chapters 1-16, although leaving much unsaid.  There is just no way to treat this or any of Austen’s books properly in under an hour, but the focus was in understanding how she uses point of view to develop among other things, the concept the Greeks called a virtuous friendship.  We argued that Austen proposes that for us to live our lives most fully AND NOT lonely- it’s not just being around people or even people that we like or love, we must be intellectually the equal of those who are closest to us- both in platonic as well as romantic relationships.  To do otherwise is to be in solitude- this is a book that explores and illustrates these kinds of relationships. 

 

Exactly, we also discussed the idea- and this is for those who really want to geek out on Austen -the narrative style she is credited for developing - “free indirect discourse” as she, as an apparent outside narrator takes you in and out of the consciousness of her characters, seamlessly- making you feel and see things from their perspective- likely without realizing it.  And I know that sounds so weird to describe and makes you think that this is some James Joyce Oddessy of the mind, but it absolutely isn’t.  Plus, it’s one of those things that  by my telling you that’s what she’s doing- you can’t help but see it…like in one of those optical illusion pictures. The subtlety and irony that you get when you notice the techniques of the artist kind of reminds me of back when I was in college, and I backpacked through Europe on my way home from studying for a semester in Kazakhstan.  We were in Rome and we went to the Sistine chapel.  I had heard about how amazing and artful it was, but I myself knew absolutely nothing of art.  I remember to this day walking in, looking at the ceiling and going- huh, well that’s nice. 

 

I bet you’re ashamed of that attitude now.

 

Well, of course I am.  I’ve been back since.  But I’ll tell you this, I’ve never one time been back without going inside with a guide.  Why go to the Sistine chapel without a guide? You have no idea what you’re doing.

 

True, it’s like drinking water through a fire hose, you’re going to drink very little and the rest is going to fall all over the ground wasted.

 

I agree completely.  Reading Jane Austen is like drinking from a garden hose.  You can read this book over and over, and still see things you never noticed before.  Last week, another thing I wanted to accomplish was attack this notion that the novel is boring- an accusation leveled at me by my father and one, Garry, I think you somewhat agreed with.  I told both of you I thought we could make it interesting by understanding the heart of story as something apart from the plot- although there is a plot- perhaps you could even call it a mystery- but the enjoyment comes from loving the characters and listening to the wit.  The characters do not serve the plot, but the plot serves only to push forward the characters.  Garry, tell me how you feel about it honestly? Now, for the purposes of disclosure, we must confess that Garry had never read this book before.

 

I have to admit the more I read it the more I have enjoyed it- and actually when I went to the audible, I started to enjoy more and more the clever phrases.  Her wit grows on you the more you read it.  She can be insulting in the most polite way, and she can be satirical almost sarcastic and you barely catch it.  Which I think is a trait of genius in people.

 

That’s it exactly- which is why before we get into the fun array of characters, which is really the plan for this episode besides pushing the plot through chapter 38 with the ball at the Crown,  I want to bring up Austen’s severest credit, who I think is actually a secret Jane-ite, but would never admit it- the illustrious American satirist, Mark Twain.  Mark Twain expressed unparalelled hatred for Austen.  Twain said the definition of an ideal library would be one with none of her books on its shelves and I quote “Just one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it”.

 

Good grief, what was his problem. 

 

I honestly don’t know except that she was the favorite author of one of closest friends, William Dean Howells, another author and literary critic.  Howells would threaten to read Austen to him when he was ill.

 

So, you think it was just public fun?

I kind of do.  He said things like this, “Her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy.  Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

 

But he admits to reading her work over and over.

 

Exactly, He wrote an unfinished essay on her that starts out like this, “Whenever I take up Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility” I feel like a barkeeper entering the kingdom of heaven. I mean, I feel as he would probably feel, would almost certainly feel.  I am quite sure I know what his sensations would be- and his private comments.  He would be certain to curl his lip, as those ultra-good Presbyterians when feeling self-complacently along.  Because he considered himself better than they?  Not at all. They would not be to his taste- that is all.  Yet he would secretly be ashamed of himself, secretly angry with himself that this was so.  Why because barkeepers are like everybody else.  It humiliates them to find that there are fine things, great things, admirable things, which others can perceive and they cannot.”  And then he goes on in his essay to just eviscerate her.

 

Well, it sounds like she maddens him and he maybe needed a good podcast to explain her.  You know this is the same man that said it was easy to quit smoking- he had done it many times.

 

I know- which is why I think he’s a secret jane-ite.  Austen in many ways, is funny in the same vein as Twain, and had they been alive at the same time, I would have loved to see those two meet. Today, when we explore the character of Frank Churchhill, Mrs. Elston and really the entire fictional town of Highbury, we will see that Austen might be one woman who could have bested Twain at his own satirical game. 

 

Sadly, however, that could never happen.  Austen’s untimely death occurred twenty years before Twain was born- which, I guess if her death had not been so early they could have met on his European tour.  Christy, we talked about getting into her life. Is it now time?

 

It is now or never.  We did mention that she was born on December 16, 1775, the seventh child out of 8 to a minister, a wonderful minister actually.

 

- which I find kind of humorous since the ministers in her books are not all that awesome.

 

  Well, that’s true, but don’t let that fool you into thinking Austen wasn’t a religious person.  At the time she was writing, there were tons of novels that were religious, and in fact, novels by their very genre were supposed to be instructive or moralistic- and so many of them were actually preachy.  Austen very deliberately made sure that she never fell into that- which I find interesting, it wasn’t the legacy she wanted.  But they were a religious family and  also extremely educated, and in fact, one of her ancestors founded St. John’s College in Oxford. However, in Jane’s case- her personal education, because she was a girl, was absolutely abhorrent- deadly actually.  If you’ve ever read Jane Eyre (a book we’ll do at some point) you know the kind of school she went to- apparently there were lots of these places where they just basically starved and abused girls.  Jane and her sister Cassandra, with a cousin named Jane Cooper went to one- and it was bad- just like in Jane Eyre. It was so bad, that when their family found out how bad, Jane Coopers’s mother came and got them, but in the process of just being on campus (if that’s what you want to call the place), she contracted typhus fever and actually died.

 

The cousin?

 

No, the aunt, later on Jane attended another girl’s school.  It wasn’t abusive , but apparently they didn’t actually learn anything there- it was more like a fun place to send your daughter, so at the end of the day, Austin pretty much got her education the same way Emily Bronte got hers, from her family and by reading.  Which apparently was a big deal in their home.  Her dad owned over 500 volumes and Jane, according to her family members read all the time.

 

Well, don’t forget to mention that her dad, even though he had 8 children, in order to supplement his income as a minister took in boys to tutor- so there is that element- a household full of boys.  And it seems, Jane spent a lot of time throughout her childhood doing not just the sewing and embroidery that were expected, but did a lot of writing as well as performing in small theater productions for the family. 

 

She did write, most notably, Juvenilia which she started when she was 11 and wrote on throughout her teenage years.  The Austen household was likely a whirlwind if we had the time, the dirty details about all of her sibling marrying off, having kids and so forth is actually kind of interesting, but maybe if we do another Austen book.  This was a very close and interactive family.  What I want to highlight are the love-interests.  The reason I think it’s interesting, beyond the fact that love interests are always interesting, is that Jane’s books are rom-coms- or at least that’s what we call them today.  They are romantic comedies, and so the natural question is- what about her love life?  Did she have true love?  Why didn’t she get married. 

 

Traditionally, as we all know from the King Henry’s and Queen Victoria, that marriage was a dynastic institution.  You married to establish a place in society- if you liked the person you were wish- well, you just got lucky.  Austen, it’s more than obvious was of the up and coming idea that two people should be about finding compatible companions- liking maybe even loving each other.

 

 And, of course, as we can tell from her novels, women had a much more difficult time of making that happen then men because ladies were not allowed to demonstrate interest openly in a man.  It just wasn’t done.  The power of the relationship was all on that side of the men- as Austen painfully illustrates.  But the question is what about Jane?  How did she understand love, as she obviously does?  Who did she love?  What went wrong?

 

Well, we know almost nothing about her love life, except that she never married. 

 

Exactly, and honestly, so much of Austen’s personal life will forever be a secret.  She was unknown publically.  Her novels were published anonymously and revealed only after she died.  But the real tragedy- not that dying young isn’t a tragedy, but in terms of posterity, after she died, her sister Cassandra destroyed her sister’s personal letters- the ones with intimate details, the ones that overlap the periods of time where she was known to be interested in a man.    After destroying the record, the family crafted a narrative about her that they wanted to present to the world- a very proper one. 

 

Similar to Petrarch. 

No, because if you recall, Petrarch crafted his OWN image.  Jane’s was done for her. 

What we know about her love-life is kind of sketch- but do you want to know the scuttlebutt gossip?

 

Well, of course, I do.  Like Emma, I want the news. Is there any truth to the love interest that Anne Hathaway made famous in the movie, Becoming Jane- Thomas Lefroy? .

 

 Yes- there might be.   What we know about that relationship is not much more than few snippets about him in  letters. One letter to her sister says this, “At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy and when you receive this it will be over- my tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea”.  So, Who knows?  The time she knew him corresponded to the period where she wrote Pride and Prejudice and some say, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett’s relationship is somewhat loosely based on this.  I don’t know.  We do know that after she died, he came down from Ireland to England to pay his respects to her.  He also bought the rejection letter for the first version of Pride and Prejudice at an auction- whatever that means. It’s kind of romantic, really. 

 

There is this one time when she did get engaged once to a very wealthy family friend six years younger than her, a Mr. Harris Bigg-Wither, but the engagement lasted one day.  She broke it off.  Apparently, she was afflicted with the same conviction as all of her heroines, that she should marry for love or not at all, and so, he had to go.  Her mother was not happy about that.

 

So, there’s no true love story at all?

 

Well, Thomas LeFroy could have really been true love.  I’m not sure, but there’s one more story that I find the most intriguing.  It’s this relationship with the younger brother of William Wordsworth, the famous British poet.  There isn’t much known about this at all, and maybe would never have been.  Except Cassandra, Jane’s sister and closest companion her whole life, told their neice years after Jane’s death, that Jane had fallen in love with John Wordsworth and he with her.  It seems, to use Austen’s language, they had an understanding.  Unfortunately, not too long after this arrangement was to have taken place, he drowned at sea. And the Jane’s letters during this period are some of the ones that were destroyed.  So, there you go, this entire romance is a mystery just as she’s a mystery.

 

It’s kind of sad really- thinking one of the world’s greatest writers of romance came so close to true love and had it tragically ripped away..

 

Yes- except, after reading her books  It’s like she had romances that didn’t end like she wanted, so she wrote better ending- but I don’t know.  That’s pure speculation..

 

Well,  of course, we’ll never know.  Do you think there’s a particular Austen character, that is Jane’s personality?

 

I’ve thought about that, and my answer is, I don’t think so.  When I read about her real life, she comes across as very vivacious and lively- she certainly attended balls and loved to dance, then there are all these stories of her being so headstrong.  There’s a quote about her when she was older calling her a “poker of whom everyone is afraid”.  However, after she died, her family painted this picture of her being so respectable and soft-spoken.  When you read her books, I think Jane is probably in all of her heroines, somehow or another- and I would say that includes Emma too- which we need to get too.  There’s more to say about her life, but I want to get to our story, which I know would be what Jane wanted, but I want to wrap this up by saying, Jane and her sister lived their parents Jane’s entire life.  After her dad retired they moved to Bath, the place Mrs. Elton raves about.  When her dad died, she, her mom and sister were displaced and moved around.  This period of her life was miserable by all accounts, but eventually her brother moved them into a large cottage in a village called Chawton.  It was here that Jane would live for the final eight years of her life.  It was in this house that she wrote Emma in 1814.  Three years later she would die in Winchester where she had been taken to be attended to by a doctor.  The conventional wisdom is that it was of Addison’s disease- that disease JFK had, but recently that has been contested with different theories.  But, regardless of what it was, she seemed to be in terrible pain, so much so that when they asked her what her last wishes were she said, “I want nothing but death.” 

 

So, what we know of her, really is her books, and in the worlds she created-

 

Exactly, and in our case, that world is Highbury.  The small town where everyone goes to Ford’s once a day- the place where Harriet can accidentally run into Robert Martin and his sisters, and Frank Churchill can buy his gloves…the place where there’s a local venue called the Crown Hall which used to have great dances but is now a place where the men go to play Whist- a card game that reminds me of Canasta…the place where the whole town can make judgements about the new preacher’s wife from the pew.   It sounds a whole lot like the life I knew when I lived in Wynne, Arkansas.  In Wynne there are people to this day who go to Wal-mart every single day- just for social really, but to pick up one thing or another, and on Sunday most people are either at the Methodist, the Baptist, Presbyterian or Catholic churches, and  after church many will decide between Mazzio’s Pizza or Kelly’s homestyle food for lunch.  You never know who you’ll see at Wal-mart, but, in Wynne, you know you’ll see someone.

 

Sounds like My hometown of Lawson -except we weren’t big enough for Wal-mart, but I also enjoy the multiple references Austen throws in about the game of whist- and it’s funny that Mr. Elton is best at it- he likes to play games with strategy- apparently at cards as well as life. 

 

Exactly- and just as a point of note- if you were to notice all the games in Emma, by design, are games of strategy: backgammon, quadrille but especially whist- which the you’ll notice the men play a lot, even Mr. Woodhouse.

 

And of course,  in the world of Highbury, everyone knows everyone’s business- and I know this isn’t til the end, so spoiler, but it’s very funny and lighthearted- when Knightly wants to get word out about his engagement he tells Mr. Weston, who tells Jane Fairfax, who lives with Miss Bates, who tells Mrs. Cole, Mrs. Perry and Mrs. Elton- and there you go- the word is out- the peanut gallery has been notified. 

 

Yes- everything here is lighthearted, but also full of mischief- and when last we left Highbury, Emma was musing over Mr. Elton daring to propose to her and she disdaining him for it- in retrospect not the best strategic play on his part, but the options are limited and he clearly is looking to improve.  That was chapter 16.  In chapter 17, Mr. Elton writes a letter to Mr. Woodhouse, addressed to MR. Woodhouse saying he was going to Bath to spend a few weeks.  Mr. Woodhouse, totally oblivious doesn’t notice it as the insult it was to Emma but instead worried that Elton wouldn’t get to Bath.  And of course, it is in Bath, that Mr. Elton meets Miss Augusta Hawkins who will become the new Mrs. Elton-a couple that is so fun to laugh at- because they are so ridiculous- almost caricatures of something we are all so familiar with wherever we live in the world- people who pretend to be wealthier or more important than they really are- the worst sort of people anywhere.  And so from volume 2, so we transition from the love triangle- Elton-harriett-Emma- to the new love triangle Frank Churchhill- Jane Fairfax and Emma. 

 

All of this lands us squarely into a discussion of the social class system that totally dominates everything during the Regency period, but is so very different than how we live in America today.  Highbury is not a fancy town- so in that regard, you can’t think of all of the British shows involving royals.  The Woodhouses and Knightley’s were not titled although they have been in Highburgy for several generations and are from ancient families.  So, they are at the top of the social ladder.  Mr. Weston is next because he’s born of a respectable family for the last two or three generations.

 

HA!!  That sounds like a long time to me.

 

Well, it gets you something- as you go down of course, we’re going to get to this family called the Cole’s.  The Cole’s are successful business owners and have the second nicest house in town after Emma.  However,  They have only recently become wealthy, and as such, during this section of the novel, there is a discussion of them having a party that at first Emma doesn’t want to attend because they are not good enough for her. 

 

Until they don’t invite her, then she decides she can condescend to their level.

 

Yes, but you see, they are humble- in other words they don’t put pretend to be as good as the older established families- so that elevates them above the lowest of the low-

 

And who might that be?

 

The pretenders- Mrs. Elton falls into this category.  Her sister who she brags on all the time is definitely nouveaux riche and has only lived in her house 11 years.

 

OH my, I’ve never lived in a single house 11 years. 

 

Well, you clearly wouldn’t be good society in Highbury.

 

I think I would.

 

Why do you say that?

 

Because I can lend on the quality of my mind.

 

Oh, and do you think that is enough?

 

Well, I am also clearly humble…like the Cole’s.

 

 Ha!  Well, there you go…something to be proud of- indeed- one’s humility. 

 

Indeed.  Well, getting back to the social classes.  That’s why there’s a love triangle fiasco at all- a problem with flying in the face of the social class system. Mr. Weston has a son that was raised by his first wife’s brother, a Captain Churchhill who had no children of his own but was extremely wealthy. The Churchill’s adopted Frank and he changed his name.  So, now Frank Churchill is richer and higher up the ladder than his father.

 

 Of course that’s a good thing but the problem arises because Captain Churchhill’s wife is what is called an ‘upstart” with “no fair pretense of family or blood”/. In other words she was the one of those lucky few who was a nobody but married money, and as we all know, even today- those kinds of people are the worst snobs of a!!!  According to the text as a result she has “out-churchilled” them all—a funny turn of phrase to tell us that she was more snobby with less reason than any other member of the family- and as a result Frank Churchhill must marry well.  It would be an embarrassment otherwise- and it’s clear that if he doesn’t he’ll be disinherited- so says the upstart- and no one else must be allowed to be one.

 

And thus the plot twist unbeknowsn’t to the entire town of Highbury until after the climax of the novel, Frank has fallen in love and convinced the highly respectable, beautiful and accomplished orphan who he met in a resort town, Jane Fairfax to be secretly engaged to him- a girl with no money.  Jane is NOT the match envisioned by the great upstart MRs. Churchill. So, this whole love affair must be concealed.  Jane and Frank, it appears, contrive to see each in Highbury.  They must create a charade- their own scheme.  She to visit her Aunt and Grandmother; he to visit his biological father and his step-mother-who he’s never met- although in this book she’s referred to as his mother-in-law.  In order to keep people from suspecting the engagement, Frank flirts endlessly with Emma, contriving reasons to be with Emma to counteract all the time he’s spending with Jane.  This of course, destroys Jane to the point that it makes her physically ill- and even though Frank does favor Jane over Emma to the point of secretly sending her a piano forte- the going back and forth between Emma and Frank and Jane and Knightly who is very jealous- goes on for several chapters. 

 

Speaking of piano forte- I don’t know if anyone noticed the opening, but our own Christy Shriver, can play a respectable piano forte and does so at the beginning of our episodes for these sections.

 

HA!!- so true, I will say, that my piano playing is closer to the mediocrity of Emma’s than the excellence of a jane Fairfax. 

 

Awwe- don’t sell yourself short.  I think you would have been a suitable candidate for matrimony for the period. 

 

Oh dear- I don’t know.  I don’t know how many pounds my parents would have been able to spare- remember, my dad’s a clergyman- except not in the vein of Mr. Elston, I will say.  Anyway, back to Frank, I do want to point which is a narrative oddity to me- but one that I think matters especially in light of all that I’ve said about Jane Austen loving to get into the heads of people- she has gone to an awful lot of trouble to keep the reader out of Frank Churchill’s head.  He is introduced through letters (which is a motif she uses the whole book for various things)- but it’s how Frank Churchill communicates in large part- especially when we get to this gigantic full disclosure letter at the end of the novel.  When we get our first description of him in chapter 23, it’s very precursory and through Emma’s eyes, “-he presented to her, and she did not think too much had been said in his praise= he was a very good looking young man; height, air address, all were unexceptionable, and his countenance had a great deal of the spirit and liveliness of his father’s he looked quite sensible…” She goes on to suggest she wanted to get to know him, she was quite sure he came to Highbury intending to meet her and and probably most importantly- Mrs. Weston wanted them to be together.  The rest of what we know of Mr. Churchill comes from watching him interact with Emma and trying to avoid being noticed paying attention to Jane.  We never see anything from his perspective.

 

And what we learn is that in many ways he’s kind of hapless.  He almost even confesses what he’s up to to Emma.  And even though Mr. Knightly may be presumptuous in judging him to be a scoundrel in chapter 19- after all the fussing and strangeness at the Bates, then at the Cole’s then finally at the ball- we likely don’t trust Frank Churchill either.   Jane Austen has trained us to trust Mr. Knightley just as Emma does- in fact he IS the voice of Austen, I am told.

 

Yes- that’s true, but it’s not true.  Austen has also, by this point in the story trained us to suspect all the characters perspectives- even Knightly’s motives must be checked- and the careful reader will notice that Knightly seems a little TOO hard on him too soon, and although he makes good points that we agree with but nevertheless find Knightly too be a little human too,  Knightley is certainly gracious to almost everyone else, so it’s out of character for him not to want to be gracious to this guy- unless there is a reason for it.  

 

He really truly is very dutiful and gracious to the point of giving Mrs. Bates all of his apples, literally.

 

The point Knightly makes in chapter 19, is that Frank Churchill’s words don’t always match his behavior. He’s always claiming he can’t visit his dad in his letters.  But Knightly knows in real life no matter what they say men, especially rich men,  do what they want, and the excuses are just that.  And if it it’s not a lie and exactly as he says- that he can’t leave because his stepmother won’t let him- well- that’s no better and maybe worse-  he’s  ruled by his step-mother that he can’t spare a weekend to ride up to visit his dad and meet his new stepmother, that’s weird too. 

 

To your point, Knightley says something that really stands out to me- and it stands out because, and I’ll revisit this at length next week because I think it really applies to Emma more than anyone else in the whole book- he says  that real men always are ruled by duty.   A point, most readers may question but will still find noble- and I will argue makes Emma the manliest man in the story.  Anyway, that aside, it seems Frank gets Mrs. Weston to adore him through letters by flattering her, he gets Mrs. Bates to like him by fixing her glasses,  he gets Emma to like him by paying attention to her.  We, however, watch his charade with Emma (and yes, that word again- the charade with Emma and Elston was just the first), and can’t help but hearing Knightly’s cautiunary words from before he galloped into town. 

 

This might be a good time to point out and this isn’t a big deal- but Jane Austen loves a good pun- like the fun with the charade, and although we don’t have near enough time to point then out- the names kind of give you a taste.  Notice that Frank is anything but Frank- and KNIGHTLY  is such a knight- get it. 

 

Yes- I get it- and Jane is fair- I might add, does Emma have a wooden house?

 

Ha!  Well, it’s in the woods- and I do think there is something to the name, but moving one.  One more thing to note, Jane Fairfax, is kind of like Frank in that she was adopted as well by a rich family. 

 

Yes- but her situation is different.  The family who adopted her, The Campbells aren’t infinitely wealthy, and they have a daughter.  So, all the money for the dowry goes to the real daughter, although Jane doesn’t seem really to resent this.

 

Hence all the bru=haha about MR. And Mrs. Dixon who have just recently gotten married.  The daughter who apparently is ugly, is married to a man named Mr. Dixon.  Which really wouldn’t be worth mentioning except for all of the back and forth between Emma and Frank Churchill about Mrs. Dixon being ugly so that’s why Mr. Dixon sent Jane a piano forte.

 

That incident really is mean on the part of Frank- to throw Jane under the bus like that-  especially if he really does love her- this doesn’t seem in the spirit of protecting one’s future wife.

 

No, it really isn’t.  It seems immature and I guess, to me that is how Frank comes across.   He is selfish and insincere pretty much the whole way through- only somewhat redeeming himself through this giant letter at the end.  But back to the middle of the story, his being willing to bad mouth Jane suits Emma.   She’s is an incurable snob jealous and incredibly jealous of Jane.

 

Sweet sad reserved and basically perfect Jane

 

Yes- and Emma’s nemesis.Austen is creating is a parallel relationship –  It’s really where are the comedy resides.  We have the hidden love of emma/knightly and the secret love of Frank and Jane.

 

 And of course- this is where all the comedy resides- Emma’s blindness to Jane is actually a result of her blindness to herself.  Jane is Emma’s equal and in fact pretty much her superior at everything except social status.

 

Yeah- and  Austen never misses an opportunity to emphasize how desirable this friendships is in the eyes of all their friends and relatives.  Isabella urges Emma in that direction and so does Knightley.  Poor Janes lives in cramped quarters with an aunt that won’t ever shut her mouth and must as she says, “hire out her intellect” as a governess.  Jane, as a member of the Campbell family, lives a wealthy life- but one where she has been taught now to be a woman of grace, duty and nobility. The problem with agreeing to a secret engagement with Frank Churchill is that she’s compromising who she is and is acting outside her character.  She feels guilty for keeping the secret, ashamed, and as a result is secretive and reserved- and ultimately makes her so physically ill, she breaks it off. 

 

  Emma, of course, is continuously irked by Jane’s reserve.  In chapter 20, and of course, we’re in Emma’s mind now, but we’re looking at Jane, let me quote, “Emma was sorry; to have to pay civilities to a person she did not like through three long months!  To be always doing more than she wished and less than she ought!  That’s a great line- how many times are we stuck in that disagreeable place.

 

So true and here’s another line, “Why she did not like Jane Fairfax might be a difficult question to answer; Mr. Knightley had one told her it was because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she wanted to be thought herself; and though accusation had been eagerly refuted at the time, there were moments of self-examination in which her conscience coult not quite acquit her.  She she could never get acquainted with her: she did not know how it was, but there was such coldness and reserve- such apparent indifference whether she pleased or not- and then her aunt was such an eternal talker! And she was made such a fuss with by every body! And it had been always imagined that they were to be so intimate- because their ages were the same, everybody had supposed they must be so fond of each other.  There were her reasons- she had no better.”  What Emma doesn’t realize herself and really, we as readers’s don’t quite understand as yet, is that she and Jane are way more alike than Emma understands.  Emma is also strapped by duty- but her duty is to her father, for whom marriage is out of the question for her. Her loyalty to her father won’t allow her to leave him- and we’ll explain why next week,  but cannot fall in love because to do so would be to put her in somewhat the same miserable situation as Jane.   

 

Ha!  And so, she becomes a matchmaking busy body for everyone else in the community as a way to disengage her own feelings for knightly. 

 

Exactly- and this works well for her until  little plot twists push all of this to the open.

 

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So, that’s our community- all the fun secondary figures to our darling heroine provide the humor and impetus for us to watch Emma grow up.  And, Emma, just as for all of us, growing up is not an absolute state that comes from a single moment of insight.  It’s an erratic process from one solution to fresh problems- with highs, punctuated by lows, steps forward, two steps backwards as the saying goes.  Emma swears off matchmaking, she picks on sweet Jane among other ways by suggesting that Mr. Dixon sent her a piano forte, she snubs the Cole’s, convinces herself that Frank is in love with her and imagines all the ways she would nobly turn him down.

 

And ironically it is through the  snooty Mrs. Augusta Elton and all of her ridiculous meddling as well as her husband Mr. Elton who Augusta constantly refers to as her “lord and master” that Austen brings out the truth both for Jane and Emma.

 

Is Augusta a pun because she thinks she’s like Augustus Caesar?

 

I think it’s pretty much something like, Emma says she wants to be wiser and wittier than all the world. Notice that it is  Mr. and Mrs. Elton DO that push our main characters to places of awakening.  Let’s join all of our friends at the ball in chapter 38. Garry- tell us about Regency balls, carriages and dancing.

 

Yes, well, of course as well see in  chapter 38 it starts with everyone arriving in the carriages, and of course, Mrs. Elton who had committed to bringing Jane and the Bates forgot them.  But like today vehicles are markers of status.  Mrs. Elton has already made much of the fact that her sister has TWO carriages.  Then we move to all the fuss about dance partners.  The way it worked is that each dance was really a group dance that could take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes.    There would be long lines of the couples with dance moves that weren’t really complicated to do, but would be complicated to remember.  It would be something to learn ahead of time.  We’ve all seen the movies where the couples hold hands and go up the line of dances to the end- everyone could see who you were dancing with and if you danced with the same person for more than one or two dances, you were basically announcing to the world you’re interested in each other. 

 

Well, and all the drama from this ball centers around the Elton’s of course.  Mrs. Elton assumes that the ball has been given in her honor, so although Frank had committed to dancing the first dance with Emma, his father makes him dance with Mrs. Elton to honor her in the way she’s expecting to be honored.   But the real drama arises when there is an opportunity to inflict pain on Emma vicariously through Harriet.  There are two more dances before supper and Harriet is the only girl without a dance partner.  As we see the action unfold through Emma’s eyes, we see that Mr. Elton, who could have dodged the whole scene by going to the card playing room, appears to deliberately walks in front of the eligible dance partners in front of Harriet and talks to people around Harriet.  It seems that Mrs. Elton has instigated her husband to spurn Harriet publically as he had already done before.  However, Knightly who watches all this unfold, swoops in and rescues sweet Harriet making as Emma states, MR. Elton look very foolish and he retreats to the card game room.  After supper, Emma and Knightly have a private moment to talk about what happened. I think their discussion is a wonderful way to end this episode, and set us up for the truly delightful and really-Shakespearen like- comedic ending we’ll discuss next week. 

 

Read the last past of chapter 38, page 304

 

And so we end this week’s discussion and our 100th episode with Emma and Knightly at the ball.  There could be worse places to be.  If you enjoy our work, please support us by taking a minute to tell a friend about our podcast and send them a link to an episode.  Stop in to see us on Instagram, Twitter, FB or LinkedIn.  This year we are really trying to up our game and learn a little more about marketing and social media- that is outside our comfort zone- so thank you for your support and for your help at helping us do what we love- connect out there in the world with those who want to know how to love lit!!    

 

Peace out

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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