Jane Austen's Heroines (RLE Jane Austen)

Intimacy in Human Relationships

John Philips Hardy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136681806
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria para escritoras

First published in 1984, John Hardy's important interpretation of Jane Austen's heroines breaks through the accepted tradition of viewing the author as merely a rational comedienne of manners. He argues instead that Jane Austen's greatness lies in her exploration of human relationships through the subtle and original portrayal of her heroines.

Jane Austen's heroines come to enjoy a distinctive relationship with the men they eventually marry. Between her lovers the potential exists for the kind of intimacy that leads to a shared privacy. Austen's recognition of this represents her special insight into what is of central importance in human relationships. Her belief that love and friendship are our only hope of triumphing over solitude, and the character and integrity of her heroines, are the major elements which make Jane Austen's novels so satisfying.

Emma Woodhouse

Despite Jane Austen’s suggestion that in writing Emma she was creating a heroine whom no one but herself would ‘much like’,¹ ‘there is’, to adapt Mr Knightley’s words, ‘an anxiety, a curiosity in what one feels for Emma’ (40). While such a remark indicates Knightley’s interest in her as a person, an interest he comes later to realise as love, our interest as readers is captured by a vitality so immediate that even in its waywardness it compels our fascinated participation. John Bayley has aptly described ‘the whole tendency of the novel’ in terms of its ‘enveloping intimacy’,² and this proceeds from a quality of imagination evident in the very first sentence:

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her (5).

The creation of Emma and her world is as seamless as this blending of the heroine’s consciousness and the author’s. It appears that Emma seems to herself what is being said of her, her happiness being as conscious as it seems to her unalloyed. She is conscious of having almost come of age, and therefore of being (what she has really never doubted, though always attentive to her father) at her own disposal – almost of having herself to thank for being ‘the fair mistress of the mansion’ (22). The irony of her having had ‘very little to distress or vex her’ is therefore lost on her, even though it is, as irony, sufficiently indulgent. It anticipates the kind of point almost immediately given it, and subsequently reinforced by later episodes.

Emma is so positive about having ‘made the match’ (11) between Miss Taylor and Mr Weston that the reader naturally inclines to Knightley’s bluff scepticism: ‘A straight-forward, open-hearted man, like Weston, and a rational unaffected woman, like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their own concerns’ (13). We soon learn that Weston had, over a long period, intended to secure a ‘little estate adjoining Highbury’ (16). Apparently he had also for some considerable period intended marrying Miss Taylor:

It was now some time since Miss Taylor had begun to influence his schemes…. He had made his fortune, bought his house, and obtained his wife; and was beginning a new period of existence with every probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through (16–17).

If this is a somewhat phlegmatic manner of proceeding, it may be counted in Emma’s favour that her wish outran the event. But this tendency in her also has its dangerous side, as Knightley is quick to point out: ‘You are more likely to have done harm to yourself, than good to them, by interference’ (13).

Emma is so concerned to direct her energies at will that for much of the novel this prevents Knightley from sharing anything approaching intimacy with her. It is true that they know each other well, that she playfully responds to his presence, and that he finds her tantalising. But he is also prepared to be frank with her even though she is wilful enough not to want to listen. She must therefore be prepared to laugh off what he says, to treat it (in her own words) as ‘all a joke’; and she revealingly adds, ‘We always say what we like to one another’ (10).

This argues that a special kind of relationship exists between them, beyond what is implied by his being her brother-in-law. If they can use this degree of freedom, without rudeness, to each other, then there is an almost unconscious basis for a further and different kind of sharing. Yet Emma is still a long way from realising this, even though in missing Mrs Weston as her companion she is at a loss for someone who can fill a comparable place in her affection. That the potential of what passes between Knightley and herself only comes, much later, to be acknowledged for what it is means that Emma is virtually bound to become involved with Harriet Smith. Her friend’s claims exist, however, only in her imaginaton. While Emma allows Harriet’s being ‘so artlessly impressed by the appearance of every thing in so superior a style’ to make up for her lack of cleverness, and even to argue her ‘good sense’ (23), Knightley is in no doubt that what has been developing between the two young women is ‘a very foolish intimacy’ (64). But his words are wasted on Emma, who becomes involved in an absorbing kind of game to which she devotes all her boundless energy and enthusiasm.

Harriet’s head is soon turned by her being persuaded to think of the clergyman Mr Elton, and Emma is instrumental in having her refuse an offer of marriage from her old sweetheart Robert Martin. This nettles Knightley, who has a justifiable regard for Martin, and he presses Emma so closely on the matter that she is even forced to prevaricate with him about her part in it all. Yet her confidence is shaken no longer than it takes her to provide herself with reassurance, and immediate events seem to favour her, for Harriet returns with news that Elton has been seen riding to London on a ‘very enviable commission’ as ‘the bearer of something exceedingly precious’ (68) – the portrait that Emma has drawn of Harriet.

The humour of this episode is enlivened by the exuberance with which Emma continually misunderstands the would-be suitor’s intentions. When she admits to her former ‘great passion for taking likenesses’, Elton becomes quite rhapsodic:

‘Let me entreat you, Miss Woodhouse, to exercise so charming a talent in favour of your friend. I know what your drawings are. How could you suppose me ignorant? Is not this room rich in specimens of your landscapes and flowers; and has not Mrs. Weston some inimitable figure-pieces in her drawing-room, at Randalls?’ (43)

Such veiled flattery could never, of course, capture Emma’s interest even if her head were not full of other plans. As it is, she entirely misses the drift of what Elton is saying: ‘Yes, good man! – thought Emma – but what has all that to do with taking likenesses? You know nothing of drawing. Don’t pretend to be in raptures about mine. Keep your raptures for Harriet’s face’ (43). She ridiculously wills Elton to embrace her own view of his affections, and is not beyond giving to Harriet’s portrait a few improving touches. Though we may accuse her of partiality, and even of blindness, we respond to her enthusiasm not only because it is so well intentioned, but also because it is so deliciously misplaced.

Emma’s failure to discern Elton’s intentions becomes even more obvious during the episode of charades – a failure all the more ludicrous because of her consciousness of her own sagacity. Indeed Emma becomes for herself the measure of all things – even to the extent of a presumed rewriting of Shakespeare. She supposes that any Hartfield edition would need a long note on the line, ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ There are, moreover, no lengths she is unwilling to go in furthering her scheme for Harriet. On their return from a ‘charitable visit’ (83) just outside Highbury, Elton joins them in their walk, and Emma is concerned to fall a little behind in order to leave him and Harriet together. Yet when she cannot help but rejoin them, she finds Elton’s ‘animation’ has been expended only on ‘giving his fair companion an account of the yesterday’s party at his friend Cole’s, and that she was come in herself for the Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the cellery, the beet-root and all the dessert’ (88–9). Emma tries to console herself with the important truism that ‘any thing interests between those who love’; yet the thought seems ridiculous when applied to this conversation between Elton and Harriet. Its potential application to Knightley and herself seems, however, entirely lost on Emma.

When the plain-speaking John Knightley arrives on the scene, Emma is amused at his idea of Elton’s being in love with her, at least to the extent that it allows her to reflect on ‘the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgment are for ever falling into’. (112) And when Harriet becomes ill with an ulcerated throat, and Elton seems more anxious that Emma should not catch the infection, she becomes ‘vexed’ (125) – an experience, we remember, it had not previously been her lot much to suffer. Her first real nemesis occurs, however, when Elton proposes to her in the carriage on the way home from Randalls. She reflects on his ‘presumption’ (130) even though she herself has been so strongly expecting him to form an ‘attachment’ (131) to Harriet, ‘the natural daughter of somebody’, (22). And when at last Emma can seek ‘the relief of quiet reflection’ (133), she begins by expressing disappointment for her own cherished scheme. Though she also feels the bitter disappointment for Harriet, it is a moot point how contrite she for her part is feeling. Indeed, it at first seems that she is distressed at the thwarting of her plans rather than at her own conduct in the affair:

The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable. – It was a wretched business, indeed! – Such an overthrow of every thing she had been wishing for! – Such a development of every thing most unwelcome! – Such a blow for Harriet! – That was the worst of all. Every part of it brought pain and humiliation, of some sort or other; but, compared with the evil to Harriet, all was light; and she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken – more in error – more disgraced by mis-judgment, than she actually was, could the effects ofher blunders have been confined to herself (134).

As Emma continues to reflect on Elton’s proposal, she comes closer to admitting her own ‘mis-judgment’ – only to conclude that the blame for it must lie elsewhere: ‘She had taken up the idea, she supposed, and made every thing bend to it. His manners, however, must have been unmarked, wavering, dubious, or she could not have been so misled.’ That the Knightleys had seen more than herself causes her to blush: ‘It was dreadfully mortifying’ (135). ‘You have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma’ (63), Mr Knightley had said, and his remark is (however unconsciously) echoed in her admission to herself: ‘I have been but half a friend to her’ (137). Gradually she comes to look more leniently on Elton’s mistake, acknowledging that there were some grounds for his ‘conceited head’ (136) to be so turned; and while she excuses him rather than implicates herself in any kind of conceit, she does nevertheless catch herself out in the very act of imagining an alternative suitor for Harriet.

Unlike the prosy and unpretentious Miss Bates, whose loquacity does not presume on what she does not know, Emma refuses to confine her busy imagination to what is before her.³ Yet it is not only her judgment but her sense of common justice that is called into question when she indulges her fancy about Jane Fairfax and the Mr Dixon who has recently married Jane’s friend. Miss Bates, so genuinely grateful for other people’s kindness to herself and her mother, seemingly gets her stimulation from her own incessant chatter. But the exercise of Emma’s fancy seems linked with her isolation, almost with some thwarting on her part of her native intelligence through her need to create some immediate object of interest. She has not otherwise stored her mind, and we have been alerted to the fact by Knightley’s, ‘I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma’ (37). Her fertile fancy therefore leads her into a kind of unwarranted ‘interference’ in the concerns of others, though the reader tends not to be alienated by this because of her natural exuberance and unselfishness.

What has been called Emma’s ‘pleasurable ease of imaginative activity’⁴ is a delighted devotion to her own imaginings, and to this extent these are intimately a part of her inner vitality. As Miss Bates talks of Jane’s friends, ‘an ingenious and animating suspicion entering Emma’s brain’ (160), she is all too ready to put her own construction on what she is told. Yet what she proceeds to accuse Jane of soon becomes her reason for pitying her, since her own romantic feelings (containing a hint even of the melodramatic) allow her to picture to herself the possibility of Jane’s ‘simple, single, successless love’: ‘She might have been unconsciously sucking in the sad poison, while a sharer of his conversation with her friend’ (168). But when Jane will not be unreserved with her, Emma’s suspicions return: ‘Her caution was thrown away. Emma saw its artifice, and returned to her first surmises’ (169).

Emma’s penchant for holding to these is nicely though silently illustrated when, on a visit to Hartfield, Jane and her aunt discuss Mr Dixon:

‘Mr. Dixon, you say, is not, strictly speaking, handsome.’

‘Handsome! Oh! no – far from it – certainly plain. I told you he was plain.’

‘My dear, you said that Miss Campbell would not allow him to be plain, and that you yourself–’

‘Oh! as for me, my judgment is worth nothing. Where I have a regard, I always think a person well-looking. But I gave what I believed the general opinion, when I called him plain’ (176).

Given the reserve Emma has noticed, it would be inconceivable to have Jane speak like this if her feelings were really engaged. Yet we sense that Emma is busily taking from the words whatever will feed her fancy – that it is Jane’s regard for Mr Dixon which makes him seem handsome to her, or (not very consistently) that he really is handsome even though Jane protests his plainness in the eyes of the world.

When Emma, with an air of expectancy on her side, meets Frank Churchill, she has her mind made up about Jane and Mr Dixon; and her suspicions are soon reinforced by Frank’s account of the gentleman’s preferring Jane’s playing to his fiancée’s. This is an example to touch Emma’s self-esteem since she has always been conscious of Jane’s ‘own very superior performance’ (169). Perhaps, then, there is a peculiar satisfaction for her in allowing her brain to be so active on the subject. Though Frank points out that Jane was Miss Campbell’s ‘very particular friend’, Emma laughingly says:

‘Poor comfort! … One would rather have a stranger preferred than one’s very particular friend – with a stranger it might not recur again – but the misery of having a very particular friend always at hand, to do every thing better than one does oneself! – Poor Mrs. Dixon! Well, I am glad she is gone to settle in Ireland’ (202).

During the dinner party at the Coles’, Emma, hearing of the gift of a piano, reveals her suspicions to Frank. The animation she displays in indulging her flight of fancy has its counterpart in Frank’s lively temper as he conducts a cat-and-mouse game in playing along with her whim:

‘If Col. Campbell is not the person, who can be?’

‘What do you say to Mrs. Dixon?’

‘Mrs. Dixon! very true indeed. I had not thought of Mrs. Dixon. She must know as well as her father, how acceptable an instrument would be; and perhaps the mode of it, the mystery, the surprize, is more like a young woman’s scheme than an elderly man’s. It is Mrs. Dixon I dare say. I told you that your suspicions would guide mine.’

‘If so, you must extend your suspicions and comprehend Mr. Dixon in them.’

‘Mr. Dixon. – Very well. Yes, I immediately perceive that it must be the joint present of Mr. and Mrs. Dixon. We were speaking the other day, you know, of his being so warm an admirer of her performance’ (216–17).

Frank has seemingly not quite, even yet, penetrated to her full meaning, so that Emma is forced to be more explicit. Her suggestion is ungenerous and even indelicate, and she comes not only to doubt whether it does not transgress ‘the duty of woman by woman’ (231), but also to regret ‘every former ungenerous suspicion’ (380). Yet our sense of this is here obscured by Emma’s zest for the idea she has conjured up – almost as though we take at face value her wish not to be judgmental:

‘I do not mean to reflect upon the good intentions of either Mr. Dixon or Miss Fairfax, but I cannot help suspecting either that, after making his proposals to her friend, he had the misfortune to fall in love with her, or that he became conscious of a little attachment on her side. One might guess twenty things without guessing exactly the right; but I am sure there must be a particular cause for her chusing to come to Highbury instead of going with the Campbells to Ireland’ (217).

Though Emma finds Frank an animating presence, ‘her feeling for him is no more than the lively notice that an attractive and vivacious girl takes of an attractive and vivacious young man.’⁵ Nevertheless, her interest in him is at this stage decided enough to enable him to calculate his effect on her. Step by step he allows himself to seem drawn in to share her ‘suspicions’. He admits ‘they have an air of great probability’, and his representing himself as plain and unseeing, after she has brought forward the near boating-accident, gives a fillip to her vanity even as he acknowledges, tongue-in-cheek, how little she needs it:

‘If I had been there, I think I should have made some discoveries.’

‘I dare say you would; but I, simple I, saw nothing but the fact, that Miss Fairfax was nearly dashed from the vessel and that Mr. Dixon caught her. – It was the work of a moment…. I do not mean to say, however, that you might not have made discoveries’ (218).

Encouraged and not seeing his irony, Emma can be more ‘decisive’ still, and when Frank further leads her on, she becomes quite positive, her earlier ‘suspicions’ reaching to a certainty: ‘No, I am sure it is not from the Campbells. … I may not have convinced you perhaps, but I am perfectly convinced myself that Mr. Dixon is a principal in the business.’ With an air of mock-innocence – and some violence to language – Frank acquiesces: ‘Indeed you injure me if you suppose me unconvinced. Your reasonings carry my judgment along with them e...