Emma - Jane Austen - Episode 3 - The Strategies Of Romantic Intrigue Go Awry!
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Emma - Jane Austen - Episode 3 - The Strategies Of Romantic Intrigue Go Awry!
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Emma- Episode 3
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I\\u2019m Christy Shriver and we\\u2019re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.\\xa0 This is our 100th episode.\\xa0 Woohoo.\\xa0 It\\u2019s hard to believe- but it\\u2019s true!\\xa0 We\\u2019ve been doing this for 100 weeks- almost two years. We\\u2019d love to hear from you via any social media you use.\\xa0 We\\u2019ve certainly enjoyed bringing our best analysis of some of the world\\u2019s greatest lit.\\xa0 If you\\u2019d like to celebrate with us, forward a favorite episode to a friend.\\xa0 Tell them this is your favorite podcast, ever..even if it isn\\u2019t, we won\\u2019t tell Rogan.
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I\\u2019m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. And Christy, are we competing with joe rogan?\\xa0
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I think we are.\\xa0 We don\\u2019t have a billion downloads yet, but doesn\\u2019t mean we\\u2019re not in the game.\\xa0
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\\xa0\\xa0It is crazy that we\\u2019ve been at this for two years.\\xa0 This is our 40th piece of literature- this is episode three in our four part series of Jane Austen\\u2019s 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.\\xa0 Last week, we galloped through chapters 1-16, although leaving much unsaid.\\xa0 There is just no way to treat this or any of Austen\\u2019s 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.\\xa0 We argued that Austen proposes that for us to live our lives most fully AND NOT lonely- it\\u2019s 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.\\xa0 To do otherwise is to be in solitude- this is a book that explores and illustrates these kinds of relationships.\\xa0
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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 - \\u201cfree indirect discourse\\u201d 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.\\xa0 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\\u2019t.\\xa0 Plus, it\\u2019s one of those things that \\xa0by my telling you that\\u2019s what she\\u2019s doing- you can\\u2019t help but see it\\u2026like 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.\\xa0 We were in Rome and we went to the Sistine chapel.\\xa0 I had heard about how amazing and artful it was, but I myself knew absolutely nothing of art.\\xa0 I remember to this day walking in, looking at the ceiling and going- huh, well that\\u2019s nice.\\xa0
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I bet you\\u2019re ashamed of that attitude now.
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Well, of course I am.\\xa0 I\\u2019ve been back since.\\xa0 But I\\u2019ll tell you this, I\\u2019ve never one time been back without going inside with a guide.\\xa0 Why go to the Sistine chapel without a guide? You have no idea what you\\u2019re doing.
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True, it\\u2019s like drinking water through a fire hose, you\\u2019re going to drink very little and the rest is going to fall all over the ground wasted.
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I agree completely.\\xa0 Reading Jane Austen is like drinking from a garden hose.\\xa0 You can read this book over and over, and still see things you never noticed before.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 The characters do not serve the plot, but the plot serves only to push forward the characters.\\xa0 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.
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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.\\xa0 Her wit grows on you the more you read it.\\xa0 She can be insulting in the most polite way, and she can be satirical almost sarcastic and you barely catch it.\\xa0 Which I think is a trait of genius in people.
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That\\u2019s 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, \\xa0I want to bring up Austen\\u2019s severest credit, who I think is actually a secret Jane-ite, but would never admit it- the illustrious American satirist, Mark Twain.\\xa0 Mark Twain expressed unparalelled hatred for Austen.\\xa0 Twain said the definition of an ideal library would be one with none of her books on its shelves and I quote \\u201cJust one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn\\u2019t a book in it\\u201d.
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Good grief, what was his problem.\\xa0
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I honestly don\\u2019t know except that she was the favorite author of one of closest friends, William Dean Howells, another author and literary critic.\\xa0 Howells would threaten to read Austen to him when he was ill.
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So, you think it was just public fun?
I kind of do.\\xa0 He said things like this, \\u201cHer books madden me so that I can\\u2019t conceal my frenzy.\\xa0 Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.\\u201d
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But he admits to reading her work over and over.
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Exactly, He wrote an unfinished essay on her that starts out like this, \\u201cWhenever I take up Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility\\u201d I feel like a barkeeper entering the kingdom of heaven. I mean, I feel as he would probably feel, would almost certainly feel.\\xa0 I am quite sure I know what his sensations would be- and his private comments.\\xa0 He would be certain to curl his lip, as those ultra-good Presbyterians when feeling self-complacently along.\\xa0 Because he considered himself better than they?\\xa0 Not at all. They would not be to his taste- that is all.\\xa0 Yet he would secretly be ashamed of himself, secretly angry with himself that this was so.\\xa0 Why because barkeepers are like everybody else.\\xa0 It humiliates them to find that there are fine things, great things, admirable things, which others can perceive and they cannot.\\u201d\\xa0 And then he goes on in his essay to just eviscerate her.
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Well, it sounds like she maddens him and he maybe needed a good podcast to explain her.\\xa0 You know this is the same man that said it was easy to quit smoking- he had done it many times.
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I know- which is why I think he\\u2019s a secret jane-ite.\\xa0 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.\\xa0
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Sadly, however, that could never happen.\\xa0 Austen\\u2019s 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.\\xa0 Christy, we talked about getting into her life. Is it now time?
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It is now or never.\\xa0 We did mention that she was born on December 16, 1775, the seventh child out of 8 to a minister, a wonderful minister actually.
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- which I find kind of humorous since the ministers in her books are not all that awesome.
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\\xa0 Well, that\\u2019s true, but don\\u2019t let that fool you into thinking Austen wasn\\u2019t a religious person.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 Austen very deliberately made sure that she never fell into that- which I find interesting, it wasn\\u2019t the legacy she wanted.\\xa0 But they were a religious family and\\xa0 also extremely educated, and in fact, one of her ancestors founded St. John\\u2019s College in Oxford. However, in Jane\\u2019s case- her personal education, because she was a girl, was absolutely abhorrent- deadly actually.\\xa0 If you\\u2019ve ever read Jane Eyre (a book we\\u2019ll 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.\\xa0 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\\u2019s mother came and got them, but in the process of just being on campus (if that\\u2019s what you want to call the place), she contracted typhus fever and actually died.
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The cousin?
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No, the aunt, later on Jane attended another girl\\u2019s school.\\xa0 It wasn\\u2019t abusive , but apparently they didn\\u2019t 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.\\xa0 Which apparently was a big deal in their home.\\xa0 Her dad owned over 500 volumes and Jane, according to her family members read all the time.
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Well, don\\u2019t 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.\\xa0 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.\\xa0
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She did write, most notably, Juvenilia which she started when she was 11 and wrote on throughout her teenage years.\\xa0 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. \\xa0This was a very close and interactive family. \\xa0What I want to highlight are the love-interests.\\xa0 The reason I think it\\u2019s interesting, beyond the fact that love interests are always interesting, is that Jane\\u2019s books are rom-coms- or at least that\\u2019s what we call them today.\\xa0 They are romantic comedies, and so the natural question is- what about her love life?\\xa0 Did she have true love?\\xa0 Why didn\\u2019t she get married.\\xa0
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Traditionally, as we all know from the King Henry\\u2019s and Queen Victoria, that marriage was a dynastic institution.\\xa0 You married to establish a place in society- if you liked the person you were wish- well, you just got lucky.\\xa0 Austen, it\\u2019s 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.
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\\xa0And, 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.\\xa0 It just wasn\\u2019t done.\\xa0 The power of the relationship was all on that side of the men- as Austen painfully illustrates.\\xa0 But the question is what about Jane?\\xa0 How did she understand love, as she obviously does?\\xa0 Who did she love?\\xa0 What went wrong?
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Well, we know almost nothing about her love life, except that she never married.\\xa0
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Exactly, and honestly, so much of Austen\\u2019s personal life will forever be a secret.\\xa0 She was unknown publically.\\xa0 Her novels were published anonymously and revealed only after she died.\\xa0 But the real tragedy- not that dying young isn\\u2019t a tragedy, but in terms of posterity, after she died, her sister Cassandra destroyed her sister\\u2019s 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.\\xa0 \\xa0\\xa0After destroying the record, the family crafted a narrative about her that they wanted to present to the world- a very proper one.\\xa0
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Similar to Petrarch.\\xa0
No, because if you recall, Petrarch crafted his OWN image.\\xa0 Jane\\u2019s was done for her.\\xa0
What we know about her love-life is kind of sketch- but do you want to know the scuttlebutt gossip?
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Well, of course, I do.\\xa0 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? .
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\\xa0Yes- there might be.\\xa0 \\xa0What we know about that relationship is not much more than few snippets about him in \\xa0letters. One letter to her sister says this, \\u201cAt 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\\u201d.\\xa0 So, Who knows?\\xa0 The time she knew him corresponded to the period where she wrote Pride and Prejudice and some say, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett\\u2019s relationship is somewhat loosely based on this.\\xa0 I don\\u2019t know.\\xa0 We do know that after she died, he came down from Ireland to England to pay his respects to her.\\xa0 He also bought the rejection letter for the first version of Pride and Prejudice at an auction- whatever that means. It\\u2019s kind of romantic, really.\\xa0
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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.\\xa0 She broke it off.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 Her mother was not happy about that.
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So, there\\u2019s no true love story at all?
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Well, Thomas LeFroy could have really been true love.\\xa0 I\\u2019m not sure, but there\\u2019s one more story that I find the most intriguing.\\xa0 It\\u2019s this relationship with the younger brother of William Wordsworth, the famous British poet.\\xa0 There isn\\u2019t much known about this at all, and maybe would never have been.\\xa0 Except Cassandra, Jane\\u2019s sister and closest companion her whole life, told their neice years after Jane\\u2019s death, that Jane had fallen in love with John Wordsworth and he with her.\\xa0 It seems, to use Austen\\u2019s language, they had an understanding.\\xa0 Unfortunately, not too long after this arrangement was to have taken place, he drowned at sea. And the Jane\\u2019s letters during this period are some of the ones that were destroyed.\\xa0 So, there you go, this entire romance is a mystery just as she\\u2019s a mystery.
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It\\u2019s kind of sad really- thinking one of the world\\u2019s greatest writers of romance came so close to true love and had it tragically ripped away..
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Yes- except, after reading her books\\xa0 It\\u2019s like she had romances that didn\\u2019t end like she wanted, so she wrote better ending- but I don\\u2019t know.\\xa0 That\\u2019s pure speculation..
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Well,\\xa0 of course, we\\u2019ll never know.\\xa0 Do you think there\\u2019s a particular Austen character, that is Jane\\u2019s personality?
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I\\u2019ve thought about that, and my answer is, I don\\u2019t think so.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 There\\u2019s a quote about her when she was older calling her a \\u201cpoker of whom everyone is afraid\\u201d.\\xa0 However, after she died, her family painted this picture of her being so respectable and soft-spoken.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 There\\u2019s 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\\u2019s entire life.\\xa0 After her dad retired they moved to Bath, the place Mrs. Elton raves about.\\xa0 When her dad died, she, her mom and sister were displaced and moved around.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 It was here that Jane would live for the final eight years of her life.\\xa0 It was in this house that she wrote Emma in 1814.\\xa0 Three years later she would die in Winchester where she had been taken to be attended to by a doctor.\\xa0 The conventional wisdom is that it was of Addison\\u2019s disease- that disease JFK had, but recently that has been contested with different theories.\\xa0 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, \\u201cI want nothing but death.\\u201d\\xa0
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So, what we know of her, really is her books, and in the worlds she created-
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Exactly, and in our case, that world is Highbury.\\xa0 The small town where everyone goes to Ford\\u2019s once a day- the place where Harriet can accidentally run into Robert Martin and his sisters, and Frank Churchill can buy his gloves\\u2026the place where there\\u2019s 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\\u2026the place where the whole town can make judgements about the new preacher\\u2019s wife from the pew. \\xa0\\xa0It sounds a whole lot like the life I knew when I lived in Wynne, Arkansas.\\xa0 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 \\xa0after church many will decide between Mazzio\\u2019s Pizza or Kelly\\u2019s homestyle food for lunch.\\xa0 You never know who you\\u2019ll see at Wal-mart, but, in Wynne, you know you\\u2019ll see someone.
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Sounds like My hometown of Lawson -except we weren\\u2019t big enough for Wal-mart, but I also enjoy the multiple references Austen throws in about the game of whist- and it\\u2019s funny that Mr. Elton is best at it- he likes to play games with strategy- apparently at cards as well as life.\\xa0
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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\\u2019ll notice the men play a lot, even Mr. Woodhouse.
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And of course, \\xa0in the world of Highbury, everyone knows everyone\\u2019s business- and I know this isn\\u2019t til the end, so spoiler, but it\\u2019s 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.\\xa0
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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.\\xa0 That was chapter 16.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 Mr. Woodhouse, totally oblivious doesn\\u2019t notice it as the insult it was to Emma but instead worried that Elton wouldn\\u2019t get to Bath.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 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.\\xa0
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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.\\xa0 Highbury is not a fancy town- so in that regard, you can\\u2019t think of all of the British shows involving royals.\\xa0 The Woodhouses and Knightley\\u2019s were not titled although they have been in Highburgy for several generations and are from ancient families.\\xa0 So, they are at the top of the social ladder.\\xa0 Mr. Weston is next because he\\u2019s born of a respectable family for the last two or three generations.
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HA!!\\xa0 That sounds like a long time to me.
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Well, it gets you something- as you go down of course, we\\u2019re going to get to this family called the Cole\\u2019s.\\xa0 The Cole\\u2019s are successful business owners and have the second nicest house in town after Emma.\\xa0 However,\\xa0 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\\u2019t want to attend because they are not good enough for her.\\xa0
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Until they don\\u2019t invite her, then she decides she can condescend to their level.
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Yes, but you see, they are humble- in other words they don\\u2019t put pretend to be as good as the older established families- so that elevates them above the lowest of the low-
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And who might that be?
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The pretenders- Mrs. Elton falls into this category.\\xa0 Her sister who she brags on all the time is definitely nouveaux riche and has only lived in her house 11 years.
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OH my, I\\u2019ve never lived in a single house 11 years.\\xa0
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Well, you clearly wouldn\\u2019t be good society in Highbury.
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I think I would.
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Why do you say that?
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Because I can lend on the quality of my mind.
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Oh, and do you think that is enough?
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Well, I am also clearly humble\\u2026like the Cole\\u2019s.
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\\xa0Ha!\\xa0 Well, there you go\\u2026something to be proud of- indeed- one\\u2019s humility.\\xa0
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Indeed.\\xa0 Well, getting back to the social classes.\\xa0 That\\u2019s why there\\u2019s 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\\u2019s brother, a Captain Churchhill who had no children of his own but was extremely wealthy. The Churchill\\u2019s adopted Frank and he changed his name. \\xa0So, now Frank Churchill is richer and higher up the ladder than his father.
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\\xa0Of course that\\u2019s a good thing but the problem arises because Captain Churchhill\\u2019s wife is what is called an \\u2018upstart\\u201d with \\u201cno fair pretense of family or blood\\u201d/. 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!!!\\xa0 According to the text as a result she has \\u201cout-churchilled\\u201d them all\\u2014a 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.\\xa0 It would be an embarrassment otherwise- and it\\u2019s clear that if he doesn\\u2019t he\\u2019ll be disinherited- so says the upstart- and no one else must be allowed to be one.
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And thus the plot twist unbeknowsn\\u2019t 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. \\xa0Jane is NOT the match envisioned by the great upstart MRs. Churchill. So, this whole love affair must be concealed. \\xa0Jane and Frank, it appears, contrive to see each in Highbury.\\xa0 They must create a charade- their own scheme.\\xa0 She to visit her Aunt and Grandmother; he to visit his biological father and his step-mother-who he\\u2019s never met- although in this book she\\u2019s referred to as his mother-in-law.\\xa0 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\\u2019s spending with Jane.\\xa0 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.\\xa0
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Speaking of piano forte- I don\\u2019t 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.
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HA!!- so true, I will say, that my piano playing is closer to the mediocrity of Emma\\u2019s than the excellence of a jane Fairfax.\\xa0
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Awwe- don\\u2019t sell yourself short.\\xa0 I think you would have been a suitable candidate for matrimony for the period.\\xa0
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Oh dear- I don\\u2019t know.\\xa0 I don\\u2019t know how many pounds my parents would have been able to spare- remember, my dad\\u2019s a clergyman- except not in the vein of Mr. Elston, I will say.\\xa0 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\\u2019ve 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\\u2019s head.\\xa0 He is introduced through letters (which is a motif she uses the whole book for various things)- but it\\u2019s how Frank Churchill communicates in large part- especially when we get to this gigantic full disclosure letter at the end of the novel. \\xa0When we get our first description of him in chapter 23, it\\u2019s very precursory and through Emma\\u2019s eyes, \\u201c-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\\u2019s he looked quite sensible\\u2026\\u201d 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.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 We never see anything from his perspective.
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And what we learn is that in many ways he\\u2019s kind of hapless.\\xa0 He almost even confesses what he\\u2019s up to to Emma.\\xa0 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\\u2019s then finally at the ball- we likely don\\u2019t trust Frank Churchill either. \\xa0\\xa0Jane Austen has trained us to trust Mr. Knightley just as Emma does- in fact he IS the voice of Austen, I am told.
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Yes- that\\u2019s true, but it\\u2019s not true.\\xa0 Austen has also, by this point in the story trained us to suspect all the characters perspectives- even Knightly\\u2019s 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,\\xa0 Knightley is certainly gracious to almost everyone else, so it\\u2019s out of character for him not to want to be gracious to this guy- unless there is a reason for it. \\xa0
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He really truly is very dutiful and gracious to the point of giving Mrs. Bates all of his apples, literally.
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The point Knightly makes in chapter 19, is that Frank Churchill\\u2019s words don\\u2019t always match his behavior. He\\u2019s always claiming he can\\u2019t visit his dad in his letters.\\xa0 But Knightly knows in real life no matter what they say men, especially rich men, \\xa0do what they want, and the excuses are just that.\\xa0 And if it it\\u2019s not a lie and exactly as he says- that he can\\u2019t leave because his stepmother won\\u2019t let him- well- that\\u2019s no better and maybe worse-\\xa0 he\\u2019s \\xa0ruled by his step-mother that he can\\u2019t spare a weekend to ride up to visit his dad and meet his new stepmother, that\\u2019s weird too.\\xa0
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To your point, Knightley says something that really stands out to me- and it stands out because, and I\\u2019ll revisit this at length next week because I think it really applies to Emma more than anyone else in the whole book- he says \\xa0that real men always are ruled by duty.\\xa0\\xa0 A point, most readers may question but will still find noble- and I will argue makes Emma the manliest man in the story.\\xa0 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, \\xa0he gets Emma to like him by paying attention to her. \\xa0We, however, watch his charade with Emma (and yes, that word again- the charade with Emma and Elston was just the first), and can\\u2019t help but hearing Knightly\\u2019s cautiunary words from before he galloped into town.\\xa0
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This might be a good time to point out and this isn\\u2019t a big deal- but Jane Austen loves a good pun- like the fun with the charade, and although we don\\u2019t have near enough time to point then out- the names kind of give you a taste.\\xa0 Notice that Frank is anything but Frank- and KNIGHTLY\\xa0 is such a knight- get it.\\xa0
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Yes- I get it- and Jane is fair- I might add, does Emma have a wooden house?
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Ha!\\xa0 Well, it\\u2019s in the woods- and I do think there is something to the name, but moving one.\\xa0 One more thing to note, Jane Fairfax, is kind of like Frank in that she was adopted as well by a rich family.\\xa0
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Yes- but her situation is different.\\xa0 The family who adopted her, The Campbells aren\\u2019t infinitely wealthy, and they have a daughter.\\xa0 So, all the money for the dowry goes to the real daughter, although Jane doesn\\u2019t seem really to resent this.
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Hence all the bru=haha about MR. And Mrs. Dixon who have just recently gotten married.\\xa0 The daughter who apparently is ugly, is married to a man named Mr. Dixon.\\xa0 Which really wouldn\\u2019t be worth mentioning except for all of the back and forth between Emma and Frank Churchill about Mrs. Dixon being ugly so that\\u2019s why Mr. Dixon sent Jane a piano forte.
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That incident really is mean on the part of Frank- to throw Jane under the bus like that-\\xa0 especially if he really does love her- this doesn\\u2019t seem in the spirit of protecting one\\u2019s future wife.
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No, it really isn\\u2019t.\\xa0 It seems immature and I guess, to me that is how Frank comes across.\\xa0 \\xa0He is selfish and insincere pretty much the whole way through- only somewhat redeeming himself through this giant letter at the end.\\xa0 But back to the middle of the story, his being willing to bad mouth Jane suits Emma.\\xa0\\xa0 She\\u2019s is an incurable snob jealous and incredibly jealous of Jane.
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Sweet sad reserved and basically perfect Jane
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Yes- and Emma\\u2019s nemesis.Austen is creating is a parallel relationship \\u2013\\xa0 It\\u2019s really where are the comedy resides.\\xa0 We have the hidden love of emma/knightly and the secret love of Frank and Jane.
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\\xa0And of course- this is where all the comedy resides- Emma\\u2019s blindness to Jane is actually a result of her blindness to herself.\\xa0 Jane is Emma\\u2019s equal and in fact pretty much her superior at everything except social status.
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Yeah- and \\xa0Austen never misses an opportunity to emphasize how desirable this friendships is in the eyes of all their friends and relatives.\\xa0 Isabella urges Emma in that direction and so does Knightley.\\xa0 Poor Janes lives in cramped quarters with an aunt that won\\u2019t ever shut her mouth and must as she says, \\u201chire out her intellect\\u201d as a governess.\\xa0 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\\u2019s compromising who she is and is acting outside her character.\\xa0 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.\\xa0
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\\xa0 Emma, of course, is continuously irked by Jane\\u2019s reserve.\\xa0 In chapter 20, and of course, we\\u2019re in Emma\\u2019s mind now, but we\\u2019re looking at Jane, let me quote, \\u201cEmma was sorry; to have to pay civilities to a person she did not like through three long months!\\xa0 To be always doing more than she wished and less than she ought!\\xa0 That\\u2019s a great line- how many times are we stuck in that disagreeable place.
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So true and here\\u2019s another line, \\u201cWhy 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.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 There were her reasons- she had no better.\\u201d\\xa0 What Emma doesn\\u2019t realize herself and really, we as readers\\u2019s don\\u2019t quite understand as yet, is that she and Jane are way more alike than Emma understands.\\xa0 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\\u2019t allow her to leave him- and we\\u2019ll explain why next week,\\xa0 but cannot fall in love because to do so would be to put her in somewhat the same miserable situation as Jane.\\xa0 \\xa0
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Ha!\\xa0 And so, she becomes a matchmaking busy body for everyone else in the community as a way to disengage her own feelings for knightly.\\xa0
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Exactly- and this works well for her until \\xa0little plot twists push all of this to the open.
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So, that\\u2019s our community- all the fun secondary figures to our darling heroine provide the humor and impetus for us to watch Emma grow up.\\xa0 And, Emma, just as for all of us, growing up is not an absolute state that comes from a single moment of insight.\\xa0 It\\u2019s an erratic process from one solution to fresh problems- with highs, punctuated by lows, steps forward, two steps backwards as the saying goes.\\xa0 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\\u2019s, convinces herself that Frank is in love with her and imagines all the ways she would nobly turn him down.
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And ironically it is through the \\xa0snooty Mrs. Augusta Elton and all of her ridiculous meddling as well as her husband Mr. Elton who Augusta constantly refers to as her \\u201clord and master\\u201d that Austen brings out the truth both for Jane and Emma.
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Is Augusta a pun because she thinks she\\u2019s like Augustus Caesar?
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I think it\\u2019s pretty much something like, Emma says she wants to be wiser and wittier than all the world. Notice that it is \\xa0Mr. and Mrs. Elton DO that push our main characters to places of awakening.\\xa0 Let\\u2019s join all of our friends at the ball in chapter 38. Garry- tell us about Regency balls, carriages and dancing.
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Yes, well, of course as well see in \\xa0chapter 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.\\xa0 But like today vehicles are markers of status.\\xa0 Mrs. Elton has already made much of the fact that her sister has TWO carriages.\\xa0 Then we move to all the fuss about dance partners.\\xa0 The way it worked is that each dance was really a group dance that could take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes.\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 There would be long lines of the couples with dance moves that weren\\u2019t really complicated to do, but would be complicated to remember.\\xa0 It would be something to learn ahead of time.\\xa0 We\\u2019ve 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\\u2019re interested in each other.\\xa0
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Well, and all the drama from this ball centers around the Elton\\u2019s of course.\\xa0 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\\u2019s expecting to be honored. \\xa0\\xa0But the real drama arises when there is an opportunity to inflict pain on Emma vicariously through Harriet.\\xa0 There are two more dances before supper and Harriet is the only girl without a dance partner.\\xa0 As we see the action unfold through Emma\\u2019s 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.\\xa0 It seems that Mrs. Elton has instigated her husband to spurn Harriet publically as he had already done before.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 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\\u2019ll discuss next week.\\xa0
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Read the last past of chapter 38, page 304
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And so we end this week\\u2019s discussion and our 100th episode with Emma and Knightly at the ball.\\xa0 There could be worse places to be.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 Stop in to see us on Instagram, Twitter, FB or LinkedIn.\\xa0 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!!\\xa0 \\xa0\\xa0
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Peace out
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