The Emma Complex(ity)

You've now spent a few days reading Jane Austen's Emma. For some of you, this may be your first foray into the world of Austen. Or maybe we have some Janeites in the class (for those of you not in the know, that is the term for Jane Austen superfans and, yes, they have their own Wikipedia page). Either way, I hope you are at least enjoying the experience so far. You can't really teach a British Literature course without studying at least one Jane Austen text and I chose Emma because I think it is fun, the title character is close to you in age, and there is a subtle complexity to this comedy of manners that I believe will make for some interesting class discussions. (And, to be perfectly transparent, Clueless (which is a modern adaptation of the novel) came out my own senior year of high school , and I was/am obsessed with that movie.)

For this week's blog entry, I want you to reflect on your first impressions of Emma herself. Sometimes the novel is dismissed as lighter fare than other of Austen's more "serious" novels (such as Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility), but I think this is a mistake. The subtle complexities of the novel that I alluded to earlier are present right from the beginning in the somewhat contradictory nature of Emma herself.

In the very opening of the novel, we are told that "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." Which is all fine and good until we learn just a little bit later that her mother died when she was a child and that "the real evils indeed of Emma's situation were the power too having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself..." (Austen 1). How are we to reconcile this first description of Emma with what we later come to learn about her? 

Having read several chapters of the novel, do you see these conflicts in Emma's character? What are your impressions of her so far? Similarly, what do you think of the novel itself? For those of you who have never read Austen, is it what you expected?