Read Online Emma (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Jane Austen - Free Book Online
Authors: Jane Austen
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visiting her grandmother from time to time” (p. 148). She is another one of the homeless people among the population of Emma.
But Colonel Campbell’s fortune was no more than “moderate,” and so Jane was prepared by means of her excellent education to earn a “respectable subsistence hereafter” (p. 148). Her “heart and understanding had received every advantage of discipline and culture.” As she approaches majority she has become an elegant, cultivated, and accomplished young woman, “qualified for the care of children, fully competent to the office of instruction herself’ (p. 148). An evil future looms ahead of her, since she will as a governess enter into a situation of semi-permanent homelessness. She will also descend in status—a gentlewoman, educated but without means, enters a respectable, affluent family to be employed, ambiguously, as a semi-member of the family who is also an upper servant. Her companionship and deep friendship with Miss Campbell continue until ”that chance, that luck which so often defies anticipation in matrimonial affairs,” leads Miss Campbell (rather than the superior Jane) to engage the affections of a rich young man and finds herself ,“ happily settled,” while Jane,“ had yet her bread to earn.,”And so with ”the fortitude of a devoted noviciate, she had resolved at one-and-twenty to complete the sacrifice, and retire from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification for ever,” (p. 149). There is some question of how we are to take such a passage. Are we to read it in the sense that Emma’s avowal never to marry is to be read? We are persuaded that Emma will eventually marry—heroines who are handsome, clever, and rich almost invariably do. The question of interest in this connection is how Emma will find her way toward deciding to marry, how she will change, grow, and develop so that marriage becomes not merely her contingent but her appropriate, indeed her inevitable choice. I do not think that the passage about Jane is ironic in quite that way. There is nothing playful about Jane; she is straight and sober all the way. She thinks of herself as a nun entering a convent and sealing herself away from ampler life, resolved to do penance for the sin of poverty and to mortify herself for having desired to live fully, in accordance with her personal possibilities and gifts, as well as her desires. Later on, she compares the employment offices for governesses in London to slave markets: ” ‘offices for the sale, not quite of human flesh, but of human intellect“’ (p. 269). She feels acutely that she is a victim of a mysterious and far from benevolent set of forces.
This cheerless prospect is suddenly lightened; chance leads her to meet Frank Churchill at a seaside resort and watering hole. The two fall quickly and deeply in love, and Frank, in his youthful and passionate impulsiveness, successfully importunes her to undertake a secret engagement. This agreement, in violation of the protocols that governed courtship among the upper orders at the time, weighs heavily on Jane’s sense of propriety and acceptable conduct. The two lovers have also agreed to conduct a secret correspondence, and this covert behavior, along with the deception of others that it unavoidably involves, adds to the stress and constraint, the recessiveness and “restraint” that is so notable a feature of Jane’s manner of conducting herself. Her burdens are only made heavier by Emma’s dislike, envy, and rivalry, and by Frank’s impossible behavior when he comes to Highbury—he doesn’t even tell her that it is he who has bought the piano for her. As a crowning imposition of misery, Jane has been “taken over” by Mrs. Elton, who with sadistic glee keeps urging her to get on with it and allow Mrs. Elton to procure for her a “superior” situation, among her acquaintances near Bristol, as a governess. xiii It is
But Colonel Campbell’s fortune was no more than “moderate,” and so Jane was prepared by means of her excellent education to earn a “respectable subsistence hereafter” (p. 148). Her “heart and understanding had received every advantage of discipline and culture.” As she approaches majority she has become an elegant, cultivated, and accomplished young woman, “qualified for the care of children, fully competent to the office of instruction herself’ (p. 148). An evil future looms ahead of her, since she will as a governess enter into a situation of semi-permanent homelessness. She will also descend in status—a gentlewoman, educated but without means, enters a respectable, affluent family to be employed, ambiguously, as a semi-member of the family who is also an upper servant. Her companionship and deep friendship with Miss Campbell continue until ”that chance, that luck which so often defies anticipation in matrimonial affairs,” leads Miss Campbell (rather than the superior Jane) to engage the affections of a rich young man and finds herself ,“ happily settled,” while Jane,“ had yet her bread to earn.,”And so with ”the fortitude of a devoted noviciate, she had resolved at one-and-twenty to complete the sacrifice, and retire from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification for ever,” (p. 149). There is some question of how we are to take such a passage. Are we to read it in the sense that Emma’s avowal never to marry is to be read? We are persuaded that Emma will eventually marry—heroines who are handsome, clever, and rich almost invariably do. The question of interest in this connection is how Emma will find her way toward deciding to marry, how she will change, grow, and develop so that marriage becomes not merely her contingent but her appropriate, indeed her inevitable choice. I do not think that the passage about Jane is ironic in quite that way. There is nothing playful about Jane; she is straight and sober all the way. She thinks of herself as a nun entering a convent and sealing herself away from ampler life, resolved to do penance for the sin of poverty and to mortify herself for having desired to live fully, in accordance with her personal possibilities and gifts, as well as her desires. Later on, she compares the employment offices for governesses in London to slave markets: ” ‘offices for the sale, not quite of human flesh, but of human intellect“’ (p. 269). She feels acutely that she is a victim of a mysterious and far from benevolent set of forces.
This cheerless prospect is suddenly lightened; chance leads her to meet Frank Churchill at a seaside resort and watering hole. The two fall quickly and deeply in love, and Frank, in his youthful and passionate impulsiveness, successfully importunes her to undertake a secret engagement. This agreement, in violation of the protocols that governed courtship among the upper orders at the time, weighs heavily on Jane’s sense of propriety and acceptable conduct. The two lovers have also agreed to conduct a secret correspondence, and this covert behavior, along with the deception of others that it unavoidably involves, adds to the stress and constraint, the recessiveness and “restraint” that is so notable a feature of Jane’s manner of conducting herself. Her burdens are only made heavier by Emma’s dislike, envy, and rivalry, and by Frank’s impossible behavior when he comes to Highbury—he doesn’t even tell her that it is he who has bought the piano for her. As a crowning imposition of misery, Jane has been “taken over” by Mrs. Elton, who with sadistic glee keeps urging her to get on with it and allow Mrs. Elton to procure for her a “superior” situation, among her acquaintances near Bristol, as a governess. xiii It is
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