I cannot see you acting wrong without a remonstrance

The words of my title are, of course, those of Mr Knightley to Emma, but I address them to the BBC.  Bored and slightly shocked by the latest television Emma, I gave it up after half an hour, and picked up the book itself.  It’s not, to be fair, Jane Austen’s finest – for me, it is clearly the weakest of the big five (not including Northanger Abbey, the runt of the litter).  But Austen in a weaker strain is still extremely fine, and there is no need to eviscerate it so completely as the BBC seemed intent on doing.  And do they think Mr Woodhouse is Emma’s grandfather, not her father – he looks about a hundred?

Emma is now a novel I pick up thinking that I ought to like it, and hoping to like it.  I used to feel this way about other Austens, but I have gradually grown into them all, and feel nothing but excitement and delight as I pick up Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, or Persuasion.  I don’t think this is because Emma herself is such a dolt – she’s irritating and trivial beyond belief, and her judgement of other people is quite extraordinarily bad – and her judgement of her own feelings.  I wouldn’t want her in my life (though Gwyneth Paltrow, in a previous version, was quite lovely), but then that’s true of others – Jane Bennett is sickly sweet good, and Fanny Price is so wet you need wellies to walk all over her, but both these books are on my “most loved” list.  I think it’s because there are so many odd characters, and because the novel really has remarkably little shape or direction.

Mr Knightley is splendid in all sorts of ways, but is a tedious prig at times – and it’s hard to believe in either his or Emma’s passion; Mr Woodhouse needs a good shaking and a reality check; the Eltons are a fearful couple.  And the plot is a cloud of unknowing in which events occur, rather than a journey through Emma’s development – as Pride and Prejudice is a journey through Elizabeth’s (and many other things); and all that nonsense with Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax – that’s all of a piece with the Gothick I wish she had left in Northanger Abbey.  I am in a severe mood with my goddess today, but I still love it – the Miss Bates monologues for example, are quite wonderful, and the Westons are drawn well, and the picture of small town social life is wonderfully conceived and executed.  Perhaps I just need a draft of the true, the blissful Hippocrene, perhaps Sense and Sensibility, the longest unread, and I’ll return to Emma another time.  In the meantime, I shall steadfastly ignore the BBC!

Comments

[glo]

Pfew! I hope no book was harmed in the writing of this post! Since you have been reviewing books, you have never been that sharp and severe, except perhaps when it came to that book about Shakespeare's life. I think you must be rather angry again the BBC film.
When I saw this book appear on your left column, I decided that this would be my 2009 yearly Austen, although it doesn't fit my resolution to read the books in the same order that they were written. Too bad. Anyway, I ought to start with Sense and Sensibility. I'll tell you about the book by the end of the year.

[Lindsay]


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Minnie - thanks for your comments, and keep
visiting. Its odd that we nowadays think of country life as an escape -
but you rightly point out that it cd be a prison.

Lindsay

lindsaybagshaw@btinternet.com

http://www.booksdofurnisharoom.typepad.com/

[Minnie]

Very interesting critique of the novel (didn't see the latest telly version), & I do agree with most of it. Just wanted to add my own view that 'Emma' is about the claustrophobia of life - narrowed to focus on a particular social stratum, but could apply to almost any. The phrase near the beginning summing up the aftermath of snowfall as 'a white world' says a lot, I think. And Emma HAS to marry Knightley: no other choice without relocating (which isn't a possibility thanks to Mr W's 'frailties'). So they just have to accommodate each other. And I suspect that's what it's about: as much as the stifling nature of country life, it's about making do with/making the most of what you have. All a bit glum, and far from romantic. Perhaps that's why we don't like it? No sparkle.
Great blog; have enjoyed my visit. Thank you.

[Dark Puss]

Lindsay & Cornflower, dare I admit that "Northanger Abbey" is the only book by Austen that I have read? Will you still talk to me? I can imagine you saying in scandalized tones "There you are, I told you he wasn't a proper reader!"

[Cornflower]

Now, come down off that fence, Lindsay!