Emma, chapters 22-24

The current chapter of Emma leads with the following right hook:

Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.

Ladies and gentlemen, Jane Austen is in the house!

Seriously, how anyone can read lines like that one—caustic, acerbic, radioactively unsentimental—and maintain an image of the woman who wrote them as a fluttery, breathy romantic is beyond me. This is a dame who eats romantics for breakfast. Scrambled. With a side of organ meats. Theirs.

And she’s in spectacular form going forward, as witness the passage that immediately follows, which hilariously smacks down the local chattering classes:

A week had not passed since Miss Hawkins’s name was first mentioned in Highbury, before she was, by some means or other, discovered to have every recommendation of person and mind,—to be handsome, elegant, highly accomplished, and perfectly amiable; and when Mr. Elton himself arrived to triumph in his happy prospects, and circulate the fame of her merits, there was very little more for him to do than to tell her Christian name, and say whose music she principally played.

Austen goes on to paint a devastating portrait of the gloating Mr. Elton, whose return to Highbury is sort of like that of Caesar’s to Rome after the conquest of Gaul. Only instead of dragging back tribal chieftains to publicly execute, Mr. Elton contents himself with publicly cutting dead both Emma and Harriet Smith—the first for jilting him, the second for daring to presume she was good enough for him. His weapon of choice is, of course, the reputation of his bride-to-be—of whom Austen tells us not much; just that aforementioned Christian name (Augusta), and that she “was in possession of an independent fortune, of so many thousands as would always be called ten”—dang, but she’s on a roll here. You may find yourself having to put the book down every few paragraphs and just catch your breath.

Emma, for her part, isn’t much affected by Mr. Elton throwing shade at her. She doesn’t care enough for his good opinion for it to matter a damn, and all he accomplishes is to give her “the impression of his not being improved by the mixture of pique and pretension now spread over his air.” The only pain he causes her is that he’s a reminder of her own gullibility. As for his much heralded fiancée, Emma’s so far from dreading that lady’s arrival that she actually can’t wait for her to get here—since “a Mrs. Elton would be an excuse for any change of intercourse; former intimacy might sink without remark. It would be almost beginning their life of civility again.”

As for Miss Hawkins as an individual, Emma “thought very little. She was good enough for Mr. Elton, no doubt; accomplished enough for Highbury—handsome enough—to look plain, probably, by Harriet’s side.”

What she was, must be uncertain; but who she was, might be found out; and setting aside the 10,000l., it did not appear that she was at all Harriet’s superior. She brought no name, no blood, no alliance. Miss Hawkins was the youngest of the two daughters of a Bristol—merchant, of course, he must be called…Bristol was her home, the very heart of Bristol; for though the father and mother had died some years ago, an uncle remained—in the law line:—nothing more distinctly honourable was hazarded of him, than that he was in the law line; and with him the daughter had lived. Emma guessed him to be the drudge of some attorney, and too stupid to rise. And all the grandeur of the connection seemed dependent on the elder sister, who was very well married, to a gentleman in a great way, near Bristol, who kept two carriages! That was the wind-up of the history; that was the glory of Miss Hawkins.

We know that Emma’s superhuman snobbery will eventually rear up and bite her in the ass; but for the moment, she has our gracious permission to keep trash-talking in this vein all she likes. In fact, we insist.

Unfortunately, while Emma’s basically immune to Mr. Elton’s prancing around Highbury in celebration of himself, Harriet Smith is another story. Where Emma serenely repels his haughty looks, they pierce Harriet like the beam from a laser cannon. She is “one of those, who, having once begun, would always be in love.” Exacerbating the problem is that, while Emma, on her aircraft-carrier-sized estate, can sail through the average week without seeing Mr. Elton at all, rooming-house resident Harriet “was sure just to meet with him, or just to miss him, just to hear his voice, or see his shoulder, just to have something to preserve him in her fancy”—and how much do we love that single phrase, “or see his shoulder”?...A brilliant summation of Harriet’s character. She’s a fetishist, in the way erotically charged teenaged girls often are. You know the type…the kind who filches the cute boy’s used napkin from the lunch-room trash, and builds a little shrine to it, then spends dreamy afternoons writing his name over and over again in her very best cursive.

She’s also, unfortunately, the kind of girl who wallows in romantic victimhood, and she gets plenty of help by virtue of the fact that, for the rest of Highbury, Mr. Elton is still oh so very all that. Hell, at Mrs. Goddard’s, he’s basically the young Sinatra, and just strutting by the house he reduces everyone in it to bobbysoxers.

At about this time, Robert Martin's sister Elizabeth calls at Mrs. Goddard’s; and though Harriet isn’t in, she leaves a note for her, “written in the very style to touch,—a small mixture of reproach with a great deal of kindness”—so that Harriet’s thrown into a tailspin about that, too. At least, she is whenever Mr. Elton’s shoulder isn’t thrusting itself into view, at which time she’s naturally hurled into a tizzy over that. She’s basically a human weather-vane, being buffeted by two encroaching fronts.

Had it been allowable entertainment, had there been no pain to her friend, or reproach to herself, in the waverings of Harriet’s mind, Emma would have been amused by its variations. Sometimes Mr. Elton predominated, sometimes the Martins; and each was occasionally useful as a check to the other.

So we have this very funny situation of Emma calibrating Harriet like a finely tuned vehicle running at high speed. If she veers too far in one direction, Emma maneuvers the controls to get her back on course. And when she wanders too far in the opposite direction, a few taps get her back again.

Alas, this lovely, suspended state can’t last. The kindness of Elizabeth Martin demands kindness in kind; meaning, Harriet must return the visit. Emma’s caught in a catch-22 here: as a well-bred young lady, she can’t flout social protocol by encouraging Harriet not to go. On the other hand, as Harriet’s protector, she can’t just send her blithely back to the wolves who nearly devoured her once before.

Being Emma Woodhouse, she hits on the perfect middle ground: she herself will take Harriet to Abbey-Mill Farm in her carriage, and drop her at the front door—then return fifteen minutes later to fetch her back again. This way, Harriet won’t be seduced into a longer stay, and the revival of old intimacies that might come with it—because as we all know, even today, “My ride is here” is one of the few unarguable social imperatives; and Elizabeth Martin and her mother and sisters will be left with an understanding that their relationship with Harriet is “to be only a formal acquaintance.” It's as definitive as can be managed, under the circumstances, without Harriet actually spitting on their shoes.

[Emma] could think of nothing better; and though there was something in it which her own heart could not approve—something of ingratitude, merely glossed over—it must be done, or what would become of Harriet?

The day of the visit arrives, and it finds Harriet in another nervous state, because she’s just seen “a trunk, directed to The Rev. Philip Elton, White Hart, Bath” being loaded into the butcher’s cart, which of course upsets her because Tragedy. But by the time Emma’s hauled her to the grounds of Abbey-Hill Farm, Harriet’s gone and swung hard in the other direction, and is getting all dewy at so many fondly familiar sights, like the old stump with the axe in it and the dead ’coon on the tree limb, that Emma increases her determination not to leave her to her own devices for one nanosecond longer than the agreed-upon quarter-hour.

And in fact it’s, like, thirteen minutes and 57 seconds before Emma’s back out front, and if Regency carriages had car horns you know Emma would be repeatedly honking hers until Harriet came bolting out the door, waving goodbye with one hand and holding her bonnet on with the other. And a good thing too, for it turns out Emma’s timing was dead-on. Harriet reveals that the Martin women “had received her doubtingly, if not coolly; and nothing beyond the merest common-place had been talked”, until Mrs. Martin mentioned that she thought Harriet had grown a bit. And suddenly everyone remembered how they might tell for sure: a pencil mark on the wainscot where she’d been measured the previous summer. And the sight of that pencil mark opened the conversational—and emotional—floodgates.

He had done it. They all seemed to remember the day, the hour, the party, the occasion,—to feel the same consciousness, the same regrets,—to be ready to return to the same good understanding; and they were just growing again like themselves (Harriet, as Emma must suspect, as ready as the best of them to be cordial and happy), when the carriage re-appeared, and all was over.

We want to hate Emma here, and we do a little; but we can’t hate her entirely, because even though she’s the dastardly villainess in this affair, she’s far from rejoining in the success of her diabolical plan.

Fourteen minutes to be given to those with whom she had thankfully passed six weeks not six months ago! Emma could not but picture it all, and feel how justly they might resent, how naturally Harriet must suffer. It was a bad business. She would have given a great deal, or endured a great deal, to have had the Martins in a higher rank of life. They were so deserving, that a little higher should have been enough; but as it was, how could she have done otherwise?

As always when Emma’s moral bearings go a bit wobbly, she feels a sudden need to see Mrs. Weston—probably because Mrs. Weston has spent basically her whole life telling Emma she’s perfect. Which is almost always reassuring, you’ll have to agree. (My dogs performs the same function for me.) So Emma directs the coach to Randalls, but instead overtakes Mr. and Mrs. Weston in the road, where they stop her to deliver some epic news: Frank Churchill is to arrive the very next day.

At least, that’s what Mr. Weston says; but of course he’s been saying it, with the utmost confidence, every Tuesday since the Lower Paleolithic era. It’s not till his wife confirms the news, by standing on one leg and mewling like a cat, that Emma can take it as gospel.

It’s a good thing she’s seated in the carriage, because if she were on her feet Emma might be unable to resist breaking into the Snoopy dance. This news is exactly the thing to push the tired old Martins and snotty Mr. Elton waaaay off to the margins. Frank Churchill’s star power is sufficient to relegate everyone else in town to Best Supporting Nobody status. Mrs. Weston actually seems so unnerved at the prospect of finally meeting her stepson, that as they part she says, “Think of me to-morrow, my dear Emma, at about four o’clock,” which is the hour set for Frank’s glorious descent from heaven (or at least from Oxford).

And Emma means to comply. In fact, all the rest of that day and the morning of the next she's reminded to think of Mrs. Weston at the appointed time, whenever she passes one of Hartfield's nineteen gazillion clocks —“‘Tis twelve,—I shall not forget to think of you four hours hence”—which is pretty good evidence that the girl's got a lot of time on her hands, when she’s not busy reordering the planets and redrawing the laws of physics.

She’s just considering how long it might be before she herself has the privilege of meeting Frank Churchill, when she opens the parlor door and there’s Frank Churchill right there, like she's just conjured him out of a magic crystal or something. He’s arrived early, and his proud papa, unable to wait showing him off, is making the rounds with him—first stop being the inestimable Woodhouses.

Emma is only momentarily nonplused; it will take more than a handsome, charismatic, nearly legendary figure being thrust upon her by surprise, to derail her composure. The roof caving in might do it, or the whole house bursting suddenly into flame, but I wouldn’t bet money on it. She’s no sooner absorbed the astonishing fact of Frank’s presence than she’s about the businesses of appraising him (“he was a very good looking young man; height, air, address, all were unexceptionable”) and deciding that she's going to like him.

But we readers…we’re a bit warier. We read about Frank’s “well-bred ease of manner” and “readiness to talk,” his “spirit and liveliness”—and we’re all, uh-oh. Because we’ve been down this road before. We’ve spent enough time in Austenland by this point, to spot one of her archetypes when it surfaces, and Frank Churchill couldn’t be more recognizably The Cad if he had it tattooed across his brow. He’s Mr. Willoughby and Mr. Wickham all over again; and Henry Crawford, too, though of course Henry Crawford was a much subtler and more complex figure, as befitted Austen’s increased prowess when she created him. So, too, will Frank Churchill be; though he presents a clearer danger in this novel, than Henry Crawford did in his. In Mansfield Park, we just kept shouting at Henry, “Go on, then, ruin her, ruin Fanny Price already,” because for that particular heroine, any change, even degradation, would be a clear improvement; but Emma’s already about eighty-five percent perfect, and we want to see her score max out by the end of the novel, not get knocked back to single digits.

So we’re not at all satisfied by the pages that follow, in which Frank Churchill says exactly what everyone wants to hear him say, and spreads pleasure over the room like margarine over toast, and even makes a reference to “coming home” that makes the buttons on his father’s waistcoat just pop clean off. Emma has enough presence of mind to wonder why if he considers this his home, it’s taken him so long to get his bouncy little butt cheeks anywhere near the place; “but still if it were a falsehood, it was a pleasant one, and pleasantly handled. His manner had no air of study or exaggeration. He really did look and speak as if in a state of no common enjoyment.”

This is all very, very bad. In Austen, we’ve learned not to trust the easy charmers, the glib fawners, the dazzling wits. The only men worth trusting are the ones who speak plainly and spare no one’s feelings…and who aren’t comfortable in a room filled with social liars. Frank Churchill is very attractive; but he’s just so obviously poisonous. I sometimes wonder whether he, and his ilk, are Austen’s revenge on a whole class of gorgeous flatterers who chatted her up at assemblies and balls, made her laugh and blush and feel girlish, then dashed off at the first opportunity to dance with anybody else.

Frank is so practiced at his craft that he instantly determines how best to insinuate himself into Emma’s good graces. As mistress of Highbury, she gets nothing but praise from everyone within a fifteen-mile radius, so it won’t make any impression if he goes that route and compliments her directly; instead he wins her over by fawning excessively over the unparalleled super-duperness of his stepmother. Emma, again, isn’t entirely a fool—“He did not advance a word of praise beyond what she knew to be thoroughly deserved by Mrs. Weston; but, undoubtedly, he could know very little of the matter”—having known the lady for, at this point, all of eleven minutes.

He got as near as he could to thanking [Emma] for Miss Taylor’s merits, without seeming quite to forget that, in the common course of things, it was rather to be supposed that Miss Taylor had formed Miss Woodhouse’s character, than Miss Woodhouse Miss Taylor’s.

And yet Emma laps it all up like a dish of cream. Possibly because it can’t do any harm to allow him to cover her in so much insincere gush, since it’s kindly meant; and also, it is pretty pleasant to hear. And she’s already made her mind up to like him—made it up long before she ever met him, in fact. Without some really serious defect, why should she sour on him now? She’s got a fair amount invested in the guy. 

Which makes her consider whether he might feel similarly about her.

Emma wondered whether the same suspicion of what might be expected from their knowing each other, which had taken strong possession of her mind, had ever crossed his; and whether his compliments were to be considered as marks of acquiescence, or proofs of defiance.

She can’t help catching Mr. Weston twinkling at them from the corner of his eye, obviously happily nursing those same expectations. Mr. Woodhouse, however, is completely oblivious to any such undercurrents; “it seemed as if he could not think so ill of any two persons’ understanding as to suppose they meant to marry until it were proved against them.” (Wonderful line!) He’s much more focused on learning whether young Frank caught a cold on his journey from Oxford, or was bitten by any poisonous adders, or perhaps lost the use of any limbs.

Ultimately Mr. Weston rises to take his leave, with the excuse that he has business in town. And then, because Austen is the kind of ruthlessly economical novelist who never wastes a word, our antennae go up, because Frank says:

“As you are going farther on business, sir, I will take the opportunity of paying a visit, which must be paid some day or other, and therefore may as well be paid now. I have the honour of being acquainted with a neighbor of yours (turning to Emma), a lady residing in or near Highbury; a family of the name of Fairfax. I shall have no difficulty, I suppose, in finding the house; though Fairfax, I believe, is not the proper name,—I should rather say Barnes or Bates. Do you know any family of that name?”

Emma now recalls that Jane Fairfax had met Frank at Weymouth, and says of course yes, she knows the family in question, and encourages Frank to pay the call. And he gripes and moans so much about how there’s no hurry, he can go any time, but he might as well do it now and get it out of the way, before his days start filling up with interesting things he’d rather be doing than to go and pay a visit to someone he barely knows at all…and Emma just smiles and buys every syllable. (Well, to be fair…the first time I read the novel, so did I. I was younger, then, and much more trusting.)

But she isn’t willing to let him go without at least taking a stab at getting some good dish on Jane. “I have heard her speak of the acquaintance,” Emma says; “she is a very elegant woman.”

[Frank] agreed to it, but with so quiet a “Yes,” as inclined her almost to doubt his real concurrence; and yet there must be a very distinct sort of elegance for the fashionable world, if Jane Fairfax could be thought only ordinarily gifted.

This is one of the only glimmers we get of anything approaching social anxiety in Emma. We’re reminded that for all her supreme self-confidence, she’s still very young, and has lived almost entirely in the country, so that her exposure to “the fashionable world” has been pretty much nil. The idea that such a world would be dismissive of a Jane Fairfax, causes her a tremor of self-doubt. We like her for it, even though we know she’d conquer any fashionable society she entered. Regency London, Gilded Age Washington, beatnik Manhattan…just give up and make her queen already.

Emma warns Frank that Jane Fairfax has an aunt who never stops talking—no, really, she never. Stops. Talking—and sends him off to pay the call. But she hardly has time to reflect on this first meeting, because he boomerangs back again the next morning, this time in the company of his stepmother. Emma is gratified to see her old governess looking so pleased—though of course Frank is the kind of silver-tongued devil who could reduce any woman to putty in his hands. Give him ten minutes with Hillary Clinton and she’d be blushing and giggling like an Olsen twin.

Emma joins them on a tour of Highbury, and Frank further raises himself in her esteem by the intensity of his interest in the town. “He begged to be shown the house which his father had lived in so long…and on recollecting that an old woman, who had nursed him, was still living, walked in quest of her cottage”—and so on, to the point that Emma is convinced he really can’t have stayed away for so long voluntarily; and if Mr. Knightley could only see him now, he’d be compelled to think so, too.

When they reach the Crown Inn, Frank is struck by its ballroom, which he is shocked—shocked, I tell you—to learn is no longer used for balls, the local population being too small for the endeavor. Frank is certain—certain, I tell you—that this impediment can easily be overcome, and that Emma of all people ought to know as much.

Why had not Miss Woodhouse revived the former good old days of the room? She who could do any thing in Highbury! The want of proper families in the place, and the conviction that none beyond the place and its immediate environs could be tempted to attend, were mentioned; but he was not satisfied.

Emma’s a little put off by his certainty that he could fill the place easily enough, just by reaching out his arm and scooping in anyone sufficiently ambulatory to cut a few capers on the dance floor; “his indifference to a confusion of rank bordered too much on inelegance of mind. He could be no judge, however, of the evil he was holding cheap. It was but an effusion of lively spirits.” Clearly, Frank is not the sort of person who’d look down his nose at the Martins of Abbey-Hill Farm, and might even partner one of the girls in the funky chicken, given the chance. We like him for this; I’m betting Austen does too. He’s not quite as thoroughly cretinous as Willoughby or Wickham; his creator is allowing him some layers. Just not quite as many as Henry Crawford—the weight of which capsized her last enterprise.

Conversation eventually turns to the visit to the Bates household, and Frank thanks Emma for having forewarned him about Miss Bates’s mutant ability to speak for six-and-a-half weeks before needing to take a breath; despite which Frank found himself held captive for so long he basically needed a shave by the time he got away.

When Emma asks how he found Jane Fairfax, he says “very will” and makes a remark about her “deplorable want of complexion”, which is so startlingly harsh that it prompts Emma—of all people—to come to Jane’s defense, arguing that her delicate paleness is in keeping with her overall elegance. But Frank stands firm in his judgment.

“Well,” said Emma, “there is no disputing about taste. At least you admire her, except her complexion.”

He shook his head and laughed. “I cannot separate Miss Fairfax and her complexion.”

But despite his willingness to disparage Jane’s looks, Emma can’t tempt him into any gossip about her activities at Weymouth, or her relationships with each of the Campbells, or even how well Frank knew her there. “It is always the lady’s right to decide on the degree of acquaintance,” he insists; “Miss Fairfax must already have given her account. I shall not commit myself by claiming more than she may choose to allow.”

Which prompts Emma to retort, “Upon my word, you answer as discreetly as she could do herself.” Despite which, she doesn’t find discretion in Frank Churchill quite as disgusting she does in Jane Fairfax. Possibly because Frank’s charisma is so high-voltage that it pretty much blinds Emma to everything else—as when she begins to talk pityingly about the sad destiny awaiting Jane, as a mere governess; which prompts Mrs. Weston, a former governess, to clear her throat and say, “Um, hello, standing right here.”

So no, Frank Churchill’s influence on Emma is not a good one. Not even a leeetle bit. But dang if it don’t feel good to Emma herself. She’s practically purring in his company.

Even so, Jane Fairfax seems to hover between them, like an invisible third wheel. Neither seems able—or willing—to leave her behind. Frank now asks whether Emma has ever heard her play. Emma has (“I have heard her every year of our lives since we both began” being the rather groaning way she phrases it), and commends her skill. Frank is glad to hear it, because he’s no judge of music himself. But he assumed Jane’s skill must be pretty rad, based on the opinion of another man, who once gave Jane musical pride of place over his own intended wife.

Emma realizes instantly that Frank must mean Mr. Dixon, and she pounces on this mini-scandal like a leopard on a wounded fawn. She wonders aloud about Mr. Dixon’s fiancée’s reaction to this obvious slight; “I could not excuse a man’s having more music than love—more ear than eye—a more acute sensibility to fine sounds than to my feelings. How did Miss Campbell appear to like it?”

Apparently Miss Campbell didn’t mind at all, because she, like every other inhabitant of planet Earth except, it seems, to two people now obsessing over her, just adores Jane Fairfax to itty-bitty pieces. Well, what about Jane herself, then, Emma wants to know? “She must have felt the improper and dangerous distinction.” And when Frank hems and haws, she realizes she’s given him an impossible question to answer.

“Oh, do not imagine that I expect an account of Miss Fairfax’s sensations from you, or from any body else. They are known to no human being, I guess, but herself; but if she continued to play whenever she was asked by Mr. Dixon, one may guess what one chooses.”

Frank allows that Emma’s guesses on that score must be better than his own, because she’s known Jane longer; but Emma protests that time in this case means nothing. She doesn’t know Jane at all, she never has. Everyone always expected them to be intimate friends, but this has never happened, because “I never could attach myself to any one so completely reserved.”

“It is a most repulsive quality, indeed,” said he. “Oftentimes very convenient, no doubt, but never pleasing. There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.”

It’s only on repeated readings of Emma that we find ourselves wondering what the hell’s going on in Frank’s mind when he says things like this. It’s a sign of Austen’s expanded powers that we see him as a human being whose motivations interest us, in a way Wickham and Willoughby never did—they were painted with broad strokes; their actions spoke for themselves. But…Frank Churchill, man. What’s he feeling right at this moment? Triumph, at so completely suckering Emma? Regret, at feeling the necessity of doing so? A kind of sexual exhilaration in his ability to so easily manipulate women? What?

As for our homegirl, her thoughts are much more obvious.

Emma felt herself so well acquainted with him, that she could hardly believe it to be only their second meeting. He was not exactly what she had expected; less of the man of the world in some of his notions, less of the spoiled child of fortune, therefore better than she had expected. His ideas seemed more moderate—his feelings warmer.

She’s also convinced, from other inferences, that he has “a very amiable inclination to settle early in life, and to marry, from worthy motives…no doubt he did perfectly feel that Enscombe could not make him happy, and that whenever he were attached, he would willingly give up much of wealth to be allowed an early establishment.”

Emma’s already demonstrated that totally misreading characters is her mutant superpower; the irony is that, in this last reflection, she really isn’t so wide of the mark. But it will be a long time before she learns this, and it won’t make her a bit happy when she does.

Still, by that time, she’ll have plenty of other things to worry about.

Emma, chapters 19-21

The second volume of the triple-decker that is Emma opens with its heroine out walking with Harriet Smith. This isn’t very remarkable; we’ve already learned that Harriet’s principal value to Emma is that of someone to walk with, and to talk with while walking with. But that’s not working out so well this morning, because Harriet is disappointed in love, and has, “in Emma’s opinion, been talking enough of Mr. Elton that day.” Yet however much Emma tries to change the subject, it happens to “burst out again when she thought she had succeeded,” because, like many a teenage girl before and after her, Harriet can turn any subject ‘round to the guy that got away. The price of salt cod?...The Russo-Persian war?...The Yazoo land scandal?...Harriet will find Mr. Elton in there somewhere.

When the two young women find themselves in the neighborhood where Mrs. and Miss Bates reside, Emma decides “to call upon them and seek safety in numbers.” She can also kill two birds with one stone, because her neglect of the Bates ladies is seen as a defect by those “very few who presumed ever to see imperfection in her” (why not just come out and say the Knightley brothers?), so she can make a show of being better than their opinion of her, while at the same time putting the kibosh of Harriet’s annoying Eltonmania.

This is a desperate tack for Emma, because she really doesn’t like visiting the Bateses. And I mean really really doesn’t like it. To her it’s “very disagreeable,—a waste of time—tiresome women—and all the horror of being in danger of falling in with the second rate and third rate of Highbury, who were calling on them for ever, and therefore she seldom went near them.” Even worse, if they’ve had a letter from their niece—the dreaded Jane Fairfax—Emma will be stuck there for the better part of a geologic age as the letter is read and re-read and analyzed and deconstructed and translated into Latin and copied onto lengths of ribbon and tied to the feet of doves who are then sent flying off to paradise. But Emma, calculating from the date of the last such letter, figures she’s safe from any new one today.

And so she and Harriet bop up to the humble little apartment above the street, and we finally, at this late stage of the novel, get our first full, unadulterated dose of Mrs. and Miss Bates. Actually, just the latter; the former is basically a nullity—she’s ancient and she knits, is about the sum total of her character. But Miss Bates!...Sweet lawd jebus save us. One of Austen’s titanically great creations. She introduces her as the elder lady’s “more active, talking daughter,” which is sort of like Shakespeare introducing Richard III as a “busy, thinking prince.” The fact is, Miss Bates is the greatest of all Austen’s epic talkers; she is unstoppably garrulous. Her volubility is a kind of existential phenomenon: she talks and talks and talks, with enormous energy and breathtaking velocity, and says absolutely nothing, nada, zilch, niente. Each word is like a grain of sand in a vast desert of utter triviality. She is relentless; she is superhuman; she is mercilessly, cruelly, immortally funny.

Here she is, for instance, on the subject of Jane Fairfax’s latest letter (because of course Emma got her calculations wrong, and there has been a new piece of correspondence from Emma’s very bestest-ever frenemy). At first Miss Bates can’t locate the missive and Emma thinks maybe she’s safe, but no, it turns up:

“Oh, here it is. I was sure it could not be far off; but I had put my huswife upon it, you see, without being aware, and so it was quite hid, but I had it in my hand so very lately that I was almost sure it must be on the table. I was reading it to Mrs. Cole, and, since she went away, I was reading it again to my mother, for it is such a pleasure to her—a letter from Jane—that she can never hear it often enough; so I knew it could not be far off, and here it is, only just under my huswife,—and since you are so kind as to wish to hear what she says; but, first of all, I must really, in justice to Jane, apologise for her writing so short a letter, only two pages you see, hardly two, and in general she fills the whole paper and crosses half. My mother often wonders that I can make it out so well. She often says, when the letter is first opened, ‘Well, Hetty, now I think you will be put to it to make out all that checker-work’—don’t you, ma’am? And then I tell her, I am sure she would contrive to make it out herself, if she had nobody to do it for her, every word of it,—I am sure she would pore over it till she had made out every word. And, indeed, though my mother’s eyes are not so good as they were, she can see amazingly well still, thank God! with the help of spectacles. It is such a blessing! My mother’s are really very good indeed. Jane often says, when she is here, ‘I am sure, grandmamma, you must have had very strong eyes to see as you do—and so much fine work as you have done too!—I only wish my eyes may last me as well.’”

This is just the warm-up to the letter, keep in mind. She hasn’t even read the first freakin’ line yet. You begin to feel Emma’s will to live sap slowly, inexorably away.

The substance of the letter’s not-quite-two-pages, which require Miss Bates nearly double that to summarize, is that Jane Fairfax, absent from Highbury for two years, is coming back for a visit. The family with whom she’s been living, the Campbells, are going to Ireland to see their newly married daughter, whose husband has a grand county-seat there.

“…(It is) a beautiful place, I fancy. Jane has heard a great deal of its beauty,—from Mr. Dixon, I mean,—I do not know that she ever heard about it from any body else,—but it was very natural, you know, that he should like to speak of his own place while he was paying his addresses,—and as Jane used to be very often walking out with them,—for Colonel and Mrs. Campbell were very particular about their daughter’s not walking out often with only Mr. Dixon, for which I do not at all blame them: of course she heard every thing he might be telling Miss Campbell about his home in Ireland…He is a most amiable, charming young man, I believe. Jane was quite longing to go to Ireland, from his account of things.”

And yet, Jane is not going to Ireland, to visit this charming Mr. Dixon and his wife, who was her childhood friend; but is instead coming back to Highbury to stay with her aunt and grandmother, where the odds of having anything like a pleasant time aren’t so much unlikely as statistically nonexistent. This prompts “an ingenious and animating suspicion” in Emma’s brain, and she slyly asks for more details—and learns that the Campbells themselves are quite mad for Jane to come, in fact they’re at the point of roping and tying her and dragging her along behind them like a rodeo steer.

Yet Jane steadfastly refuses—and this despite owing Mr. Dixon her life. For it seems that during a certain yachting party, the sails were whipping around in a manner that at one point would have “dashed (Jane) into the sea” but for Mr. Dixon stepping in and manfully taking hold of her. “I can never think of it without trembling!” Miss Bates says, adding that ever since “I have been so fond of Mr. Dixon!”

And probably not just you, Emma thinks—a supposition made stronger when she recalls that the Campbell’s daughter “has no remarkable degree of personal beauty,—is not by any means to be compared with Miss Fairfax.” Suddenly Emma’s not so totally unwilling to hear more of her hostess’s inane prattle. In fact, were Miss Bates to clam up now, Emma might very well flip her onto the carpet and press her knee in her back until she agreed to say more.

No worries, of course, because the only inducement Miss Bates needs to talk is an atmosphere of sufficient density to carry sound waves. She gladly relays how Jane has pleaded illness to avoid the Irish trip, and the Campbells have been forced to agree that a return to the air of her native county might benefit her. This propels Miss Bates into such an extended fit of declamation (“You may guess, dear Miss Woodhouse, what a flurry it has thrown me in! If it was not from the drawback of her illness—but I am afraid we must expect to see her grown thin, and looking very poorly. I must tell you what an unlucky thing happened to me as to that...” etc.) that by the time she’s recovered herself, and is ready to—y’know—actually read the goddamn letter—Emma regrets that she’s stayed past her allotted time, and must go.

And not all that could be urged to detain her succeeded. She regained the street, happy in this, that though much had been forced on her against her will, though she had, in fact, heard the whole substance of Jane Fairfax’s letter, she had been able to escape the letter itself.

Probably Miss Bates’s voice is still ringing in her ears twenty minutes after she leaves. I know it’s still ringing in mine.

Austen now presses pause, and shuttles back to cover Jane Fairfax’s back story—though being sophisticated readers, we’ve already inferred most of it. But the novel was a new form back when Emma was first published, so Austen presumably felt obliged to fill in all the blanks, cross all the T’s, and spackle in all the cracks.

Jane, we learn, is the poor orphaned child of Mrs. Bates’s youngest daughter, about whom nothing is said; but we can presume that as the younger sister of Miss Bates she grew to womanhood without ever getting a word in edgewise. This lady’s husband, one Lieutenant Fairfax, died in action abroad, triggering his wife’s subsequent death from grief—so right away we’re off to a swell start—and toddler Jane fell into the lap of her aunt and grandmother.

There she might have languished forever, were it not for a certain Col. Campbell, who owed his life to Jane’s father and chose to repay the debt by taking on Jane’s expenses…and then eventually taking on Jane herself, as a companion for his dog-faced daughter, since the two girls had become fast friends over the course of many visits. And “from that period Jane had belonged to Col. Campbell’s family, and had lived with them entirely, only visiting her grandmother from time to time.”

The Campbells were very fond of Jane and gave her an excellent education, with the idea that eventually—when their own daughter was married and established in her own home—that Jane should make a living educating others, as a teacher or governess, those being the only honorable professions open to a young lady of Jane’s qualities at the time (the Hooters franchise not having yet been established). But when the time came, and Miss Campbell “became Mrs. Dixon and was carried off to Ireland,” the Campbells found that Jane “was too much beloved to be parted with”—so that the day of her finally beginning her destined career has been continually postponed, with a stream of excuses such as Oh, she’s still too young, or Oh, she’s not really in the best of health, or Oh, it might rain today, or Oh, it’s time for lunch.

Eventually Jane herself girds her loins and sets her twenty-first year as the time for her “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.” Which is a rather fine whine about what will essentially be looking after a few pampered brats in their parents’ undoubtedly comfortable home. It’s not like Jane’s going to be forced to do forty hours a week of data entry in a cubicle, or anything.

Austen makes much of the fact that everyone in the Campbell clan—father, mother, hatchet-faced daughter—is just crazy about Jane, which is “the more honourable to each party from the circumstance of Jane’s decided superiority both in beauty and acquirements. That nature had given it in feature could not be unseen by the young woman, nor could her higher powers of mind be unfelt by the parents.” Apparently, Jane’s just one of those people you ought to hate but can’t; she seems to win over everyone who comes within twenty yards of her, like she excretes ambrosial pheremones or something…everyone, that is, except Emma.

Which is what has brought up the interesting possibility—immediately seized on by Emma’s suspicious mind (she’s a bit of a “busy, thinking” sort herself)—that there’s more to Jane’s return to Highbury than meets the eye. To be sure, her claim of ill health is no lie, since she “had never been quite well since the time of (the Campbells’) daughter’s marriage” and suffers from “a weakened frame and varying spirits” (pointless aside: Varying Spirits will be my next band name). But Austen even admits to a measure of skullduggery. “With regard to (Jane) not accompanying them to Ireland, her account to her aunt contained nothing but the truth, though there might be some truths not told.” Oh reaaaally? And again, because we’re sophisticated readers, we suspect (along with Emma) that the unavoidable comparisons between Miss Fairfax and Miss Campbell can’t have escaped Mr. Dixon’s notice on those innumerable walks they all took together. In fact, you have to wonder what private moments might have passed between Jane and Mr. Dixon on those walks, when Miss Campbell was momentarily distracted by, say, chasing a squirrel up a tree. Could Jane’s return to Highbury actually be a kind of flight? And from what? Disappointment?...Guilt?...Temptation?...A memory of sweet monkey mojo in the moonlight?

Despite these tantalizing conjectures, which you might expect would provide quite a meal for someone as deviously inclined as Emma, she doesn’t look forward to the opportunity of actually examining the Jane herself for first-hand evidence of emotional turmoil. Quite the opposite.

Emma was sorry to have to pay civilities to a person she did not like through three long months!—to be always doing more than she wished, and less than she ought. Why she did not like Jane Fairfax might be a difficult question to answer…”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 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, every body had supposed they must be so fond of each other.” These were her reasons; she had no better.

Well, give the girl a break…that’s plenty.

It should be pretty clear by now that I’m no Fairfax fan myself. In her, I see the resurrection of Mansfield Park’s Fanny Price—clawing her way into this novel, like a zombie from its grave, to come staggering around where she’s not wanted, frightening the cats and setting the dogs to barking. I like to think that Austen, having got Fanny Price-worship out of her system—presumably askin to going cold turkey off heroin—can now look back and see what a mistake she made; and is giving us Jane Fairfax as a kind of corrective, almost an apology: “See here? I get it now; I understand that a dainty little cipher who binds herself up in propriety can be a relentless, stabbing pain in the ass.”

And yet, like most addicts in recovery, she hasn’t quite shaken off the old demons entirely; and the wavering of resolve she feels, are passed right along to Emma, whose dislike of Jane Fairfax is “so little just,—every imputed fault was so magnified by fancy,—that she never saw Jane Fairfax, the first time after any considerable absence, without feeling that she injured her”. And in fact, when the two girls do meet again, Emma is knocked out by “the very appearance and manners, which for those two whole years she had been depreciating. Jane Fairfax was very elegant, remarkably elegant; and she had herself the highest value for elegance.”

When she took in her history, indeed, her situation, as well as her beauty; when she considered what all this elegance was destined to, what she was going to sink from, how she was going to live, it seemed impossible to feel any thing but compassion and respect; especially, if to every well-known particular, entitling her to interest, were added the highly probably circumstance of an attachment to Mr. Dixon, which she had so naturally started herself.

Yes, especially that; and now that it comes to it, Emma can’t even muster the energy to dwell on the more lurid possibilities of that unfortunate attraction. She “was very willing now to acquit her of having seduced Mr. Dixon’s affections from his wife, or of any thing mischievous which her imagination had suggested at first. If it were love, it might be simple, single, successless love on her side alone.”

So Emma’s determined to give Jane another chance, and really try to like her this time—like a precocious adolescent who’s ready to have another go at brussels sprouts. She’s so far gone in “softened, charitable feelings, as made her look around in walking home, and lament that Highbury afforded no man worthy of giving (Jane) independence,—nobody that she could wish to scheme about for her.” Yes, Emma really is one of those people who will just keep on touching the scalding-hot stove until her blistered, wounded hand just falls right off.

But then she spends ten minutes actually talking to Jane and everything snaps right back to its default setting. At an evening engagement at Hartfield, Jane is “so cold, so cautious! There was no getting at her real opinion. Wrapt up in a cloak of politeness, she seemed determined to hazard nothing. She was disgustingly, was suspiciously reserved.” Emma fishes like crazy for some hint at the truth about Jane’s history with Mr. Dixon, and comes up empty every time. And “the like reserve prevailed on other topics.”

(Jane) and Mr. Frank Churchill had been at Weymouth at the same time. It was known that they were a little acquainted; but not a syllable of real information could Emma procure as to what he truly was. “Was he handsome?”—“She believed he was reckoned a fine young man.”—“Was he aggreable?”—“He was generally thought so.”—“Did he appear a sensible young man; a young man of information?”—“At a watering-place, or in a common London acquaintance, it was difficult to decide on such points…She believed every body found his manners pleasing.” Emma could not forgive her.

It’s a lovely irony Austen offers up here: in a single family, we have an aunt who’s a virtual avatar of logorrhea, and a niece who can barely be made to cough up a half-dozen syllables. She’s on form here, our J.A.—very much on form.

Emma’s low opinion of Jane Fairfax is not shared by Mr. Knightley (hell—it’s not shared by anybody), and that gentleman has a history of riding Emma’s backside without a saddle where her treatment of Jane is concerned. So he’s tickled pink by the sight of Emma and Jane paired off on a settee, their heads together in private talk; he’s unaware that Emma is furiously trying to get Jane to commit to just…one…thing. (“What’s your favorite cheese?” “I must own, I enjoy them all.” “Which do you like better, Christmas or Easter?” “In the winter I generally prefer the former; in the spring, the latter.” “Shall I poke you in the eye, or pull your forefinger all the way back?” “Whichever you prefer; for myself, am indifferent.”)

The next day Mr. Knightley openly commends Emma for the improvement in her manners towards Jane. Emma replies, a bit frostily, “I am happy you approved…but I hope I am not often deficient in what is due to guests at Hartfield.”

And then, once again, we’re transported into the ring, with Knightley in one corner, Emma in the other, their gloves shielding their faces, and circling, circling. Emma gets in the first jab, right at Knightley’s kisser, when she sniffs that “Miss Fairfax is reserved”, but he easily dances away from it, then prances back smiling.

“My dear Emma…you are not going to tell me, I hope, that you had not a pleasant evening.”

“Oh, no; I was pleased with my own perseverance in asking questions, and amused to think how little information I obtained.”

It’s a good start, and we’re hoping for another epic bout between them, like their knock-down-drag-out over Frank Churchill; but unfortunately Mr. Woodhouse is present, and being utterly clueless to the crackling sexual dynamic between his daughter and her dreamy-eyed antagonist, he chooses this moment to go off on an extended monologue about whether he ought to send a leg of pork to the Bateses, because what if they salt it too heavily. When he hears that Emma has already sent them a whole hind-quarter, he launches right into a dizzy dissertation on which is the less risky for oversalting, and through the whole thing you can pretty much picture Emma and Mr. Knightley staring at him in increasing despair and thinking Please sweet lord God in heaven not one more word about salt pork.

And when he’s finally finished, Mr. Knightley’s like, Thank God (maybe he runs his hand over his jaw, to check whether, after all that, he might need a shave). Then he turns back to Emma—their tiff over Jane Fairfax now forgotten (salted over, you might say)—and slyly says, “Emma…I have a piece of news for you.” And he teases her with it, while she hops up and down to hear it, like a macaw being offered something shiny.

But Mr. Knightley draws out the suspense too long, because who should burst in to spoil everything—not only the surprise, but the longed-for respite from salt pork—but Miss Bates, with Jane Fairfax blowing in behind her like a tumbleweed. “Full of thanks and full of news, (she) knew not which to give quickest” and so she decides to just handle both at once, by mashing them into together in one epic blurt. “My dear Miss Woodhouse—I come quite overpowered. Such a beautiful hind-quarter of pork! You are too bountiful! Have you heard the news? Mr. Elton is going to be married.”

Mr. Knightley admits to Emma that this was the story with which he’d been tantalizing her; and Miss Bates is surprised he's already heard, and asks how he came to hear of it. Which in an ordinary human being born of a mother's womb and not a hellspawn spat up from the devil’s lower intestine, would involve saying, “Mr. Knightley, how came you to hear of it?” But with Miss Bates it goes like this:

“But where could you hear it?” cried Miss Bates. “Where could you possibly hear it, Mr. Knightley? For it is not five minutes since I received Mrs. Cole’s note—no, it cannot be more than five—or at least ten—for I had got my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come out—I was only gone down to speak to Patty again about the park—Jane was standing in the passage—were you not, Jane?—for my mother was so afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said, I would go down and see, and Jane said, ‘Shall I go down instead? for I think you have a little cold, and Patty has been washing the kitchen.’—‘Oh, my dear,’ said I—well, and just then came the note. A Miss Hawkins—that’s all I know—a Miss Hawkins of Bath. But, Mr. Knightley, how could you possibly have heard of it? for the very moment Mr. Cole told Mrs. Cole of it, she sat down and wrote to me. A Miss Hawkins—”

At which point Mr. Knightley is compelled to interrupt her. Possibly with a blunt instrument.

Really, I just love Miss Bates. She’s phenomenal. Ask her how to get from her parlor to her sitting room, and she’ll give you directions longer than you’d get for a trip from Istanbul to Riyadh.

Now that the news is out, it’s to be thrashed over like a meaty bone among a pack of hyenas—all except for Jane Fairfax, of course, who holds herself aloof from the general feeding frenzy. Miss Bates, engaging in what an analyst might call “projection,” says to her:

“…Jane, you have never seen Mr. Eton:—no wonder that you have such a curiosity to see him.”

Jane’s curiosity did not appear of the absorbing nature as wholly to occupy her.

This is very funny stuff, especially since it helps further fix Jane’s character. By now, we’re pretty sure that if she were tied to some train tracks with a locomotive bearing down on her, her efforts to wriggle free would not be of such an absorbing nature as wholly to occupy her.

Most of the ensuing discussion is taken up, as you might expect, by Miss Bates’s saga-length discursions, but whenever anyone else can get his or her two cents in, it’s all in aid of wondering what kind of lady this Miss Hawkins must be, to land such a catch as Mr. Elton, who—Emma explains to Jane—is considered “the standard of perfection in Highbury, both in person and in mind.” Yes, she really says this; she's that shameless.

Eventually the subject peters out—because of course no one knows a goddamn thing about Miss Hawkins, and there’s only so long you can dance around a subject you’re completely ignorant of, even with Miss Bates and her apocalyptic mouth factored in—and everyone takes his or her leave. Miss Bates’s parting words are notable, in that they comprise more sheer verbiage than Jane Fairfax has managed during the entirety of the chapter, and managed to touch on every single one of its principal themes, whether or not they're in context or even coherent.

“…This has been a most agreeable piece of news indeed. I shall just go round by Mrs. Cole’s; but I shall not stop three minutes: and Jane, you had better go home directly—I would not have you out in a shower! We think she is better for Highbury already. Thank you, we do indeed. I shall not attempt calling on Mrs. Goddard, for I really do not think she cares for any thing but boiled pork; when we dress the leg it will be another thing. Good morning to you, my dear sir. Oh, Mr. Knightley is coming too. Well, that is so very!—I am sure if Jane is tired, you will be so kind as to give her your arm. Mr. Elton, and Miss Hawkins. Good morning to you.”

Good morning? Surely it’s good afternoon, by now. Possibly even good evening. Or, hell, Merry Christmas.

But, oh. Just wait. Because it ain't over.

We’ve seen this phenomenon before, in previous Austen novels: some epic talker will browbeat us into submission for six or seven pages—and another character will take it as a kind of thrown gauntlet, and come roaring back to top the performance with one exponentially more logorrheic. In this case it’s Harriet Smith, of all people—who’s up to now been more of a natterer, emitting a low but steady stream of nothing much more than oh goodness me’s and heavens and dear me whatever nexts and really Miss Woodhouses do you think so’s.

But now…well, just push back the furniture to make room for her. 

Emma, feeling that Harriet must hear the news of Mr. Elton’s upcoming nuptials from her, before the rest of Highbury gets the news, is just waiting out the rain before venturing forth to Mrs. Goddard’s. But before she can get out the door Harriet herself bursts obligingly in, “with just the heated, agitated look which hurrying thither with a full heart was likely to give,” and Emma’s like, Oops, too late.

But in fact Harriet has come about something else entirely, which she relates at such tremendous length, and utilizing such a quantity!—really such an astonishing number!—of exclamation points! Why, you’d think her in danger of exhausting the available planetary supply and leaving future generations none to use in their own extremities of astonishment or incredulity! Really, none at all!

The upshot is, Harriet, having been caught in the cloudburst, sought to escape it by ducking into the haberdasher’s shop, and who else should be there but “Elizabeth Martin and her brother! Dear Miss Woodhouse! only think. I thought I should have fainted.” There’s a lot of I-looked-at-her-but-then-she-looked-away and vice-versa and rinse and repeat, and a lot of very specific Not Talking and Moving Casually about, until at length Robert Martin finally twigs to Harriet’s presence. Hushed words with his sister follow.

“…I could not help thinking that he was persuading her to speak to me—(do you think he was, Miss Woodhouse?)—for presently she came forward—came quite up to me, and asked me how I did, and seemed ready to shake hands, if I would. She did not do any of it in the same way that she used; I could see that she was altered; but however, she seemed to try to be very friendly, and we shook hands, and stood talking some time; but I know no more what I said—I was in such a tremble! I remember she said she was sorry we never met now; which I thought almost too kind!”

Eventually Robert Martin himself stepped forward and offered her a few courteous words on an alternate route to Hartfield, where she might avoid puddles. Oh, that sweet-talker. It sure seems to have worked on Harriet, who was of course ready to faint every three-point-five seconds, and trembling and quaking and shivering so that it was a miracle she didn’t vibrate all the nails right out of the floorboards.

Harriet of course now begs for Emma’s advice on what to do, because that’s worked out so well for her this far. Emma herself, amazingly, isn’t ready with the mot juste. She finds she’s actually “obliged to stop and think.” But for Emma, stopping and thinking really means, stopping and finding justification for the prejudices she’s already latched onto. It’s interesting to watch this process unfold.

The young man’s conduct, and his sister’s, seemed the result of real feeling, and she could not but pity them. As Harriet described it, there had been an interesting mixture of wounded affection and genuine delicacy in their behaviour: but she had believed them to be well-meaning, worthy people, before; and what difference did this make in the evils of the connection? It was folly to be disturbed by it. Of course, he must be sorry to lose her,—they must all be sorry; ambition, as well as love, had probably been mortified. They might all have hoped to rise by Harriet’s acquaintance; and besides, what was the value of Harriet’s description? So easily pleased,—so little discerning,—what signified her praise?

These are the moments we find it hardest to like Emma. And when she follows through with her advice to Harriet (“It might be distressing for the moment…but you seem to have behaved extremely well; and it is over,—and may never,—can never, as a first meeting,—occur again, and therefore you need not think about it”) we really do want to pull her hair, or flick her ear or something.

Emma’s actually grateful to be able now to distract Harriet with the news of Mr. Elton; and Harriet—like a baby in a crib, fascinated by whatever bright new object her mobile wafts her way—is soon entirely absorbed by that subject, and awash in the various feelings and speculations and exclamation points it provokes.

As we leave Emma, she’s feeling pretty dang satisfied at having regained her control over Harriet, and at having secured her from those grasping, ambitious, social-climbing Martins. Poor Emma. She’s a would-be Machiavelli, but she keeps mistaking every skirmish for the whole campaign. 

Next time, a new face joins the fray—that of the long anticipated, and many times heralded, Mr. Frank Churchill—but he doesn’t come as an ally. Though Emma won’t know that immediately. Nor, of course, do we want her to. We’re vicious that way. But then…so is Emma’s creator. God bless her caustic, calculating heart.

Emma, chapters 16-18

The new chapter leads off with one of my favorite Austen’s sentences: “The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable.” Because God forbid you should be miserable with your hair drooping. Priorities, please.

Also, allow me to note—as I haven’t in a while—the utter nonentity that is that maid. Very, very few of the serving-class characters in Austen’s novels are ever named, even fewer given any lines, and virtually none allowed anything like a distinct character. I’ve been in correspondence with a reader who’s pointed out that in Austen’s time, and in Austen’s particular class stratum—the impoverished gentry—there was almost nothing analogous to what we call privacy or personal space, and that masters and servants lived virtually on top of each other. And so, lacking physical space to define the division between them, the gentry set up a kind of perceptual smokescreen. The servants might be in the room, they might be leaning right over them serving dinner, they might have their goddamn fingers in their hair, putting it in curl so they could be nice and miserable…but for all practical purposes, they were invisible to them. Ils n’existent pas.

I can certainly understand and accept this; but it’s also the kind of social limitation a writer of genius ought to overcome. It’s hard to believe that Austen—who numbers among the nimblest, most quicksilver minds we encounter in all of English literature (hell, world literature)—had no curiosity about the lives that ran parallel to hers—in the very same freakin’ rooms, for God’s sake. Certainly Shakespeare and Dickens didn’t shy away from delving into lower-class characters.

I love Austen, and I rank her in the same pantheon as those gentlemen; and this may be her only failing. When I read her, I’m entirely transported to a different world—but I only see half of that world. And it makes me itchy. I’m generally pretty scornful of the literary sub-genre of Jane Austen “sequels” by modern-day writers, but if someone wanted to have a hand at Below Stairs at Rosings or Pride, Prejudice & Pewter Polishing, I’d be right there.

Anyway, back to Emma. The reason for her misery is, of course, the way playing Cupid has blown up in her face. She’s spent weeks pitching Harriet Smith at Mr. Elton, only to learn, in the most humiliating manner imaginable, that the vicar’s catcher’s mitt is oiled only for her.

It’s rough going for Emma, this being wrong business. And sober introspection isn’t exactly her superpower. But give her credit, she has a proper go at it, and even manages to get her priorities more or less right. Meaning, she’s upset less about the injury to her own self-esteem, than to that of her hapless victim.

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-judgement than she actually was,—could the effects of her blunders have been confined to herself.

She then retraces all the various maneuvers of the whole sorry campaign and tries to imagine how on earth she got everything so ass-backwards. For one thing, there was that romantically-charged riddle addressed to the recipient’s “ready wit”; Emma now realizes that not even the most bedazzled love-slave of Harriet Smith could ever fool himself into thinking her a ready wit. I mean, Harriet’s one of those people who just might one day, with sufficient distractions, simply forget to breathe and drop dead like a stone.

And yes, Emma admits she had been conscious of Mr. Elton’s “manners to herself [being] unnecessarily gallant”…but she’d passed over it as “a mere error of judgment, of knowledge, or taste, as one proof, among others, that he had not always lived in the best society” (sort of the way Jimmy Carter, when introduced at Buckingham Palace, caused a minor kerfluffle when he swooped in and kissed the Queen Mother on the lips). In any case, Emma considers herself “indebted for her first idea” of Mr. Elton’s true feelings to her brother-in-law, John Knightley—and indebted as well to his brother, who warned her that Mr. Elton would rather pay court to his backyard maple tree than look twice at Harriet Smith. “There was no denying that those brothers had penetration.” (Not for another few chapters, anyway. Then she’ll have no trouble denying it long and loud.)

Emma’s regret and pity for Harriet doesn’t extend to Mr. Elton, for exactly this reason. His sole objective in launching himself at Emma was clearly to vault up the social ladder.

He wanted to marry well, and having the arrogance to raise his eyes to her, pretended to be in love…Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance; but she could hardly devise any set of expressions, or fancy any tone of voice, less allied with real love. She need not trouble herself to pity him. He only wanted to aggrandise and enrich himself; and if Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield, the heiress of thirty thousand pounds, were not quite so easily obtained as he had fancied, he would soon try for Miss Somebody else with twenty, or with ten.

I love, love, love it when Austen gets out her meat cleaver.

In fact, so far from pitying Mr. Elton, Emma is outraged that he ever had the sheer cojones to look at her with a proprietary eye—creepy little oleaginous nobody that he is. “Perhaps it was not fair to expect him to feel how very much he was her inferior in talent, and all the elegancies of mind…but he must know that in fortune and consequence she was greatly his superior.” I mean, right?...He refuses to lower himself to Harriet Smith’s level, but expects Emma Woodhouse to lower herself to his?...And even accuses her of leading him on? Clearly, the man wants shooting.

The upshot is, Emma resolves never, never, never, never to have any hand in matchmaking of any kind, so help her God, may she be struck by lightning and go bald and have her feet fall off from gangrene if she ever dares try it again. Though she’s still thick-headed enough to congratulate herself on having plucked Harriet out of the wooing arms of Robert Martin; her mistake, as she sees it, was merely in not stopping there. Because “now, poor girl, [Harriet’s] peace is cut up for some time…and if she were not to feel this disappointment so very much, I am sure I have not an idea of any body else who would be at all desirable for her:—William Coxe—oh, no, I could not endure William Coxe,—a pert young lawyer.” And give Emma credit, she realizes she’s matchmaking again only about a nanosecond after we do. But clearly, this new resolve of hers is going to be problematic.

What remains now is to go and tell Harriet, who’s sufficiently recovered from her cold to be clobbered with some new debilitating thing. But after a good night’s sleep, Emma feels better about this prospect, because she realizes that Harriet’s nature isn’t “of that superior sort in which the feelings are most acute and retentive”—which is a very nice way of saying she has the emotional depth of your average Irish setter. Even better, the snowfall has continued all night long so Emma awakens to find herself “for many days a most honourable prisoner. No intercourse with Harriet possible but by note; no church for her on Sunday any more than on Christmas-day; and no need to find excuses for Mr. Elton absenting himself.” So she’s able to put the whole messy imbroglio out of her mind and go about her business, possibly happily humming “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.”

Yet the weather doesn’t seem any impediment to Mr. Knightley, who shocks Mr. Woodhouse by tramping on over for a visit, blizzard be damned. “Ah, Mr. Knightley, why do not you stay at home like poor Mr. Elton?” the paterfamilias wails. But when the weather has “improved enough for those to move who must move” (which means the John Knightleys summarily depart), Mr. Elton still doesn’t rear his impeccably coiffed head. Instead he sends Mr. Woodhouse “a long, civil, ceremonious note” announcing his immediate departure for a few weeks in Bath.

Emma is so very okay with this—“Mr. Elton’s absence just at this time was the very thing to be desired. She admired him for contriving it”—though she can’t help being ticked off that in the entirety of the long, blathering note, not only does he pay her no compliments, he doesn’t even mention her name. And she’s, like, Emma Woodhouse, baby, she is not accustomed to anyone cutting her dead like that. She’s sure her father, too, will notice the slight to her, but no, Mr. Woodhouse is far too worried about that long trip to Bath, on which Mr. Elton is sure to be beset by Mongol warlords or be swallowed up in a freak earthquake.

 

Well, never mind, at least the vicar’s out of the picture for a while. So Emma finally makes her dreaded visit to Harriet—which goes about as well as you can imagine. In fact, “The confession completely renewed [Emma’s] first shame, and the sight of Harriet’s tears made her think that she should never be in charity with herself again.” Oh, sweetheart. Not to worry.

Harriet, however, “bore the intelligence very well, blaming nobody,” and in fact takes it as confirmation of how undeserving she is of anyone as super-superfine as Mr. Elton. “She never could have deserved him; and nobody but so partial and kind a friend as Miss Woodhouse would have thought it possible.” This rising-above-it from Harriet, of all people, is such agony for Emma—“[Harriet’s] grief was so truly artless, that no dignity could have made it more respectable in Emma’s eyes”—that she’s convinced for a moment (brief enough, but it’s there) that she would be better off if she were more like her unpretentious, unsophisticated friend.

But then, being Emma, she decides it’s “rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant” (she’s half-right, as we’ll discover) and resolves instead just to be a bit more careful about how she dallies with other people’s lives. Which is sort of like Emma resolving to eat up the entire Hartfield estate and then cough it back up in an entirely new configuration. It’s just not going to happen. And a good thing too, because if it did we’d have a much, much shorter novel.

Emma brings Harriet back home with her and strives to “occupy and amuse her, and by books and conversation to drive Mr. Elton from her thoughts”, and ideally get her into such a “state of composure by the time of Mr. Elton’s return as to allow them all to meet again in the common routine of acquaintance” without any shrieking or fainting or pulling hair from one’s own head. Which is important, because it’s not like Harriet can avoid Mr. Elton, there being only about eleven people in all of Highbury society.

As if Emma’s world weren’t in enough disarray, the next bit of news she hears is that Frank Churchill is not coming after all. A letter arrives expressing his “very great mortification and regret; but still he looked forward with the hope of coming to Randalls at no distant period.” Mrs. Weston is much, much more dejected by the news than her husband, who has the kind of character that “soon flies over the failure, and begins to hope again”, which would make him an ideal Chicago Cubs fan.

Emma herself, while still wildly curious about Frank, is just fine with his staying put; after burning her fingers, she craves a period of time “to be quiet and out of temptation”, and God love ‘er, she’s sufficiently self-aware to know a visit from Frank Churchill would pretty much torpedo any chance of that. Still, she doesn’t want to appear indifferent to Mrs. Weston and her other friends, who are genuinely disappointed by his change of plans, so she echoes their sentiments very gratifyingly. She even finds herself the first to announce the news to Mr. Knightley, and in the process “exclaimed quite as much as was necessary (or, being acting a part, perhaps rather more,) at the conduct of the Churchills in keeping him away.” This is the only reference we have to an Austen heroine explicitly “acting a part” (as opposed to Austen villainesses, like Lucy Steele and Maria Bertram), and it’s one of the reasons we love her; she’s complex—she has layers—and she’s also such a magnificent sham.

Her vilification of the Churchills for keeping Frank from visiting his father and new stepmother, prompts Mr. Knightley to take the opposing view, to Emma’s “great amusement” as “she was taking the other side of the question from her real opinion, and, making use of Mrs. Weston’s arguments against herself.” So immediately this is starting out deliciously.

And the argument that follows—which ranges (and rages) over six full pages—is just flat-out scintillating. Emma and Knightley going at it hammer and tong is every bit as thrilling as any of Lizzy Bennet and Mr. Darcy’s scorched-earth confrontations. It’s miraculously paced, every beat resounding like a cannon shot. I can’t really do it justice—not without quoting the entire thing to you—but here’s the upshot:

Mr. Knightley isn’t at all impressed by the prevailing opinion—which is that poor Frank is being kept from seeing his father and paying respects to his new stepmother, by the selfish demands of his adopted family. He is, after all, a grown man, and if he had a mind to come, he would find the time and the means to do just that.

Emma argues that Mr. Knightley, having never been beholden to anyone in his life, can’t appreciate the kind of dependency Frank Churchill lives under. But Knightley scoffs at that.

“He cannot want money, he cannot want leisure. We know, on the contrary, that he has so much of both, that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in the kingdom. We hear of him for ever at some watering-place or other; a little while ago he was at Weymouth. This proves that he can leave the Churchills.”

“Yes, sometimes he can.”

“And those times are, whenever he thinks it worth his while; whenever there is any temptation of pleasure.”

Emma calls this unfair, because no one should “judge of any body’s conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation”, which is how you know she’s arguing just for the sake of argument, because she herself could win an Olympic gold medal in Jumping To Conclusions. Brazenly she plows on, protesting that Frank “may, at times, be able to do a great deal more than he can do at others,” and Mr. Knightley immediately shoots back that “There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chooses, and that is his duty”.

“A man who felt rightly would say at once, simply and resolutely, to Mrs. Churchill, ‘Every sacrifice of mere pleasure you will always find me ready to make to your convenience; but I must go and see my father immediately. I know he would be hurt by my failing in such a mark of respect to him on the present occasion. I shall, therefore, set off to-morrow.’ If he would say so to her at once, in the tone of decision becoming a young man, there would be no opposition made to his going.”

“No,” said Emma, laughing, “but perhaps there might be some made to his coming back again.”

She then conjures Frank striding around the room, bellowing his independence and beating his chest like a gorilla; “How can you imagine such conduct practicable?” But Mr. Knightley won’t be baited—“[T]he declaration,—made, of course, as a man of sense would make it, in a proper manner,—would do him more good, raise him higher, fix his interest stronger with the people he depended on, than all that a line of shifts and expedients can ever do…”

“…If he would act in this sort of manner, on principle, consistently, regularly, their little minds would bend to his.”

“I rather doubt that. You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones.”

And here’s another, just plain stellar exchange, from a few paragraphs later. Emma argues:

“[Frank] may have as strong a sense of what would be right as you can have, without being so equal, under particular circumstances, to act up to it.”

“Then, it would not be so strong a sense.”

And another one, opening with this salvo from Mr. Knightley:

“[Frank] can sit down and write a fine flourishing letter, full of professions and falsehoods, and persuade himself that he has hit upon the best method in the world of preserving peace at home, and preventing his father’s having any right to complain. His letters disgust me.”

“Your feelings are singular. They seem to satisfy every body else.”

“I suspect they do not satisfy Mrs. Weston.”

If this were a tennis match—and it would be Wimbledon-level, if it were—I can imagine the scorekeeper’s ears beginning to smoke as he tried to follow the sheer swiftness and force of these volleys; at this point we ourselves don’t have any clue as to who’s winning the match…though we expect it’s Mr. Knightley, if only because Emma has admitted at the outset (to herself, anyway) that she’s playing a part—that it is, for her, an academic exercise; a rhetorical romp.

But…is it? Her feathers are totally ruffled by the end of it, and she’s seriously turned off by Mr. Knightley’s smug superiority.

To take a dislike to a young man, only because he appeared to be of a different disposition from himself, was unworthy the real liberality of mind which she was always used to acknowledge in him; for with all the high opinion of himself, which she had often laid to his charge, she had never before for a moment supposed it could make him unjust to the merit of another.

We’re pretty sure by now that Emma doesn’t pick fights with Mr. Knightley out of boredom, or for the fun of arguing a position not her own. She contends with him because he’s gotten under her skin. Deep down, she wants his good opinion, but she resents wanting it—probably because he doesn’t appear to want hers in return. It’s this self-contained quality of his that she finds both so appealing and so maddening; she has as strong a desire to understand it, and to emulate it, as she has to crack it wide open and spill its contents at her feet.

In other words, her heart is at stake here. She doesn’t know it yet. But we’ve spent most of the novel being a step ahead of Emma Woodhouse, and we don’t mind waiting for her to catch up. She’s vain, peremptory, and a thoroughly heinous busybody; but she makes us laugh. So we not only forgive her, we love her for it. In fact, we’re far from impatient for her to catch up with us; if we could, we’d turn and call out to her, “No hurry, darlin’…take your time!”

And believe me, she’s going to.