Similarities Between Emma And Clueless

Jane Austen Goes to High School

A critic was once known for comparing Jane Austen’s novels to the book of burn from the movie Mean Girls. In Austen’s book of burn she shows no mercy as she weaves a tale in order to critique and mock the social view of her society. It is almost ironic that Jane Austen’s novels are being compared to a high school gossip book being that one of the best movie adaptations of her novel Emma is set in a modern day high school. This is perfect due to the fact that high school is not only a learning environment for the mind but also a part of people’s lives where they develop important social skills. By setting up Jane Austen’s novel Emma in a modern day high school, the movie adaptation Clueless shows an accurate

The movie Clueless does a really good job of portraying this beginning description of Emma through the character Cher. Cher is almost a complete clone of Emma through the guise of a popular high school girl. They are both descripted as beautiful, wealthy and highly influential within each of their social circle sharing their precise skill of manipulation. They also share their lack of self-awareness also known as their weakness. A perfect example of this portrayal of Cher and Emma’s personality is when Cher says “Okay, you’re probably going ‘Is this a Noxema commercial or what?’ But seriously, I actually have like a way normal life for a teenage girl.” This statement through the airheaded voice of Cher further enforces her flawed personality trait of lacked self-awareness similar to how Austen describes Emma. It is her exact skill of manipulation and lack of self-awareness that gets Emma into trouble through her participation in the gossip of her society. Before discussing how Emma’s character flaws get her into trouble, through her participation in the gossip of her society, gossip itself must be defined as well as it’s function within

Gossip is usually believed whether or not it is true and can be spread like a virus. What makes gossip so untrustworthy is that even if the word initially starts as truth as it travels through many mouths that it almost always becomes misconstrued. The best way to describe how gossip is spread is the phone call game. In most elementary school young students are taught the phone call game in order to learn to be careful with their words. How the phone call works is that groups of student form a line and the first person whispers into the ear of the person next to them a statement such as ‘The ice cream man is coming to school after lunch time’. The person next then will continue to repeat this statement to the person next to them and so on and so forth until the statement is repeated to the last person. The last person will then reveal that the statement is ‘for homework we eat ice-cream.” The last statement does not match the first. Why? Because with each person the information is constantly changing making word of mouth not very reliable. The exact same thing happens with gossip. As a result false information can be spread and can create problems. A person might ask if