However much we insist it is not true, our choices, actions, and thoughts are rarely uninfluenced by the conditions we are born into. Our culture and society play a huge role in the person we become, shaping our opinions and worldviews from birth. This truth is illustrated no better than in Jane Austen’s Emma. In Emma, Austen uses narrative style, characterization, and the plot device of word games to illustrate the ever-present power of hierarchical control. Emma's plot seemingly hovers around the superficial theme of strategic matchmaking. But while this is an important aspect of Emma, it serves primarily as a catalyst to illustrate the much bigger idea of societal authority present in the novel. Word games play a huge role in the plot development of Emma. ". . . Emma is itself a word game, anagrammatic in theme . . . and plot structure" (Grey 181). The word games in Emma involve the matching and rearranging of verbal characters. This mirrors the plot of the book, where characters are matched and rearranged as potential marriage partners. (Grey 181). In the same way that rearranging the alphabet tiles changes their meaning, different pairings in Emma demonstrate different aspects of the individual’s character. The theme of Emma is expressed through the word games by the games’ requirement to adhere to the rules. Emma’s society relies on a strict adherence to the rules dictated by the “middle-class aristocracy” (Grossman 1). Likewise, the word games rely on observation of the rules, and when the rules of the game are broken it usually coincides with breaking of the rules of the social game. Frank and Emma break the social rules when they gossip obviously about Jane Fairfax and mock her attachment to Mr. Dixon by spelling out ... ... middle of paper ... ...ized Consciousness': Richardson, Austen, And Stylistic Influence." Style Spring 2001: 18+. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. Byrne, Sandie. "Jane Austen's Emma." British Writers Classics 1. (2003): 65-86. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 20 Mar 2012. Ferguson, Frances. "Jane Austen, Emma, and the Impact of Form." Modern Language Quarterly 61.1 (2000): 157. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. Grey, J. David., A. Walton. Litz, B. C. Southam, and H. Abigail. Bok. The Jane Austen Companion. New York: Macmillan, 1986. Print. Grossman, Jonathan H. "The Labor of the Leisured in Emma: Class, Manners, and Austen." Studies in Family Planning 30.3 (1999): 143. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. Hale, John K. "Austen's 'Emma'." The Explicator 59.3 (2001): 122. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.
Wallace, Tara Ghoshal. Jane Austen and Narrative Authority. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. 17-30.
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Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. Stephen M. Parrish. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1993.
Jane Austen’s novel Emma was written at a time when the epistolary novel had just passed its peak (Cousineau, 32). Not only do letters and correspondence feature heavily in the novel, but according to April Alliston, “elements… characteristic of novels of women’s correspondence recur in Austen” (221). Some examples of these elements that Alliston provides are the existence of young marriageable heroines; deceased mothers, or threatening ones which, in Austen’s novels, have become merely negligent; and substitute mothers who pass advice on to the daughter (221).
...ane Austen. Harlow: Longman Literature Guides [series], 1988. Craik, W. A. The Development of Jane Austen's comic art: Emma: Jane Austen's mature comic art. London: Audio Learning, 1978. Sound recording; 1 cassette; 2-track. mono. Gard, Roger, [1936- ]. Jane Austen, Emma and Persuasion. Harmondsworth : Penguin, Penguin masterstudies [series], 1985. Jefferson, D. W. (Douglas William), [1912- ]. Jane Austen's Emma: a landmark in English fiction. London: Chatto and Windus for Sussex University Press, Text and context [series], 1977. Lauritzen, Monica. Jane Austen's Emma on television: a study of a BBC classic serial. Goteborg, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Gothenburg studies in English, 48 [series], 1981. Sabiston, Elizabeth Jean, [1937- ]. The Prison of Womanhood: four provincial heroines in nineteenth-century fiction. London : Macmillan, 1987.
Scott, Sir Walter. Quarterly Review. October 1815. pp.192-200. Rpt. in Bloom’s Classic Critical Views: Jane Austen. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Bloom-Infobase, 2007. pp. 130-132.
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Monaghan, David M. The Decline of the Gentry: a Study of Jane Austen's Attitude to Formality in Persuasion. JSTOR. JSTOR, 1969. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Within the novel, Jane Austen’s exploits of irony are shown linked throughout Emma’s notions of love and the real within her own society. Emma’s lack of education on the concepts of love is quite evident within her apathy towards Frank Churchill as her opinions are deeply rooted within her own affections, as she states, “Emma continued to entertain no doubt of her being in love. Her ideas only varied as to the how much. At first, she thought it was a good deal; and afterwards, but little. She had great pleasure in hearing Frank Churchill talked of; and for his sake, greater pleasure than ever in seeing Mr. and Mrs. Weston; she was very often thinking of him. But, on the other hand, she could not admit herself to be unhappy, nor, after the first morning, to be less disposed for employment than usual; she was still busy and cheerful; and, pleasing as he was, she could yet imagine him to have faults,” (Austen 264). Emma’s sketch of Harriet is another illustration of irony surrounded by Emma’s arrogance as it does not portray an accurate depiction of Harriet as Emma has altered ...
Heckerling alters Jane Austen’s 17th century novel ‘Emma’ to correspond with present audience by adaptation of characters, literature, language and form which still projects Austen’s satire concept for the necessity of living an conventional life adhering to social mores. Skillfully supporting the essence of Emma through a modernised visual. Each writer shares common themes, with both texts represent parallel social settings tha...
"Jane Austen." The Oxford Companion To English Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. 51. Print.
...Emma’s voice in order to relate the inside ideology, while simultaneously using a somewhat ironic third-person narrative voice in order to provide critical social commentary on the social attitudes of the Highbury society depicted in Emma. Emma’s voice allows the reader to gain an unadultered insight into the lives of the people of Highbury, providing the narrative with a Austen uses a somewhat similar dichotomous technique in Persuasion, in which she splits the novel into two halves -- one in which advocates for the traditional system of formality, and another that works to eradicate the very same system that she extolled so highly in the first half. Under the deceptive guise of “political inaction,” Austen actually provides commentary on the underlying social and political issues that pervade the novel through the literary technique of heteroglossia (Parker 359).
Fergus, Jan. “Biography.” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen. Ed. Janet Todd.