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Literature impact on society
Literature impact on society
The influence in literature
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Emma Continues to Shape Society’s Status Quo Novels: the first form of social media. Jane Austen’s works continue to suggest how society should function. In her most highly lauded novel, Emma, Jane Austen creates a blueprint for the foundation of a well-matched, highly-mannered, and cohesive community. Consequently, contemporary authors and journalists reference well known characters in Emma to provide readers with a more grounded foundation to fully grasp the whole concept of the passage or article. Although Emma is a two century-old novel about a woman’s encounters with love, people continue to incorporate its message and plot into everyday life. (add a stronger thesis here) One of Emma’s most prominent features is its overwhelming usage …show more content…
Many novels are turned into movies, and they often times share the same name. However, some producers break this trend because Emma “was the basis for the plot” of the popular film “Clueless” (ASU’S JANE AUSTEN EXPERT). The 1990’s production brings a modern and inviting twist on one of Jane Austen’s best works. Both “Clueless” and Emma are centered around an affluent young woman who “make[s] the match” between acquaintances and beloved friends (J. Austen 38). In both the novel and the movie, the girls find themselves in unfavorable situations as a result of their involvement in other people’s business. Emma Woodhouse is not only known for her outspoken personality, but also she draws people’s attention when she walks into a room simply by her air. This is not to say that her wealth also allows her to spend money on extraordinary apparel. A short article in Vogue references this phenomenon: “Dreamy… Emma Woodhouses let their party shoes peek out flirtatiously” (“twinkle toes”). As a journalist, this allusion is subtle, yet fully addresses the fact that women need confidence to be different, but also they need to be willing to live on the edge from time to time. During one of the many balls Emma attends, she decides to dance with a close family friend, but she is careful not to “make it all improper” (J.
Emma Woodhouse of the Jane Austen novel Emma, is part of the rich, upscale society of a well off village in nineteenth century England, while Cher Horowitz the main character of the movie version Clueless, lives in the upscale Beverly Hills of California. The Woodhouse family is very highly looked upon in Highbury, and Cher and her father are also viewed as the cultural elite. The abuse of power and wealth, arrogance, and a lack of acceptance all prove that the class status of these families plays a significant role in the shaping of both the novel and the video.
... But in fact her powers and beauty cannot change the foundation of her society. Emma’s circumscription within the boundaries of her class kept her world under control. This prevents her from considering another society beyond her existence. The confusion from her failed attempts with Harriet due to her guidance, allows her to embrace reality. Jane Austen uses Emma’s character to reveal the quality in the structures of the nineteenth century society. Based on the conclusion of the novel, when Emma is forced to look beyond the limited power and beauty she has and acknowledge the existing order and structure of the early nineteenth century English society.
Jane Austen’s novels still remain relevant to this day, despite being written more than 200 years ago. This decade, from 2011-2017, celebrates the bicentennial publishing of her six novels. Her novels are classics, and still on many a required college reading list, yet her works are also read by ordinary people who just enjoy a good story. During her lifetime, her books were well received, but quickly forgotten after her death (Harman 65). Considered one of Britain’s most revered authors, her legacy is now passed from generation to generation and has become entrenched in popular culture (Swisher 13).
Jane Austen writes social novels. Her societies are microcosms of relative stability in a rapidly changing world. Within these restricted realms, class structure is rigid; however, members of this society participate in one common activity: discourse. Due to the vagaries and incompetencies among the characters, not all conversations in Emma conform to the ideals of communication, and in fact, contribute to the promulgation of the central conflict. Henry Fielding proposed in his Miscellanies, that conversation should resemble "that reciprocal Interchange of ideas, by which Truth is examined, and all our Knowledge communicated to each other [and which] contributes to the moral improvement of society but presupposes, under ideal circumstances, a reciprocity between participants." Austen confirms this view of discourse in her novel by creating a hierarchy of language and making clear and meaningful conversation possible only between "persons whose Understanding is pretty near on an Equality with our own" (Fielding 120). Characters of fortune and education who speak in accordance with the rules of pragmatics and social decorum are, in turn, rewarded through matrimonial bonds with characters of similar communicative merit. Based upon an equality of understanding, these relationships are marked by "truth and sincerity in all dealings with each other" (430). Contrarily, characters of low birth and ill breeding are stigmatized by an inferiority of language and a predisposition for misinterpretation, which renders them incapable of communication in its true sense. Those persons with a paucity of language are, thereby, doomed to "pervert the understanding" (430).
In her popular book Emma, it is the first time that an author writes in a third-person point of view, shares a character 's judgments, and follows the path to their decisions. This technique opened up a new world of opportunities, combining the internal and external world of a character in a novel (Mullan, 2015, How Jane Austen’s Emma Changed the Face of Fiction). Jane Austen had Although writings were fictional she used precise incidents and described her own life with extraordinary detail. Her writings were creating a window into the thoughts, actions, relationships, and morality of daily life.
Emma, a novel by Jane Austen, is the story of a young woman, Emma, who is rich, stubborn, conniving, and occupies her time meddling into others' business. There are several recurring themes throughout the novel; the ideas of marriage, social class, women's confinement, and the power of imagination to blind the one from the truth, which all become delineated and reach a climax during the trip to Box Hill. The scene at Box Hill exposes many underlying emotions that have been built up throughout the novel, and sets the stage for the events that conclude it.
In Jane Austen’s Emma, an emphasis is placed on the importance of female friendships. In particular, Austen places a great deal of emphasis on how Emma treats the women she calls her friends. In many ways, Emma manipulates the people in her life to fit her specific expectations for them. This can be seen in her matchmaking, especially Harriet’s relationship with Mr. Martin. Emma’s manipulation of various relationships serves as a way to control the friendships she has with the women in her life. By matching her friends with the men she has chosen for them, Emma can not only elevate their status but also keep these women in her life as well. It is only when her friendships are affected by marriage that Emma re-evaluates the role of marriage in her own life.
Jane Austen worried that she made, “a heroine whom no one but [her]self will much like” when in fact Emma became considered her masterpiece. While Jane Austen feared the worst for her novel, “she could hardly have been more mistaken. Not only is the novel usually seen as her masterpiece, but her heroine has won innumerable friends”. Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1816 that Jane Austen’s, “knowledge of the world, and the peculiar tact with which she presents characters that the reader cannot fail to recognize, reminds us something of the merits of the Flemish school of painting. The subjects are not often elegant, and certainly never grand; but they are finished to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader.” Critics thought Jane Austen
Austen was raised in an unusually liberal family where her father was a part of the middle-landowning class. They had a moderate amount of luxuries, but were not considered well off. Unlike many girls of her time Austen received a fairly comprehensive education. She received this mainly through the undivided support of her family. Austen and her sisters, like most girls of their time, were homeschooled. Austen’s zealous parents encouraged the girls to play piano, read and write. Her parent’s encouragement led to her interest in writing. Austen’s father housed an extensive library filled with books which kept Austen occupied for years (“Sense and Sensibility” 119). Through her observant nature and passion to read and write, Austen was able to eloquently write of the many “hidden truths” of social and class distinction during her time. They included daily societal changes some of which foreshadowed future societal leniency. Familial support also extended societal norm of marriage. Her parents attempt...
In Jane Austen’s social class and coming of age novel, Emma, the relationships between irony, insight and education are based upon the premise of the character of Emma Woodhouse herself. The persona of Emma is portrayed through her ironic and naive tone as she is perceived as a character that seems to know everything, which brings out the comedic disparities of ironies within the narrative. Emma is seen as a little fish in a larger pond, a subject of manipulating people in order to reflect her own perceptions and judgments. Her education is her moral recognition to love outside her own sheltered fancies and her understandings of her society as a whole.
In Fay Weldon’s epistolary book, Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen, Aunt Fay writes to her niece Alice “enlighten people, and you enlighten society”. Aunt Fay aims to teach Alice that since Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice in 1813 the importance of reading and the accomplished woman still remain issues in the 1980s. Austen’s novel aims to entertain. Since Austen’s novel focuses on human behavior, these two issues remain timeless. While context is still important in influencing the importance of reading and the accomplished woman, Aunt Fay teaches Alice there still remains a continuity.
In Jane Austen's Emma the eponymous heroine is "handsome, clever, and rich" but she also suffers from arrogance and self-deception. With the good judgement of Mr Knightley, and her own self scrutiny, Emma experiences a movement of psyche, from arrogance and vanity through the humiliation of self knowledge to clarity of judgement and fulfilment in marriage. The tone of the novel and the episodes where Emma is self deceived progresses from the light comedy of Mr Elton's gallantry and the eventual mortification to the sombre depression of Emma's belief that she has ruined her own chances of happiness by bringing Mr Knightley and Harriet together. Although at times the reader is able to laugh at her mistakes, as she moves slowly and uncertainly to self knowledge and maturity, the reader, like Mr Knightley, comes to take her seriously, for in the novel serious moral and social issues are dealt with, issues which directly concern her. While we may be 'put off' by her mistakes, and flights of illogical fancy, these are also the very qualities which endear her to us.
In the term of realism, Emma’s society value view represented the problematic old society. Austen was very suspicious to sustain the significance of social class construction in “Emma.” The exi...
Jane Austen’s works are characterized by their classic portrayals of love among the gentry of England. Most of Austen’s novels use the lens of romance in order to provide social commentary through both realism and irony. Austen’s first published bookThe central conflicts in both of Jane Austen’s novels Emma and Persuasion are founded on the structure of class systems and the ensuing societal differences between the gentry and the proletariat. Although Emma and Persuasion were written only a year apart, Austen’s treatment of social class systems differs greatly between the two novels, thus allowing us to trace the development of her beliefs regarding the gentry and their role in society through the analysis of Austen’s differing treatment of class systems in the Emma and Persuasion. The society depicted in Emma is based on a far more rigid social structure than that of the naval society of Persuasion, which Austen embodies through her strikingly different female protagonists, Emma Woodhouse and Anne Eliot, and their respective conflicts. In her final novel, Persuasion, Austen explores the emerging idea of a meritocracy through her portrayal of the male protagonist, Captain Wentworth. The evolution from a traditional aristocracy-based society in Emma to that of a contemporary meritocracy-based society in Persuasion embodies Austen’s own development and illustrates her subversion of almost all the social attitudes and institutions that were central to her initial novels.
Many people read Jane Austen’s fiction novels and only see her writing as cliché and old fashioned. But her stories have a classic, undying theme to them. Stories that are still relatable to readers today. In the last 10 years Austen’s books have been made into a number of television adaptations. Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park. Not only do we see Austen’s story lines through her books and the movies, but many modern authors and movie directors use Austen as an inspiration when writing their books and movie scripts. Austen’s stories capture the heart of many people, but she also captures the heart of women today. Women who strive to abolish the social discrimination against themselves. It is a debatable