Emma Movie Analysis

Upon watching Jane Austen’s Emma, directed by Diarmuid Lawrence, one sees that within this adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Emma the grand plot remains intact and true to the Austen’s novel, but perhaps because of time restraints the movies seems to cut through scenes quite quickly. However, upon further analyzing the way in which the novel itself transitioned through passages, it seems the biggest difference between the adaptation and the novel itself is the absence of the omniscient narrator used in the novel, who allows the reader glimpses into the minds of characters (the community), explains the background and intertwined lives/relationships of minor and major characters, and is themselves a complex entity inlaid with a higher moral understanding

The narrator within the novel acts as a sort of amniotic fluid encompassing the plot, setting, and characters within the novel. So, with the elimination of the narrator within the film, the viewer is left as the acting narrator (interpreter), yet much of the internal and social understandings are unimpressed upon the viewer. Instead, within the film, the viewer is simply presented with the next scene, and therefore, it seems scenes within the film are not only rushed, they seem to run shallow – as in they do not offer enough information for the audience to truly understand why characters act and say what they do. In one of the beginning scenes of Jane Austen’s Emma, Emma asks Mrs. Goddard about Harriot Smith after seeing her at church, and in reply, Mrs. Goddard

Although the fantasies appropriately capture Emma’s inner thoughts and even reveal her subconscious like when she imagines Mr. Knightly marrying Jane Fairfax and she yells “but what about little Henry”, the film’s audience, much like the novel’s reader, is aware that Emma is more than worried about little Henry’s inheritance. Also, much in the way that gossip in the novel acts like a female triviality, so do the