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Discussion: Group Read: Emma
posts: 13 views: 592 last post: 10 years ago
created by: Murder by Death
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You're right, they really don't have anything to say to each other, and this scene with her father is really her only significant appearance. But it struck me because the conversation felt like more of a competition between father and daughter than a loving exchange and of course the "We are so very airy" struck me.

I've just moved past Miss Bates' soliloquy about apples and I can't help but think, or wonder, but mostly think, that there must be a great deal of biography in Emma; more so than in her other works. Not to take a thing away from Jane Austen's writing talent, but I can't fathom writing a Miss Bates character without intimate knowledge of just such a person. She's so nice and yet so tedious and her dialogue is so illustrative of her person - how do you write that without basing it one someone you are subjected to regularly?

I could also very well believe that Emma was based on a person, or persons in Miss Austen's orbit. In spite of the things I don't like about Emma, she does have depth, an ability to recognise her mistakes and wish to erase them and she attempts to correct her behaviour. It's what keeps me vacillating between disliking her and finding her sympathetic.
JA was an astute observer and I bet you are right that she drew from real people to develop her characters. One of my Goodreads friends, another Austen "enthusiast" - bordering on the obsessive - (like me!) thinks that people who have parented daughters find much to relate to, and to love in Emma, despite her many imperfections and self-deceptions. I agree. We consider her our favorite character and we both have daughters.

This thread is very satisfying to me. I glad it's coming together slowly, like a favorite casserole.
Reply to post #17 (show post):

I've been catching up on my Emma reading today and she's close to ranking as my irritating character. On some levels I can understand her, but the one thing I absolutely can't abide is manipulation...and that's exactly what she's doing. I've been cheering for Mr. Knightly every time he tries to talk to her but she just doesn't listen.

Course I'm still bent out of shape by her reducing a person to a possession. "a Harriet Smith", like she's an object to set on a mantel or something.

I've often thought Austen drew from real life; her characters are so lifelike, both the good and the bad. I often see people I know in her descriptions.

I've been enjoying this too. Haven't been able to post till now but I've read each post as they've come! =)
Okay, warning now: this is going to be long.

I'm reading the new annotated version of Emma and let me tell you, it has been very interesting reading and very insightful. This one really blew me away and while I've not really researched it beyond what's talked about in the extraordinarily long annotation, I think it makes sense. MbD, who's seen a bit, wanted the goods and wanted me to share all.

The full riddle that Mr. Woodhouse was trying to recollect and Emma says was copied into the book is this:

Kitty, a fair, but frozen maid,
Kindled a flame I still deplore;
The hood-wink'd boy I call'd in aid,
Much of his near approach afraid,
So fatal to my suit before.

At length, propitious to my pray'r,
The little urchin came;
At once he sought the midway air,
And soon he clear'd, with dextrous care,
The bitter relicks of my flame.

To Kitty, Fanny now succeeds,
She kindles slow, but lasting fires:
With care my appetite she feeds;
Each day some willing victim bleeds,
To satisfy my strange desires.

Say, by what title, or what name,
Must I this youth address?
Cupid and he are not the same,
Tho' both can raise, or quench a flame --
I'll kiss you, if you guess.

-- The Poetical Works of David Garrick, 1785 (found here: http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/emmchrad.html#kittyans)

This is the annotation: "The solution to the riddle is a chimney-sweep. IN a novel thick with overt and covert riddles and charades, this is one of the most blatant, but also one of the most teasing. The fact that Mr. Woodhouse can only remember the first stanza may superficially recall his 18th century literary antecedent, Uncle Toby in Sterne's Tristram Shandy, but his claim that "it is very clever all the way through" suggests tantalizingly unnarrated possibilities --especially since the riddle as a whole ("To Kitty, Fanny now succeeds") is far too salacious ever to have made it into Elegent Extracts, whence Emma claims to have copied it. In her influential article "Slipping into the Ha-Ha: Bawdy Humour and Body Politics in Jane Austen's Novels" (Nineteenth Century Literature, 55:3 [2000], pp. 309-339), Jill Heydt-Stevenson comments cogently on some of the riddle's suggestions. Not only does she offer an extended reading of Garrick's sexual innuendos ("the riddle addresses the plight of a man [the narrator] who has been infected with venereal disease" [p.318]) but she also follows the lead that Austen's narrative offers in the direction of Mr. Woodhouse's possible back-story. "Through a series of covert associations," she argues, "Austen raises the ludicrous and hilarious possibility that the clearly asexual Mr. Woodhouse might have been a libertine in his youth and now suffers from tertiary syphilis. For example, Emma's father, a hypochondriac, cannot bear to be cold and so prefers a fire, even in midsummer; the riddle's narrator, ill with venereal disease, also longs for 'fire' to cure him. Both Mr. Woodhouse and the narrator despise marriage and want to surround themselves wiht young virgins, who will keep them 'well'. Further, it is also deliciously, though seditiously, funny that one of the reputed cures for venereal disease was al light diet, mostly consisting of a thin gruel - Mr. Woodhouse's favorite meal" (p. 320)." p. 113 of annotated Emma.

I'm not sure I find it all together "ludicrous and hilarious"; want to read more about this, but his character bothers me more then even Mr. Elliot's did and I can't put it into words why. Also, why would Austen include all this (cuz I firmly believe she did it knowingly), given the topic, to only be funny? I'm unsure but this whole thing has me terribly intrigued.

A few other things I've found by a quick google search: http://books.google.com/books?id=TuZe1EIcQ5AC&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=A+riddle+david+Garrick+%22Kitty,+a+fair,+but+frozen+maid%22&source=bl&ots=BQBnfNilmV&sig=LJ2S13SuqSjCG4Y5i8Szrz1F8Q8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IIDDU-qVE9aoyASl_YDwBQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=A%20riddle%20david%20Garrick%20%22Kitty%2C%20a%20fair%2C%20but%20frozen%20maid%22&f=false

(part of a page from a book also talking about "'what kind of game Jane Austen is playing with Mr. Woodhouse and her readers' by putting a poem about syphilis and prostitution into such a feeble, seemingly sexless character's mouth. - Better Left Unsaid: Victorian Novels, Hays Code Films, and the Benefits of Censorship by Nora Gilbert.

And here's a posting on a blog where a book by the woman who wrote the article is talked about. I'm...not sure I agree with them on their assessment on Emma (mid to bottom of the post). They seem to feel that if this were true, his treatments, etc. would be discussed. I say NO they wouldn't! This is a book for women as well as men. That's something that is not going to be blatant in the text! For readers in the know, they would understand the nod and gain a fuller meaning without having spelled out. (Treatments written about; sheesh!) For those not, like many today, it would just go over their heads and the book could be understandable and enjoyable without it. Still not completely sure that is what Austen has in mind, but do still think it possibility.

http://reveriesunderthesignofausten.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/unbecoming-conjunctions-a-syphilitic-mr-woodhouse-fashionable-na-laughing-at-anne-elliot/
I could not continue reading Emma in the same light at all after hearing about this theory - it's definitely altered by perception of Mr. Woodhouse. It's also made me much more interested in reading the annotated version; I notice now when I read something that I know I'm not fully understanding, whereas before I'd just sort of skim over it and hope it became clearer in context. Based on what I've been able to find via google, it certainly seems there is evidence to support the argument. Just going so far as to quote the first line of that riddle is far more scandalous an act than I would have previously given Jane Austen credit for. I found this rather interesting dissection of the whole riddle:

http://kellyrfineman.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/emma-volume-i-chapter-9.html

Certainly a seedier side of Edwardian England that I have ever before considered. Yeesh.

What has also come to mind as I read, is Emma's hypocritical impatience with Miss Bates. The only character who could possibly be more irritating than that poor, lovely, well-meaning woman is Mr. Woodhouse himself with his constant fretting, best-intentioned ungraciousness towards his guests (always trying to deny them decent food) and his projected hypochondria. Emma has infinite patience for her father with none left over to even be objective about Miss Bates. In fairness I'm not sure I could argue against Emma here; many of us are far more apt to accept shortcomings in our family members before accepting it in others.

This book is still my least favorite of Austen's works I've read so far, but I'm thoroughly enjoying looking beyond the letters on the page.
PD James has argued that Emma should be viewed primarily as a detective story. This is fascinating, exciting - even titillating - I'm going to have to dig up that annotated version myself!
This looks interesting. http://scholarship.rollins.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&context=mls
All of these are so neat! I've read the blog post from MbD (and the complete spelling out of the poem's meaning may have blown my mind even more) and am currently reading the section on Emma from Grasshopper's post. I'm then planning on giving the full pdf a look.

I agree with both of them so far though; this information would have been relatively (some people would not have known/understood the true meaning of the riddle - young girls in particular) easily understood by readers of the day. Austen was "A Lady", she's not going to write a book openly talking about venereal disease - it wouldn't have been published. But I'm really beginning to agree she did put it in there for those who could and wanted to to find.

I feel like I'm in a Literature class again...except we're reading a really good book and talking about things none of my teachers would have talked about!

@aka Grasshopper: Does she explain why? I'm wondering if it has to do with the book's free indirect style; because you certainly have to pick through what (Emma) is saying/thinking and read into people's actions rather then take what the text says at face value. Another possible reason this Mr. Woodhouse thing is probable.
But perhaps the most interesting example of a mainstream novel which is also a detective story is the brilliantly structured Emma by Jane Austen. Here the secret which is the mainspring of the action is the unrecognised relationships between the limited number of characters. The story is confined to a closed society in a rural setting, which was to become common in detective fiction, and Jane Austen deceives us with cleverly constructed clues (eight immediately come to mind) — some based on action, some on apparently innocuous conversations, some in her authorial voice. At the end, when all becomes plain and the characters are at last united with their right partners, we wonder how we could have been so deceived.
P.D. James Talking About Detective Fiction[i] 2009
I don't think I can quite buy into P.D. James' idea of Emma as a detective story. It's a rather broad interpretation of the detective genre; there are clues, sure, but no crimes; no problem that must be solved. There actually isn't much of a crisis in the story for that matter. It's an interesting suggestion though - and it does have us thinking and talking about it. :)

Back to Mr. Woodhouse though, I can't help but wonder: do we think this is shocking because our perceptions of Regency England are heavily skewed toward virtue, chastity and moralism? Is it possible that these hints of promiscuity wouldn't have been hidden so much at the time of writing, but rather "taken as read" by Regency audiences?

I'm guessing, and I have no facts to back this up, but I get the impression that syphilis was a not-uncommon ailment before the advent of antibiotics. Perhaps everyone of any class knew someone afflicted; if that's the case, Jane Austen's inclusion of these references may not have been sly so much as just a fact of life. They seem shocking to us because syphilis is definitely not a common ailment today and you have to um, work rather hard to get it. *ahem*

Just truly speculating - my lack of information about the time is vast.

ETC: I KNOW Austen's books are Regency but for some reason my fingers keep typing Edwardian. I do not know why I keep doing it, but I've fixed the ones I've found.
Reply to post #25 (show post):

I think you've got a point. I think many people would have at least known about its prevalence, though I maintain it's unlikely many unmarried girls would. And yes, I think this might be more hidden from us today rather then in their time.

While there is no crime committed (other then against real friendship and feels so far), what I got from PD James' blurb was the mindset that is helpful in reading Emma. I don't know about others, but I approach mystery novels differently then I do other books. I've read so many, I hardly realize I'm doing it any more. But I read a Magical Cats mystery differently then I do when I pick up a YA novel or even a Jane Austen pastiche: I read just as fast but I'm hyper alert for clues and little things mentioned. I know how a plot might go, so I can see the way events are taking me. That's why I love mysteries that surprise me, there aren't many. I think that might be what James was suggesting; how you should choose to approach the story. Not sure, but just my opinion.
I can see it from that angle; it's still a little bit of a stretch for me, but I can understand where James is coming from. Austen definitely plays with a form of double entendre throughout the book; using a characters words and facial expressions in such a way that leads to different understandings being possible, both for other characters and the reader.
Reply to post #27 (show post):

This has made me want to read the other books in the annotated version to see what they might have hiding. I'm holding off on reading P&P until I get that version.
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