Appeal of Character of Austen's Emma

The appeal of the character of Emma Woodhouse in Jane Austen's novel Emma depends on her ignorance of herself and of her own unlikable qualities. She is a comic character for that reason. Had she been from the beginning of the novel aware of herself, her self-centeredness, her snobbishness, and all her other defects, she would have been anything but a comic character, would have been thoroughly unlikable, and would have had little appeal for the reader.

If Emma were simply a woman ignorant of her flaws and kept to herself, however, she would not make the delightful character she does indeed make. Emma is a woman who cannot help but meddle in other peoples' affairs, specifically affairs of the heart. Her recipe for happiness, for others and finally for herself, is love and marriage. And she sees herself as the force destined to bring men and women together for the sake of love and marriage. Precisely because she is so unaware of anything but the most shallow considerations in life and love, she leaves disasters---if comic disasters---everywhere in her wake.

Emma is introduced to us as a spoiled young woman who is about to have her life altered dramatically---at least in its externals. We read that Emma has lived a protected life:

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. . . . The

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place, she has not wrought much havoc. She has wrought inconvenience. It is, again, a comic and not a tragic novel. We are sympathetic to Emma because we know that little is at stake in her machinations. Emma becomes a pleasure for the reader because she thinks thoughts and takes actions which perhaps the reader would like to think and take, but which he or she chooses not to because he or she has the self-awareness (and inhibitions) which Emma lacks. Emma, as a fictional character who knows no such moral or social inhibitions, and who is not aware of her self-centeredness in any case, is free to indulge her most anti-social impulses. Emma's "awakening" can hardly be seen as a meaningful moment of enlightenment in this context. She remains a romantic, and maneuvers to satisfy her own love needs instead of others. It is difficult to see Emma's sudden enlightenment as anything but a comic twist as wholly unlikely as anything else in the novel. Austen obviously cares for Emma, and wants her to have some sort of awakening, which in turn leads to a most happy ending. Emma's awakening, then, appears to be a device designed lead to her marriage to Knightley. Austen paints a utopian future for her heroine: "The wishes, the hopes, the co

Category: Literature - A