Jane Austen's novel Emma & Theme of Nature of Power

Jane Austen's novel Emma has as one of its major subjects the nature of power in human relationships. Specifically, Austen means to compare, respectively, the healthful and unhealthful relationships between Emma and Harriet on one hand, and Emma and Knightley on the other. The Emma-Harriet relationship is the epitome of the unhealthy relationship in which the "teacher" (Emma) abuses and manipulates and exploits the "student." The power is all in the hands of Emma, who has not what's best for Harriet in mind, but instead what is most desirable for herself. The relationship between Knightley and Emma, on the other hand, is an entirely different sort of student-teacher relationship based on experience and power. Whereas Emma "teaches" Harriet with only her own desires and interests in mind, Knightley is generally selfless in the attention he pays Emma. The contrast in these two relationships is emphasized by the relative self-awareness of Emma and Knightley. With reference to the first point of comparison, Emma is completely unaware that her relationship with Harriet is self-serving, whereas Knightley, though he has only Emma's interest at heart, nevertheless is constantly on guard for selfish motivations.

With respect to that self-awareness (or lack of it), much of the appeal of the character of Emma depends on her ignorance of herself and of her own unlikable qualities. Her manipulation of Harriet is a prime example of that self-ignorance. In fact, to one degree or another, e

Do we really believe that it takes only a "few minutes" of meditation for a character such as Emma, the epitome of denial and self-ignorance, the symbol of ego run riot, to achieve such an awakening of heart, mind and soul? Do we really believe that all it took was a moment of "suspicion" about herself to open the floodgates of enlightenment? She has been a character up to her nose in suspicion up that point---the suspicion that all other human beings are inferior to her and need her help to live and love. A moment of self-suspicion would have been brushed off by Emma like an annoying gnat. Her regret about the way she treated Harriet had been pointed out to her before, so this is hardly news to her. What takes place in this passage is that the author simply decides that this self-ignorant, self-willed young lady is ready, ready or not, for the awakening that had to come sooner or later, and now was as good a time as any. The point to keep in mind in analyzing Emma, and the light shed on her character by her relationships with other characters, is that she is a comic and romantic character in a comic and romantic novel. Still, though the author may have the lightest of intentions, we may learn something about ourselves should