Her style accurately though unconsciously reflects the intensity of Jane’s unhappiness, but it also betrays Emma’s characteristic failure to interpret realistically the behavior of people around her. She might have been unconsciously sucking in the sad poison, while a sharer of his conversation with her friend” p. Jane is to be congratulated for the “sacrifices” entailed in separation from the Dixons, and “Emma was very willing now to acquit her of having seduced Mr. Dixon’s affections from his wife. Hence the unfounded conjectures on Jane Fairfax’s “secret passion” are delivered in sentimental cliches. 20)Įmma’s self-centered and unrealistic point of view is sometimes couched in the appropriate jargon of novel slang. The consequences of these two events, so apparently unrelated but both triggered by a marriage, subsequently are to become intertwined at Highbury. Thus both Jane and Emma are in a sense launched into the world at the same time, Jane without the protection of the Campbells once Miss Campbell marries Mr Dixon, Emma without the indulgent care of Miss Taylor. We learn afterwards that Frank and Jane met at Weymouth in October, while Emma, Mr Knightley and Mr Woodhouse were coincidentally attending the wedding of Miss Taylor, Emma’s ex-governess, and Mr Weston, Frank’s father. Emma, however, has never seen the sea, and it is almost a full year after Jane is secretly engaged to Frank that Emma becomes fully conscious of her passion for Mr Knightley. Jane’s feelings were awakened to maturity when she met Frank Churchill at Weymouth, a celebrated watering-place. In certain crucial respects even Jane Fairfax’s relative poverty has permitted her a greater freedom and breadth of vision than Emma’s socially secure but isolated position. There are hidden force-vectors within circles that may render them unpredictably unstable. (p. Knightley, in one of her several good thrusts at the intellectual self assuredness of that sensible man, “Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be” . The circles of human relationship are volatile constructs, apt at any moment of contraction to burst, because of the pressures brought to bear upon the variously inclining individuals contained within them. The dramatic effect of all this is that we become most sensitive to the fragility of those human connections which seem to offer comfort . ‘Good heavens!-What can be broke to me, that does not relate to one of that family?’” p. ‘Break it to me,’ cried Emma, standing still with terror. 237] “‘She will break it to you better than I can.’ . As the novel progresses, one begins to anticipate references to breaking and bursting: “her parting words, ‘Oh! Miss Woodhouse, the comfort of being sometimes alone!’-seemed to burst from an overcharged heart” p. Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself and the children, and let me look as I chuse” . pray do not concern yourself about my looks. One thinks, for example, of John Knightley, who is always turning inward toward the seemingly close circle of his family “fireside.” But then it is the very tightness of this family circle that provokes his outburst to his wife: “‘My dear Isabella. As characters draw closer together, connections tend to break or burst.
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