Emma and Clueless Essay

Jane Austen's novel "Emma" published in 1815 and the film adaptation "Clueless" written and directed by Amy Heckerling in 1995 both share a similar interest in maintaining a high social status. Emma Woodhouse of the novel "Emma" and Cher Horowitz from the film "Clueless" are both spoiled young lady living in a high-class society. Emma Woodhouse is part of the rich, upscale society in a large and populous village in the nineteenth century England, while Cher Horowitz lives in a rich, upscale Beverly Hills, California USA. Both of the main characters, Emma and Cher shows arrogance and lack of acceptance to other social class due to their use of power and wealth, which they are unaware of it themselves. Emma and Cher's immaturity has resulted

Emma Woodhouse, who begins the novel "handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition" (Austen 1), suffers from a dangerous propensity to play matchmaker, diving into other’s lives, for what she believes is their own good. Despite this, she is a sympathetic character. Her matchmaking leads only to near-disasters and her expressions of remorse following these mistakes are sincere and resolute. Jane Austen's Emma concerns the social milieu of a sympathetic, but flawed young woman whose self-delusion regarding her flaws is gradually erased through a series of comic and ironic events.

Jane Austen’s Emma can be categorized as a bildungsroman, better known as a coming-of-age tale, in which the reader follows the title character as she comes to terms with her position in the world during the Regency period. However, looking beyond the titular character, one can look at Emma as a satirical work regarding the restrictions and conventions of 19th century society. This satirical element later went on to inspire Heckerling’s interpretation as she adapted the story of Emma into the cult film, Clueless, which goes on to highlight the phenomena of cliques amongst the youth of America. Both works use the element of exaggeration in order to explore the gender stereotypes and expectations placed upon society during their respective eras. Heckerling effectively takes the novel Emma and thrusts it into the world of Beverly Hills, keeping the underlying themes while engaging a more modern audience.

The culture of popular girls, a fascinating concept to those willing to escape into an all too real world. This, which has been somewhat of a cult classic starting as far back as the 1800s, with Jane Austen's Emma. Emma Churchill was a twenty one year old with the most trivial problems, which, to her, seemed the world. Those of not getting a boy, or getting someone else's boy were the most troubling to Ms. Churchill, as she is known to her help. Typical of any story such as this, she had an accomplice in her daily shenanigans, Harriet Smith. Her slightly naive best friend was there to help her through all of her earth shatteringly important problems. Emma never did have a mother figure, so conclusively that is why she never learned that there are bigger things in life than boys and primping. Despite this, she was never interested in the idea of marrying for herself, but setting her friends up with their perfect match. However, she does end up finding love in the end, even if it is with a family member, extended family of course. This twisted story of love and the troubles of a rich girl is more commonly known in pop culture by the name of "Clueless". Clueless tells the story of a girl named Cher, navigating high school with her best friend Ty.

In Madame Bovary, Emma creates conspicuous goals based off romantic novels she reads. In reaching her goals, she requires a level of

Emma, a novel by Jane Austen, is the story of a young woman, Emma, who is rich, stubborn, conniving, and occupies her time meddling into others' business. There are several recurring themes throughout the novel; the ideas of marriage, social class, women's confinement, and the power of imagination to blind the one from the truth, which all become delineated and reach a climax during the trip to Box Hill. The scene at Box Hill exposes many underlying emotions that have been built up throughout the novel, and sets the stage for the events that conclude it.

Beautiful dresses, passionate romances, elegant parties, a general state of leisure and happiness – these are only a few of the idealistic views of the nineteenth century. In her novel, Emma, Jane Austen paints a much more realistic picture of the ins and outs of high society in England of the 1800’s. Through the presumptions and pride of the characters of heroine, Emma Woodhouse, and secondary character, Mrs. Elton, Austen presents a stark critique of the social assumptions and diplomatic maneuvering so common of the society of her time, however, by the end of the novel, Austen’s critique is made clear by a subtle foil of these two characters – Emma having been the only one of the two to learn her lesson.

Every transformation creatively replicates the original with an imprint based on cultural, social and historical contexts. The teenflick Clueless directed by Amy Heckerling is a recontextualized transformation of the 19th century Emma by Jane Austen, which even though is a dramatic transformation, it still retains the ideas of the original text. The transformation of the idyllic country society of regency Highbury in Emma to the fast-paced world of modern Beverly Hills of Clueless, explores the socio-cultural values such as courtship and marriage which are challenged and redefined. Simultaneously, themes such as wealth and status are still imprinted in the film despite the cultural, social, nor historical contextual difference. Jane Austen extensively uses the omniscient third person view as well as other impactful techniques to satirically

Never having learned to think before she speaks, Miss Bates is quite defenseless to Emma's verbal parry on Box Hill. Had anyone else been the target of Emma's wit, we would not be so stricken by the magnitude of Emma's thoughtlessness. It is Emma's shame that really marks the end of her career as a supercilious little snoot. She has been forced, through Knightley's admonition, to see Miss Bates not as a caricature but a real human being, one as capable of pain as Emma herself. (Austen means this as a revelation for her readers, too -- too bad Sir Walter Scott didn't pick up on it.)

Though written over two centuries apart, the protagonists in Jane Austen’s Emma and Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, are very much alike. They are strong female characters of a certain social standing, that are expected to abide by a particular set of rules and adhere to societal norms. Unlike most young women, Austen’s Emma and Heckerling’s Cher are able to disregard social expectations¬ — like Emma’s idea of marriage, and Cher’s idea of sex — simply because they are privileged and socially stable enough to do so. In this way, both young women simultaneously embrace and reject the principles of female social expectations of their specific time periods. Both Austen and Heckerling confront the belief systems of their readers and viewers through characters that do not act “appropriately” within their respective social environments.

Emma's father had revealed that parents have high expectations of their children.  Out on the surface, children meet those expectations, without their parents knowing.  In reality, they were struggling from depression.

Similar to Sheridan, Austen reimagines several stock characters such as the braggart soldier (in the form of Mrs Elton) and the killjoy (in the form of Mr Woodhouse), however she takes it one step further as she combines several comic roles to form her main protagonist Emma. This is a key reason why ‘Emma’ is an innovative comic novel as Austen subverts the idea that ‘the obstacles to a [protagonists] desire … form the action of… comedy and the overcoming of them the resolution’ by combining the role of the trickster, the ingénue, the fool and the blocking character to characterize Emma. In doing so Emma becomes the obstacle to her own happy ending as the mischief she creates is caused by her own self-inflicted restriction on herself of being unable to love as ‘it is not my way, or my

“But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way” (Austen, 2006b, p. 963). Women in Austen’s novels are denied equality because of certain shared factors. In this essay this will be proved by discussing two of these factors and by referring to Emma Woodhouse, in the novel Emma, and Catherine Morland, in the novel Northanger Abbey, both being troublesome and ignorant and naive. Emma Woodhouse indulges in arranging everyone’s fate.

After this has occurred, Emma now undertakes to consider seriously what she has done to Harriet her friend. She regrets having talked Harriet into being attached to Mr. Elton because she does not think Harriet would ever have considered getting married to him were it not for her persuading her to accept his proposal. She now realizes the results of her attempting to connect the two. She concludes that it is not the best thing to do to take such a great effort in trying to bring two people together. She had adventured too far, assumed too much and taken lightly a matter that required seriousness. She had made tricky something simple. She had a deep concern and shame and she resolved never to do such a thing again. It is significant how the attitude of Emma towards match-making changes as she tries as the novel begins, she considers match-making to be one of the greatest amusements in the world, taking it as a

Today's society places a lot of emphasis on individualism, and is a spawning ground for things like loneliness and sadness. In Emma's case, she does not realize that the is the derivative of all of her self inflicted sadness and loneliness. Through her actions Emma continues to confine herself to the self-styled world that she has built. And pressure from modern society refuses to allow her to fix her