Essay on Jane Austen's Emma

Austen portrays Elizabeth’s conflict with issues of manners, upbringing, education and marriage as she struggles to express her thoughts and values in a society that demanded strict obedience from women. Austen portrays Elizabeth as a woman with the strength to resist social pressures and demandments, nor to be a prisoner of her own ego. She is an individual who explores the norms as she examines the human behaviors and rights with her good sense, thinking independently of her family and friends. Elizabeth manage to express her intelligence and independence with a strong character without needing to compromise on her femininity as she stands up for her rights and speaks her mind. She shows the readers a woman in a man’s world as she strives to disregard social

In eighteenth century which feminist in social status was not popular by that time, author can only through literature to express her thought and discontented about society. Jane Austen’s Emma advocates a concept about the equality of men and women. Also satirizes women would depend on marriage in exchange to make a living or money in that era. By the effect of society bourgeois, Emma has little self-arrogant. She is a middle class that everyone could admire, “Young, pretty, rich and clever”, she has whatever she needs. She disdains to have friends with lower levels. However, she is soon reach satisfaction with matchmaking for her friend. Story characterizes a distorted society images and the superiority of higher class status. It

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.

Austen’s views within Emma are a reflection of the prevailing views in the Regency Era, as the upper classes often abused their wealth and influence to ensure that their descendants would be wealthy like them. The rigidity associated with the class structure within the Regency era is initially reflected when Emma is characterised as, “handsome, clever and rich with a comfortable home and a happy disposition”. The fact the sentence specifically mentions her assets definitely emphasises how her inherited wealth is the major (if not only) factor accounting for her high status. This classist structure is later reflected with the gentry’s interactions of those below their social class. Emma’s arrogant tone when she teaches Harriet “the yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom I can feel I can have nothing to do” is indicative of the inflexible nature of the class system during that era. It was acceptable to feel superior due to being of a higher class. Her view symbolises that of the upper classes’ patronising attitude to the lower classes, and thus emphasises the omnipresent nature of the class system within the United Kingdom. Hence, Austen’s heavy emphasis on the class system within Emma is a stark reminder of how our behaviours have not developed over the

or other, and we can never expect her to do it with so little expense

Emma, is the story of the education and growth process of Emma. Throughout majority of the novel, Emma involves herself in bad situations in which she misconstrues facts and blinds herself from the truth, at the expense of others. After Emma has discovered that she has been terribly wrong about Mr. Elton, and she was mistaken to encourage Harriet's affection of him, Emma says, "It was foolish, it was wrong to take so active a part in bringing two people together, it was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious- a trick of what ought to be simple!." Emma

In addition, the novelist provides us with many diverse roles of women. Women did not have careers, simply marriage offers. We are soon introduced to Harriet Smith, who is an illegitimate orphan, with no options but to hope for a marriage proposal. She does not seem to have a great personality, has a bad background, and no dowry whatsoever, so it is a strange case when the young farmer, Robert Martin, proposes to her.

Towards the beginning of the novel, Emma is opposed to the idea of marrying, when she is talking with Harriet, and when Harriet asks about marriage, Emma says, “Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband's house as I am of Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.” (Austen 73). Mr. Knightley and Emma, who are lifelong friends and are well-suited to one another. They both are born into well-respected families of wealth, in the beginning, neither of them shows the interest to marry, however, as the novel progresses, they begin their relationship. Mr. Knightley is in the mid-thirties and has never been paired with anyone, also Emma sees marriage as a way to get what she has no need of. Even though Emma is opposed to marriage, Mr. Knightley is a good match.

In the novel Emma, the author, Jane Austen, uses many different techniques to characterize Miss Bates as a woman with no intellect, but a very kind heart. Miss Bates in a humorous character who is loved and loving.

Emma Woodhouse and Kim Kardashian are in their own way outspoken women who dare to challenge the status quo that their individual societies enforce on them. In Austen’s novel, Emma encounters a scenario in which Mr. Knightley, who enforces the standards of the 1800s, becomes angry at her for telling Harriet that she is much too ladylike to marry a poor farmer like Mr. Martin. (Austen 54) Mr. Knightley angrily argues, “What are Harriet Smith’s claims, either of birth, nature or education… She is the natural daughter of nobody knows whom, with probably no settles provision at all, and certainly no respectable relations.”

Though at first glance, Emma appears to be a generic romantic novel about virtue and ladyhood, Austen actually challenges what the meaning of “ladyhood” is to the reader. We view Emma’s follies, trials, and triumphs through the eyes of the omnipotent narrator who first describes Emma as a stereotypical, wealthy young lady who is “handsome, clever…with…a happy disposition” (1). Through the use of irony, Austen employs a series of situations in which Emma, a “lady” of high standing within her community, challenges conventional thinking of what it means to be a young woman in the early nineteenth century, particularly her ideas concerning marriage and

“This contradiction between imagined autonomy and legal negation is the contradiction that romantic love denies and the marriage plot suspends. And even though it does not appear in this precise form in Emma, I want to argue that this paradox – and the contradiction it foreshadows – constitutes the ideological tension the novel is trying to manage and the terms in which plot complications are engendered and resolved. Let me explain a little more fully what I mean” (401).

(Austen 1). Having a conceited nature, she only tolerates following her own advice, as well as frequently acting upon her instincts regardless of the consequences, especially when it comes to match-making. Emma believes that she is able to match any two people whom she deems compatible. Even though Emma is self centered, she ironically refuses to tend to her own feelings. Speaking to her father Emma states, “I promise you to make none for myself, papa; but I must, indeed, for other people.

Marriage has no always been about the love and happiness two people bring eachother; instead it was concidered to be more of a business transaction. Emma by Jane Austen takes place during the early twentieth century, this time period was completly absorabed in social classes and had a much different view on marriage than today. Through the young, bold, wealthy, and beautiful character Emma Woodhouse, Jane Austen exposes the protocol of marriage as well as the effects marriage held based on social standing during the early twentieth centuery.

Jane Austen lived from 1775 until 1817, a span of four decades that saw significant changes in English social, political, and economic life. At the time her birth, England was embroiled in a bitter struggle with its American colonies, the loss of which, several years later, proved to be a tremendous blow to English political and military prestige. Under the rule of George III, England's political climate became increasingly unstable with constant struggles between the King and Whig politicians. Ireland received its independence in 1782, although the violence that had long plagued the country continued to rage. Across the Channel, the French Revolution had begun and the English aristocracy watched in horror as royal heads began to roll.