Jane Austen's Emma Essay

Jane Austen provides her readers with insight into marriage and English society within the 1800’s. In Emma, the story establishes the idea that society could not function without marriage and how the institution of marriage defined one’s social status.

Jane Austen’s novel 'Emma' and Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, as significant and satirical reflections of Regency England and postmodern America respectively, indicate how the transformation process can shape and improve literacy, intertextual and logical importance. The transformation is evident in the compositions Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ and Amy Heckerling’s ‘Clueless’ enabling us to investigate the assortment of logical subjects. Regarding ‘Emma’ the perspective throughout the Regency time frame examines the strict values of love and marriage inside the inflexible social hierarchy. Austen’s advances the significance of etiquette throughout the text. Austen reveals a neo-women’s activist perspective, shown in the female protagonist revealing the female protagonists’ scholarly capacity and social equity in an otherwise patriarchal society. However, the close resemblance of the story; ‘Clueless’, Heckerling composition conveys entirely transformed values, reflected through the actions of the current upper-working class of contemporary Los Angeles. The critical analysis of commercialism in the informal social class system of modern America reiterating social expectations of gender and social characterisation within the microcosm of the typical American educational system. The transformation in attitudes of Austen, reveals an exhaustive utilisation of setting, a close examination of dialect and various artistic procedure.

Clueless is a 1995 film loosely based on the famous Jane Austen’s 1816 novel Emma. Set in Beverly Hills, Cher who is almost 16 is the most popular girl in school as well as rich and pretty. Her father is a lawyer and her mother died from a liposuction surgery when she was a baby. Cher plays matchmaker throughout the film and begins with two nerdy teachers. This starts by her just trying to boost her grades, but she then sees how much happiness she is bring people so she decides to adopt the new girl, Tai, and give her a makeover. She tries to get Tai and Elton who is the most popular guy in school together but that backfires when Elton tries to make moves with Cher.

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 could not resist. Ah! Ma’am but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me- but you will be limited as to number- only three at once”; Emma insults Miss Bates, who is a dear friend, in order to quench her desire for social credit. When Mr Martin’s proposal arrives for Harriet, Emma shakes her head with disdain. Emma has the highest social status, apart from Knightley, and uses this to diminish those of lower class. Chapone asks us to “Observe her manner to servants and inferiors” and whether she treats “them always with affability”, but we know, Emma does not. Emma thinks Mr Martin is a “very inferior creature” and when Harriet asks for advice Emma says “the letter had much better be all your own” but sneaks in “You need not to be prompted to write the appearance of sorrow for his disappointment”. Harriet refuses Martin, and Emma proclaims that Harriet, if she accepted, would have been “confined to the society of the illiterate and vulgar” and “could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin” since she deems the lower class as unsophisticated primitives. Emma would have lost her latest amusement and her chance to prove her intelligence. Emma’s subtle manipulations illustrates the absence of inner morality, and is thus, an ill-qualified mentor.

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

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 Emma Jane Austen exposes the limitations of the role of women in her society. Examine Austen’s presentation of what is called in the novel, women’s usual occupations of eye, and hand, and mind. Emma – Role of Woman In Emma Jane Austen exposes the limitations of the role of women in her society.

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.

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

Jane Fairfax plays a significant role as a rival towards Emma in terms of intelligence and beauty in the novel Emma by Jane Austen. Jane Fairfax is born to Mrs. Bates youngest daughter and Lieut. Fairfax. Jane’s father Lieut. Fairfax died and Jane was left with a widow mother who also died when Jane was three years old. After the death of Jane’s parents, Jane was took care by Colonel Campbell who was a good friend to Mr. Fairfax where Mr. Campbell believed that Mr. Fairfax has saved his life (p.128). Jane was loved by Mrs. and Miss Bates but if she lived with them, she would have had limited opportunities through her education and her social level. From Campbells kindness Jane was educated at high standards in London by Campbells support

(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.

Love comes in many shapes and forms, whether it’s an inanimate object or a person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Jane Austen’s novel, “Sense and Sensibility”, revolves around two sisters who try to find true love, while requiring a balance of reason and emotion. Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are viewed as two completely different people. Elinor is known to represent “sense” while Marianne represents “sensibility.” In the novel, Jane Austen emphasizes two common women’s characteristics, and shows us how Elinor and Marianne both find love and happiness only by overcoming their struggles and learning from one another’s actions and mistakes.

This image and atmosphere of mundane imperfection is a far cry from what Emma expects after reading the romantic novels she smuggled in at the convent. From those foppish texts she gathers the impression that ladies such as she should be “lolling on carriages” or “dreaming on sofas,” or perhaps embracing some dashing “young man in a short cloak” (Flaubert 32). Yet such is not the reality in which she lives.