For some time, I’ve been hankering to re-read a favorite classic, and I suppose that my simply putting it that way assured that Emma would be my choice. I love no book more. And, familiar as it is, the novel still bristles with complicating mysteries. It seems to be more shapeless than Austen’s other novels, but the appearance must be deceptive, because comedy of such civilized intensity cannot possibly emerge from haphazard construction. Rather, it is my taste that is at fault, too gross to discern the pattern. On this reading, my seventh or eighth, I sense Austen’s slyness. She begins with an ending, the end of Emma’s happy enjoyment of Miss Taylor’s company. The entire first chapter is a novel in its own right. Where can the story go from there? The novel gets going in earnest — not that you’d sense this if you hadn’t read the novel several times — at the end of the third chapter, with the introduction of Harriet Smith. Chapter 5 shifts the point of view away from Emma, as Mr Knightley tells Mrs Weston (as Miss Taylor has become) that he doesn’t think that Emma’s association with Harriet will do either girl any good. For the first time, Emma’s defects are stated rather than implied. “I am much mistaken if Emma’s doctrines give any strength of mind, or tend at all to make a girl adapt herself rationally to the varieties of her situation in life. They only give a little polish.” This is not a declaration of war — that comes three chapters later, with Mr Knightley’s thundering tirade, “‘Not Harriet’s equal!'” — but it more than hints at hostilities to come. Knowing that the enemies (the heroine and her brother-in-law) will ultimately negotiate a peace that flourishes in true love only (and oddly) increases the suspense.

Was it the second or the third time that I read Emma that left me feeling slightly scorched?

She had always wanted to do everything, and had made more progress, both in drawing and music, than many might have done with so little labour as she would ever submit to. She played and sang, and drew in almost every style; but steadiness had always been wanting; and in nothing had she approached the degree of excellence which she would have been glad to command, and ought not to have failed of. She was not much deceived as to her own skill, either as an artist or a musician; but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved.

Ouch. This passage used to make me feel found out, as it would Emma itself. Now it just makes me sad, because, like Emma, I got used to doing things too surprisingly well without much effort to strive to do anything really well. My piano teacher warned me again and again not to play “by ear,” but it was so much easier for me to do so  than actually to learn to read music that I can follow a score only when I’m listening to the music. In a similar way, I dodged every occasion on which I might have been obliged to study Latin; victorious over Caesar, I never captured Horace. Above all — and out of vanity exactly like Emma’s — the thing that I worked hardest at was avoiding the appearance of working hard.

When did I read Emma for the first time? I don’t recall. The copy of the novel that I have with me, a leatherette-bound Collins edition of 1953 that was part of a boxed set, has a note on the endpapers indicating that I read the novel for the third time in 1970. That seems a little precocious — but I loved Emma from the start. And yet, like any true classic, it is always a different novel. This go-round, what I’m noticing is that Mr Knightley is indeed a bit rough, “knightly” or not depending on your ideas of men in medieval armor. He is no prince. He makes me just as uncomfortable as he does Emma; almost every complaint that he has against her, adjusting for gender, was made to me, many times, by teachers and other grown-ups; like Emma, I wouldn’t listen. It was only Jane Austen herself, the second or third time that I read her masterpiece, who could get my attention. By then, I had gotten in more scrapes and created more havoc than Emma ever dreamed of, but I was not beyond repair. Whatever else might have been better in my life, my marriage to Kathleen cannot have been improved; almost always a source of happiness, it has, as it approaches its thirtieth anniversary, become something more than that, something that I can’t quite (or daren’t quite) name. I can’t think of anyone who deserves more credit for my side of the business than Jane Austen.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Friday, September 2nd, 2011 at 9:33 am.