“All her novels are the same. When you start reading them again, you realize what she’s actually saying,” she said.
It seems the key to appreciate Jane Austen’s work is perseverance and leaving any preconceived notions of the love story behind. Indeed, Stiller assures you, “No matter how often you read Jane Austen, there is always something new to be found.”
The story is set in the village of Highbury, where 20-year-old heiress Emma Woodhouse lives a rather constrained life due to living with her elderly father who’s a hypochondriac. Vain, self-centered, and somewhat deluded, Emma sets herself on a grand scheme of matchmaking, in which she often makes mistakes, despite the warnings of good friends.
Sounds like a love story so far, but remember that underneath it all are life lessons.
Through Emma’s life, we learn the pain of false narratives that appear real, and how she reflects on and learns lessons from her actions, which not only impact her but those around her.
Stiller explains more about Jane Austen’s “Emma”:
In her village, there is a poor single woman, Miss Bates, the daughter of a former vicar. But despite her poverty, she is always cheerful, contented, grateful, and interested in everyone—certainly a model of fortitude—and this is in the days without welfare benefits of any sort. This trait recommends her to everyone who, in turn, visits her regularly, presents her with little gifts of apples and other delicacies, and runs errands for her.
Deserved or otherwise, charity was not only considered necessary and expected from the better off, but was also recognized, in philosophical terms, as a solid virtue. It was a matter of etiquette and courtesy in those days, even in small communities, that people paid morning visits, the form being not to spend more than 15 to 30 minutes there. Emma herself visits a poor, sick family with soup and other useful items.
The problem is that Miss Bates is also simple-minded and garrulous and cannot string a sentence together before flying off on another subject. Emma has no patience with Miss Bates, visits her reluctantly, and ridicules her gently behind her back. But at one point, Emma teases her in public, which mortifies the old woman, who bears it with candor and forbearance in acknowledging her own imperfect character.
But Emma’s longtime friend Mr. Knightley, remonstrates with Emma, and charges her with being insolent and thoughtless to someone who, in earlier days, would have been in a much more superior social position and whose notice of Emma would have been an honor. He tells her she has set a bad example to others and should have had more compassion.
Mr. Knightley himself says it was not pleasant for him to say this to Emma, but he would tell her the truth, proving himself a friend by faithful counsel and hoping that she would do him greater justice than she could at that moment. In true contrition, Emma resolves that it would be the start of a regular, equal, and kindly intercourse with Miss Bates and her family.
Another example is Emma’s grand scheme of matchmaking people, which makes you wonder how she manages it in the very small village she lives in. And of course, actually, she’s meddling, and she gets warned by Mr. Knightley that she should leave people alone to get on with their own lives. He tells her to stay away from certain people, but she still insists that she’s going to make a match between the vicar and her young friend, Harriet Smith, from the local boarding school whom she’s just befriended. And of course, the poor girl is rather weak-headed and is led along quite easily by Emma and gets let down frightfully because it turns out the vicar isn’t interested in her at all. He’s more interested in Emma.
Emma actually makes Harriet turn down a match with a very eligible farmer, who’s very much in love with Harriet, because Emma thinks Harriet is above him socially, even though Harriet is illegitimate. And of course, Mr. Knightley says no sensible man wants to be aligned with an illegitimate woman, whether she’s rich or poor.
“This was the conclusion of the first series of reflection. This was the knowledge of herself, on the first question of inquiry, which she reached; and without being long in reaching it.—She was most sorrowfully indignant; ashamed of every sensation but the one revealed to her—her affection for Mr. Knightley.—Every other part of her mind was disgusting.
With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of everybody’s feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange everybody’s destiny. She was proved to have been universally mistaken; and she had not quite done nothing—for she had done mischief. She had brought evil on Harriet, on herself, and she too much feared, on Mr. Knightley.”
Emma’s been through so many trials during this period and made so many mistakes that she’s redeemed in the end because she’s learned her lesson, and actually, that is the point of all of Jane Austen’s characters. The heroine makes mistakes, but she develops and learns at the end. Not only does she learn from her mistakes, they actually develop her character for the future.
