¶ … Emma
The Marriages in Emma, by Jane Austin
Emma is the story of four marriages and the realities that motivated these couples to join together. This paper will examine the factors that come into play when a man makes his decision to marry and the degree of love and emotional attachment each relationship reflects. The unions are looked at in order of highest degree of emotional attachment and love to least.
Mr. Elton and Miss Hawkins
Emma attempts to make a match between Mr. Elton, the village vicar, and Harriet Smith, a seventeen-year-old woman of undetermined background. In the process of bringing the two together, Harriet becomes enamored with Mr. Elton and rejects a proposal from Robert Martin, believing, with Emma's encouragement, that Martin is beneath her and Elton would raise her social status.
For his part Mr. Elton is flattered by the attention that Emma gives him during the course of her matchmaking and asks for her hand instead of Harriet's. Emma rejects his proposal and Mr. Elton soon goes to Bath and marries Miss Hawkins, a woman of some means.
The irony in this marriage is that while Harriet is trying to marry above herself...
Jane Austen's Emma Jane Austen's Gentleman Ideal in Emma In her third novel, Jane Austen created a flawed but sympathetic heroine in the young Emma Woodhouse. Widely considered her finest work, Austen's Emma once again deals with social mores, particularly those dealing with ethical actions and social status. This paper focuses on how Austen uses the figure of George Knightley to propose a new English Gentleman Ideal to criticize the strictures regarding the
223) a person without a condition of some kind, was cruelly marginalized by society, as even the well-meaning people would avoid the connection with someone who was not seen well by the others, so as not to be marginalized in his or her turn. The situation of the woman is again entirely dependent on the man, since the society would not accept a woman who did not perform her
Emma is a likeable character or not. Emma is an interesting and complex character, and she can be quite unlikable, especially when she meddles in the affairs of others and does not recognize the danger of that meddling. However, in the end she shows that she has grown up, can take responsibility for her actions, and is finally ready for true love, so she is a likable character. Emma is
Emma: The Character of Frank Churchill and 'reading' the moral qualities of men in Jane Austen One of the challenges posed by Jane Austen, of her heroine Emma Woodhouse, in the novel entitled Emma, is how Emma must learn to be a good reader of both male and female characters. The persona of Frank Churchill poses a constant series of challenges to Emma -- is Frank a rouge and a coxcomb,
Her blooming full-pulsed youth stood there in a moral imprisonment which made itself one with the chill, colorless, narrowed landscape, with the shrunken furniture, the never-read books, and the ghostly stag in a pale fantastic world that seemed to be vanishing from the daylight. (Eliot, XXVIII) However it is worth noting the implicit paradox expressed here in the notion of a married woman's "oppressive liberty." Dorothea Brooke marries sufficiently well
10, 84). This validation is what drives Emma to continue manipulating. Emma recognizes her own delusion when it becomes clear that Mr. Elton in fact loves Emma. This is clear in her imagination, where she continues to think of him as Harriet's lover and not hers. His response is: "I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my existence" (ch. 15, 121). This shows the level to
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