EMMA WOODHOUSE: Why is she an unlikeable heroine? — Jane Austen EMMA novel analysis

hello and welcome to close reading classic literature with me dr octavia cox why might it be a good thing if emma woodhouse is an unlikable heroine according to james edward austin lee jane austen's nephew according to him in his memoir of jane austen dated from 1870 on commencing her novel emma jane austen announced that she was going to write an unlikable heroine so this is the text from a memoir of jane austen she was very fond of emma but did not reckon on her being a general favorite for when commencing that work she said i am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like and i think this is really really an important quotation to help us to understand the character of emma woodhouse and the novel emma better jane austen intended in creating emma woodhouse to create a heroine who was a challenge to like and this is not just then an unlikable character so this isn't just you know a fanny dashwood or a lady catherine de berg or some other female character who was unlikable but an unlikable heroine and this was radical for the time that austin was writing in in choosing to create a heroine whom no one would much like jane austen famously wrote to her niece fanny knight in 1817 and this is of her ideals of her ideas of novels and heroines and i think it's very important to see that those are so often kind of um aligned and spoken about together and when we talk thinking of novels of this period the ideas of novels and heroines that's pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked so both in terms of novels so novels that are simply pictures of perfection make her sick and wicked as well as the heroines of those novels heroines who are pictures of perfections pictures of perfection make her sick and wicked heroines in the time that jane austen was writing were expected to be perfect and conform to ideals of feminine perfection so of course they were supposed to be staggeringly beautiful they were supposed to be duly submissive they were supposed to be duly deferential they were supposed to be duly humble they were supposed to be unsure of their own judgment whilst of course possessing several female accomplishments and an innate elegance of taste so jane austen jokes about this in her heavily mocking and hilarious i do recommend it her plan of a novel which was written in late 1815 early 1816. incidentally this is the very time of the publication of emma which was actually published in december 1815 but is dated 1816. so this is her plan of a novel heroine a faultless character herself perfectly good of course perfectly good with much tenderness and sentiment and not the least wit very highly accomplished understanding modern languages and generally speaking everything everything that the most accomplished young women learn but particularly excelling in music her favorite pursuit and playing equally well on the piano forte and harp and singing in the first style her person quite beautiful of course she is perfectly good and she is quite meaning fully totally beautiful dark eyes and plump cheeks book to open with the description of father and daughter who are to converse in long speeches elegant language and a tone of high serious sentiment so the heroine then is supposed to be of course a faultless character who is perfectly good and a great kind of example of a contemporary heroine who fits this mold who is a faultless character and who is perfectly good is emily sent over in ann radcliffe's very very very popular novel the mysteries of udolpho which was published in 1794 and incidentally this is the um novel of the moment that katherine moorland in jane austen's novel northanger abbey is incredibly taken with um so northanger abbey was first drafted in the 1790s when the mysteries of udolpho first came out although it wasn't published until after jane austen died but in that novel jane austen is also playing with literary conventions every novel of jail sticks basically she plays with literary conventions and here is how the perfect emily sent obert is described in the opening chapter of the mysteries of udolpho adjoining the eastern side of the greenhouse looking towards the plains of langerdock was a room which emily called hers and which contained her books her drawings her musical instruments with some favorite birds and plants here she usually exercised herself in elegant arts cultivated only because they were congenial to her taste and in which native genius assisted by the instructions of monsieur and madame sentoba those are her parents made her an early proficient in person emily resembled her mother having the same elegant symmetry of form the same delicacy of features and the same blue eyes full of tender sweetness but lovely as her person was it was the varied expression of her countenance as conversation awakened the nicer emotions of her mind that threw such a captivating grace around her sent over so her father cultivated her understanding with the most scrupulous care he gave her a general view of the sciences and an exact acquaintance with every part of elegant literature he taught her latin and english chiefly that she might understand the sublimity of their best poets she discovered in her early years a taste for works of genius emily is ludicrously almost comically angelic uh faultless and perfectly good so jane austen had already by the time she came to writing and publishing emma she had already already challenged the contemporary accepted norm that heroines should be perfect for example in the character of elizabeth bennett in pride and prejudice which was published a few years before emma in 1813. so elizabeth bennett is is flawed and imperfect in for example her prejudices against mr darcy particularly but also in her misplaced pride so for example in her kind of the pride she has in her powers of perception which of course proved to have been ill-judged and ill-founded um you know for example with with mr wickham um and also with her relationship with charlotte lucas for example so with considering thinking that it would be impossible for charlotte lucas to be content as the wife of mr collins that's the word that we we we are in the thinking of lizzie bennet and she says impossible and she also when she's thinking about charlotte being married to mr collins and she also describes it as a humiliating picture to think of the two of them being married but the point is that elizabeth bennett yes she is flawed but she is still likeable so as a as a heroine generally speaking lizzie bennet is very well liked you might even say many people think of her as you know one of the most loved heroines in all of english literature so even though she is flawed readers do sympathize with her they're on her side largely i think because her opinions appear to be reasonably justified and because she she doesn't act with any malice she thinks she perceives things um and she seems to do so with an open heart and she accepts when she has been wrong and she tries to change her self and her thinking and her behavior etc when she is confronted with evidence that she is not is not perfect so going back to the idea of of kind of her opinions her prejudices uh being reasonably justified she overhears miss darcy at the opening of the novel being very rude about her for example when he says she is not handsome enough to tempt me to dance and understandably she takes against him um and in terms of mr collins and him being embarrassing he is an embarrassing husband and charlotte we know as readers finds her finds him embarrassing but when lizzie goes to visit them at hansford um she clearly develops her understanding her if not quite acceptance but her sort of understanding of charlotte's reasons and beginning to see charlotte's perspective and why charlotte acts the way she does and how charlotte manages mr collins to make her life as content as possible so for example um the text reads this is in pride and prejudice when mr collins said anything of which his wife might reasonably be ashamed which certainly was not unseldom so we're being guided there by by the narrative voice when when mr collins says anything which mrs collins or charlotte lucas might reasonably be ashamed so we're told she is reasonably ashamed of him which certainly was not unseldon she involuntarily turned her eye on charlotte this is lizzy once or twice she could discern a faint blush but in general charlotte wisely did not hear so we can see that elizabeth is beginning to understand charlotte's behavior and why she's doing what she's doing more than she had done earlier in the novel so this is kind of crucial i think that reader sympathize with her because we see that she is self-aware enough she is intellectually curious enough to reflect on her own perceptions so another crucial example a kind of profound revelation that she has really is that she comes to realize that her father that mr bennett has really failed as a parent so even while she loves him even while she values many things about his character his sense of humor for example she can still see that he has been severely lacking so even while she might side with mr bennett in terms of mrs bennett's silliness and while lizzie bennet doesn't appreciate mrs bennett's silliness she also can kind of take a step outside of that immediate response to the two of them and evaluate the ways that they have behaved and kind of reflect critically on the causes of what's happened for example to lydia in the character of the heroine of elizabeth bennett and in pride and prejudice then jane austen had created an imperfect flawed heroine but a very likable one emma woodhouse however is different many readers find her deeply unlikable vain conceited spoiled petty small-minded controlling snobby arrogant are just some of the unlikable qualities and characteristics leveled at her and these of course are far removed from the ideal feminine heroine if it had been radical enough creating a flawed heroine in elizabeth bennett jane austen goes much further with emma woodhouse in the character of emma woodhouse jane austen set out to make a heroine who would not be easy to like going back to james edward austin lee's quote that he talks about what she was thinking when she commenced the work so from the beginning from the outset she intended to create a character who no one but her would much like being unlikable is absolutely breaking a central quality of supposedly ideal femininity women were supposed to be likable they were supposed to go out of their way to be liked by other people to be appealing to other people and what does this really do if you are intent on being likable to others it means that you are subjugated to other people's opinions it means that there you have an external rather than an internal locus of value because if you are looking to be appealing to other people if you are looking to be likable to other people then your value comes from the way that other people judge you from the way that other people feel about you rather than from your own sense necessarily of self-worth so in creating a heroine who is unlikable then jane austen is not only not creating a picture of perfection she is almost creating a provocative antithesis of a female picture of perfection emma woodhouse breaks a cardinal rule of good expected femininity she is not easily likable a contemporary novelist susan ferrier who wrote the very popular novel marriage for example and that's from 1818. so she ferrier wrote of her bafflement about the character of emma woodhouse as a heroine so susan ferrier remarked of emma the novel and emma the character i have been reading emma which is excellent there is no story whatever and the heroine is not better than other people she notes that the heroine is not better than other people it might seem odd to us now to imagine given the triumph of realism so given the triumph of this idea of good novels representing real life or having a sense of very similitude life likeness so although it might seem odd because we completely accept realism now it might be odd for us to see the ways in which actually this was a revolutionary move for uh austin in the novel emma that it was a revolutionary notion to have a heroine who was no better than other people and susan ferrier's critique really kind of exposes contemporary expectation a heroine ought to be better than everyone else she ought to be a picture of perfection for the young female reader to try to emulate and aspire to to be like in this way many novels of the period were a tool for conditioning the young female reader there are kind of a means of social conditioning you might say but jane austen was tired of this constraint on what a novel what a heroine so what a woman was supposed to be so in this period many novels essentially were fictionalized conduct books so conduct books as the name suggests were books which would tell you how you were supposed to behave in a certain situation this is the best thing to do if you are confronted with this that and the other so novels were essentially a kind of fictionalized version of these different scenes where the heroine would would show the reader how to conduct herself should be an exemplar for an example an ideal example so in that sense then those kinds of novels were designed to instill and promote certain feminine perfections in readers and actually not just in creating expectations not just in the young female reader but also in the young male reader too so the conditioning then operates two ways in the female reader these pictures of perfection are are kind of you're supposed to copy them but for the young male reader these pictures of perfection you are supposed to desire so young female readers are shown what they are supposed to emulate and young male readers are shown what they are supposed to think is attractive and um likeable in the character of emma woodhouse then jane austen might be said to issue a challenge to readers yes emma woodhouse may be unlikable although she does have some redeeming qualities too so she she cares very genuinely for her uh slightly difficult shall we say father for example and of course she's not uh she's not immoral or evil or malevolent or um actively nefarious or anything you know she she's not an angel but equally she's not a monster so we're not operating in this kind of polarity where a woman either has to be an angel or she's monstrous no um so yes emma woodhouse may be unlikable in many ways but the challenge to readers to some extent seems to be wouldn't you rather as a reader encounter a complex difficult nuanced character who reflects the pettinesses the jealousies the self-delusions of real life rather than a picture of perfection who gets everything right all the time jane austen's challenge to readers then is for them but i think that her challenge to read us then is for readers to reflect on their own expectations of heroines of what women were supposed to be and of novels and what they were supposed to promote if it bothers you that emma woodhouse is unlikable and this is of course assuming that you do find her unlikable many people don't and that's a video for another day um you know is she actually unlikable or not but if you find her unlikable and if it bothers you that you've that emma woodhouse is unlikable what does that say about you thank you very much indeed for watching remember if you like what i do here on my channel where i analyze classic literature then do subscribe and if you have liked the video then do please press the thumbs up button it helps me out in youtube's algorithm thank you so much to everyone who has supported my channel and continues to support my channel i really do appreciate it and what are your thoughts why do you think jane austen went out of her way to create a character who no one but herself would much like

Channel: Dr Octavia Cox

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Length: 23min 6sec (1386 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 24 2022