Emma; A feminist novel?

Emma , a story which at its core is a heart-breaking glance at the Victorian’s preoccupation with social class and status and the influence this subsequently had on limiting an individual’s ability to marry, yet it is often perceived as anything but heart-breaking.

It is a tale wrapped, unironically, in an indulging romantic narrative which concludes in a superficially pleasant ending, with all the single women delivered nicely into the hands of appropriate and ‘superior’ men. Socially unequal marriages are punished (Mr Weston and his first wife), forbidden (Frank and Jane Churchill), scorned at (the possibility of Harriet marrying Mr Elton), confining women to an even smaller circle within the already limited private sphere which they can operate in, with little hope of bettering themselves, even through marriage.

So, is Emma a feminist novel? 

It is certainly a novel which runs entirely with the domestic issues of women at its core, pivoting around their social situations, schemes of marriage, extravagant dinner parties and female friendships, yet this hardly warrants a book as feminist.

The female perspective is definitely apparent; with the dominating voice of Emma made so powerful by Austen that it wholly shapes the third person narrative. Utilizing this ‘Free indirect style’, which, according to Mullan (2015) “miraculously combined the internal and the external” narrative view, it gives the impression that Emma’s thoughts, assumptions and even delusions, are the objective all-knowing third-person truth, yet as the novel goes on we begin to question all her ‘insights’ of others and even doubt she knows herself.

Her sudden realisation of her love for Mr Knightley, her brother-in-law and friend, comes as much a shock to her as it does to the reader.

But for a middle-class, rich and beautiful woman, who seemingly has everything and therefore pledges never to marry as nothing could be gained, finds that, even she, is need of marriage to help “correct her faults.”

This is certainly a blow to the feminist reader, who initially must see Emma’s pledge against marriage as the attribute of a strong, fearlessly independent woman. Emma, at last, gives in to Mr Knightley’s superior reasoning and realises that her attempts at trying to ‘better’ her naïve friend of “no parentage” (convinced that Harriet could make a ‘very successful’ marriage to someone many rungs up the social ladder) is proven to be entirely wrong.

Emma throughout the novel, is proven time and time again, to be mistaken and her inability at perceiving others meanings and simply not understanding the social world she is in, leads her to deal with uncomfortable consequences. Whether that is mistaking Mr Elton’s advances on her to be intended for Harriet or assuming Frank Churchill to be madly in love with her, the theme of confusion and misunderstanding all seems to ultimately lead her to fall gratefully into the hands of a capable Mr Knightley who always knew better.

Upon her marriage, instead of the traditional Victorian transaction of a woman being sent from her father to the care of her husband, Emma, out of a sense of womanly duty and obligation, will be the carer of both husband and father. For this to be the story’s end for a strong-willed, independent character is somewhat disappointing as she moulds to conform to Victorian stereotypes.

And as for female friendship, although

Emma is seemingly full of the intimate acquaintances between women, there is not one friendship which did not or does not involve some degree of social dependency. Be that in the case of Mrs Weston and Emma or more starkly in the instance of Harriet, who Emma shapes in a vanity project to be her own self-indulgent plaything who can worship her superiority.

The relations between women in Emma are often instead marred by jealously and competition; Emma’s jealously of Jane prevents a friendship which would have been one of equal footing, her distaste for Mrs Elton comes from a place of attacked social pride.

It has been said “women’s friendships test the power of women in that culture, when women are weak friendships are inhibited, when they are strong, it flourishes” (Perry, 1986). If this is anything to go by, the women in Emma’s world are certainly feeble.