User:Simmaren/Sandbox/Jane Austen

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Male mentor

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• Knightley is seen by most critics as the "pattern gentleman" carrying the moral authority of the novel and comparable to the character of Sir Charles Grandison and similar characters. Feminist critics such as Kirkham and Johnson reject this view and perceive a roughly equal apportionment of praise and blame between Knightley and Emma. Waldron believes that Kirkham was on the mark "with the difference that I believe that Austen would have repudiated the label of 'Enlightenment feminist' if she had ever heard it. Her main purpose seems to me to have been literary—to produce a critique of fictional figures who control the action of the story because the narrative assumes them to be endowed with special vertù; such figures are as often women as men....Jane Austen seems consciously to reject any assumption of status as value." Waldron 114-115.
• Knightley is introduced as a "man of sense", but the development of his relationship with Emma over the course of the novel suggests that he is far more complex than this label indicates. "Austen enjoys exploiting the reflexes of her readers, and means to disillusion us." 118. Initially, Knightley is dissatisfied with Emma because she has offended against the conventional ideal. In his conversation with Mrs. Weston, he declares that Emma is too intelligent, she has decided for herself what she ought to do instead of passively accepting the opinions of those (Knightley included) who know better, and she has used her talents to control her social environment and boss everyone else about. 119. Knightley disagrees strongly with Emma's plans for Harriet, and in their argument is emotional and inconsistent while Emma is cool, collected and consistent. 121. Emma has some very rational arguments, based on the ideals promulgated by the conduct books. The argument that most angers him is Emma's description of the general taste of men in choosing their wives: men prefer beauty and good temperament over intelligence and accomplishment. 123. [Waldron suggests that this preference is behind both Knightley's brother's choice of Isabella as a wife (with her "striking inferiorities" to her husband) and Knightley's brother's eventual reservations about Knightley's choice of Emma as a wife. 124-125.] Jane Fairfax provides another topic of disagreement: Knightly criticises Emma because she is not more like Jane and suggests that Emma should cultivate Jane's friendship, while Emma (who would like that friendship) correctly perceives that Jane is unwilling to be intimate and is hiding a secret. 126-127. When Emma subsequently suggests that Jane would be Knightley's perfect partner, he is forced to admit his mistake: "[Jane] has not the open temper which a man would wish for in a wife." Waldron 127.
• "Here, Knightley has done something quite uncharacteristic of the fictional hero/guardian—he has changed his mind....[Knightley] is saying, in effect, that a stormy relationship with someone he can trust is better than a calm one with someone whose thoughts may be hidden from him. He is inviting Emma to go on saying exactly what she thinks and at least hinting that he will no longer invoke his own superiority to oppose her." Waldron 127.

• "In the end, Emma and Knightley understand that they have both been wrong, confused, mislead by their own prejudices. Those who see Mr. Kightley as mentor, pure and simple, tend to overlook the enormous development his character undergoes during the course of the novel...in the long run experience teaches him that his attitudes are too rigid, that Emma's intuitions are sometimes better than his 'reasonable' assumptions and that love has litle to do with rules of conduct." Waldron 132.

• In each case the heroine learns the truth about the young man and is saved from the possibility of unhappiness. But in each case she is saved not because she learns the truth, but because of the steadying power, the sharpening of perception which love for someone else gives her, and the standard of comparison which this other man (the hero) provides." (Devlin, 33) EX: Elizabeth, Wickham, Darcy; Emma, Frank, Knightley

• Harding identifies a Cinderella theme in Austen's novels. "[I]n the first four of the finished novels the heroine's final position is, even in the worldly sense, always above her reasonable social expectations by conventional social standards, but corresponding to her natural worth." Harding also describes an evolution of this theme across the novels. In NA, S & S and P & P, the theme is handled straightforwardly. "[T]he heroine of these early novels is herself the criterion of sound judgment and good feeling....none of the people she meets represents those values as effectively as she does herself." Accordingly, she does not have to submit to another, better representative of virtue and good feeling, only to ally selectively with certain aspects of the characters of others. She stands independently. This changes in MP, where Fanny is still "better" than the other characters but submits herself to the authority of Sir Thomas and then Edmund, influencing them by force of her example. "[Even a heroine must owe a great deal of her character and values to the social world in which she had been moulded" and therefore the heroine cannot be "so solitary in her excellence as the earlier heroines are." In Emma, it is even clearer that the heroine has taken in many of the objectionable features of the society around her and must learn from the people around her (Knightley in particular) how to behave with virtue and restraint. Emma's personality includes some of the tendencies and qualities that Austen most disliked, but instead of embodying these in a caricature, Austen makes them a part of the personality of a character who is otherwise portrayed as having many fine qualities. (Harding, 173-179)

• Fanny trusts Sir Thomas and other male figures, but they betray her. She must learn to think for herself. This challenges the conservative notion that patriarchs will always care for those beneath them (Johnson, 103).

• "Austen criticises the belief that women's problems are to be solved by benevolent patriarchs. She does this by showing patriarchal figures as at best defective, like Mr Bennet, and at worst vicious, like General Tilney. Her heroines, especially the later ones, solve their own problems before making marriages with men who see themselves in a fraternal, rather than a patriarchal, relationship as husbands." (Kirkham, 32)

• The basic pattern of Emma, like the first half of P&P, is movement from self-delusion to self-recognition. The three major stages in the story all focus on Emms's inability to see others clearly, in the first part Mr. Elton, in the second Frank Churchill, and in the third George Knightley. In P&P, Elizabeth's faulty perception is corrected once and for all and the novel moves on to social issues of communication and reconciliation. The entire course of Emma is a constant process of emotional miscalculations and rational corrections. Knightley is successful with Emma as Sir Thomas Bertram is not with his own children because Knightley does not present himself as an opponent or censor of Emma but instead helps Emma liberate her own native good sense. (Litz, 132-134, 136-143)

• Emma likes to be in charge, to manage things and the lives of other people, to be in the center of things, to dominate. Her strong personality can be checked and guided only by a personality as positive as her own. Except for Knightley, there is no one in her immediate circle capable of this. (Mudrick, 182-184, 187)