Transatlantic Women Travelers, 1688-1843 by Misty Krueger;

Author:Misty Krueger;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rutgers University Press

THE POWER OF SENSIBILITY TO REFORM MEN

After Emma leaves England in pursuit of Henry, it is increasingly Robert Raymond who reports, journal-style, to Charles Corbett what Emma says and does. This shift is significant because it coincides with an increase in episodes in which displays of Emma’s sensibility move the narrative action forward. These episodes demonstrate more than Emma’s conventional femininity; they show her disengagement with masculine, military attitudes evinced by many of the male characters in the novel. Rather than writing letters demonstrating this sensibility, Emma enacts the emotion she feels physically, either through a kind of despondent though determined activity, characterized by physical debilitation, weakness, or illness, or by a lapse into lifelessness, which has the effect of resolving conflicts between the male characters in the novel, even suspending the pursuit of fighting by Edward and Henry.

The first of these incidents, narrated by Robert Raymond in a letter to his silent correspondent, Frederick Berkeley, focuses upon Emma’s resistance to notions of martial honor and military glory, indicating her emphasis instead upon humanity, love, and pacifism. The episode takes place before Emma leaves England, when Raymond finds her in the library at Castleberry contemplating a painting. The painting depicts a battle scene. Emma, who is recovering from an illness brought on by her father’s insistence that she renounce her love for Henry, describes to Raymond her feelings upon looking at various pieces of the scene and becomes increasingly frenzied: “In that lacerated body there yet seems life. It is panting in the picture!—how the streams of—Ah, my God! the hoof of a horse seems ready to stamp upon his bosom—another sword is pointed at his throat.—Stop, stop barbarian—he is of thy kind—he is thy fellow-creature—perhaps he is closely, dearly, TENDERLY connected—restrain thy sacrilegious hand—kill not her whose existence is interwoven with his—kill not his helpless children—respect the tender state of unprotected infancy.”22 Emma cannot sustain the emotions that overwhelm her when she considers the women and children left behind by these soldiers, who will suffer as much, if not more, than the soldiers themselves. The broken nature of her speech, demonstrated by Pratt’s frequent use of dashes and Emma’s incomplete sentences, which begin before she can finish articulating her previous thought, indicates the swell of emotion Emma experiences as she gazes upon the bloody scenes depicted in the painting. Ultimately, Raymond writes to Berkeley, “She fell lifeless on the floor. Her soul was filled with images of the deepest horror. It was a noble frenzy of tenderness and humanity, but it trod too quickly on her late recovery.—She is again carried to her bed” (144). As in similar instances later in the novel, Emma’s fall into lifelessness serves to remove a source of conflict between men: as a result of her collapse, Raymond tells Emma’s father he will no longer seek Emma’s hand in marriage because it is clear she is in love with Henry. From this point forward, Raymond strives to use reason to control his love for

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