Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets by Deresiewicz William;

Author:Deresiewicz, William;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LIT004130, Literary Criticism/European/General, LIT004120, Literary Criticism/European/English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2004-12-28T16:00:00+00:00

So where is Emma in all of this? It is telling that she is silent throughout most of the scene we were just looking at, speaking up only when the conversation turns to Frank, a subject that flatters her vanity, and even then addressing herself only to Mrs. Weston and Knightley, her particular intimates. With the kind of friendship that binds the community together she has as little to do as possible, holding herself aloof from the likes of the Bateses and the Coles, begrudging them her every expression of kindness. It is no wonder that loneliness so threatens her as the novel opens, as it threatens no other Austenian heroine.68

The idea, pressed on Emma by her environment, that she ought, as a young person, to cultivate a serious friendship or two—the idea that friendship is “the dear peculiar bond of youth”—reflects Austen’s absorption of the Byronic revaluation of the classical-romantic tradition. For despite our general sense that Austen valued friendship very highly, the same-sex friendships that we see in the early novels and in Mansfield Park almost always involve disappointment and even betrayal: Elizabeth and Charlotte Lucas, Elinor and Lucy Steele, Catherine and Isabella Thorpe, Fanny and Mary Crawford. But here it is part of what marks Emma as psychically misshapen, part of the disabling legacy of her overindulged childhood, that she seems never to have had a true Byronic friend, an equal with whom to share genuine intimacy.

Of course, the friendship she does soon choose to cultivate perfectly accords with her exalted sense of her place in the world and the splendid isolation in which it keeps her. But Emma was looking for a friendship neither equal nor intimate: Harriet, we are told, is not “exactly the friend Emma wanted,” but “exactly the young friend she wanted” (24).69 And not only is Harriet younger—all of four years younger, a difference Emma stresses at every turn—she is also far less worldly, very less wealthy, and—this seems especially important to Emma—far shorter. She is invariably, not Emma’s “friend,” but her “little friend” (239) or “poor little friend” (25) or “sweet little friend” (47). If we need any further evidence that this is not a friendship of equals, even to its participants, we may note that while Emma calls Harriet “Harriet,” Harriet calls Emma “Miss Woodhouse” (e.g., 220).

In fact, we can see exactly what kind of friend Emma thinks she is to Harriet. As in so many respects, Mrs. Elton holds the mirror up to the heroine’s worst qualities; Emma plays for Harriet the self-appointed role of benefactor, of “friend” in the John Dashwood sense—patronizing, overbearing, controlling, and just as misguided and destructive as Mrs. Elton is with respect to Jane. Notwithstanding the observation that she treats Harriet in ways analogous to a wife,70 there is nothing at all ambiguous about this relationship, nothing playful or flexible or spontaneous. Emma may participate in ambiguous relationships, but in this one of her own devising, she establishes strict roles from the moment she takes Harriet under her patronage and never permits the slightest deviation from her script.

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