I’m bucking the trend here…. Emma has always been my least favourite heroine, and my least feavourite book (because I just did not like her). I did not like any of the Emma films I have seen so far (and I think I watched them all). None of them made me like Emma, or Mr Knightly, or any of the other characters.Jane Austen herself said, "I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like." Emma can be annoying because of her lack of maturity and sense; compared to the other Austen heroines, her flaws are quite apparent. Knightley may seem too old in comparison to Emma. Perhaps there is a paternalistic air to their relationship that doesn't jive well with what moderns (and modern women) expect from relationships, something more egalitarian with respect to age, life situation, experiences, and lifestyle. (The model of the companionate marriage. Although one website characterizes the match between Emma and Mr. Knightley as companionate! This is due to differences in how it is defined...) It may even strike some as being a bit creepy, given how long they have known each other, and how much of an influence Knightley has had? After all, Knightley was somewhat of a father-figure to Emma:
Till now that she was threatened with its loss, Emma had never known how much of her happiness depended on being first with Mr. Knightley, first in interest and affection. Satisfied that it was so, and feeling it her due, she had enjoyed it without reflection; and only in the dread of being supplanted, found how inexpressibly important it had been. Long, very long, she felt she had been first; for, having no female connexions of his own, there had been only Isabella whose claims could be compared with hers, and she had always known exactly how far he loved and esteemed Isabella. She had herself been first with him for many years past. She had not deserved it; she had often been negligent or perverse, slighting his advice, or even wilfully opposing him, insensible of half his merits, and quarrelling with him because he would not acknowledge her false and insolent estimate of her own -- but still, from family attachment and habit, and thorough excellence of mind, he had loved her, and watched over her from a girl, with an endeavour to improve her, and an anxiety for her doing right, which no other creature had at all shared. In spite of all her faults, she knew she was dear to him; might she not say, very dear? (Emma)I think the line about holding Emma as a child comes from the Gwyneth Paltrow adaptation? But there is this line:
Emma laughed, and replied: "But I had the assistance of all your endeavours to counteract the indulgence of other people. I doubt whether my own sense would have corrected me without it."Ephebophilia!"Do you? I have no doubt. Nature gave you understanding: -- Miss Taylor gave you principles. You must have done well. My interference was quite as likely to do harm as good. It was very natural for you to say, 'What right has he to lecture me?' and I am afraid very natural for you to feel that it was done in a disagreeable manner. I do not believe I did you any good. The good was all to myself, by making you an object of the tenderest affection to me. I could not think about you so much without doating on you, faults and all; and by dint of fancying so many errors, have been in love with you ever since you were thirteen at least."
"I am sure you were of use to me," cried Emma. "I was very often influenced rightly by you -- oftener than I would own at the time. I am very sure you did me good. And if poor little Anna Weston is to be spoiled, it will be the greatest humanity in you to do as much for her as you have done for me, except falling in love with her when she is thirteen."
"How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your saucy looks -- 'Mr. Knightley, I am going to do so and so; papa says I may, or, I have Miss Taylor's leave' -- something which, you knew, I did not approve. In such cases my interference was giving you two bad feelings instead of one."
Well, that's an exaggeration -- his love sounds innocent. However, who is to say that there was no sexual attraction involved whatsoever?
Females in their teen years being married off to older men is nothing new in the history of mankind, and Christian societies have survived its practice. While we tend to frown upon men marrying teen-aged girls simply on the consideration of age alone, should we not look instead at the maturity of both parties, and whether they have been adequately prepared for marriage?
One may object more to the male having an influence on the moral development of the female.
There is a substantial age gap between Marianne Dashwood and Colonel Brandon as well, but it lacks the "paternalism" that characterizes the relationship between Emma and Mr. Knightley; do female readers tend to mind that age gap less?
Aristotle or Xenophon wouldn't have a problem with an 15-year age gap, nor would they think it out of place for the husband to have a part in the education of a wife. If St. Thomas More believes that a prospective wife should be just finishing her education or ready to begin it, then would he assent that those who are ready to be educated will be educated by their husbands? Who else would be educating her, once she is married and in a new home? (Her in-laws, like in East Asian cultures of the past?) Is such an age difference as common among the lower classes of medieval European society? Did it often occur that widowers of all classes would take a much younger second wife?
Perhaps what is being advocated by Aristotle, Xenophon, and St. Thomas More, is not the beginning of a moral education, but its completion, as the woman takes up her role as the wife, mother, and mistress of the household and learns how to perform these well, under the guidance of her husband. But for the male to have that sort of influence, which would be part of his authority as the husband, would still be objectionable to contemporary feminists. Females by their nature are docile to the males, even if feminists try to cast this off by aping masculine behavior. But once they marry (or have intimate relations with a man), do their natural desires and expectations betray their feminist ideals?
It is a fact of life that women in their late teens and early twenties have certain physical advantages over women in their thirties which make them more favorable as potential spouses. (Do older women have advantages? As Western societies decay, it becomes less likely that they have them; many have noted that single women in their thirties, whether never married or divorced, seem to be arrested at a certain stage of emotional and character development. An effect of the narcissism epidemic, or a cause?) But there is also a measure of innocence and docility, which can be maintained to a certain extent into their twenties by those women who remain chaste.
Is it possible that the neuroses that many unmarried women in their thirties feel is due in part to a lack of a stable male influence? It's not simply not having a man that is a problem, but not having a man do what a man does in relation to a woman -- providing emotional comfort, consolation, even guidance.
Jane Austen Today: BBC One's Emma: Behind the scenes preview
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