Seventh of eight children of a moderately prosperous country clergyman, but not prosperous enough to give his daughters good dowries.
Jane had a patchy education, but read widely at home.
She was a pretty and flirtatious young woman. She seems to have fallen in love with one young man, who immediately died, then accepted another proposal and backed out the next day. Another man who was fond of her did not propose, because she had no money. She never married, and lived with her mother and siblings until her early death; her closest relationship was with her sister Cassandra.
There has been much discussion recently about whether Austen was lesbian, and whether this shows in the relation between Emma and Harriet. I am sceptical, but will say more below.
In Austen’s life and work, we may observe the dilution of religion into manners. Many younger sons, and probably Austen’s father, went into the church to make a living, not out of deep conviction. Mr Elton, in Emma, seems entirely lacking in any spiritual dimension. The religious preoccupations of Defoe, Fielding or Richardson seem quite distant in Austen’s world.
There is no direct evidence, but much in the novels that suggests Austen was sensitive to her position as a dependent, unmarried woman. She published her novels anonymously, however, and did nothing to change her life when they became successful. Not until long after her death was she recognized as one of the great English novelists, and it is unlikely that she herself knew the true value of her work - “that little bit (two inches wide) of ivory, in which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour.”
It does not seem plausible to me to interpret the relation between Emma and Harriet as lesbian, but it is homosocial in the sense of using men as pawns in their transactions with each other. These transactions may be material, or emotional.
Material: Emma wants to provide for her social needs by filling the gap left by Miss Taylor (now Mrs Weston). She wants to establish Harriet in the village by marrying her to someone of Emma’s own class, and also to strengthen her own position by having an unquestioning ally.
Robert Martin will not do for this (p. 80), though Knightley disagrees entirely with Emma’s veto (87 - 91). He points out that Mr Elton will surely not accept Harriet as an equal (92).
Emotional: Emma doesn’t want to marry herself, and is not afraid of being single, because she is rich (109). But she enjoys matchmaking, as a playful exercise of indirect power (43). Because her female instruments are weaker than she is, Emma’s aim is to get men (Mr Weston, Mr Elton) to do what she wants, without giving anything of herself in return. With Mr Elton, of course, this backfires.
Emma criticizes men (p. 90) for liking women who are beautiful, submissive, and nothing else. One of the novel’s many ironies is that this is precisely why Emma likes Harriet (and dislikes Jane Fairfax, who refuses this dynamic, but whom Emma doesn’t want to treat as an equal. When Emma says that women without money are treated with contempt (109), she is thinking of the Bates and Jane - but Emma will allow her own contempt to show on Box Hill (364)).
Emma has an inadequate father, and has been spoiled as a child - like Lovelace. Like him, also, she displays the bad side of the male temperament - except with Knightley, her relations with others are driven by a love of power, and a withholding of the self.
As a woman, Austen has a clear-eyed view of woman’s relation to power - and scorn, perhaps even hatred, for those who abuse it, like Mrs Churchill. At the same time, she respects it - both in itself, and as necessary to the social order. Emma’s power can be good, provided it is properly channelled; and the lack of power has its own pathology, as we see with the Bates.
The crucial passage here is the description of Mrs and Miss Bates, pp. 51 - 52.
1. We need to look first at the English system of dual values. George Orwell describes it in this way:
“the essential point about the English class-system is that it is not entirely explicable in terms of money. Roughly speaking it is a money-stratification, but it is also interpenetrated by a sort of shadowy caste-system; rather like a jerry-built modern bungalow haunted by medieval ghosts.”
The caste system we can call the “prestige culture,” which ranks people according to their gentility - ultimately, their degree of favor with the landowning aristocracy. The “money culture” judges simply by how rich people are; and in Austen’s time there was a great deal of new wealth derived from “trade” - i.e. business of all kinds (p. 309).
The Bateses rank high in prestige, but low in money - yet they still outrank the Coles, who are a “new” family that have enriched themselves in trade, but that Emma wants to keep at arms’ length for a while longer - so she is annoyed when the Coles invite her to a party, instead of waiting to be invited (p. 217 - 218).
Part of Mrs Churchill’s hatefulness is that she is not an aristocrat by blood, but has chosen to be arrogant out of insecurity (309).
Austen’s own position was closer to Jane Fairfax’s than to Emma’s - she was genteel, but not wealthy, and may have lost a husband in the way Jane Fairfax “lost” Mr Dixon to Miss Campbell’s £12,000 (p. 182). Austen is critical both of the power of money, and the power of prestige - Frank Churchill, and also Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, show the tension between the upper middle class and the aristocracy (such as we have already seen in Clarissa).
2. Austen’s own marginality - in terms of status, wealth, and gender - contributes to her critical view of the social system in her description of the Bateses:
a. “regard and respect” and “uncommon popularity” (51) have a sting in them - they suggest that the Bateses’ status is in fact an empty one. They are outwardly respected, but really despised - and might even be hated, if they gave anyone reason to do so.
b. “a most fortunate creature” is “represented speech” in Bakhtin’s terms: it shows that Miss Bates goes around cringing, to avoid being beaten. But wht kind of a society is it that requires people to cringe if they want to be accepted (and given charity)?
c. Mr Woodhouse is mentioned to show that he is like the Bateses in every way, except that he is rich - so that everyone truly caters to his whims (which raises the question: should we look at him with amusement, or with dislike and disgust?).
d. Emma sees through this charade, and is irritated by it - but she is rebuked by Knightley when her mask slips. Why is it so important to keep wearing the mask?
e. People in Highbury profess Christian virtues of charity and humility, but it is really a Nietschzean world of a ruthless struggle for power and self-assertion. What mediates between the two value-systems is convention - which prevents society from falling into chaos, but at the price of universal hypocrisy - there is no place here for a fresh, open-hearted character like Tom Jones.
f. Austen lays all this bare, but never fully shows her own hand - some critics see her England as a “great good place,” others think she is full of bitterness - as revealed, for example, by the comment in Northanger Abbey that “every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies.” Her final judgement on the social pecking order is as veiled as it is on the hierarchy of gender.
One of the few places where this is explored, though not discussed explicitly is in Chapter 18 (163 - 65).
Frank Churchill cancels his visit, and Emma and Knightley quarrel about it. Knightley says that Frank lacks manliness; Emma recognizes in Frank a feminized male who suffers from his “dependence” on his tyrannical aunt.
Knightley argues for an absolute or universal morality; Emma’s is relative and particular. She argues, also, that morality is “the interest of the stronger” (like Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic). For her, might makes right; for Knightley, right makes might.
Austen herself deploys a complex irony here:
1. This is one of the clearest places where Knightley’s judgement is affected by his jealousy of Frank (p. 167). Does Austen think Knightley is conscious of his own emotions? If not, then his universal morality is warped by his particular jealousy.
2. Emma’s whole argument is also undermined by her taking Mrs Weston’s position rather than her own (163). It is Mrs Weston who has lived as a dependent - Emma never has, and her situation is actually the opposite of Frank’s (she is a strong woman under a weak man, he is a weak man under a strong woman). Emma’s real motive is to annoy Knightley, and to “try out” sympathy for Frank.
3. Austen is thus laughing at both - which makes it difficult to extract any straightforward position from the debate. Emma is right on p. 165 when she says that people are shaped by their upbringing, and are not morally free from moment to moment - just as the Bateses are servile from long habit.
But perhaps there’s a clue in Austen’s saying that Emma is a heroine that no one but herself will much like - I believe that Austen identified with Emma’s brilliance and power, even as she knew that almost every other woman in the novel is deformed by her subordination. Yet the two worst people in the novel are also women of power - Mrs Churchill and Mrs Elton - which suggests that Emma is redeemed by her agonistic relation to Knightley.
Box Hill
Begins with Frank saying that Emma wants to know what everyone is thinking (363) - a dangerous request at any time - cf. 349 “Emma denied none of it aloud, and agreed to none of it in private” (trip to Box Hill with the Eltons).
Everything that people say “sincerely” does more damage - cf. Mrs Elton saying to Knightley “Pray be sincere” (351) [note how Knightley gets back at her without her realising it]
365 - 366: Frank’s sneer at the Eltons is taken by Jane as a coded criticism of their own relationship - in conjunction with his flirtation with Emma (which Knightley takes as an example of bad male influence on E.). “hazle eyes” - cf. Jane’s “deep grey” eyes, 180.
Knightley’s rebuke (368): not that Emma was wrong in her judgement, but that it is unfair to speak truth to the weak. Further, that others (i.e. the Eltons) will turn on Miss Bates if Emma no longer protects her (cf. their treatment of Harriet at the dance, 324-25, and Knightley’s intervention to protect her).
Miss Bates knows she is boring, but she can’t stop - it’s a nervous habit, caused by her vulnerability.
Knightley is an Allworthy, but one who knows what is going on around him - he is a genuine patriarch to the community, guardian of the weak, promoter of culture - all these are specifically gentry values. They are threatened from two sides: aristocratic selfishness and amorality (Frank), nouveau-riche ambition and ruthlessness (Mrs Elton).
Emma needs to be separated from both sets of values, in order to become a worthy lady of the manor. In these terms, you can’t take away the Bates’s status - even if it is based on lies and hypocrisy - because your own claim to legitimacy is part of theirs. The alternative would be a class society where Coles and Eltons would rule, and the shabby-genteel would be crushed. The whole point is to be able to crush them, but not do it - and to prevent others from trying.
The Bateses are degraded by their situation, it’s true, but the alternatives are worse. Not everyone wants to be at the top of the pecking order.
On this reading, Emma’s conversion is to traditional gentry values - Knightley is reminding her of the proper qualities of a ruler - and away from her previous brilliant individualism. The self must be sacrificed to duty and the (hierarchical) collectivity. Robert Martin will be accepted on his merits into Highbury society (453), and Emma will welcome him.
It also must be sacrificed to the discipline of marriage: Knightley is angry with Emma for flirting with Frank as much as for insulting Miss Bates (though he is too gentlemanly to show this). Here, Emma’s behavior is similar to Tom’s with Lady Bellaston, an irresponsible exploitation of her sexual attractiveness. She needs to give up her promiscuity and submit herself to the moral discipline of her (superior) partner, as Tom does to Sophia. The interests of the community require, at the top, a monogamous marriage that will produce a legitimate heir to the estate.
All of this adds up to a “Fieldingesque” reading of the novel - of which the hero is not an individual, but Highbury as the eternal country estate, and microcosm of the nation as a whole. Like the young Queen Victoria, Emma must come into her inheritance and vow: “I will be good.”
But Austen read Richardson as well as Fielding, and Emma can be read as a puritan rather than a cavalier novel. Here, the climax of Box Hill would be “the tears running down [Emma’s] cheeks” (369) - which make it into a novel of repentance and conversion.
Emma’s sins are pride and the love of power; she believes, also, that she is in control of her fate. She does not steal - she does not have to - but she is greedy for domination. She never examines her conscience seriously, even after Elton’s proposal (153); and in the morning she is back to her usual tricks (156).
In Calvinist terms, she is “hardened” against any outside voice.
Her remorse after Box Hill can be seen as a “conversion-experience,” after which she has become a new woman, able to repent and to see herself for what she is. She is born again into humility and charity; she has also become capable of self-knowledge. She will serve Miss Bates, and cease to be a proud exploiter.
Emma is thus a novel of spiritual growth, in which the puritan conversion-narrative is diluted and secularised, but nonetheless provides the core of the novel. Formal religion plays little role, but Emma could not be who she is without the two centuries of puritan self-examination that lead up to her.
Austen is a satirist and a comic novelist, to be sure, but at heart she is serious, devout, and idealistic. Emma is not a fairy-tale character like Sophia Western, but someone who has a rich inner life that has been nourished by a long moral tradition. The fairy-tale plot is still there, but it is enriched by the dimension of character that Austen takes from Richardson rather than Fielding.
Of course, none of this need be taken on faith - Emma is “serious, very serious” on p. 456, but a page before she says “I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other.” At the very least - and like Moll - she will have the cake of repentance and eat it too, in the form of happiness, prosperity, and sexual fulfilment.
Conclusion: Where’s Jane?
Is Austen’s art marginal, or hegemonic? Is she a feminist, or one who cannot see beyond women’s traditional roles?
One thing we can be sure of is that Austen likes to tease - she always gives a judgement with one hand, and puts it in doubt with the other:
“right feminine happiness” (158)
“the affections and utility of domestic life” (456)
It’s not that Isabella and Harriet shouldn’t enjoy their roles - but they seem to enjoy them so much because their IQ doesn’t get into three figures. Yet, on the other hand, both Emma and Austen herself seem to enjoy female domesticity - provided they can express an intellectual and critical consciousness as well.
The only figure in Emma who is both marginal and intelligent is Jane Fairfax - her bitterness is unquestioned, but needs to be qualified:
1. She is bitter with her subordination - but the immediate instrument of her oppression will be a woman, just as Mrs Elton is her oppressor in the present.
2. Jane herself hates the kind of person she has been forced to become - a reserved outsider - for her, there is nothing positive in this status, no scope for revolt and self-assertion like, say, Mary Wollstonecraft (who was herself, briefly, a governess).
3. Jane’s solution is to be re-integrated into society as a woman of power and privilege herself - everyone seems to be happy with this.
Virginia Woolf’s judgement here is one we should respect (The Common Reader)
If her sister Cassandra had not destroyed Jane’s letters, we would have known.
Perhaps the best answer is that Austen found the only real liberation available to a woman at that time: in the act of writing itself. There is enough vindication there to rise above a mere hunting for dogma - as there is in all the novelists we have read.