Emma

ISBN: E100000019839 出版年：2006 页码： Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 Project Gutenberg

J Austen warned her readers that “I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.” It is easier to say why the reader may dislike Emma than why her creator likes her. Emma is willful, manipulative, an arranger or rather a misarranger of other people’s lives. Much of the time she fails to see things clearly and truly, and her self-knowledge is uncertain. At the end of the novel she acknowledges that she has learned from experience, but not every reader is persuaded. In the beginning we find admiration for Emma and her situation: “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” There is perhaps a qualification in the word seemed. Three paragraphs down, the qualification is confirmed. “The real evils indeed of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.” An absent mother (who died when she was very young), a valetudinarian father, and an indulgent governess combine to give her rule of the household. What follows are the promised “evils,” “disadvantages,” and “misfortunes” that create a dissonance between Austen’s stated affection for her heroine and the reader’s unease with Emma, if not outright dislike of her. Part of the drama for the reader will be discovering the source of Austen’s affection, whether or not the reader ultimately shares it. The case against Emma is clear enough. In trying to arrange a marriage between the vain and pompous Mr. Elton (not her first impression of him) and the young and naive Harriet Smith, Emma ignores both the temperamental disaffinity and the social distance between them—and more grievously she misunderstands the desires of Mr. Elton. He is a vicar from a good family with