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A Jane Austen Re-read: Emma

April 13, 2020 /

Hello everyone,

The fact that Emma is so popular means that it took me an extra week just to make it through the sheer volume of Emma’s many adaptations, and I didn’t even get to them all – however, I am here now, and I have to tell you that you are in for a treat!

I approached this book with some dread because when I first read Emma, I did not like it all that much. I thought Emma was annoying, and the central relationship between Harriet and Emma was grating, and many of the characters felt a little more one-sided than in some of her other books.

I am so glad I came back and read it again! Emma is a different flavor of heroine than Lizzie Bennett, Elinor Dashwood or Fanny Price, but she is hilarious and fun, and the book itself is overtly funny and over-the-top.

Next time, I am reading Northanger Abbey – come along and join the fun. It is probably one of the shortest books, with way more adaptations than I expected, so it may be a couple of weeks!

There are spoilers below. If you haven’t already read this book or watched one of the movies, this post likely isn’t going to make much sense anyway.

Rereading The Book

Emma is the story of 20 year old Emma Woodhouse, who is described at the outset as “handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition”. The book follows her over the course of a year or so as she tries, unsuccessfully, to improve and marry off her friends and neighbors, learning a lot about her self and her failures as she goes.

I was dreading this book to be honest. I read it in my early 20s, and I remember being irritated at Emma, and not liking it all that much. However, I am so glad I revisited it because this was a wonderfully pleasant surprise!

I have to say that I take pleasure in imagining that Emma was Austen’s response to modern day criticism of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, her previous book, who even her mother thought was sad and soppy. Emma is the opposite of Fanny to a fault, and I enjoyed the contrast to no end. Emma Woodhouse is not Elizabeth Bennett, but she is a fascinating young woman who is allowed to grow and learn from her mistakes without serious injury to her body or heart, which is rare in an Austen book. In fact, Austen’s treatment of Emma, while not always sympathetic, is kinder than most of her other books by far.

Overall, this is the most farcical book of Austen’s to date, with some highly intelligent and nuanced critiques of social norms. Characters are more two-dimensional than in her other books, but the social interactions are pointedly more tense and fraught with social consequences, and the “bad” characters are to be endured rather than avoided.

Also, Mr Woodhouse is a fascinating character, and I was really intrigued by him. Emma is almost trapped in Highbury due to her dad’s hypochondria, even though she is so close to London, and her general inclination seems to be for parties and socializing. This is not really mentioned, and I think it was part of keeping the story insular, but nevertheless, I found it really intriguing, and felt it added an additional level of context to Emma’s constant meddling – she is just bored stiff!

This was fun!

And finally, it took my until I had watched the book and watched at least 3 different versions to realize that Frank totally went to London to get the pianoforte for Jane Fairfax instead of getting his haircut!

Written Adaptations

This book as SO many adaptations – It is not the exhaustive list, but has a lot of them.

Film Adaptations Worth Watching

Emma has been adapted a lot. So this was a LOT of watching. That being said, there were clear winners and losers here, and I don’t want anyone to anyone to waste their time. The following are all the adaptations I could watch in order of enjoyment.

One note – there is a great looking Bollywood film out there called Aisha, but because I couldn’t find it anywhere with English subtitles, I ended up not watching it!

1.) Emma 2009

This was almost perfect in every way. This had my favorite characterization of Emma, in that she comes across as confident, fully believing in her world and her opinions, fairly selfish and still manages to be kind and genuine at heart, especially towards Harriet. I think they caught the fact that Emma is essentially a late teenager with too much freedom and not enough to do really well.

They also have my favorite Mr Knightley, and their chemistry was fabulous. The show also does a great job (better than the novel) of giving background and context to Emma’s jealousy towards Jane and interest in Frank, and how the differences in HOW they lost parents at an early age changed their outcomes despite the fact that they all went through the same experience.

Overall, this was my favorite adaptation – it was faithful, interesting, and did the characters justice, and was also fun to watch. It is also available on Amazon Prime, so don’t miss it!

2.) Clueless

I LOVE this so much, and I make no apologies for it being this high up the list. It is a rather lose adaptation but placing this story in high school makes the adaptation make a ton of sense, and I liked that they kept the close relationship between Emma and her father.

Cher, the “Emma”, is delightfully ridiculous, and Brittney Murphy plays an absolutely perfectly pitched version of the Harriet character.

This is just a great movie, and is absolutely worth watching!

3.) Emma 2020

This was visually stunning, and in all rights, it should place higher on this list, but it just didn’t have as much joy. I did think that Anya Taylor-Joy did a brilliant job of giving the character a depth and subtlety. However, Emma comes across as both worse and also better than her book self? I can’t explain it, but the balance of Emma is almost impossible to get right, and this was a little off kilter.

However, I really enjoyed the characterizations as a whole, and they add a richness to the world around Emma and serve to emphasize both Emma’s misunderstandings (Harriet and Frank Churchill) and her justifiable prejudices (Miss Bates and Mrs Elton). In general, this version makes the way that Emma interacts with the world both understandable and ridiculous in equal measures, which makes the movie all the more enjoyable.

This was the funniest period version of Austen I have seen for a while, which was great both because it made it a great movie in its own right, and because the book is so funny in a way that isn’t translated into any of the other period versions. And the posturing between Frank Churchill and George Knightley was quite fun to observe, but only worked because they made George Knightley much younger than the book version is supposed to be.

The two things I do have to note for Austen purists are that in the interest in making Emma more sympathetic, Jane Fairfax isn’t served all that well, and while the main points of the plot are there, Autumn De Wilde has certainly made some adjustments and abridgments that are likely to frustrate purists.

4.) Emma 1996

This is pretty generally panned, and while I didn’t think it was great, I didn’t hate it either. It followed the plot (and dialogue) very closely. Paltrow is fine, although she doesn’t get the subtlety of Emma all that well, and so she comes across as a little earnest and “good”. This means that when it comes to Frank Churchill, she seems easily led by him into saying some awful things, but never actually first that hard with him, so it is just odd.

I did like Mr Knightley and Harriett to some extent, and I liked her relationship with Miss Taylor/Mrs Weston, but overall, I do feel like it felt like everyone was saying the right lines with not as much of the right feeling.

5.) Emma Approved

This was fine, but I’m not sure it did the best job of modernizing Emma. The absence of her father means that while Emma’s motivations in the book seem to come from a boredom and loneliness, the Emma in this show is just a meddler for no reason – she gets to travel with no limitations and isn’t cooped up or bored like the Emma of the novel.

Knightley is great however, and I liked Harriet’s growth as a character.

6.) Emma 1997

This was fine. I thought Kate Beckinsale played a serviceable, if too naive, Emma, but in contrast to the 1996 version, they had the events of the novel without any of the context, and so without knowing the story, I can’t imagine it feeling all that rich.

There was no chemistry whatsoever between Mr Knightley and Emma, so that part fell flat. Also, there was one too many references to his having held Emma in his arms as a baby for my liking. I have no problem with the age gap if handled appropriately, but that felt icky.

I did like the Mr Knightly, “gentleman farmer” aspect – the final scene ends at a harvest dinner with all of his tenants and that was a fun way to see him as a successful man in his own right.

Thank you all for reading along! The next (and last) two books of Austen’s are Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which were published together (a weird combination if you ask me). Because Northanger Abbey was written first, I am reading that next – check out Jane Austen’s parody of a romantic novel with me, it won’t take long!

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