Female Character of the Week: Emma Woodhouse

I finally, finally got around to finishing Mansfield Park. After writing that post where I flogged myself for being a bad Jane Austen fan because I couldn’t get through the book, I remembered that I hadn’t reached the good part yet, and eagerly devoured the chapters where the Bertrams and the Crawfords put on a rehearsal for a play for the sole purpose of flirting with each other in character.  I was entertained up until the point where Fanny leaves Mansfield Park and then struggled through the ending.  There are things to love about Mansfield Park, but I may skip it the next time I do an Austen reread.

Part of the problem is, as I’ve said before, the fact that Fanny Price is kind of a wet blanket.  I sympathize with her to a point and find her refusal to compromise her moral integrity quite admirable, but she practically lives or dies by Edmund’s approval of her.  I want to invest in money for a Fanny Price spine transplant.  The “everyone is morally corrupted except poor put-upon Fanny” theme also gets old after awhile.

Fortunately, the heroine in Jane Austen’s next novel is much more spirited than Miss Price: the scheming Miss Emma Woodhouse, the woman who likes to organize the world to her liking and fix everyone’s problems with her excellent judgment. 

Name: Emma Woodhouse

Why She Rocks: Jane Austen once described Emma as a “heroine whom no one but myself will much like.”  Indeed, Emma is (in a way) her most controversial protagonist.  Unlike the heroines of her novels, Emma is the only one who doesn’t have to worry about money.  She is “handsome, clever, and rich,” independently wealthy, and heiress to her father’s fortune.  She doesn’t have to get married to secure her standard of living.  She hasn’t a care in the world…meaning she has almost nothing to do, and therefore, spends her time meddling in other people’s affairs.

Part of Emma’s problem is that she’s too smart for her own good.  I don’t mean this in an oppressive, “silence the smart woman!” way (obviously), just that her intelligence and cleverness is undervalued in Regency society.  She has no outlet for her intelligence.  If she were a man, she’d make an excellent statesman.  As a woman, the only way she can exercise her brain is to match-make all the people around her.  And, because she believes she knows best, she expects everyone around her to act exactly the way she wants them to act.  She never thinks Mr. Elton might be interested in her, because she’s already set him aside for Harriet.  Finding Frank Churchill much more attractive, she entertains the idea that he is in love with her (though, to be fair, he works hard to make sure she gets that impression), but acknowledging that she doesn’t love him, believes he will fall in love with her friend.  Why?  Because she wants him to!

Emma is quite vain and self-congratulatory, yes, but those flaws make sense given her background.  She’s never had a care in the world, and throughout her entire life, she’s been stroked and pet and congratulated on being such a good clever girl.  No one stops praising her, so why should she change her views?  Mr. Knightley is the only one who takes her to task for her poor decisions and vanity, which she believes to be a sign of his indifference or dislike…when in fact, he treats her like a person instead of a doll.  Fortunately, she recognizes this in the end.

She can be petty, and she can be cruel.  Emma’s dislike of Jane Fairfax borders on obnoxious; she’s jealous of the way other people in her circle praise Jane’s beauty and musical talent, ignoring the fact that Jane is poor, with bleak prospects for the future.  She also cruelly insults poor Miss Bates in front of an entire garden party, humiliating her, simply because she felt humiliated earlier in the day by Mrs. Elton.

Those are not admirable qualities.  Those are the things Jane Austen was talking about when she said she expected her readers not to like Emma.

Yet, these less-than-admirable qualities are exactly why I love Emma.

Who among us has never dreamed of fixing our world and molding it into the way we think it should be?  How many of us have pettily disliked a decent person for no good reason?  How many of us have been thoughtlessly cruel to someone who didn’t deserve it, and initially defensive when we were called out on it?

Emma has plenty of good qualities to balance out her flaws.  She truly is a good-hearted person who wants to help people and make them happy.  She’s witty and clever, and has the patience of the saint in caring for her fussy old man of a father.  But if she were just these things, she’d be a wittier Fanny Price.  No one loves a perfect protagonist.  Emma is lovable not in spite of, but because of her flaws.