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Emma is a literary classic by Jane Austen following the genteel women of Georgian-Regency England in their most cherished sport: matchmaking. Emma is spoiled, headstrong, and self-satisfied. After a couple she has introduced gets married, she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities and, blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives, proceeds to forge ahead in her new interest despite objections. What follows is a comedy of manners, in which Emma repeatedly counsels her friends for or against their marriage prospects, absent any notice of their true emotions or desires. This story is often cited as a personal favorite of critics and literary historians, and Emma is set apart from other Austen heroines by her seeming immunity to romantic attraction.… (more)
Sarasamsara: Like Austen's novels, The Makioka Sisters traces the daily lives and romances of an upper-class family-- the only difference is that this is pre-war Japan, not Regency England. Like in one of Austen's works, when you close the novel you feel like you are closing the door on someone's life.… (more)
kara.shamy: In some ways the heroines in these two novels are alike, but they are very different in other respects, and more strikingly, their respective journeys to the altar/married life go in diametrically opposite ways, in a sense! Both are true classics in my estimation; reading these two novels exposes the reader to two of the greatest English-language novelists of all time in the height of their respective powers. While all readers and critics do not and will not share this superlative view, few would dispute these are two early female masters of the form and are well worth a read on that humbler basis ;) Enjoy!… (more)
nessreader: Both Emma and Miss M are about ambitious, capable upper class women who can only express themselves as social hostesses. Both heroines are managing and bossy - Miss M, a generation younger, is played more for laughs, but there is a strong parallel. And both end in utter satisfaction for heroine and reader alike.… (more)
I've read Pride & Prejudice and Persuasion, both of which I really enjoyed, but I just could not get into Emma. To put it bluntly, bat s**t boring. Didn't even finish. ( )
While overall a good book, I found it incredibly longwinded. After about 20 chapters, I switched to consuming it as an audiobook, which I enjoyed more - in fact, I find it might be the best way to consume it, as it truly serves to immerse one more. Still, I would had preferred it to be a bit shorter. Emma is a character I still do not have a full grasp on, even after over 50 chapters, which I think is a shame. However, it is very skillfully written. ( )
I've loved this book for a long time, but rereading it last week, I almost dropped it when Mr. Knightley tells Emma he's been in love with her since she was 13. He would've been 29 when she was 13. Ugh. I know, I know, it was a different time, but still. CREEPY. Somehow in the years since I last read Emma, Mr. Knightley had become in my imagination a nearly decent 30 years old. He's only 10 years older than Emma, right? No, no. Watch yourself, people. When you start romanticizing romances you know you've lost your edge.
Okay. What I'll tell myself is that Mr. Knightley was in love with teenage Emma in a totally pure way. Like in that movie Beautiful Girls where Timothy Hutton thinks a young Natalie Portman is a really great kid and wishes he could wait ten years and marry her because she's so cool. Yeah, that's more okay. I guess it's all okay. Of all of Austen's books that I've read, Emma is the one where the two romantic leads spend the most time together actually falling in love. So there's that. ( )
The institution of marriage, like the novel itself, has changed greatly since Austenâs time; but as long as human beings long for this kind of mutual recognition and understanding, âEmmaâ will live.
âPerhaps the key to Emmaâs perfection, however, is that it is a comic novel, written in a mode that rarely gets much respect. Itâs exquisitely ironic.â
âThe presiding message of the novel is that we must forgive Emma for her shortcomings just as she can and does learn to excuse the sometimes vexing people around her. There is, I believe, more wisdom in that than in many, many more portentous and ambitious novels. Emma is flawed, but âEmmaâ is flawless."
Itâs a small but striking and instructive demonstration, the careful way Emma appraises the character of the various men who jockey for her attentions and those of the women around her. We could all learn from her example.
"In January 1814, Jane Austen sat down to write a revolutionary novel. Emma, the book she composed over the next year, was to change the shape of what is possible in fiction."
"The novelâs stylistic innovations allow it to explore not just a characterâs feelings, but, comically, her deep ignorance of her own feelings. "
"Those who condemn the novel by saying that its heroine is a snob miss the point. Of course she is. But Austen, with a refusal of moralism worthy of Flaubert, abandons her protagonist to her snobbery and confidently risks inciting foolish readers to think that the author must be a snob too"
To His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, this work is, by His Royal Highness's permission, most respectfully dedicated, by His Royal Highness's dutiful and obedient humble servant, the author.
First words
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.
Quotations
Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.
"I thank you; but I assure you, you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and I are very good friends, and nothing more, and she walked on, amusing herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgment are for every falling into..." (Emma)
"I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other."
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure.
I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through--and very good books they were--very well chosen and very neatly arranged--sometimes alphabetically and sometimes by some other rule.
How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation? (Frank Weston Churchill)
Oh! The blessing of a female correspondent when one is really interested in the absent! (Frank Weston Churchill)
"I cannot make speeches, Emma...If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more." (Mr. Knightley)
It will be natural for me...to speak my opinion aloud as I read. (Mr. Knightley)
These matters are always a secret till it is found out that everybody knows them. (Mr. Weston)
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
[...] a sanguine temper, though for ever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. it soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again.
Last words
But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.
Emma is a literary classic by Jane Austen following the genteel women of Georgian-Regency England in their most cherished sport: matchmaking. Emma is spoiled, headstrong, and self-satisfied. After a couple she has introduced gets married, she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities and, blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives, proceeds to forge ahead in her new interest despite objections. What follows is a comedy of manners, in which Emma repeatedly counsels her friends for or against their marriage prospects, absent any notice of their true emotions or desires. This story is often cited as a personal favorite of critics and literary historians, and Emma is set apart from other Austen heroines by her seeming immunity to romantic attraction.
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Haiku summary
Mix-match my neighbors Cutest narcissist am I Don't listen to me (city girl)
Bossy know-it-all Privileged and doted on Meddles. Learns lessons. (pickupsticks)
She can do no wrong Matchmaking busybody Knightley sets things right. (pickupsticks)