"How was she to bear the
change? It was true that her friend was going only a half a mile from them; but
Emma was aware that great must be the difference between a Mrs. Weston, only
half a mile from them, and a Miss Taylor in the house; and with all her advantages,
natural and domestic, she was now in great danger of suffering from
intellectual solitude. She dearly loved her father, but he was no companion for
her. He could not meet her in conversation, rational or playful." (Vol I, Chapter 1)
Emma, like so many of
Jane Austen’s heroines, is an “imaginist,” a phrase coined by Austen herself in
Emma. Her matchmaking is just a small
example of the way she plays out life in her head before in reality, and her
imagining, without fail, leads to unmet expectations.
Austen points out that this quality isolates Emma,
particularly from her father, who “could not meet her in conversation, rational
or playful.” Emma is a thinker, and doubtless would think rings around the
nervous, frail Mr. Woodhouse, and she also possesses a sharp wit, much of which
would be lost on her father.
Men in Emma tend to follow after Mr.
Woodhouse’s pattern. Harold Bloom asks the question, “Does [Emma],
imaginatively speaking, marry down?” (Bloom 159). While Mr. Knightly is respectable and
genuine, he is light-years away from being the imaginist that Emma herself is.
Emma is a woman with her head in the clouds, and Mr. Knightly is very much a
man of the earth; the two complement each other, but it is doubtful here as
well that Mr. Knightly could ever completely match Emma “in conversation.”
Embedded
in this paragraph is a pandemic longing that human beings will forever need
someone who “can meet [them] in conversation, rational or playful.” The Emma’s
of the world will not stand to be alone. They will always need someone to talk
to who can sharpen the knives of their wit, yet it is their advanced imaginism
that isolates them from others. Losing a friend will always be difficult for
the Emma’s, as their brilliant, exuberant and prolific minds lose an outlet of
someone to talk to, and close off. They remain introverted and alone.
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