Who is speaking?
Or it is not only about love matching and matrimony
Reading with a notebook in my hand may be condescended to this type of activity that one tends to classify lovingly and with utter respect as “a waste of time” and “wonder where she finds time for this rubbish.”
And yet, being a first-class stubborn witch, who won’t change her mind once it has been made, I’m still floating in the fluffy pink clouds of love toward this intellectually stimulating activity.
No, our honeymoon is not over, and thus — ah, because of this “thus” they poked fun at Oliver in the movie Saltburn! — I’m still here, deciphering my illegible notes. This time on Jane Austen’s Emma.
(I’ve always been proud of my handwriting, even when teachers in my primary school shamed me for its unreadability. It is unreadable, but I love it, because it’s mine and comes to my aid whenever I want to catch a flying idea by its tail and keep it in the cage of my notebook.)
Who is speaking?
No, it’s not a transcription of that one phone call that I did answer. (I’m writing this post on a Sunday morning, and Sundays, as you know, are perfect for unnecessary side notes. So here it is, another nobody-even-asked-for side note.
If I see an unknown number making my phone buzz, I won’t answer it. In no universe. I will google it, hoping that if it were something important, they would leave a voicemail, which is a thing here in France.)
Who is speaking? is the question that paid me a visit and made itself in my mind.
Who is speaking in Jane Austen’s Emma? In other words, to whom does the narration belong?
At first glance, the answer is absolutely clear and utterly undoubtful. The story seems to be told in the third person. The third person is the one who uses “she,” “he,” and, more inclusive, “they.”
The narration glides, just like a movie camera, from one character to another, zooming in to show the intricate patterns on cushions and the loveliness of the green couch.
We hear the voice-over saying that “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence.”
Everything is all right, we are safe, and we will see the events unfolding from the outside, just exactly where we belong. No stream of consciousness Virginia Woolf loved to play with.
And yet, something is bugging me here.
“The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable. — It was a wretched business indeed! — Such an overthrow of every thing she had been wishing for! — Such a development of every thing most unwelcome! — Such a blow for Harriet! — that was the worst of all.”
Where do these exclamations come from?
It was a wretched business indeed!
Such an overthrow of everything she had been wishing for!
Who is saying it? The narrator? Or Emma? But it is not a direct speech, otherwise we would have quotation marks, for example.
And this is the first thing, among countless others, that is great about Jane Austen and her novels. She knew exactly what she was doing and why while creating her bookish universes.
Jane Austen is believed to be one of the first writers who consistently used free indirect speech, letting her narration go through the mind of its characters, and thus — second “thus” in this newsletter — offering us a more intimate insight into characters’ inner world.
And here comes the second thing that I’m genuinely crazy about Austen’s Emma. The narrator lets us know exactly what she needs us to know. No more, no less.
How would you explain, for example, that we learn what John Knightley thought about Mr. Weston:
“John Knightley only was in mute astonishment. — That a man who might have spent his evening quietly at home after a day of business in London, should set off again, and walk half a mile to another man’s house, for the sake of being in mixed company till bed-time, of finishing his day in the efforts of civility and the noise of numbers, was a circumstance to strike him deeply. A man who had been in motion since eight o’clock in the morning, and might now have been still, who had been long talking, and might have been silent, who had been in more than one crowd, and might have been alone! — Such a man, to quit the tranquility and independence of his own fireside, and on the evening of a cold sleety April day rush out again into the world!”
But this same narrator didn’t say a word about what Jane Fairfax thought about Mr. Frank Churchill.
“‘Was he handsome?’ — ’She believed he was reckoned a very fine young man.’ ‘Was he agreeable?” — “He was generally thought so.’ ‘Did he appear a sensible young man; a young man of information?’ — ’At a watering-place, or in a common London acquaintance, it was difficult to decide on such points. Manners were all that could be safely judged of, under a much longer knowledge than they had yet had of Mr. Churchill. She believed every body found his manners pleasing.’”
And in general, in the course of the story, we are never presented with Jane Fairfax’s indirect speech. We learn everything the narrator wants us to know about her either from what the other characters say about her or from dialogues where Jane Fairfax is in total control of the narration and that’s why doesn’t betray her real feelings.
So, what may the possible explanation be?
One of Jane Austen’s goals is to wrap us in the plot, making us turn one page after another to find out who loved whom and who will marry whom.
And yet the writer also wants us to be attentive readers when she scatters little details all over the story. Austen is the type of writer for whom the pistol in the wall should be fired. Everything matters, and the smallest details let us know about the characters’ desires and motives.
The problem is, we do tend to read Austen’s novels in a rush, biting our nails to know their endings. And that’s why Jane Austen is one of those writers whose narrative power reveals itself only during the second or even third reads when we are finally able to savor the story and sip its details without swallowing everything in one seat.
The weather
When we were assiduously laboring over our British pronunciation at uni — which, to the distress of my professor, anyway got infected by the American sounds — there was this one text that was supposed to do some magic trick and make us speak with the most magnificent RP possible. It goes like this, “The weather in England can change very quickly.” And so on and so forth.
And even if that was an awfully drab text, I must admit, every word of it was true, for the weather in England does change very quickly. And plays an important role in the universe of Jane Austen’s Emma.
The constant fear of draughts emphasizes Jane Fairfax’s fragility.
The pouring-now-and-then rain traps the characters into meeting each other when they are, of course, the least prepared and thus the most vulnerable to Cupid’s arrows.
The weather reflects the characters’ states of mind and predicts a happy solution to all possible problems.
“The weather continued much the same all the following morning; and the same loneliness, and the same melancholy, seemed to reign at Hartfield — but in the afternoon it cleared; the wind changed into a softer quarter; the clouds were carried off; the sun appeared; it was summer again.”
Apples
Mr. Knightley sent all the apples he had to Jane, and Emma is all in doubt. Does he really love Jane?
And I, of course, think about apples in other stories. Like the golden apple of discord and the judgment of Paris. Or the apple Eve and Adam devoured and lost their place in Paradise.
And if you say — or think — that it is a bit too far-fetched, I just shrug my shoulders. There’s something to it, and the choice of fruit is not a coincidence.
Personal connection
What everyone, it seems, raves about when it comes to Jane Austen, is the coziness of her rural England where the worst thing that may happen to you is not to find an eligible suitor when you are a female and in your prime time.
But we shouldn’t forget that Jane Austen was creating her masterpieces while the blood-spilling war with Napoleon was raging, and it was her deliberate choice to narrow down her subject matter to “the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush.”
And I can’t help but think about the present days that have been filled, for me, with gruesome news and atrocious events for the past two years. Isn’t my tiny literary blog my little bit of ivory that I focus all my energy on in order to muffle the inner howlings, for the darkness finally came “from the Mediterranean Sea” and “covered the city hated by the procurator”?
What is this newsletter if not an invitation to slow down and read with a notebook in your hands, becoming an active and creative reader?
Great books, the ones that stand the test of time, the ones that are like good wine, get better with age, deserve this. And so does Jane Austen.
P.S.
Some great writers about great Jane Austen:
- Walter Scott: https://onlyanovel.wordpress.com/austen-reviews/sir-walter-scotts-review-of-emma/
- Viriginia Woolf: https://monadnock.net/woolf/austen.html
