Description
The story revolves around the protagonist of the story, Emma Woodhouse. She is a twenty-one-year-old beautiful, high-spirited, headstrong, intelligent but a bit of spoiled young woman from the landed gentry. Her mother died when she was very young. She has been the mistress of the house since her elder sister got married. She lives with her father in Hartfield. Although she is intelligent and smart yet she lacks the discipline to practice or study anything in depth.
The story begins with the marriage of Emma's best friend and former governess of the house Ms. Taylor and Mr. Weston, the new neighbor. Having introduced them, Emma takes credit for their marriage and she feels that she has found her interest. She forges ahead with her new interest in 'match-making' against the advice of Mr. Knightley, a brother-in-law of her sister. She attempts to match her new friend Harriet Smith to Mr. Elton, a local vicar and persuades her to refuse the marriage proposal from Robert Martin, a respected, well-educated, and well-spoken young farmer, though Harriet likes him. Mr. Elton is not attracted to Harriet, considering Harriet socially inferior. He mistakenly believes that Emma is in love with him and proposes to her. She refuses the proposal. Harriet is heartbroken and Emma is ashamed about misleading her.
While she is in many ways mature, Emma makes some serious mistakes, mainly due to her lack of experience and her conviction that she is always right. Although she has vowed she will never marry yet she bewitched into making matches for others. She has a brief flirtation with Frank Churchill, son of Mr. Weston from his first marriage; however, she realizes that Frank has something with Jane. Frank conceals his engagement with Jane and plays games around with other characters to keep it secret. Mr. Knightley suspects that Frank and Jane have a secret understanding. When the truth comes out Emma is heartbroken and accepts her foolishness. Mr. Knightley goes to console her from the truth of Frank and Jane's engagement. At the end of the novel, Emma realizes that she is in love with Mr. Knightley and he feels the same. Mr. Knightley proposes to her for marriage and she accepts the proposal. Harriet accepts the second proposal from Robert Martin, get married, and live happily ever after.
Review
Emma, by Jane Austen, is a 19th century novel about youthful hubris and romantic misunderstandings. It is set in the virtual country village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls, and Donwell Abbey. It involves the relationships among people from a small number of families.
At the beginning of the novel, Jane Austen writes, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." She introduces the title character as "Emma Woodhouse, a handsome, clever and rich with a comfortable home and a happy disposition... and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."
Emma is portrayed by the author as spoiled, headstrong, and self-satisfied; she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities. She is compassionate to the poor, but at the same time has a strong sense of class status. She is blind to the dangers of meddling in others' lives; and her imaginations and perceptions often lead her astray.
Emma is the character that we find often in a girl. She is intelligent and believes in her instinct, though it goes wrong sometimes. This novel is a good read from the 19th century, though it lacks the strong story-board, yet leaves a good impression on readers. It says a lot in a simple narrative style. Many pro-writers have given good and critic both remark to the Novel 'Emma'.
Thomas Moore writes, ‘Let me entreat you to read Emma- It is the very perfection of novel-writing and I cannot praise it more highly than by saying it is often extremely like your own method of describing things- so much effect with so little effort!"
John Henry Newman writes after several years, 'Everything Miss Austen writes is clever, but I desiderate something. There is a want of the body to the story. The action is frittered away in over-little things. There are some beautiful things in it. Emma herself is the most interesting to me of all her heroines. I feel kind to her whenever I think of her... That other woman, Fairfax, is a dolt- but I like Emma."
Adaptation
The great novel Emma has been the subject of many adaptations for films, TV, radio, and stage shows. The mass of adaptations based on Jane Austen's novels has not only created a large contemporary fan base but has also sparked an extensive scholarly examination of the both process and effect of modernizing the narratives.
It has been adapted for academic work such as Recreating Jane Austen by John Wiltshire.
Jane Austen in Hollywood edited by Troost and Greenfield, and Jane Austen and Co. Remaking the Past in Contemporary Culture edited by Pucci and Thompson and Adapting Jane Austen: The Surprising Fidelity of 'Clueless' by Willian Galperin to name a few.
Many more adaptations have been done since 1948 in different mediums of entertainment, here are few examples:
Film
- Clueless, a loose American modern adaptation of the novel set in Beverly Hills in 1995.
- Emma, an American comedy starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma in 1996.
- Aisha, an Indian modern adaptation of the novel, starring Sonam Kapoor as Aisha (Emma) in 2010.
- Emma, directed by Autumn de Wilde starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Emma in 2020.
Television
- The first-ever adaptation of Emma was live BBC TV broadcast titled Emma starring Judy Campbell who also wrote the screenplay in 1948.
- Emma, live NBC TV broadcast in 1954, starring Felicia Montealegre as Emma.
- Emma, another live NBC TV broadcast in Matinee Theater series in 1957, starring Sarah Churchill as Emma.
- Emma, live BBC TV serial in six parts in 1960, starring Diana Fairfax as Emma.
- Emma, live CBS TV broadcast in their Camera Three series in 1960, starring Nancy Wickwire as Emma.
- Emma, a six-part BBC miniseries broadcasted in 1972, starring Doran Godwin as Emma.
- Emma, an ITV TV film in 1996, starring Kate Beckinsale as Emma.
- Emma, a four-part BBC miniseries in 2009, starring Romola Garai as Emma.
Web
- Emma Approved, a YouTube web series of 2013, produced by Pemberley Digital and starring Joanna Sotomura as Emma.
- The Emma Agenda, a YouTube web series of 2017, produced by Quip Modest Productions, starring Selis Maria Vargas as Emma. In this version, The role of Mr. Knightley is a female hence makes it the first lesbian version of Emma on screen.
Stage
- Emma, a stage adaptation by British playwright Michael Fry, first produced by the Gloucester Stage Company in 1991.
- Emma, a musical written by Stephen Karam in 2000, first showed by the Brownbrokers students theater group at Brown University. In 2004 Karam's music was played at the New York Musical Theater Festival under the direction of Patricia Birch.
- A theatrical adaptation by Michael Napier Brown was performed at the Royal Theater in Northampton in 2000.
- Jane Austen's Emma - A Musical Romantic Comedy, a musical written by Paul Gordon in 2007, which premiered at TheaterWorks and Menlo Park, California. The musical has since been performed at the Cincinnati Playhouse, The Repertory Theater of St. Louis, and the Old Globe Theater in San Diego.
- Emma, a stage adaption by Rachel Atkins for the Book-It Repertory Theater in Seattle in 2009, directed by Marcus Goodwin with Sylvie Davidson in the title role.
Fiction
- Joan Aiken wrote a companion novel, Jane Fairfax: The Secret Story of the Second Heroine in Jane Austen's Emma.
- The Matchmaker: An Amish Retelling of Jane Austen's Emma (2015) by Sarah Price
- Emma Ever After, a 2018 modern retelling of Emma by Brigid Coady. In the version, Emma is a Public Relations Manager for celebrities and George "Gee" Knightley is the former member of a boy band.
Many aspiring authors have written more fictional books and novels based on Jane Austen's Emma in different times, such as Emma: A Modern Retelling (2014), Emma and the Vampires (2010) The importance of being Emma (2008), Poor Emma (2007) and (1987).
Manga
An adaptation as a Japanese comic book and graphic novel was adapted by Crystal S Chan and arty by Po Tse which was published in June 2015 by Manga Classics Inc.
About the Author
Jane Austen, born on 16 December 1775 in Hampshire, England, was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels. Her narrations interpret, critique, and comment upon the British 'landed gentry’ at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favorable social standing and economic security. Her writings critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her use of caustic irony along with her realism, humor, and social commentary, has earned her acclaim among critics, scholars, and popular audiences alike.
Jane's list of works includes seventeen novels, three volumes of Juvenilia, two unfinished fictions, prayer, letter, poem, and plays. She achieved success as a published writer after her first four popular novels - Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816). Two additional novels - Northanger Abbey and Persuasion both were published posthumously in 1818, and the last one, at the time of her illness, eventually titled Sanditon, but she died on 18 July 1817 before she could finish it.
She left a few more unfinished work behind such as a short epistolary novel Lady Susan and The Watsons.
Jane Austen is on the £10 note which was introduced in 2017, replacing Charles Darwin.
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Rating: 4.1/5
Author: Jane Austen
Publisher: Penguin Books (Original John Murray)
Publishing Date: 6 May 2003 (original 23 December 1815)
Language: English
Genre: Romance Novel, Fiction, Comedy, Novel of Manners, Comedy of Manners
ISBN-10: 0141439580
ISBN-13: 9780141439587
Pages: 474
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