The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner Page 0,18
goes on for several lines, with Mr. Woodhouse continuing to demur, and Mr. Knightley continuing to not budge a bit—comically reduces the two men to their intractable natures, one all fussiness to his detriment and one all abrupt and overly decided to his. But if you think about it, this is the absolute most that Austen would be willing to show at this point, about the hidden currents of attraction between Emma and Knightley that they are way too bogged down by history and situation to acknowledge. This helps us to first mistake Knightley’s dislike of Frank Churchill as that of an elder overprotective family member—since she has her father wrapped around her little finger, someone in the book has to be up to the task—rather than the raging jealousy he is starting to be consumed by.”
“Mr. Knightley is another one who is so clueless—do none of these men know they are in love? Why are so many of her characters so lacking in self-awareness, do you think?” asked Adeline. “Is that the essence of our folly, our fate as humans: to not understand why we do things, or whom we love? Is that why so much of it ends up rubbish—and if it doesn’t, it’s just dumb luck?”
“It does seem to me that when her characters truly know and understand themselves from the start, they are less successful to the reader. Fanny Price comes to mind.”
Adeline knew how much Dr. Gray disliked Fanny Price.
“I think the reader on some level resents that purity of intent and action,” he continued. “It’s like, ‘Come on now, mess it up—do what other people would do. Fall for the Henry Crawfords.’ We love Jane Austen because her characters, as sparkling as they are, are no better and no worse than us. They’re so eminently, so completely, human. I, for one, find it greatly consoling that she had us all figured out.”
Frances slowly shut the window, then leaned back against the side of the nook and closed her eyes. It had been a long time since she had chatted with a friend about anything meaningful. The more she stayed indoors, the less people visited. She understood the logic to that—for all that friendship was not supposed to be logical.
It was now only her, her father—the ailing patriarch in his second-floor suite—and Josephine who resided in the Great House, along with the two young house girls, Charlotte Dewar and Evie Stone, who took care of the laundry and cleaning. For day employ, there was Tom, the stable boy, who also looked after the walled garden, caring for her beloved roses and apples and squash, and Adam Berwick, that sad, silent man, who tilled the fields for her.
But she was the last in line of the Knight family, now that her father was dying. The very thing her ancestors had fought so hard against, in adopting Edward Knight, had come to pass after all, and on her watch. She felt such pain over that, a pain far out of proportion to the simple sad fact that she had never been lucky enough to marry and bear a child. That she would feel obliged, from the weight of family history, to mourn for even more than that—for the crumbling Elizabethan bricks around her, for the break in a chain that included the world’s greatest writer—was something a good friend would have tried to talk her out of.
She also berated herself for failing at friendship itself. She had once been one of the most prominent members of the community, sharing the privilege of her beautiful estate, opening it up for fall fêtes and spring fairs and winter tobogganing down the back hill. And she had always had a natural compassion and concern for other people. The energy that she got from learning about others, hearing their stories, and thinking of ways to help them had been a real gift. She resented greatly that for some unfathomable reason, she no longer had the energy for the very things that had always sustained her. If ever there was a recipe for decline, that surely would be it.
She did not mean to feel so sorry for herself—and she was fully aware of the great losses many others in her village had survived. Look at the Berwick family, losing both the father and two of the sons so soon after each other—the two boys in the exact same battle even. And poor Dr. Gray, whose beautiful wife could not have children, and