Handsome, Clever, and Rich (Emma, Part 1)

In the first of our two episodes on Emma , we welcome editor Stephanie Insley Hershinow to discuss what popular conceptions of Jane Austen get right and get wrong about her, how Austen is both similar to and different from the titular protagonist of the novel, Austen's place in the history of marriage stories, and some of the novel's most memorable characters. 

Stephanie Insley Hershinow is an associate professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, where she specializes in novel theory and eighteenth-century culture. She is the author of Born Yesterday: Inexperience and the Early Realist Novel. She lives with her family in Jersey City, New Jersey.

To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of Emma, go to https://seagull.wwnorton.com/NLEmma.

Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.

Listen to our Spotify playlist inspired by Emma: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7qxZTcPpCsTpnPyCVAEr3K?si=19817ebce02b465e.

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Episode transcript at: https://seagull.wwnorton.com/emma/part1/transcript.

Transcript

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[Mark:] You are listening to the Norton Library Podcast, where we explore classic works of literature and philosophy with the leading scholars of the Norton Library, a new series from W. W. Norton that introduces influential texts to a new generation of readers. I'm your host, Mark Cirino, with Michael Von Cannon producing, and today we present part one of our two episodes devoted to Jane Austen's classic novel, Emma. We are joined for these conversations by its editor, Stephanie Insley Hershinow. In this first episode, we discuss Jane Austen and her world, the misperceptions about Austen, the idea of the marriage plot, the memorable characters who populate Emma, and much more. Stephanie Insley Hershinow is Associate Professor of English at Baruch College CUNY, where she specializes in novel theory and 18th-century culture. She is the author of "Born Yesterday: Inexperience and the Early Realist Novel.” Stephanie Insley Hershinow, welcome to the Norton Library Podcast! 

[Stephanie:] Thanks, Mark, it's great to be here! 

[Mark:] Well, it's great to have you. And congratulations on this new edition of Jane Austen's Emma! 

[Stephanie:] Thanks. It's a bright pink, you cannot miss it. 

[Mark:] Striking cover, absolutely. [Laughter] So, when we think about this novel, maybe the place that we should start is with the author herself. Jane Austen is obviously a legendary figure. What do we know about her, what do we need to know about her in order to approach this book? 

[Stephanie:] Yeah, I think it's useful for us to think about the difference between, like, the legend of Jane Austen and Austen herself. Uh, Austen was born in 1775. She was one of eight siblings. Her father's a clergyman, a really educated man – he went to Oxford on scholarship. Her mom's from a more illustrious family. Her mom's father was an Oxford Dawn, so something like a dean of one of the colleges. Again, a really educated family. They didn't make too much money, though. If anyone has read Austen, they know that being a member of the clergy is a respectable profession but not necessarily a very remunerative one. Uh, so, to me, one of the most interesting things about her family life is that her dad opens up a school for boys. So, you know, think pre-teen, teen boys trying to get ready to go to Oxford or Cambridge – and he runs it out of the house. So, she's one of eight siblings, and also the house is just crawling with these pupils of her father. Um, he keeps the house full of books, in part for that reason and also because he's a reader himself. And so, I think one of the most formative things about her upbringing is just that she has access to this pretty substantial library for somebody of that kind of class status.  

[Mark:] So, how typical would that kind of education have been for a woman at that time? 

[Stephanie:] Not that typical. You know, it's probably more common that you would have some access – maybe just some novels that are kind of circulating around through the house, um, some kind of religious writings – but to have that kind of home library would be pretty rare. Um, Austen also had a little bit of formal education, which is much rarer for a woman in that time. Um, you know, it didn't go that well. [Laughter] For one, she goes off to school when she's seven, which is on the young side. She goes away to school because her older sister, Cassandra, goes away to school. They’re joined at the hip, and she says, “Well, if she's going, I'm going.” Um, and her mother says, “Uh, okay, fine. One less child in the house.” Um, they fall into a kind of an epidemic, which, you know, we're all familiar with now.  

[Mark:] Right. [Stephanie:] But, um, so they – The teacher takes them off to another school, they run into another epidemic. You know, they just, they keep kind of falling into illness. They have to get sent home. Like, it was kind of a disaster. But we should think of her having, like, some access to schooling that would have been, um, pretty rare, especially for women at that time.  

[Mark:] And she was drawn to education and literature and even writing as a young child? 

[Stephanie:] Yeah, I think this is one of the most common misconceptions about Austen, at least that I run into, is that, um – I think Virginia Woolf is responsible for this, to some extent – that she had to kind of hide her writing, or she's, you know, kind of scribbling in corners and hiding the manuscripts and that kind of thing. And, you know, it's not that that never happened, but she's actually really well supported by her family in these endeavors. So, her – she's in an artistic, educated, book-loving kind of family. She's not the only one in her family who writes: her brothers start a literary magazine at Oxford. So, there's a lot of support for this. And so, she starts writing seriously, um, in her teens – maybe even earlier. Uh, and because she has older sister siblings, she starts writing to entertain her nieces and nephews. So, Austen, you know, also never married, herself. She's living at home, um, with her family her whole life until she dies at 41. But she's, you know, she's writing parodies of things that they all have read together out loud. She's writing little plays for them to put on together. And her family loves this stuff! Like, they actually get, you know, they support her not only in just sharing this material and kind of trying it out on different audiences, different readers, um, but they even give her these kind of bound volumes so that she can copy out in nice handwriting some of her pieces that she's written – we call it the Juvenilia. But the Juvenilia is found in these three kind of leatherbound volumes, in a way that suggests that, you know, they're taking this stuff pretty seriously and thinking of her as a writer, even within the family before she's able to get anything published that finds other readers. 

[Mark:] So, when does she publish professionally, her novels and so forth?  

[Stephanie:] Yeah, there's some false starts. So, she's, you know, we know she's writing a lot at the end of the 18th century, so the 1790s, late 1790s. And she's already trying to find a publisher then. So, she gets a publisher for the novel that will become “Northanger Abbey,” and then they just don't put it out. I mean, nightmare, right? That they – she signs a contract, the publisher says, “Yes, we'll put it—” And just for whatever reason, we still aren't quite sure, they sit on that manuscript. Um, same with “Pride and Prejudice” – what would become Pride and Prejudice. You know, this iconic novel.  

[Mark:] Sure. [Stephanie:] Um, her dad tries to get a publisher for that and isn't successful. So, she doesn't publish a novel until 1811, with “Sense and Sensibility.” Um, probably her brother Henry helps her finally get that connection in London. He plays a kind of go between. But you can tell even from this, right, like, her family's trying to get those novels published! So, there isn't that kind of – you know, sometimes I get students thinking like her family was ashamed of it, or... We do hear those stories for other women writers, but— 

[Mark:] She’s well supported, yeah.  

[Stephanie:] She is! And it's nice to think of that. Right? [Laughter] It's – like, it's nice to think of her as somebody who's appreciated, um, in that way, at home.  

[Mark:] If you think of the novels that Austen publishes, are they of a type? Is there something called “a Jane Austen novel,” where it has certain convention or set of expectations. And is Emma of that type, or is it – does it separate itself at all?  

[Stephanie:] Yeah, I think, you know, most of us, if you've heard of Jane Austen at all, whether or not you've read her, you know she writes love stories. We probably call them love stories now – we call them romance novels. Um, they certainly inspire this whole genre of the romance novel. Which isn't to say that nobody wrote a novel before Jane Austen that ends in a marriage, right? Or that has a courtship plot. Plenty of people did, and she reads them and she's thinking about them. Um, so we have those beats, right, of the plot, where, you know, we have – all of the novels have some kind of eligible young woman of marrying age at their center. Um, and we get these, you know, the kind of fits and starts of, you know, meeting someone, falling out with someone, you know, that kind of, uh, courtship plot. All of the end in marriage. All of them. Emma, to me, is the most interesting Austen novel, precisely because it puts at the center of the plot a young woman who doesn't need to get married. So, you know, part of what gets left out by me saying, like, “all of these are romance novels,” is that, you know, for Austen – also famously, right? – she's thinking about marriage as also an economic proposition. So, she's thinking about the kind of realities of marriage, the fact that, for a single young woman, you know, you have no financial independence, you have no legal Independence. Um, you have to have some kind of, um, relationship to a man to be legible in society, right? Either it's your father or it's going to be your spouse. Um, for Emma, what sets her apart is that she's wealthy; she's nearly of age; uh, she has no, you know, kind of older brother set to inherit; uh, she's supported by her father; um, and she says explicitly in the novel, you know, to the dismay of her friend, like, “I don't have to get married. I have no reason to get married.” Um, and so that really kind of, you know, to me, constitutes a serious experiment with what this kind of form can do. Now... she does get married. And that's not, I think, a spoiler, in that, you know, as I said, like, we know that in Austen novels the heroine gets married. I won't even say who she gets married to. But, you know, it's still, I think, worth our consideration that she says – and the novel seems to endorse the idea – that she doesn't have to get married for money, she doesn't have to get married for status, she doesn't have to get married to have a kind of meaningful life in her society. And that sets up this very different kind of plot, I think, um, for the very gratuitousness of the fact that she does get married at the end.  

[Mark:] So, Stephanie is there a temptation to have Emma say, “I have no need to get married,” and read Austen's own biography into that? Or do you feel uneasy doing that?  

[Stephanie:] Yeah. No, no. I think, um, yes and no, right? Because Austen did need to get married. [Laughter] Um, she doesn't have that same kind of social position. So, you know, we begin this novel by learning that Emma Woodhouse is “handsome, clever, and rich.” Um, it's a great opening – almost as good as “Call me Ishmael.” [Laughter] Uh, but she's “handsome, clever, and rich,” and I always, you know, get my students to say, like, “Okay, why does it matter that, you know, she's handsome, not pretty? She's clever, not intelligent?” You know, like, think about the kind of specificity of these terms. But it really matters that she's rich. And it also really matters that Jane Austen was not. Um, so I think yes, in some sense we have to think about what Austen thinks is representable. Um, there's a great Austen scholar, D. A. Miller, who asked the question, you know, like, “Why didn't Austen have a character who is more like herself?” Meaning, like, an unmarried woman who is successful. And, um, you know, we might presume, you know, happy and supported by her family in her kind of intellectual endeavors. We don't quite get that in Austen. But it does feel like Emma is the novel where Austen is thinking about the status of single women, uh, a little bit more explicitly than in some of the other novels. So, it's not just Emma, but also some of the other characters, as well: Jane Fairfax, Miss Bates. You know, kind of thinking about singleness from a few different angles. And I think there's absolutely no way we can think about that outside of Austen's own experience. 

[Mark:] So, you earlier were saying that the marriage plot is a convention of this period in literature. Does Austen have a slant on it in Emma? Is she playing along with the conventions of the time? What might be her readers’ expectations? Or is there an angle that she uses in Emma that's, uh, valuable to talk about? 

[Stephanie:] I think of Austen as a kind of, uh, master adapter of forms. You know, she's sometimes credited for inventing things that, you know, as a scholar of the 18th century, I know she did not invent. [Laughter] But I do think she's very good at taking up these forms and kind of playing with them. And I think this is one of them: the marriage plot, right? So, it's not just the novel, right? I mean, the beginning of Emma she refers to Shakespeare's “Midsummer Night's Dream.” I mean, like, classically, comedy itself is about marriage, right? Like, comedy ends in marriage. And I think she, uh, is very aware of that kind of, um, generic convention. Pressure not just from some of the novels that she's read, but from all of those classical forms. And so, yeah, I believe that part of what she's doing here is expressing a degree of ambivalence about marriage... within a marriage plot, right? She's, like, smuggling in this critique of marriage within a marriage plot. And, you know, again, to get back to this idea that Emma doesn't need to marry for money. You know, what she tells her friend is, like, “If I'm going to marry, I'm going to marry for love.” That's unusual in an Austen novel, actually. You know, as much as we associate them with these kind of fantasies of mutual affection and respect, right – which they are! – uh, you know Elizabeth Bennett tells us that she thinks differently of Darcy when she sees his house. She's like, “kaching,” right? [Laughter] She doesn't hide that. Um, Emma doesn't need that, uh, and so it does allow us to think about these questions from a different perspective. But there are so many bad marriages in this novel and across Austen. 

[Mark:] So what makes for a good husband depends on who you are and what your place is in society. Is it about riches? Is it about compatibility, right? Does the answer to that question change depending on the character?  

[Stephanie:] Absolutely. Uh, so... one of the silliest, also most fun things about this novel, is the fact that Emma, in thinking that she doesn't need to get married, um, is still kind of obsessed with the idea of marriage. So, the whole opening gambit is that she decides she's just basically going to play matchmaker for all of the townspeople in her little village. It's a little – it's a really claustrophobic novel. Like, it takes place in this tiny little village. It barely, uh, leaves that village. Emma barely leaves that village. But she starts to think of herself as this kind of expert, uh, you know, matchmaker. And she starts to kind of, you know, put together these puzzle pieces of all of her friends. And I think part of what we're meant to understand as readers is that some of the things she thinks would mean that two people are compatible don't necessarily mean the two people are compatible, right? So, she's starting to think, you know, to your point, you know, in terms of, “Okay, these two people are of the same status. Done.” You know. Um, and the novel suggests, you know, maybe there's more to it than that. And maybe matchmaking is not actually that useful in art, right? Maybe this kind of compatibility has to be organically developed. 

[Mark:] Is Emma's motivation one of benevolence?  

[Stephanie:] [Laughter] She probably thinks so. It's also boredom, right? I mean, we're meant to understand, too, that she's got some time on her hands. Um, the novel opens with the marriage of her governess. Um, and, of course, at this point she's 20. Like, she doesn’t need her governess at home. Um, but she's lost a friend. You know, she's lost a companion. And she lives with her invalid father for whom she's a caretaker, so she has a lot of, kind of, just energy that she's channeling into some of these other relationships. Um, it is benevolently motivated, but it also causes a lot of havoc, right? And this is back to that kind of Shakespearean mode where we get a lot of, kind of, crossed wires and, um, not quite mistaken identity, but certainly, like, mistaken motives or you know that kind of thing. Um, hijinks ensue, as they say. Um, and so, you know, one of the things that I think is fun is just to think about Emma's matchmaking impulse as a kind of creative impulse. So, it all goes awry but, you know, to think of her as doing something akin to what Austen is doing, too, right? And starting to think about, you know, thinking about relationships and how they work and how they don't work. Like, that's what the novel's doing at large, too. 

[Mark:] When you talk about marriage – I wonder if you could put it into context for us, in the sense, uh – Your introduction refers to the Regency Era as the context for Austen's career and her life. What was that? And how – what would the readers have been reading? Uh, how would they be reading this when the book was published? 

[Stephanie:] Yeah! The Regency Era – Sometimes we talk about the Regency Era as a kind of longer span, maybe end of the 18th century until the reign of Queen Victoria. Um, but the Regency is also this really tiny, almost like a blip of a historical period. Um, so properly, the Regency is like 1811 to 1820, which just names the time when the prince regent, uh, had to assume the throne because King George III is declared so unfit, uh, that he can no longer rule. He's, you know, The Madness of King George is about this time. He's mentally unwell, uh, and the prince has to take over. The prince is not someone who at that point in his life, um, is necessarily that fit to rule himself. He's a kind of carousing, um, womanizing, gambling, you know, that kind of, uh, that kind of a prince. Austen hated him, uh, but he assumes the throne. And, you know, for this brief period, this, uh, you know, nine-year period, you know, there's some, there's some good stuff that comes out of it. This real kind of efflorescence of culture, uh, and art. He's a supporter of the arts. Uh, we get this, you know, real attention to the cultural life of London. You know, architectural, you know, developments. You know, at the same time, this is a moment when England's at war. Yeah, I think one of the things that really is, uh, affecting the way that Austen's readers are thinking about marriage and the way even her characters are thinking about marriage is just there's a real shortage of men, right? Like, the ratios are off.  

[Mark:] Right. [Stephanie:] And that's part of why these, uh, decisions are so high stakes: a lot of men are away fighting or have been killed in the Napoleonic Wars. So, the, you know, the Regency kind of cuts both ways. It's a really dark time, uh, in some sense, but for the wealthy – especially in urban centers – it's also a really exciting time. 

[Mark:] You mention that Austen's dedication of the novel to the prince regent is written in a very particular way. [Laughter] Could you, um, could you explain that to us? 

[Stephanie:] Yeah, it's a funny story. I mean, it's one of those, kind of, “careful what you wish for” moments, right? [Laughter] Where Austen is – Even though she's publishing anonymously, uh, her name is starting to get around. You know, and we don't know, like, was her brother, Henry, kind of like, “Hey, my sister wrote it!” Um, you know, that kind of bragging – it's possible. But so, she publishes, uh, “Sense and Sensibility,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Mansfield Park,” uh, under pseudonyms. So, they come out by “a lady” or by “the author of Pride and Prejudice,” that kind of thing. Um, but by the time Emma is getting published – is actually already in print – when the prince's court librarian, um, invites her to come and tour his library, which, you know, you can't pass up that opportunity. And he gives her this big, like, wink wink, nudge nudge, like, “The prince would *really* love if someone like you would dedicate a novel to him.” And so she does it. She's right, I think, to pick up on that hint. Um, but we know she didn't – she was not a fan of the prince regent. And she even has a very, very veiled dig at him in Emma. Um, one of the characters lives in Brunswick Square, which is named for his estranged wife. So, you know, yeah, so the dedication is not effusive, it’s pretty— 

[Mark:] Kind of grudging, right? [Stephanie:] —formulaic. [Laughter] Yeah! It's a little bit of, like, “...and this one's for the prince regent.” Um, so, you know, her brother may have even written it. But it does kind of cement that reputation, even though her name won't appear on the novels until after her death. 

[Mark:] Stephanie, I wonder if we could close this episode by talking about some of the major characters of the novel. Maybe if you give us a little insight into what we should look for and what we need to know about them. And why don't we, of course, start with Emma? We've talked about her a little bit, but what distinguishes her as a character? 

[Stephanie:] I have to come back to that opening line, just because, I think, you know, this is one of those places where, uh, we have to laugh at what Austen gives us, right? So, Emma Woodhouse is, uh, “handsome, clever, and rich.” And she tells us, you know, really the only difficulties she runs into in life are when she doesn't get her away – and even that is rare, right? You know, so she's someone – we would call her now, she's privileged. Um, I think – and, you know, we can talk about this – I think it's probably an overrating when people really hate her. But at the same time, she is not an obviously likable character. Uh, there's a very kind of famous line from one of Austen's letters, where she says that she's writing a protagonist “whom no one but myself will much like.” And she's talking about Emma. So, she has this real affection for Emma, uh, but we've always read her, since this novel was published, as a difficult character to sympathize with, or a difficult character to follow through some of these journeys. 

[Mark:] So, you've mentioned the first sentence a couple of times. Why is it so important to you that the adjectives are “handsome, clever, and rich”? 

[Stephanie:] I think, you know, it takes us a little while to really unpack those, right? This is a novel that really bears rereading. Um, and so, you know, clever, for example, just to take one. We know Emma doesn't quite live up to her potential, right? She's someone who, um, as her neighbor, Mr. Knightley points out, she keeps setting up these kind of self-improvement schemes for herself and then never kind of making good on them. So, she'll make lists of books that she should read, and the list feels like an accomplishment and so then she never gets around to reading them. It doesn't seem quite right to call her intelligent, though she is, right? But what she really gets by on is her wit, right? She's clever in conversation, she's someone who's kind of quick with a response. Um, I think Austen's really kind of careful with some of those descriptions. That it kind of – it's something for us to hold onto as we keep going and encountering her in the scenarios and seeing her, kind of, her failings just as clearly as we see, you know, all of those qualities that make her the center of her community. 

[Mark:] Is that what you think Austen liked about her? Her social – how socially adept she was? 

[Stephanie:] Yes, though it's also the thing that gets her in trouble by the end. So, I think there's a little bit of a kind of self-critique, too. Like, if this is Austen kind of, um, you know placing herself within the novel in that way, right – Not in the wealth way, but in the kind of like, uh, quick with a barb kind of way – uh, readers of the novel will know that by the end, uh, Emma's quickness of wit can also get her into trouble. And I think that's something for us as readers to kind of think about as well. 

[Mark:] Okay, very good. Harriet Smith. 

[Stephanie:] Oh, poor Harriet. So, Harriet Smith is a pupil at a nearby boarding school. She is, as the novel puts it, the “natural daughter” of somebody, which means she's an illegitimate child. So, part of what appeals, uh, part of her appeal to Emma is that she's mysterious, right? She doesn't know her background; Emma doesn't know her background. And she can kind of project onto Harriet any number of fantasies about who she might be. Um, for me, Harriet is really interesting, because Harriet feels like she's straight out of an 18th-century novel, right? She's this kind of character, um, with a mysterious background. She – Tom Jones is a very similar character to Harriet Smith. Um, she's a little bit of adult. You know, she's a – she's pretty, but she's a little dim. Um, she provides that kind of foil for Emma in that respect, right? She is absolutely not quick with a response in conversation. Uh, and so, she really gives Emma this kind of fodder, especially in the wake of her governess's marriage, um, for Emma to kind of project all of these fantasies onto her. She's one of – She's Emma's first real, uh, kind of target for her matchmaking scheme. Uh, so I say “poor Harriet” because, you know, Harriet really gets caught up in Emma's imaginative life, when she probably would have done just fine for herself outside of Emma’s imaginative life. 

[Mark:] That's interesting, yeah. Uh, Mr. Knightley. 

[Stephanie:] Mr. Knightley. Mr. Knightley is, on one level, just the boy next door, right? He, uh, is someone who's always been in Emma's life. He also happens to be her brother-in-law her. Uh, her sister has married his brother, so they have this kind of close family connection. And also just that close geographical proximity, he's right there. He's over every day. Um, one of the things that's interesting in this novel, though, to me, is the way that so many of these relationships are overdetermined. So, Knightley is the neighbor – he's kind of her brother and sometimes he seems like her dad, right? He's giving her advice or, you know, kind of chiding her for, you know, doing something that he doesn't think is quite right or, you know, he's the one, as I said, who kind of teases her for making all of these optimistic plans for herself that she doesn't follow through on. Um, and he also becomes, over the course of the novel, a love interest, you know, not just for Emma but for other characters as well. You know, she starts to kind of see him as potentially someone who someone could fall in love with, which had not quite been on her radar prior to the action of the novel. So, you know, he's an interesting guy. But part of the reason why, is that he can kind of fill so many different roles in the narrative. 

[Mark:] Right. You talk in your introduction about the multiple affiliations that a lot of these characters have – how it's not that easy to just pigeonhole them as that they're one thing, but it's a lot of overlapping, uh, relationships going on. 

[Stephanie:] Yeah. I mean, this is a – it's a small town.  

[Mark:] Right. [Stephanie:] It's one of those towns where, you know, you see – you can't avoid someone. You know, you see your friends every day. They're over for cards; you go to visit them; you see them in the grocery store; you see them in the post office. And I think for that reason, we get a lot of these overlapping relationships, which also kind of leads to some challenges as the novel progresses. Because you're not quite sure who you're dealing with in any given situation. 

[Mark:] I think we can slip one more side character in. Should we talk about Jane Fairfax, or is there somebody else that you'd prefer to talk about? 

[Stephanie:] Let's talk about Jane! Though Jane may also, um, lead us to thinking about Miss Bates. I think, you know, part of what I had mentioned earlier about Austen thinking about singleness here, um, is that, yes, Emma is unmarried, Harriet is unmarried. But then Emma has this almost like a doppelganger in Jane Fairfax, of, you know, this other accomplished young woman. You know, they're the same age. They should be friends, but they've never quite gotten on. And so, she provides this kind of, like, alternate possible life that Emma could have led. Um, and Miss Bates, too, who is kind of the spinster figure. She's single, but in a, you know, in a more kind of excessive way, in part because of her poverty. So, it just seems like she, too, is kind of this, “there but for the grace of God, go I” uh, figure for Emma to help her think about what her position in the community also is. 

[Mark:] Stephanie Insley Hershinow, thank you so much for joining us on the Norton Library Podcast and discussing your new edition of Jane Austen's Emma! 

[Stephanie:] Thanks, Mark!  

[Mark:] The Norton Library edition of Emma by Jane Austen, with an introduction by Stephanie Insley Hershinow, is available now in paperback and ebook. Check out the links in the description for this episode for ordering options and more information about the Norton Library, including the full catalog of titles.  

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