How does Emma's management of Harriet's affairs reveal the important issues in Jane Austen's 'Emma'

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Francesca White 12C

How does Emma’s management of Harriet’s affairs reveal the important issues in Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’

In this novel, Jane Austen uses the relationship between Emma and Harriet to highlight the important issues.  She uses Emma’s management of Harriet to do this.  She creates contrast between Emma and Harriet; she portrays Emma as beautiful and intelligent though we can still see faults in her personality.  The main fault is her desire to control people and match-make them.  This also raises issues, including the position of women and Emma’s social status, marriage and comedy which is shown through irony, especially in the relationship between Emma and Harriet.

The first thing we read is ‘Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich’.  By beginning the novel with this quote, we can see the qualities considered important at that time and how Emma has a high social status.  When we first hear of Harriet, we can see a contrast between the two characters.  ‘Harriet was the natural daughter of somebody.  Somebody had placed her several years back at Mrs Goddard’s school.’  We see that Harriet is an orphan which automatically contrasts with Emma’s strong family history.  The way Austen says ‘natural daughter of somebody’ suggests her unimportance and lack of family history which was considered important in Austen’s time.  Also, the way the word ‘placed’ is used makes her seem like an inanimate object.  The reader sees from the beginning that these two characters are extremely different and therefore not a natural friendship.  This raises the theme of social class.

Another main theme in the novel is marriage.  Emma’s attitude to this reveals Austen’s thoughts.  In Austen’s time, marriage was based on money, property and status.  However, we see that Austen believes that it should be for love.  This shows that Austen had views ahead of her time.  When Emma hears of Mr Martin’s proposal, she believes that Harriet’s status is higher than his, and should refuse the offer when, in fact, this is not true at all.  In this sense, Emma is very naïve and shows how she misjudges situations.  Mr Martin is of a higher social class than Harriet and also has more money.  Here Emma is misusing her patronage.

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A further theme of the novel is patronage and how Emma abuses it.  When Harriet refuses Mr Martin’s proposal, we can see that Harriet realises that she is in no position to do so, but Emma does not realise this, portraying Emma as being quite ignorant of this issue.  Mr Woodhouse – Emma’s father – is satirised by Austen to be a worrier, and is oblivious to what goes on around him.  He, therefore, does not see Emma’s matchmaking and management of people.  He is one of the main people of whom Emma manages.  Through this we see that ...

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