10 General Editor's Preface reader living ‘now’, and whatever forces of survival and honour link the cwo. Criticism is the public manifestation of this dialogue, a witness to the continuing power of literanure to arouse and excite. It lluminstes the possibilities and regards of the dialogue, pushing ‘interpretation’ as far forward as it can. go. ‘And here, indeed, is the rub: how far can it go? Where does ‘interpretation’ end and nonsense begin? Why is one interpreta- tion superior to ancther, and why does each age need to interpret for itself? The critic knows that his insights have value only in so far as they serve the text, and that he must take socount of views differing sharply from hie own. He knows that his own writing will be judged as well as the work he writes about, so that tte cannot simply assert inner illumination ora differing taste. The critical forum isa place of vigorous conflict and disagree ment, but there is nothing, in this to cause dismay, What is attested is the complexity of human experience and the richness ‘of literature, not any chaos or relativity of taste. A critic is better seen, no doubt, 2 an explorer than as an ‘authority’, but plorers ought 10 be, and vsually are, well equipped. The effec of {geod criticism is to convince us of what C. S. Lawis called ‘the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors’. A Gabook: wil be used only ii eps to promote thé same A single volume can represent no more than a small selection of extical opinions. Some critics have been excluded far reasons of space, and it is hoped that readers will follow up the further suggestions in the Select Bibliography. Other contributions have been severed from their original context, to which some readers may wish to return, Indeed, if they take a hint from the critics represented here, they certainly will. A.B. Dyson INTRODUCTION Lan going to take a heroine whom no one bot myself will much like,’ said Jane Austen, on commencing the composition of Emma.' Todsy one is inclined to interpret chis remari as the recognition of 2 problem that was to be successfully overcome, rather than as an accurate prediction. Readers like the author's niece, Fanny Knight, who ‘could not bear Emma herself” (see below, p. 33) have been in the minority. Most readers, if they respond to Jane Austen's work at all, have liked Emma Wood- house and the novel that bears her name. There has been con siderable disagreement as to why we like her; but that we do, despite all her fault, is one of Uae most common tributes paid t0 Jane Austen’s skill asa novelist. ‘Although Emma has never heen the most widely popular of Jane Austen’s nevels (that distinction must belong, to Pride and Prejudice) there has been a growing measure of agreement ‘through the years among, her more devoted and discriminating readets that itis her most perfect and fully representative work. It happily combines all che qualities for which she has been most admired: irony, wit, realism, vivid characterisation, moral seriousness and faultless control of tone and narrative metho. No other novel presents us so strikingly with the paradox never Sea sy Sd as Be asec oe Pen es fe en centage oo oe ae going to take...”* James Edward Austen-Leigh, d Memoir of Jane oe ee et Beda Mamma calogue shows thet ap 1 193 ee pe ee ee a eee Nera ee oe ee ee Soe ee eea Incroduction inseparable from our reading of Jane Austen — of rich meanings extracted from superficially slight materials. Modern criticism, in particular, has focused attention on Zmma as the classic example af Jane Ansten’s art; while ite frst publication in 1816 marked the peak ofthe modest fame she attained in her own lifetime. Jane Austen was born in 1775, at Steventon, Hampshire, where her father was rectos, and where she ved until he retired 10 Bath in #8ot. After an unsettled period following Mr Austen's death in 1805, she lived with her mother and sister Cassancira at Chawton, also in Hampshire, from r809 to 1817. In the later year she became seriously ill and moved, for medical attention, 0 Winchester, where she died on 18 July. Although she never married, Jane Austen belonged to a large and lively family, and her life was full of human interest and incident. It was not, how- ever, inany sense a public life: her friends and relations took a keen interest in her writings, but she never moved in literary circles, and her novels were published anonymously in her awn lifetime, ‘The six major novels were published in the following order: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (2813), Mans- field Park (1814), Emma (1816) and (posthumously) Persuasion with Northanger Abbey (1818). As regards composition, hhow- ever, Morthanger Abbey should be gromped with Pride and Pre- jadice and Sense and Sensibility: these three novels were evidently frst writin in the 1790s, and substantially revised before theie eventual publication. The three ‘mature’ novels were written in order of publication, but probably Jane Austen had not finished working on the manuscript of Persuasion when she died. Emma is therefore the lat novel which she completed to her own satis faction and personally saw through the press. Modern scholarsi:ip has uncovered a gnod deal of information about the composition, publication and initial reception of Emma: + Se apelly Cals Beecher Hogan, Jane Auton and her Ealy Public’, in Review of English Studies, ns 1 (1950) pp. 44~7, and R. W, Chapman's Jane furor: Fats end Prose (Ontork p48) tnd Jone Asien: a Cried Biography (Onion, 1953) The ator irety indeed to oth thee waa Inerodsction B A memcrancim in the author's own hand has survived, recording thatthe novel was begun in Janvary 1814, and com pleted on 29 March 1815. Jane Austen was therefore no doubt thinking of er own work in progress when she wrote in September 1814 to her niece Anna, an sspirant novelist, that's or 4 Families in a Country Vilage isthe very thing to work on’! In May 1814 Mansfeld Park had been published, and the edition vas sold out ay November: Jane Austen's reputation was growing, In 181s she heard indirecly that the Prince Regent iter George TV) was an admirer of her novels, and “kept a set Of them in every one of his residences’? ‘The prince's ibrerian, James Stanier Clarke, introduced himself to Jane Auseen when she was in London, and indicated that she might dedicate ser next bock to the prince, Though she had no respect for his personal character, Jane Austen accepted the compliment to her literary merit, and Emma appeared with a dedication to the ‘prince. In the ensuing correspondence Clarke, 1 well-meaning ut somewhat conceited and famous man, who might have stepped from the pages of one of Jane Austen's own novels, provoked one of her most characteristic leters by suggesting that she try ber hand at a historical romance ‘illustrative of the history of the migust House of Cobourg’. Her reply, written (perhaps not fortuitously) on April Foo!'s Day, ina masterpiece of politely disguised irony, and also a serious, perceptive attempt atattstc self-definition (eee below, p.31)- Emme appeared on 29 December 1815, though the tile page {is dated 1816. It was published, in an edition of 2000 copies, by John Murray, whom Jane Austen had aured perhaps because her previous publisher, Egerton, hed failed to produce a second edition of Mansfeld Park. (Murray published a second edition of this novel early in 1876) Henry Austen, who handled his siste’s business affuiry, rejected on hee behalf Murray’s offer of ‘Lago forthe copyrights of Sense and Sensibility, Mansfld Park, and Emma, and the latter two novels were published on a 1 Jae Austen's Letters to her sister Cassandra and het, collected and ‘editad ny 8. W. Clapman (Oxford, 1932) p- * Chapman, Facts and Proloms,p 1384 Introduction profit-sharing basis. A note made by Jane Austen towards the end of her life records a figure of £39 as “first profits of Emma’. Whatever its financial advantages, the publication of Emma by Murray indirectly brought its author a considerable gain in repuation. For Murray was the founder of the influential Quarrerly Review, and his reader was the editor of that journal, William Gifford. Gifford was greatly impressed by the new novel = ‘OF Emma I have nothing but good to say’, he wrote afier reading the manuscript' — and he suggested thar the book deserved a prominent review in the Quarterly. Murrey accord- ingly asked his most distinguished contributor, Sir Walter Scot, if he had ‘any fancy to dash off an article on Emma’? Scot's review, a long article af some sooo words, which also discussed Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, appeared in March 1816, uncigned, a8 was the custom. Even without Scott's signature, the extensive and generally fevourable discussion of her work in the Quarterly was an important milestone in Jane Auster’s literary career, the frst significant recognition that che was a novelist of unusual dis- tinction. It is not known whether she was privately told of the identity of her anonymous reviewer. We know from a lever that she was aware that Scott was the author of the enormously: suc- cessful Waverley (3814), although this novel and its successors ‘were published anonymously and Scott was at this time inown to the general public as a poet. In retrospect, there seems a nice irony in the fact that the first important tribute to Jane Austen's ficion was made by the erch-practitioner of the -nistorical romance, a literary form which, she told James Stanier Clarke, T could not sit down seriously to write... under any other motive han to save my life.’ One of the great merim of Scott's review is that he atiempts to place jane Austen in relation to existing fictional traditions, In its first appearance,” he suggests, ‘the novel was she lepitimate Child of the romance’, and it honoured its parentage by offering the reader heightened narrative interest and idealised sentiment, * Chapman, Facts and Problems, p. 156 Hogan, RESN 145. 4 Ease. Chopra, pang * 7 Insrodseion 5 But, he suggests, ‘these excitements... had lost uch of their poignaney by the repeated and injudicious use of them and in consequence a ‘style of novel has arisen in the last fifteen or twenty years’ which instead exploits ‘the art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, and pre- senting w the reader, instead of the splendid soenes of an imagi- nary would, a concrete and striking represenztion ofthat whi daily taking place around him’. Jane Austen isthe prime exem- plar of this new kind of novel Scot's argument pechape underestimates the realistic, antic romantic quality of much eighteenth-century tion, especially Richardson's and his anempt tn see Jane Austen as representing a current literary trend somewhat obscures the highly individual character of her work. For Jane Austen's realism does not anerely offer alternative diversions to those of an exhausted romance urdition: it implicitly discredits dhe false patterns imposed upon experience by literary conventions ~ including those that Scott himeel relied upon. That Seote was half-aware of this challenge is suggested by the conciusion of his article, where he defends, somewhat selfindulgently, the code of romantic love. But Scot is both generous and perceptive in his praise of Jane Austen's art, and is fully alive to the dificaltien over which it tumphs. His detailed aocount of Emma shows that he had read it with ateentive appreciation. Other contem porary reviewers were generally favourable, but only Scott shows any consciousnes of dealing witha lnerary masterpiece" Te was in frct @ long sine before Jane Austen was generally acknowledged 10 be a major novelis. In ler lifetime, and immediatly afterwards, ahe suffered the penalties of being an *Scows respect for Jane Austen was not diminished with # passing of times n 1836 be noted in his journal "That young lady bad alent fer descbing the involvemencs, and feeling, and characters of ordinary fe which sto me the most wonderfl tang ever met with The big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; bus the exquisite touch, which render ordiesy commonplace Panes and ‘Sameer interesting from the truth of the description and the seni ‘ment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died 90 my?Bs Introduction anti-somantic writer in an age of romanticism. Coleridge and Southey held her work in high estecra its true, but n0 comment is recorded from Byron, Shelley or Keats, and Wordsworth characteristically remarked that ‘though he admitied that her novels were an admirable copy of life, he could not be interested Jn productions of that kind; unless che truth of nature were presented to him clarified, as it were, by the pervading light of the imagination, it had scarce any attractions in his eyes’ It has often heen remarked that the Oxford Movernent was a child of the Romantic Revival, and it is not surprising to find John Henry Newman in 1837 qualifying his admiration for Emma with some regrets for the lack of ‘body? and ‘romance’ in the story (see below, p. 49). Charlotte Bronté, whose own fiction is the antithesis of Jane Austen's, puts the romantic case against her with typical vehemence (see below, p. 50). Anthony Trollops, a novelist who had rather more in common with Jane Austen, responds to the ironic characterisation of Emma, but he sees the novel, sather condescendingly, as essentially a ‘period-piece” (see below, p. 51). Jane Austen always had enthusiastic admirers in the decades following her death - Archbishop Whately, Macaulay and George Lewes, for example, all compared her skill in charace terisation to Shakespeare's! — but it was nct until 1833 that her novels were reprinted; and when her nephew James Edward ‘AvmenLeigh published his Memoir in 2871 it was his opinion that ‘Seldom has any literary reputatiem been of such slow growth, as that of Jane Austen’ By that date, however, the reputation ‘was established, if the wide interest shown in the Memoir is any evidence, Among the many long articles it provoked in the periodical press was one of the finest studies of Jane Austen ever ‘written: Richard Simpson's exeay in the North British Review (ee below, p. 52). 7 See Chapman, Biography, p.2 coe mage 2'Sce Chapinan, Biography, pp. a5, 27 end 29, The comparison smay surprise che modern reader, Put ainetecath-centuryextcs tended to ee Shakespeare above ll the master of realistic cheracreriasion. Insrodiction ” Before Simpsons article - and for a long time afterwards ~ tributes to Jane Austen concentrated monotonously on her skill in conveying an illusion of life. “Real” and ‘natural were the most, common epithets of praise bestowed upon her work, the art of ‘which was seen to consist principally of investing fictitious characters and actiors with tie kind of interest that we take in people and events within our own actual experience. Such w the response of Jane Austen's own circle, as we see from the ‘Opinions’ she collected, and it was one she indulged privately by providing sequels to her stories.” tis a natural response, and cone which we can never entirely suppress — probably we should ‘ot uy to, Butas ¢ way of interpreting and evaluating Jane Austen it has severe limitations. Under its influence, criticism very easily degenerates into gossip, at which level itis incapable of explaining ‘why we shovld consider Jane Austen an important writer. The most hostile critics of ber work ~ Charlotte Bronté, for example, or E. N. Hayes (see below, p. 74) have acknowledged thet she gives a marvellovsly lifelike rendering of the world she knew: their objection bas been that she does nothing else, and thar the world she knew was foo narrow in is scope and too superficial in its values to provide the stuff of great literature, Tis the great vire of Simpson's essay that he shows how Jane Austen's ‘miniatures’ of middle-ciess Regency society ‘mediate a complex and challenging vision of experience, and he does so in terms which remarkably anticipate the conclusions of the most sophisticated modern criticism, That Jane Austen bad aan ewentially critical aad ironic vrision, defined initially by parodic contrast with literary stereotypes; that her fiction was not thrown off by akind of effortless knack, Sut ‘worked up by inoes- sant labour into its perfect form’; thet her novels, arranged in, ander of composition, reveal a coherent paitecn of development; that she was a subtle and unsentimental moralist, particular! concerned with the processes of selfliscovery and the attain 1 According to tradition, she predicted that Mr Woodhouse would live for two years after his daughter's marriage, and that Mrs Frank Cliurehil would die young. See R. W. Chapman, Facts and Problems, pp. 123 and 186.8 Ineroduction ‘ment of mamirity through personal relations ~ all these points, snade by Simpson, reappear in such modern crties as Dr and Mrs Leavis, Marvin Mudrick and Lionel Triling. Criticism in the decades following Simpson's article, however, failed to maintain the srandard he had set. The first two full. leogth studies of Jane Austen, Mrs Charles Malden's Jane dlusten (1889) and Goldwin Smith's Life of Jane Austen (1890) rarely rise above the level of chatty paraphrase. ‘The extract fiom Walter Hersies Pollock's fare Austen: dn essay in criticism (1899) given below {eee p. 61) concerning an inconsistency in Emma, is characteristic of the tendency of ‘Janeites" to concern them selves with minutiae, It was evidently the growth of a cosy, undiseriminating cult of Jane Austen at this period that provoked Henry James's outburst against ‘the body of publishers, editor, illustrators, producers of the present twaddle of magazines, who have found their “dear”, our dear, everybody's dear, Jane 50 infinitely to their material purpose’.* The meagreness of James's recorded comments on Jane Austen ~ meagre both in quantity and praise ~ is one of the great puzzles and disappointments of literary history, for of all earlier English novelists she seems closest to him in spirit and in concern for formal artistry — in Particular the narrative method of Emma has been picked out as anticipating James's experiments with ‘point of view’. William Dean Howells, James's compatriot and friend, was more sympa thetic, 18 his sensitive character-skerch of Emma shows (sce helow, p. 62). American critics are now among the most ene thusiattic and perceptive readers of Jane Austen; but as Richard Poirier suggests in his comparison of Emma and Huckleberry Finn (see below, p. 78), her art concentrates all che qualities that baracterise English literary culture and distinguish it from the _,t This term for devotees of Jane Austen was coined by Rudyard Kipling in a story called “The Janez” (19a) and ims had somewhat Rigas ee ie ta ier oe Sek Geanmoese ee O 3 See, for instance, RW. Chapman, ‘fine Austen's Methods’ in Times Literary Supplement, 9 Feb 192%, p 2; and F.R. Leavis, The Groat Tradition (3948) p19 2. introduction 19 Ametican. She has always been peculiarly ‘English’ classic. ‘Though her novels were translated into French throughout the nineteen:h century, no major French novelist up to and including, Proust makes reference to her, and it has been said that ‘from the point of view of the European tradition of the novel she might 2s ‘well never have existed’? Jn English criticism of the lave nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Emme is more and more frequently cited as the jpremeexaraple of Jane Austen's art. Mrs Oliphant, irs Malden, Goldwir Smith, A. C. Bradiey and George Saintsbury all reach this verdict. For Reginald Farrer, writing in 1917, it was ‘the nis of Emma anticipated nt criticism of the novel in stressing the control of tone and narrative method by which Jane Austen maintains a delicare halance of symoatheti identification and critical derach= ment in our response to her iaeroine (see below, p. 54). ‘The twenties and thirties of this century saw a revolution in English studies, a sudden expansion and intensification of critical activity marked by the development of‘elose reading’ techniques gy, sociology and anthropology. But the new criticism concerned itself initially with poetry and poetic drama, and the study of the novel was comparatively late in feeling its effecs. As faras Jane Austen is concemed, this period was dominated by the schclarship of R. W. Chapman, who provided definitive editions of the novels (in 1923), the Lerzers (in 1932) and much previously unpublished minor work. By the end of the thires, most of the exrant materials for the study of Jane Austen were ‘generally available, and since then books and articles about her have streamed from the presses in ever-increasing numbers. In 1939 Mary Lascelles published Jane Austen and her Art, "Joseph Cady and Tan Watt, ‘Jane Austen's Critic’, in Critical Quarterly, © (4963) 55. This is the best survey known to the editor. Margaret Oliphant, Literary History of England (3882) 1 20 Goldwin Smith, Life of Jane usten (1890) p. Bxraye ond Sradies, 1 (i911) 223 George Sainsbury, The Kngish Novel (igt5) p 19820 Ineroduetion which is still in many ways the soundest and most helpful full- Jength stady (though it does not lend itself to representation in extracts). In the 19408, the highly influential school of critics associated with F. R. Leavis and the journal Scrutiny defined Jane Austen a «living classic who answered to the moat rigorous ‘demands of modem criticism. Dr Leavis, though he has published no extended work on Jane Austen, placed her firmly ar the beginning of his “Great Tradition’ of English novelists (the ‘other members being George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence), and characterstcally stressed her ‘intense moral preoccupation’. ‘When we examine the formal perfection of Emma,’ he says, ‘we Snd that it can be appreciated only in terms of the moral preoccupations that characterise the novelist’s peculiar interest in life." This emphasis has been challenged by Graham Hough, who cites Leavis and Maleoim Bradbury on Emma in the course of a polemic against ‘moral’ criticism. Hough argues thet the formal perfection of Emma ‘consists of such things as its limited and clearly defined subject, its selective narrative method, its stylised dialogue, its consi=. tency and truth to social reality, none of which have ‘much ro do with Jane Austen's moral preoceupations” (see below, p. 81). Tie present writer has suggested that this vexed question of the relationship between formal and moral value might be resolved by inverting Leavis’s formulation to read: “Wien we examine the moral precorupations that characterise Jane Austen's peculiar interest in life as snanifested in Emma, we find that they can be appreciated only in terms of the formal perfection of the novel” In other words, the kind of interests aroused by Emma are fundamentally moral, but their jiterary value inheres in the formal artistry through which shey are communicated.3 Two Scrutiny articles of particular interest are D. W. Harding’ aspect of the work of Jane Austen’ and Critical Theory of Jane Austen's Writings’, phasised Jane Austen's. painstaking, dedicated ‘Leavis, The Great Tradition p. x7. "David Lodge, “The Critical Moment, 964", 71 (1964) 268-5. n Critical Quarterly, Tneroduetion a craftsmanship by arguing that the major aovels went through several drafis before she was satisfied with them, and suggested that thelr sources could be detected ir the early minor work. According, to this theory, Emma (whese, Mrs Leavis says, ‘we ser [Janz Austen] at the climax of her art and in completest possible control over her writing’) was worked up out of an unfinished story called The Watsons, begun probably in 1803, but not published until r927.* Harding’s article was a less technical and more radical exercise in reappraisal, and its influence has bees profound, though controversial. This was the most mS rare So far from gentle, consoling writer, comfortably confirming the values of her own milieu, Jane Austen, Harding argued, was in many ways fiercely hostile to her social environment, and writing was her way of “inding some mode of existence for her critical atitades’. Her ‘hatred’ is ‘regulated’ so successfully that most readers contrive to overlook it, but to do so is 0 misunderssand her. Emma is interesting precisely for its recognition that ‘even a heroine is likely to have assimilated many of the more unpleasant possibilities of the human being in society’ (see below, p. 69). Modern eriticiam of Jane Austen is concerned less with defending her status as a classic (this is generally taken for granted, and “dissenting opinions’ such as that of E. N. Haynes, are rare) than ‘with defining the precise nature of her achievement ard ber im- portance. In this debate Firmahas occupied a central position, and the essays collected in the second part ofthis selecion have been chosen not oaly for thei intrinsic quality, but a ilusteations of the divesity of approach and Interpretation this novel con:inues 1 provoke. Emma, says Edmund Wilson, ‘is with Jane Austen ‘what Hemlet's with Shakespeare. Its the novel about which ber readers are likely to disagree mos.” But in all the confict of pinion we can isolate certain recurrent issues, of wich the most *Q, D. Leavis, ‘A Critical Theory of Jane Austen's Weitings’, in Serutiny, k (p41-2) 758 3Rdmand Wilson, ‘A L Yorker, x3 Oct 1945. Talk About Jane Austen’, in Mewery Inuroduction jmportant are: the character of Emma and our response 10 her, the nature of the adjustment she makes to ber world, and the relationship of the world of Emma to the world of actuality ‘These are questions of meaning, but they involve at every point questions of form, since it is only by careful attention to the structure and texture of the novel chat we can determine what it Most of the contribmtors agree that Jane Austen gave an important clue to the meaning of Emma when she said she was going to take a heroine ‘whom no-one but myself will much ike’, but it was cvidently an ambiguous one. To Marvin Mudcick, clearly writing under the nfiuence of D. W. Harding, Emma is indeed in many ways an unlikeable heroine, a latent Lesbian, who is essentially incapable of committing herself in normal human relationships, and who finally triumphs only Decause in “her social milien charm conquers, even as it makes every cruel and thoughtless mistake; because .. it finds. com- mitted to it even the good and the wise, even when it is known and evaluated” ', Exama's ‘reformation’, and the marriage to Mr Knightley which rewards it are, Mudrick suggests, Suilt on shaky foundations, and the fact that most readers have accepted them at face valve is the ultimate icouy of a novel steeped in ioay: ‘Zmma is a novel admired, even consecrated, for qualities which it in fact subverts or ignores.’ Madrick’s essay is perhaps moze provocative than persuasive, and Eagar F. Shannon's conservaive reading of Etna make some telling pointsagainst him. Shanaon's argument that Emma's reformation is genuine, and is meant to be interpreted as such, gains considerable weight from his sensitive demonstration of the pattern of counterpointed motifs that invite us to contrast the mature with the immature Emma. Malcolm Bradbury analyses the structure of the novel to much the same affect, I, however, we interpret Emma as essentially the story of a Saved and set deceived herine who finally comes ton rote of true self-awareness, it is clear that, in Bradbury's words, “ihe Marvin Madrick, Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery (Princeton, 1952) p. vil Tneroduetion 43 antistic problem of the book is... 1o make us care for Emma in such a way that we care about her fate, and like her, but that we in 0 way subdue cnr moral feelings about her faults’. This is essentially a problem of narrative method, ofthe ‘point of view" the story is told; and no one las dope fuller justice spect of the novel than Wayne Booth/He shows how Jane Austen ensures our sympathetic identification with the ineroine by making her the primary centre of consciousness, through which most of the experience of the novel is mediated, but contols and checks such identification by discreet anthorial interventions, ironic deflations of Emma, and well-timed com- ments from the most morally reliable character in the book, Mr Rnightley."7 Tn one respect Booth’s analysis has been pertinently challenged by W. J. Harvey. Booth suggested that the ironie distancing of Emma was sacrificed to some extent to the author's desire for mynifietion, particularly concerning the relationship between ic Courchill and Jane Fairfax, so that itis only on the second reading of the novel that we fully appreciate the scale of Emma's self-deception. Harvey argues, justly I think, that the ‘mystfica- tion’ is not just an end in ise, but a response ‘appropriate to the world of surmise, speculation, misunderstandings and cross purposes that the novel depicts’, without which the ironies would be ‘ponderous and schematic’. Even on second reading, ‘our attention is so diversified by the thick web of linguistic mance *hat we do not concentrate single-minded results of the mystification’. One might add that we never seem to exhaust the subde ironies of Emma, and this perhaps expiains why we can never sssume a position of detached superiority towards the heroine. Becoming aware, at each re-reading, of what we ‘missed’ in previous readings, we are compelled to acknowledge, like Emma herself, the fallbility of standing Mark Schorer, who approaches ihe novel through # close alysis of its linguistic texture, comes closer to Mudrick most of the contributors in stressing that its significance is muc ‘more ambivalent and ‘open’ than its elegant design suggestsey Introduction “Although Jane Austen is not given to overtly figurative expres- sion, Schorer demonstrates that her language is saturated with dead or buried metaphors drawn from commerce and property, the counting-house and the inherited estate, creating the sense of a word of peculiarly matcrial values, against which the world of the action, concerned with refinement of sensibility and moral discrimination, is ironically juxtaposed. The novel is concerned with the adjustment of these two scales of value in the fate of the heroine, but it is an adjasemens, not a victory of one over the other. This is Jane Austen’s ‘moral realism’. R. E. Hughes makes 2 similar case in plotting Emma's progress from an immature conception of love divorced from material values, to an equally immature concern with material values divorced from love, to a mature wconciliation of the ‘wo in her Gnal self-awareness and marriage to Knightley. This reading, if somewhat over- schematic, has the advantage of bringing out the relationship of Emma'co its tistorial context. Hinghes makes the interesting suggestion that views of Jane Austen's novels may be divided into the ‘microscopic’ sees them as self-sufficient renderings of a particular, limized milien) and the ‘microcosmic’ (which sees them as symbolic structures having analogical relationship to che world at large, and thus conveying a timeless and universal meaning). In practice, it would be dificult to maintain either positon in an absolute sense, for the kind of fiction Jane Austen writes makes its effects through the iliusion of reaiistic particulatity, but just because it is fiction, and not history, our efforts wo interpret it inevitably suggest ‘its analogical relaion to a larger, more generalised ‘reality’. However, 28a distinction of emphasis, itis a neseful one. Arnold Kettle, for instance, has dificulry in arguing away his doubts about the major significance of Emma because be is a ‘microscopic’ reader. “We do not get from Emma a condensed and refined sense of a larger entity’, be says. ‘Neither is ita symbolic work suggesting referencea far beyond its surface meaning.’ Emmis shout living in Highbury, not about Life, ard Itin'‘ae convincing 2s our own lives’. But, a a critic with strong social ~ indeed, socialist ~ interests, Kettle is troubled hy the Introduction 35 exclusion of so much contemporary social reality from the novel. Many readers of Jane Austen have had the same misgivings, but few have faced them as honestly as Kettle, or tested them against as sensitive a reading, Given a ‘microscopic’ reading of Emma, a Leavisian emphasis on moral intelligence is one way of socount- ing for its ‘universal’ significance. This is Bradbury's conclusion: “We have been persuaded . .. of the importance of true regard for the self and for others, persuaded 0 see the full human being as full, ine, morally serious, totally responsible, entirely in- volved, and to consider every human action as a crucial, com ritting act of self-definition.” Perhaps the boldest sofurion to the constantly debated ques- tion of the relationship between the world of Fimma and che world of actuality is that of Lionel Trilling, who identifies the novel generically as a combination of comedy and idyll, Ie is an error ta suppose that ‘Jane Austen's world really did exist’, but 4 pardonable one, because it is a tribute to the moving and elevating, power of her myth, the ‘extraordinary promise’ and ‘rare hope’ it holds out to ue of ‘controlling, the personal life, of becoming acquainted with ourselves, of creating a community of “inrelligent love” ’. In che course of his characteristically thoughtful, snggestive and eloquent essay, Trilling makes two semarks with which [should like to conclude Temy be felt that a casebook of this kind submerges the living text in a weer of critical commentary, and that ir confuses rather than asists che reader by the diversity of interpretation it reveals. On the lanier point I would invoke Trilling’s observation that Emma ‘is ike @ person ~ not to be comprehended fully and ‘nally by any other person’; and on the former, his remark thet ‘it is possible to say of Jane Ansten, as perhaps we can say of n0 other vriter, that the opinions which are held of her work are almest as interesting, and almost as ftaportant to think about, as the work itself”. In fact, these statements aeem to me to be applicable to any significant writer or work, and to constitute the nltimare justification of the activity we call criticism. Without a doubs, they apply to Jane Austen's Emma. Dav Lopor