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Emma: A Novel: from its
title-page and its first two words—“Emma Woodhouse”—onwards, Jane Austen’s most
perfect narrative focuses on one woman, confining itself almost entirely to
Emma’s own consciousness.1 In any small,
close-knit community such as Highbury, with its obligations, benefits, and
irritations, speech—communication—is central. Accordingly, Emma, more than any other of Austen’s
novels, emphasizes the significance of speech, not only through its brilliant
dialogue, but also through an intense consciousness of speech habits and their
implications. Miss Bates—who is, of course, the “talker” of my title—Mr.
Elton, Mrs. Elton, Mr. Woodhouse—all are recognizable every time they open
their mouths, not just because of the content of their speeches but also
because of the characteristic ways in which they express themselves. Not
only are the inhabitants of Highbury defined and illuminated by their own
speech habits, they also comment on each other’s diction and locutions and
furthermore discuss the implications of language use, which is also the subject
of narrative comment. As Juliet McMaster says, “the discriminating members
of Highbury society have a virtually professional expertise in each others’
language” (“Secret Language” 121). In discussing all these aspects of the
treatment of language in Emma, my
focus is on how, in this novel especially, Austen gently but invariably
moralizes speech acts—how in Emma, “death
and life are in the power of the tongue,” to quote the biblical Book of
Proverbs (18:21). Allusions to
Death, Life, and the Bible may sound rather overstrained in reference to
Austen’s comedy, in which, after all, nothing of any great significance
happens. As its first critic, Walter Scott, pointed out, “Emma has even less story than either [Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice]” (Southam 419).
Any catastrophe that threatens is averted. Mrs. Weston’s poultry houses
are raided, so Emma and Mr. Knightley can be happy. Mrs. Churchill
conveniently dies, so Frank and Jane can be happy. Yet the seriousness of
this comedy is beyond dispute: there is a strong sense throughout of the
communal obligation of minimizing other people’s pain and furthering other
people’s well-being. It is not by chance that this is the only one of the
six novels in which the heroine is seen in that most characteristic activity of
the nineteenth-century lady, charitable visits to the poor.2 Every character
inevitably fails in this obligation of charity from time to time, most notably
Emma herself. And Emma’s worst misdeeds, her worst offences against the
community, are verbal. Indeed, it is arguable that, at this period, the
moral life of gentry women—“ladies”—most often involved speech rather than
action because it was through speech that they were able to exercise their
freedom. The most memorable of Emma’s offences is her unkindness to Miss
Bates at Box Hill, when she cannot resist a jibe at the older woman’s speech
habits as sure to lead her to exceed the limit of “‘three things very dull
indeed’” (370). If we wince at this small incident, it is because Austen
puts us in Emma’s place, so well do we understand both Emma’s original temptation
and her later contrition: Miss Bates is clearly infuriating and clearly
good-nature itself. Moreover, Austen perhaps flatters her readers into
believing that they share the temptations of a wit, such as Emma, to make
amusing if hurtful remarks. The dangers of wit were a commonplace of the
period: the well-known conduct writer,
Dr. Gregory, comments that “wit is so flattering to vanity, that those who
possess it become intoxicated, and lose all self-command” (30). Well,
yes—especially when it is a very hot day and everyone in the company is feeling
rather irritable. Though Miss Bates is hurt, however, she soon forgives
Emma. The ill-effects of Emma’s other verbal misdeeds last longer.
Emma’s failure in “the duty of woman by woman” (231) in imparting to Frank
Churchill her “abominable suspicions” about Jane Fairfax and Mr. Dixon is
indeed, as she comes to realize, “unpardonabl[e]” in itself (421): it
also causes embarrassment to herself as well as to Jane. Again, Emma’s
heedless fostering of Harriet’s infatuation with Mr. Elton, “talking her” into
love, gives Harriet five months of unnecessary misery. The far fewer
words of encouragement she gives Harriet in relation to her second love (or
perhaps, Harriet being Harriet, her third love) backfire, of course, causing
both women brief but acute pain. Other characters also commit significant verbal aggressions, to adopt Juliet McMaster’s phrase (“Mrs. Elton” 73). Frank Churchill’s teasing of Jane about a tune that was “‘danced at Weymouth’” (242) may indeed be “not kind,” as Elizabeth Newark says (215), but his words at Box Hill, which Jane knows only too well how to interpret, are far more cruel: “‘How many a man has committed himself on a short acquaintance, and rued it all the rest of his life!’” he says, angrily (372). John Knightley is ill-tempered; George Knightley scolds—or at least, he scolds Emma. But like Emma, these characters acknowledge, and sometimes even feel shame for, their verbal affronts. They are sensitive and intelligent enough to acknowledge what they have done. But those who offend most through their words are quite incapable of perceiving their offences and are therefore incapable of change. Consider Mrs. Elton: Augusta Hawkins Elton’s use of language resembles that of advertising rather than of literature or conversation. She uses language not so much for communication and interaction as for the greater glory of Augusta Hawkins Elton and manages to inflict many wounds in the process. At the dinner party at Hartfield, for instance, she bullies Jane Fairfax incessantly, first about her visits to the post office, and then about getting a position as governess. She refuses to listen to Jane’s firm but quiet protests, speaking in terms of “‘exert[ing] . . . authority’” over Jane (295). Such self-aggrandizing patronage allows her to advertise her belief in her general superiority, as well as the fact that she has more than one manservant (to collect Jane’s letters) and sundry rich connections (to employ Jane as governess). The implications of this episode are underlined by its ending—by the brilliant comedy of the dialogue, or dual monologue, between her and Mr. Weston, in which Mr. Weston wishes only to talk about his son and Mrs. Elton wishes only to talk about Mrs. Elton. As Marilyn Butler says, “none of the comic characters communicate. They surround themselves with a web of words but with words that convey their own selfhood, their individuality and make little or no impact on the consciousness of others” (271). More accurately, perhaps, the consciousness of others makes little or no impact on these speakers. That is as true of Mr. Weston as of Mrs. Elton, but, as with Miss Bates, his verbal offences are easily forgiven because of his patent good nature. Mrs. Elton’s speech is
the subject of frequent comment by the other characters, both for its content and
its manner. Emma notes especially Mrs. Elton’s pretentious ways of
speaking of other people, which show her ignorance of polite usage as well as
of grammatical Italian. After her first tête-à-tête with Mrs. Elton, Emma
exclaims “‘Knightley!—I could not have believed it. Knightley!—never seen
him in her life before, and call him Knightley! . . . her Mr. E, and
her cara sposo’” (Samuelian 255). Chapman’s edition corrects Mrs. Elton’s
mistake and prints “caro sposo,” but it seems significant that she gets it
wrong twice—and that Emma seems to observe this.3 Her husband’s speech habits—apart from his perpetual “exactly so”—have perhaps a more unpleasant significance. Both the Knightley brothers observe the great difference between his speech with women and with men. Mr. Knightley warns Emma, “‘Elton may talk sentimentally, but he will act rationally. . . . [F]rom his general way of talking in unreserved moments, when there are only men present, I am convinced that he does not mean to throw himself away’” (66); his less tolerant brother comments, “‘I never in my life saw a man more intent on being agreeable than Mr. Elton. It is downright labour to him where ladies are concerned. With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please every feature works’” (111). My concern here is not so much with Mr. Elton’s sexism but with a related matter, his hypocrisy. While Emma thinks that he is Harriet’s suitor, she notes his excessive gallantry merely with some amusement, observing his care “that nothing ungallant, nothing that did not breathe a compliment to the sex should pass his lips” (70). She notes, “there was a sort of parade in his speeches which was very apt to incline her to laugh. She ran away to indulge the inclination” (82). The truth does begin to dawn on her at one point, when she thinks, “‘[T]his man is almost too gallant to be in love’” (49); she quickly brushes the realization aside, however. Emma is, typically if regrettably, more sensitive to what offends Emma than to what might offend Emma’s dear friend. It is not until Emma is forced to recognize that she herself is his object, that she recognizes Elton’s hypocrisy for what it is: “There had been no real affection either in his language or manners. Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance; but she could hardly devise any set of expressions, or fancy any tone of voice, less allied with real love” (135). Elton’s “fine words” are addressed to Emma’s £30,000 rather than to Emma herself. Such hypocrisy
as Elton’s is especially offensive in a text such as this, in which truth, like
charity, is paramount. Elton, like a coarser Frank Churchill, fails to
observe the standards of strict honesty. Emma, when driven to consider “‘what
a man should be,’” talks about “‘that strict adherence to truth and principle,
that disdain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every
transaction of his life’” (397). Plainly, her standards are set by Mr.
Knightley. Truth in this narrative is related to love, or more precisely
to the appropriate male love object, for here the males most worthy to attract
females—Mr. Knightley, Mr. Martin—are the truth-tellers. Mr. Knightley is
represented as nothing if not honest, and in his relation with Emma it is in
part “‘the beauty of truth and sincerity’” that he values (446). Emma
shares his values, and, after her engagement, is wounded by her need to conceal
certain details for Harriet’s sake. She finds the need to practice a
degree of deceit towards Mr. Knightley “little inferior to the pain of having
made Harriet unhappy” (463). And, when Harriet is safely in the hands of
Mr. Martin and the need for reticence is over, “[h]igh in the rank of [Emma’s]
most serious and heartfelt felicities, was the reflection that all necessity of
concealment from Mr. Knightley would soon be over. The disguise,
equivocation, mystery, so hateful to her to practise might soon be over. She
could now look forward to giving him that full and perfect confidence which her
disposition was most ready to welcome as a duty” (475). For Emma,
sincerity is a value she accepts both instinctively and intellectually. Elton’s speech,
with its compliments and “parade,” offends against sincerity. It also
offends against the values implicit in Emma
in a less serious but related way. “‘One man’s style must not be the
rule of another’s,’” says Mr. Knightley, as he reads Frank Churchill’s letter,
having finally achieved a degree of tolerance for Frank (445). All the
same, it is quite clear that he does take his own style as a rule and that his
style is the plain style, quite at odds with the “‘fine complimentary’”
approach of Frank Churchill and Mr. Elton (445). The treatment of the
plain style in Emma implies that it
is an indication of moral quality as well as of good taste, that it is of value
to the community in general, not merely an indication of social class.
When Knightley asks Emma to marry him, he uses what the narrative voice
describes as “plain, unaffected, gentleman-like English” (448), a significant
conjunction of adjectives, placing the moral (“plain” and “unaffected,” which
imply “truthful”) alongside the social (“gentleman-like”). Knightley
himself seems to think of his own plain-spokenness as a guarantee of sincerity:
“‘I cannot make speeches,’” he tells Emma, “‘If I loved you less, I might be
able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.—You hear nothing but
truth from me’” (430). The narrative voice seems to support this implied
connection between plain speech and sincerity. When the Knightley
brothers meet, “‘How d’ye do, George?’ and ‘John, how are you?’ succeeded
in the true English style, burying under a calmness that seemed all but
indifference, the real attachment which would have led either of them, if
requisite, to do every thing for the good of the other” (99). Knightley’s
bluntness occasionally verges on rudeness but never quite crosses the
line. Margaret Kirkham believes he is insulting to Miss Bates, as
offensive as Emma at Box Hill, in asking her, “‘[A]re you mad, to let your
niece sing herself hoarse in this manner?’” (229; Kirkham 133). Miss
Bates, however, clearly recognizes his good intentions, and minds no more than
Emma minds when Knightley affectionately calls her a “‘[n]onsensical girl’” (214). Use of the
plain style also indicates Robert Martin’s fine qualities. His language is
described in precisely the same terms as that of Mr. Knightley: “The
style of the letter [proposing to Harriet] was much above [Emma’s] expectation.
There were not merely no grammatical errors, but as a composition it would not have disgraced a gentleman;
the language, though plain, was
strong and unaffected, and the
sentiments it conveyed very much to the credit of the writer. It was
short, but expressed good sense, warm attachment, liberality, propriety, even
delicacy of feeling” (50-51, my emphasis). Mr. Knightley, too, praises
Robert Martin for his use of plain language: “‘I never hear better sense
from any one than from Robert Martin. He always speaks to the purpose;
open, straight forward, and very well judging’” (59). Like his
landlord’s, Robert Martin’s language communicates warmth, openness, and
sincerity. In Emma, verbal
style indicates moral style.
My title
alludes to silence as well as speech, but so far I have discussed the speech
rather than the silences in Emma.
But silences are essential to this novel, which would have virtually no plot
without them. Many people, notably P. D. James, who knows about
these things, have written about Emma
in terms of the detective story or mystery, and such narratives demand
silences, gaps in the available information. But silences in Emma work beyond the level of plot.
Like speech, silences—failures or refusals to communicate—can be aggressions
against communal values. Jane’s silence, and even more so Frank’s
combinations of misleading speech and silence, offend in that they unsettle
normal community interactions in a closely-knit society, in which people are
accustomed to expect to understand the network of relationships amongst which
they live. For Emma,
Frank’s concealment is an abuse of those communal values. She attacks
Frank’s behavior, and her implicit grounds are again the importance of those
standards embodied in Mr. Knightley—the need for truth and sincerity in a
community: “‘What has it been but a system of hypocrisy and deceit,—espionage,
and treachery?—To come among us with professions of openness and simplicity;
and such a league in secret to judge us all!—Here have we been, the whole
winter and spring, completely duped, fancying ourselves all on an equal footing
of truth and honour’” (399). Emma’s anger, of course, arises partly from
her sense of her own foolishness in talking to Frank about Jane and Mr.
Dixon. But she is right in her judgment of Frank, too, in that though he
is intelligent and good-natured enough to avoid the worst offences of the
Eltons, his value for truth and direct dealing is suspect, to say the least.
“‘I am the wretchedest being in the world at a civil falsehood,’” he says; but
even as he speaks he is deceiving Emma about his knowledge of Jane’s piano, and
he can find plenty of additional ways to distort the truth, both through speech
and through silence (234). While silences
can be abused, in almost any society they are sometimes desirable and
inevitable: “[s]eldom, very seldom does complete truth belong to any
human disclosure,” says the narrative voice (431). Emma loves “‘every thing
that is decided and open’” (460) and acknowledges the beauty of frankness, but
she cannot tell the whole truth about her recent emotional history to Mr.
Knightley without wounding Harriet further than she has been wounded
already. The paramount values of this novel, truth and charity, are
occasionally and realistically incompatible. There are occasions when
truth does damage. Emma, with
its stress on community, puts forward the ideal of a careful and intelligent
negotiation between speech and silence, between openness and tact, for the
benefit of communal living. Indeed,
although Emma undoubtedly has the “‘open temper’” that Mr. Knightley loves
(289), she is also a mistress of the kindly or polite silence. As Claudia
Johnson says, “Emma has ready stores of ‘politeness,’ which enable her to
respect what is delicate by leaving it unsaid” (129). In relation to
these silences, Johnson also comments on what I have called Emma’s verbal
aggressions: “Shameful as these infractions are, they stand out precisely
because they are so infrequent, and if Mrs. Elton’s presence on the scene helps
us to identify and deplore them, it also helps appreciate how much better Emma handles
herself by comparison” (130). Emma, unlike Mrs. Elton, negotiates between
the values of truth and those of charity, sometimes through speech and
sometimes through her own silence. When she has to listen to John
Knightley’s complaints about Mr. Weston’s unwanted hospitality, for instance,
“she had resolution enough to refrain from making any answer at all. She
could not be complying, she dreaded being quarrelsome; her heroism reached only
to silence” (114). The comfort of family relations, perhaps especially
among relations-in-law, depends on such restraint. Similarly, when Mr.
Weston is justifying himself for tactlessly drawing the Eltons into the Box
Hill expedition, “Emma denied none of it aloud, and agreed to none of it in
private” (353). Sometimes her silence arises from self-protection rather
than politeness or consideration for others: when she realizes that
Harriet loves Mr. Knightley, she keeps silent about her own feelings, but what
she says to Harriet is no more than the truth: “‘Harriet, I will only
venture to declare, that Mr. Knightley is the last man in the world, who would
intentionally give any woman the idea of his feeling for her more than he
really does’” (411). As Andre Brink points out, “in a situation where
open revolt or defiance is ruled out, one of the only possible alternatives to
compliance is silence, and on occasion Emma does resort to it” (304).
Compliance might involve hypocrisy; revolt might be destructive; silence
preserves the moral order. This sense of the need to negotiate between speech and silence for the sake of the group is something Emma shares with Knightley, for of all the many couples in this marriage comedy, they are the only pair held together by shared principles. Austen demonstrates the fundamental agreement between Knightley and Emma by showing them working together for the comfort of the family group—by organizing speech and silence. All the way through the visit of John and Isabella Knightley to Highbury these two cooperate to negotiate peace in the family circle, both at Hartfield and at Randalls, by providing speech as a diversion so as to protect the necessary silences about certain sensitive subjects—rival doctors, seaside holidays: “At times, almost inadvertently,” says Mary Waldron, “they achieve a kind of instinctual harmony of purpose which hints at a latent kindredship of spirit—as for instance during the incipient quarrel between John Knightley and Mr. Woodhouse during the family visit to Hartfield, when they both make strenuous and concerted efforts to change the subject . . . and at the snowy Christmas Eve party at Randalls when both combine to extricate Mr. Woodhouse” (120). Their closeness and mutual understanding is very clear in the sheer brevity of their exchange about leaving Randalls: [W]hile the
others were variously urging and recommending, Mr. Knightley and Emma settled
it in a few brief sentences: thus— “Your father
will not be easy; why do not you go?” “I am ready, if
the others are.” “Shall I ring
the bell?” “Yes, do.”
(128) This scene shows them, as Juliet McMaster
observes, as “essentially compatible partners” (“Secret Language” 129). The closeness
between Knightley and Emma has become increasingly apparent since the first
chapter of the novel, which shows Emma’s mode of speech to Mr. Knightley as
completely different from her mode of speech to her father. She speaks to
Mr. Woodhouse as one does to a fractious child, gently coaxing and persuading:
“‘Not a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen. Oh! no, we all felt that
we were going to be only half a mile apart, and were sure of meeting every day,’”
she says, cajoling her father into cheerfulness over the wedding of “‘poor Miss
Taylor’” (11). She has taken on early the role of
daughter-as-parent. With Mr. Knightley, however, she speaks as an equal,
ready to be playful or argumentative as the fancy takes her. Their
relationship is at the heart of the novel not just because the novel is a love
story, but also because at its best that relationship shows the full use of
speech as right communication both between two people and, beyond that, between
those people and a larger society. In fact, love in Emma is presented in terms of such communication. As Butler
suggests, they are both “supreme in dialogue” (272). Their unique
relationship shows itself most clearly in their conversation, as does that of
Darcy and Elizabeth. The dialogues between Knightley and Emma are perhaps
the product of a more mature art in that they show the two lovers acting
together within a community, and, in part, for the sake of that community.
The appropriate
conclusion of any discussion of speech in Emma
is surely a tribute to the “talker” of my title, and indeed my argument
would be incomplete without a consideration of Austen’s representation of Miss
Bates. Community is a vital
concern of this novel, as I have said, and the interactions of Emma and
Knightley are directed in part by communal needs. In the community of
Highbury Miss Bates is central, literally in her rooms in the house opposite
Ford’s, the haberdashers, as well as figuratively in a dozen different ways.
Miss Bates is central in part because, in a novel so concerned with community
obligations, she not only fulfils her own obligations but is also a most proper
recipient of other people’s charity: she needs their hindquarters of pork
and sacks of apples, and she also needs their tolerance and kind words.
More significantly, perhaps, through Miss Bates, Austen provides a remarkable
example of a character who, though she has “no intellectual superiority” (21),
unlike Emma and Mr. Knightley, nevertheless combines the values of the novel in
herself. She is instinctively charitable: “[s]he loved every body,
was interested in every body’s happiness, quick-sighted to every body’s merits”
(21); and she is so truthful that even when a social lie (explaining Jane’s
refusal to see Emma) is required of her, she has to tell the truth (378-79).
She is central in terms of plot, too: most of the clues in this
“detective story” depend on Miss Bates’s truth-telling. And for the
reader, she creates a sense of the wider community beyond the gentry who are
the main characters: the baker, the baker’s boy, the servants at
Hartfield and Donwell as well as her own Patty—we are conscious of all these
lives going on because Miss Bates tells us about them. It is largely
because of Miss Bates’s talk that we have such a strong sense of the community
of Highbury, a sense best expressed one hundred and thirty-odd years ago by the
distinguished Victorian novelist Margaret Oliphant: “It is impossible to
conceive a more perfect piece of village geography, a scene more absolutely
real. . . . We know it as well as if we had lived there all our lives
and visited Miss Bates every other day” (Southam 224). NOTES 1. Mr. Knightley talks to Mrs. Weston about Emma
(78-82) and makes some observations about Jane Fairfax (302-06). I
believe that these are the only places in the novel in which we see through
other eyes than Emma’s. 2. Anne Elliot’s visits to Mrs. Smith in Persuasion are a rather different
matter, as Mrs. Smith and Anne are of the same social class. 3. Kristin Flieger Samuelian in her edition of Emma notes the inaccuracy of Mrs.
Elton’s Italian, which Chapman corrects (254). See also Sutherland 214. 4. Having written this essay, I was amused to hear
Janet Todd also use the expression “non-U” of Mrs. Elton in her plenary talk to
the Vancouver AGM. Works
Cited
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Andre. The Novel: Language and
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Jane Austen: A Literary Life.
London: Macmillan, 1991. Butler,
Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of
Ideas. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975. Gregory, John.
A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters: A New
Edition. London, 1784. James, P. D.
“Appendix: Emma Considered as a
Detective Story.” Time to be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography.
Toronto: Vintage, 2001. 243-59. Johnson,
Claudia L. Jane Austen: Women,
Politics, and the Novel. Chicago:
U of Chicago P, 1988. Kirkham,
Margaret. Jane Austen, Feminism,
and Fiction. London: Athlone P, 1997. McMaster, Juliet. “The Secret Languages of Emma.” Persuasions 15 (1991): 119-31. _____.
“Mrs. Elton and Other Verbal Aggressors.” The Talk in Jane Austen. Ed. Bruce Stovel and Lynn Weinlos
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