"Meaning to read more": What Jane Austen's characters read (and why), part 4

The Reader by Marguerite Gérard and Jean Honoré Fragonard, c. 1786. Image source: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

In her book What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why) (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Persuasions editor Susan Allen Ford examines the reading preferences of Austen's characters as a key to understanding them more deeply. In this post series I am looking at each of Austen's canonical novels to see what this perspective can tell us in particular about her heroines. The previous installment, "To be a renter, a chuser of books!", looked at Fanny Price in Mansfield Park; this part will focus on Emma Woodhouse.

"Meaning to read more": Emma

Among Austen heroines, Emma is perhaps the least avid reader.

"Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were—very well chosen, and very neatly arranged. . .But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding." (Vol. I, Ch. V)

It becomes apparent that the entire course of the novel involves Emma learning to subject her sometimes over-active imagination to her rational understanding.

Title page of Emma: A Novel. In Three Volumes. By the Author of "Pride & Prejudice," &c. &c., London, 1816. Image source: HathiTrust.org

When Emma, "handsome, clever, and rich," meets pretty Harriet Smith, "the natural daughter of somebody," she decides to manage Harriet's introduction into Highbury society. Miss Smith, thinks Emma,

wanted only a little more knowledge and elegance to be quite perfect. She would notice her; she would improve her; she would detach her from her bad acquaintance, and introduce her into good society; she would form her opinions and her manners. (Vol. I, Ch. III)

But Emma's program for Harriet's "improvement" is hardly a systematic one, reflecting her own haphazard education, overseen by her governess Miss Taylor. Although Emma has high-minded intentions, they are always undermined by her preferred inclinations:

Her views of improving her little friend’s mind, by a great deal of useful reading and conversation, had never yet led to more than a few first chapters, and the intention of going on to-morrow. It was much easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination range and work at Harriet’s fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge her comprehension or exercise it on sober facts. . . (Vol. I, Ch. IX)

Emma's own reading has presumably been made up almost entirely of fiction, rather than "sober facts." When Harriet mentions Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest (1791), and Regina Maria Roche's The Children of the Abbey (1796), Emma seems to share knowledge of these books (Vol. I, Ch. IV). But with poetry, history, biographies, essays, and the like—"useful," that is, morally instructive, reading—we understand that little progress has been, or will be, made.

Madame de Genlis' Adelaide and Theodore

Emma mentions one book specifically, a hint, perhaps, of its significance. When towards the end of Austen's novel Mrs. Weston (the former Miss Taylor) becomes the mother of a little girl, Emma assures Mr. Knightley that the girl's education will be ideal, because of Mrs. Weston's former role as her teacher:

"She has had the advantage, you know, of practising on me," she continued—"like La Baronne d'Almane on La Comtesse d'Ostalis, in Madame de Genlis' Adelaide and Theodore, and we shall now see her own little Adelaide educated on a more perfect plan."

"That is," replied Mr. Knightley, "she will indulge her even more than she did you, and believe that she does not indulge her at all. It will be the only difference." (Vol. III, Ch. XVII)

Title page of Adelaide and Theodore; or, Letters on Education, by Madame de Genlis, Third Edition, London, 1788. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Adelaide and Theodore is the English translation of Adéle et Théodore (1782), and concerns the proper upbringing of children—particularly girls and young women. As Ford writes,

Adelaide and Theodore presents itself as a collection of "Letters on Education," like those of Madame de Genlis's model Samuel Richardson, blending practical and theoretical discourse with narrative, strictures on conduct with the pleasures of romance. It is the account of the twelve years devoted to the education of the Baron and Baroness d'Almane's children. (pp. 196–197)

Ford points out the importance of the concept of "perfection" in the education of girls, and that Jane Austen "laughs at the very notion of perfection for which Genlis provides the model."

Portrait of Madame de Genlis by Adelaide Labille-Guiard, 1790. Image source: LACMA.org

Ford writes, "As in Adelaide and Theodore, Emma's perfection is a central issue. Mr Knightley is 'one of the few people who can see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them'" (pp. 201–202).

At the Box Hill excursion, for example, Mr. Weston attempts to flatter Emma by posing a riddle: "What two letters of the alphabet are there, that express perfection?" The answer is "M. and A.—Em-ma—Do you understand?" (Vol. III, Ch. VII). This riddle comes just after Emma has directed a cutting remark to Miss Bates, humiliating her in front of the group—hardly an example of Emma's perfection. Ford notes that Mr. Weston's "'very indifferent piece of wit'. . .only points to the illusiveness, even the fraudulence, of such an ideal. Mr. Knightley's irony further underscores Emma's very real distance from the ideal and mocks human attempts to define that ideal: 'Perfection should not have come quite so soon'" (p. 202).

The Box Hill incident echoes one in Adelaide and Theodore. Young Adelaide hangs a satirical drawing of her governess, Miss Bridget, in her room; when Miss Bridget sees it she is mortified. Adelaide's mother remonstrates with her:

No joke can be innocent that is offensive. . .You, who owe friendship, respect, and gratitude to Miss Bridget, you make her uneasy, you laugh at that which gives her pain, and you wish to make her appear ridiculous. . .She cannot read [your feelings] in your heart; she can only judge from from your actions; and you have treated her with so much ingratitude!. . .I confess to you your behaviour has both surprized and afflicted me, I had an opinion so different of you! (Vol. I, pp. 181–183)

Compare Mr. Knightley's "scolding" of Emma:

How could you be so unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation?—Emma, I had not thought it possible. . .Her situation should secure your compassion. It was badly done, indeed! You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honour, to have you now, in thoughtless spirits, and the pride of the moment, laugh at her, humble her—and before her niece, too—and before others, many of whom (certainly some,) would be entirely guided by your treatment of her. (Vol. III, Ch. VII)

When her mother expresses her disappointment in her behavior, "Adelaide burst into tears" (p. 181); in the carriage after parting with Mr. Knightley, "Emma felt the tears running down her cheeks almost all the way home" (Vol. III, Ch. VII).

This scene is not the only parallel to Adelaide and Theodore that Ford discerns in Emma. Genlis' novel includes a chapter devoted to the "Course of Reading pursued by Adelaide, from the Age of Six years, to Twenty-two" (Vol. III, pp. 284–292), no doubt the origin of the "great many lists" Emma draws up of her intended reading.

"Course of Reading pursued by Adelaide, from the Age of Six years, to Twenty-two," from Adelaide and Theodore, or, Letters on Education, by Madame de Genlis, Vol. III, Third Edition, London, 1788. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Adelaide tells her mother that she "should like better to marry an amiable man of thirty-seven, than a young man of three and twenty" (Vol. III, p. 172); Frank Churchill just happens to be "three-and-twenty" (Vol. I, Ch. XI), while Mr. Knightley is "a sensible man about seven or eight-and-thirty" (Vol. I, Ch. I). Ford details many other echoes between the two works, with a key difference: "What Genlis lays out with instructive gravity, Austen plays ironically" (p. 197).

But the novel that Austen wrote after Emma is, perhaps, her least ironic.

Next time: "I will not allow books to prove anything": Persuasion