Emma and Mr Knightley: 'partial old friends'
Re-reading Emma by Jane Austen recently, and then watching the woefully miscast Mark Strong transform the hero Mr Knightley into a sort of proto-Mr Rochester, has made me
appreciate the subtle romance of the original story all the more. I stand by my claim: Emma and Mr Knightley are the strongest of all Austen’s pairings, and deserve to be the happiest. There are no disparities of wealth, station or intelligence for them to overcome. The sixteen year age difference that generally disgusts younger readers only signifies that these two know each other better than they understand their own hearts. Emma has admired and respected Mr Knightley all her life, recognising his good heart and fair judgement more than she would care to admit, while he fell in love with Emma precisely because of all her ‘little faults’.
Forget Andrew Davies’ misconceptions of a grumpy old man grooming his young neighbour to be a child bride. Read the novel. Mr Knightley is cheerful, youthful, witty and caring, and is willing to lose Emma to a younger suitor because he wants
her to be happy. His ‘lecturing and scolding’ of Emma only commences when Frank Churchill appears on the scene - he’s not angry, he’s jealous! Before Frank, Emma and Mr Knightley behave more like the ‘partial old friends’ they are, alternating between open opinion and playful banter. The dialogue between them is charged with passion, and both enjoy crossing verbal swords, but neither realise why at first! He visits Hartfield every day, walking the mile there and back to talk to Emma, and she values his company. I love the lively verbal sparring between them over Frank and Harriet, but the quiet moments shared by Emma and Mr
Knightley are the best. When he stops by to tell Emma and her father of his visit to London, or moves closer to her for a more intimate conversation. True, companionable silence is not exactly a match for the electric sexual tension between Lizzie and Darcy, say, but which courtship is the more real? And which romance would endure? After all, Darcy more or less buys Elizabeth, paying Wickham to marry her sister and save the family name, but then he can afford to be generous. Mr Knightley makes the biggest, and most romantic, gesture to prove his love: he gives up his house and his independence so that Emma need not leave her father.
These are some of my favourite quotes from the novel, revealing the true Emma and Mr Knightley:
‘You might not see one in a hundred with gentleman so plainly written as in Mr Knightley’ - Emma to Harriet Smith, already holding her good friend and neighbour in high esteem
‘He could not have appeared to greater advantage perhaps anywhere, than where he had placed himself. His tall, firm, upright figure, among the bulky forms and stooping shoulders of the elderly men, was such as Emma felt must draw everybody’s eyes’ - Emma ogles Mr Knightley while she’s supposed to be dancing with Frank Churchill!
‘So unlike what a man should be! - None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of life’ - Who could Emma be thinking of in this angry condemnation of Frank Churchill?
‘No longer walking in at all hours, as if ever willing to change his home for hers!’ - Emma realises what she might have lost in Mr Knightley
‘
I have seldom seen a face or figure more pleasing to me than hers. But I am a partial old friend’ - Mr Knightley already kidding himself by chapter five
‘She spoke with a confidence which staggered, with a satisfaction which silenced, Mr Knightley’ - His deeper feelings for Emma hit Mr Knightley hard
‘He had ridden home through the rain; and walked up directly after dinner, to see how this sweetest and best of all creatures, faultless in spite of all her faults, bore the discovery’
‘If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more’ - Mr Knightley is so afraid to declare his true feelings for Emma that he has to ask if he even stands a chance. He will always love her, his ‘dearest, most beloved Emma’, but hardly dares to hope that she might feel the same for him
And if that isn’t enough, he is even more sweet and tender with her when they finally do get together! Reading Frank’s tiresome letter aloud, Mr Knightley asks Emma’s leave to engage in a sort of running commentary, so that by talking to her he may feel he is near her. And he is keen to protect her from any ill feeling, whether in his brother’s
honest appraisal of their engagement or from news of Harriet Smith’s acceptance of Robert Martin. Mr Knightley even apologises for trying to keep Emma’s younger wayward spirits in check, fearing that he did her more harm than good. There is no fear of Emma being beaten into submission by a critical and foul-tempered husband, in the way that critics of the novel (and Andrew Davies) have suggested in the past. The danger is probably more that Mr Knightley will be so overwhelmed by love for his beautiful, lively and lovely wife that he gives in completely and becomes her devoted slave!
I love how Emma and Mr Knightley are on the same wavelength throughout the novel. He knows how much she loves her f
ussy father, and that keeping Mr Woodhouse happy is the key to Emma’s heart. When his brother John aggravates the old man, at dinner on the subject of seaside holidays for the children and at Randalls during a snowstorm, Mr Knightley steps in to distract or calm Mr Woodhouse for Emma’ sake. He and Emma share brief, direct conversations - ‘Your father will not be happy. Why do you not go?’ - and sometimes don’t even have to talk at all to communicate. Emma calls him to her side with just a look at the ball, when she wishes to thank him for dancing with Harriet. Similarly, Emma knows when she has overstepped the mark, and does not usually need Mr Knightley to correct her, but his opinion is important to her all the same. He is like the voice of her conscience.
No other Austen romance stirs me quite like Emma and Mr Knightley. A longstanding friendship which blossoms into love is far more believable, and encouraging, than the animal magnetism of Darcy and Elizabeth. Especially when the reader is allowed to know the hearts of the characters before even they are aware of their own feelings! I always smile when
Emma notes exactly where Mr Knightley was standing during a recent conversation, or insists that he must never marry - for the sake of her little nephew Henry, who stands to inherit Donwell. Mr Knightley confesses that he loves to look at Emma, and hates to hear her praising Frank Churchill (even when she is only talking about him to aggravate Mr Knightley!) A second - or third, or thirty-third - reading is necessary to notice all the little clues that these ‘old friends’ really belong together, but they are made for each other in every sense. His patient and placid manner supports her active imagination and youthful spirit like ‘Hartfield is a notch in the Donwell Abbey estate’. Emma completes Mr Knightley, and he is the only man worthy enough to ‘tempt’ her into matrimony.