Emma by Jane Austen.
Title: Emma.
Author: Jane Austen.
Genre: Literature, fiction, humour, romance.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: December 23rd, 1815.
Summary: When her former governess finds happiness as the bride of a local widower, the brilliant and beautiful Emma Woodhouse flatters herself that she alone has secured the marriage and that she possesses a special talent for bringing lovers together. The young heiress next busies herself with finding a suitable husband for her friend and protégé, Harriet Smith, setting off an entertaining sequence of comic mishaps and misunderstandings in this sparkling comedy of English-village romance. Beneath its considerable wit, the novel is also the story of a young woman's progress toward self-understanding.
My rating: 8/10
♥ “Waiving that point, however, and supposing her to be, as you describe her, only pretty and good-natured, let me tell you that in the degree she possesses them, they are not trivial recommendations to the world in general, for she is, in fact, a beautiful girl, and must be thought so by ninety-nine people out of an hundred; and till it appears that men are much more philosophic on the subject of beauty than they are generally supposed, till they do fall in love with well-informed minds instead of handsome faces, a girl with such loveliness as Harriet has a certainty of being admired and sought after, of having the power of choosing from among many, consequently a claim to be nice.”
♥ There are people who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.
♥ “There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution.”
♥ ...and she thought very highly of him as a good-humoured, well-meaning, respectable young man, without any deficiency of useful understanding or knowledge of the world.
♥ Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations that a young person who either marries or dies is sure of being kindly spoken of.
♥ He had made his fortune, bought his house, and obtained his wife, and was beginning a new period of existence with every probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through. He had never been an unhappy man; his own temper had secured him from that, even in his first marriage; but his second must show him how delightful a well-judging and truly amiable woman could be, and must give him the pleasantest proof of its being a great deal better to choose than to be chosen, to excite gratitude than to feel it.
♥ Mrs. Goddard was the mistress of a school - not of a seminary or an establishment or anything which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirement with elegant morality upon new principles and new systems, and where young ladies for enormous pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity - but a real, honest, old-fashioned boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent to be out of the way and scramble themselves into a little education without any danger of coming back prodigies. Mrs. Goddard’s school was in high repute - and very deservedly; for Highbury was reckoned a particularly healthy spot; she had an ample house and garden, gave the children plenty of wholesome food, let them run about a great deal in the summer, and in winter dressed their chilblains with her own hands. It was no wonder that a train of twenty young couples now walked after her to church.
♥ The first error, and the worst, lay at her door. It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious - a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more.
♥ Much could not be hoped from the traffic of even the busiest part of Highbury - Mr. Perry walking hastily by, Mr. William Cox letting himself in at the office-door, Mr. Cole’s carriage-horses returning from exercise, or a stray letter-boy on an obstinate mule were the liveliest objects she could presume to expect; and when her eyes fell only on the butcher with his tray, a tidy old woman travelling homewards from shop with her full basket, two curs quarrelling over a dirty bone, and a string of dawdling children round the baker’s little bow-window eyeing the gingerbread, she knew she had no reason to complain and was amused enough; quite enough still to stand at the door. A mind lively and at ease can do with seeing nothing and can see nothing that does not answer.
♥ “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart,” said she afterwards to herself. “There is nothing to be compared to it. Warmth and tenderness of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the clearness of head in the world for attraction - I am sure it will. It is tenderness of heart which makes my dear father so generally beloved, which gives Isabella all her popularity. I have it not; but I know how to prize and respect it. Harriet is my superior in all the charm and all the felicity it gives. Dear Harriet! I would not change you for the clearest-headed, longest-sighted, best-judging female breathing. Oh, the coldness of Jane Fairfax! Harriet is worth a hundred such; and for a wife - a sensible man’s wife - it is invaluable. I mention no names, but happy the man who changes Emma for Harriet!"
♥ Emma perceived that her taste was not the only taste on which Mr. Weston depended, and felt that to be the favourite and intimate of a man who had so many intimates and confidants was not the very first distinction in the scale of vanity. She liked his open manners, but a little less of open-heartedness would have made him a higher character. General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be. She could fancy such a man.
♥ Goldsmith tells us that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill fame. Mrs. Churchill, after being disliked at least twenty-five years, was now spoken of with compassionate allowances.
♥ He had found her agitated and low. Frank Churchill was a villain. He heard her declare that she had never loved him. Frank Churchill’s character was not desperate. She was his own Emma, by hand and word, when they returned into the house; and if he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he might have deemed him a very good sort of fellow.