LOL, s'fine, I'll be the odd man out on Knightley. I think one of the things that doesn't translate as clearly to our generation is just how precarious a dependent relative's situation was in the early 19th century, which is where my problems with Knightley's assessment of Frank here lie. The wealthier folk could've thrown off the poorer ones in their care as easy as kiss my hand (see John Dashwood in S&S). The fact that Emma takes up Mrs. Weston's line of argument to Knightley isn't really important except for the fact that Mrs. Weston, who knows firsthand what dependence means and entails, is the one bringing these things up. Emma may have taken the argument up to be devil's advocate, and she may have thought the same as Knightley, but this goes to show two things to my mind: 1) neither of them have ever been dependent, so they don't know what that life experience is like at all, and, thus, aren't really in a position to judge, and 2) she probably got her original ideas from listening to him. Consider Knightley's attitude towards Jane and Miss Bates--they're equally dependent, but as women garner more of his sympathy because they need protectors, if you will. Frank, as a man, should've been able to call his shots a bit more, in Knightley's mind, but Knightley seems to discount Mrs. Churchill's volatility completely. Which is when I turn to Mr. Weston since, of all the Highbury folk, he's the only one that actually knows her and knows what she's really like, and what power she has over her husband and, subsequently, his son. Granted, Mr. Weston is clearly biased towards Mrs. Churchill, but at the same time, there has to be some truth in what he says about her. She's described in much the same way as Mrs. Ferrars in S&S or even as Lady Catherine in P&P. If money makes the world go round nowadays, it seems like it was even moreso the case back then, so anything to stay in the good graces of a patron(ess) was probably not strange.
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