Emma - Jane Austen [6]
The slipperiness of the phrase becomes more obvious a few paragraphs later, when it is echoed and ironized in the response of those who gather to view Emma’s portrait of Harriet: ‘Every body who saw it was pleased, but Mr Elton was in continual raptures, and defended it through every criticism.’ ‘Every body’, at this point, refers of course to the Hartfield circle – Mrs Weston, Mr Woodhouse and Mr Knightley – and it quickly becomes clear that their pleasure in the likeness has little to do with the accuracy of Emma’s representation of Harriet. For while Mrs Weston admires Emma’s ‘improvement’ to Harriet’s eyebrows and lashes, Mr Woodhouse is torn between his uncritical delight in anything his daughter might do, and his concern for Miss Smith having been placed out of doors in nothing more substantial than ‘a little shawl’. Only Mr Knightley dares find fault with the drawing, but his brusque ‘You have made her too tall, Emma’, is immediately dismissed by Mr Elton’s repeated ‘I never saw such a likeness’. In a matter of lines, the central characters reveal themselves through their responses to the portrait, which are clearly influenced by their own preconceptions, their views of the artist and their relationships with each other. Any reader, therefore, who feels confident in his or her recognition of mimetic power, might pause over Mr Elton’s enthusiastic ‘I never saw such a likeness’, while those determined to find indeterminacy consider the centrality of the artist in the scene. The appreciation of Emma, here, can perhaps be seen as an elaborate metaphor for the appreciation of Emma.
A scene that initially appears to be promoting realism in both its content and style (‘a likeness pleases every body’), thus unfolds to suggest that the perception of ‘likeness’ depends as much on the observer as the creator. If the reader finds the scene convincing or ‘realistic’, it is probably because of a previously formed view of the novel and its author. The dialogue seems lifelike, not merely because it might remind the reader of personal acquaintances, but because it continues the illusion that has been created in earlier chapters. Mr Woodhouse’s attitude is entirely consistent with the representation of his character in the opening pages – doting, anxious, and firmly resistant to the thought of stirring from his own fire-place. Mrs Weston’s response, too, reflects the opinion she expressed to Mr Knightley in Chapter 5, that Emma’s somewhat high-handed attentions to Harriet can be nothing but beneficial to the girl of humble origins. The same conversation is recalled in Mr Knightley’s ‘You have made her too tall’, which echoes his disapproval of Harriet being elevated above her natural station. The reader’s pleasure in the ‘likeness’ of the scene, then, is not merely a question of it ‘ringing true’, but of recognizing the consistency between the representation here and that of earlier passages.
Despite the completeness of the text, however, much interest can be derived from reading it in relation to its historical context. Emma’s artistic accomplishments, for example, like many of the novel’s details, can be seen in the light of contemporary debates on female education following works such as Mary Wollstone-craft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman published in 1792.21 Mr Elton’s activities, too, may be read as a comment on the role of the early nineteenth-century clergyman, a topic which had already been explored in Austen’s previous novel, Mansfield Park.22 Even the