even more unseemly procedures in the Elton-Emma-Harriet confusion.
At the Coles’ dinner-party, when Mrs. Weston reveals to Emma her “discovery” that Knightley is very attracted to Jane, Emma goes into a protracted flap of consternation (I have cited part of this aria-like flurry earlier):
“How could you think of such a thing? ... Mr. Knightley must not marry!—You would not have little Henry cut out from Donwell? ... I cannot at all consent to Mr. Knightley’s marrying.... Mr. Knightley marry! No, I have never had such an idea, and I cannot adopt it now ... every feeling revolts. For his own sake, I would not have him do so mad a thing....
But Mr. Knightley does not want to marry. I am sure he has not the least idea of it. Do not put it into his head. Why should he marry? He is as happy as possible by himself.... He has no occasion to marry, either to fill up his time or his heart ” (pp. 202-203).
A better defense by denial might be difficult to locate. And shortly thereafter when Frank and Jane make music together, when Emma hears “the sweet sounds of the united voices,” Emma can only think of babies, of “a most mortifying change” in which little Henry would be ejected as “the heir of Donwell” (p. 206). Frank and Jane are expressing themselves erotically before her, but Emma, deaf and blind to what is obvious, displaces her response onto the unacceptable, abhorrent fantasy of Knightley and Jane producing at least one male baby while she continues to repudiate, as far as she herself is concerned, any personal connection with such affairs.
In fact, Emma seems at least on one occasion not to be on the easiest terms with her body. When the heated discussion about where to hold a ball gets underway, Mr. Woodhouse has a panic about drafts, and Emma is concerned with adequate space in which to dance. “ ‘It would be dreadful to be standing so close. Nothing can be farther from pleasure than to be dancing in a crowd—and a crowd in a little room’ ” (p. 224). Emma loves to dance, and Mrs. Weston, “capital in her country-dances,” is seated, and a waltz is beginning. Frank Churchill takes Emma’s hand “and [leads] her up to the top” (p. 207); the dance itself, however, seems less a combination of the two styles than a British domestication of the still notorious waltz. It is in any case not to be confused with the sexual arousal and turmoil reportedly induced by the waltz and represented as such by Goethe, in The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), by Byron in The Waltz: An Apostrophic Hymn (1813), and in the testimony of numberless others.
Similarly Emma’s response to Harriet is also in part deflected. She is at first attracted to Harriet “on account of her beauty.” Harriet’s lovely good looks “happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair, with a fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of great sweetness.” And Emma spends the evening “admiring those soft blue eyes” (p. 20). In recent years a number of feminist and gay commentators have taken such remarks (along with others) to suggest a lesbian interest on the part of Emma and Jane Austen. Whatever the merit of this contention (and I believe that there is quite a bit of merit to it), it seems to me that Emma’s warm response to Harriet is also an expression of her suspended state of affective development and of her narcissism. xxv In being physically attracted to Harriet, she is in effect also admiring and arousing herself. For Harriet throughout the novel functions as Emma’s sexual stand-in. Her imaginings juxtapose Harriet sexually with the available but, for her, socially ineligible men in the novel—EIton, Frank, Knightley—while Harriet’s one real opportunity, Robert Martin, is fiercely embargoed by Emma herself.
When Frank has to leave Highbury to attend to the caprices of his sick aunt, Emma reflects that Frank has “almost told her that he
At the Coles’ dinner-party, when Mrs. Weston reveals to Emma her “discovery” that Knightley is very attracted to Jane, Emma goes into a protracted flap of consternation (I have cited part of this aria-like flurry earlier):
“How could you think of such a thing? ... Mr. Knightley must not marry!—You would not have little Henry cut out from Donwell? ... I cannot at all consent to Mr. Knightley’s marrying.... Mr. Knightley marry! No, I have never had such an idea, and I cannot adopt it now ... every feeling revolts. For his own sake, I would not have him do so mad a thing....
But Mr. Knightley does not want to marry. I am sure he has not the least idea of it. Do not put it into his head. Why should he marry? He is as happy as possible by himself.... He has no occasion to marry, either to fill up his time or his heart ” (pp. 202-203).
A better defense by denial might be difficult to locate. And shortly thereafter when Frank and Jane make music together, when Emma hears “the sweet sounds of the united voices,” Emma can only think of babies, of “a most mortifying change” in which little Henry would be ejected as “the heir of Donwell” (p. 206). Frank and Jane are expressing themselves erotically before her, but Emma, deaf and blind to what is obvious, displaces her response onto the unacceptable, abhorrent fantasy of Knightley and Jane producing at least one male baby while she continues to repudiate, as far as she herself is concerned, any personal connection with such affairs.
In fact, Emma seems at least on one occasion not to be on the easiest terms with her body. When the heated discussion about where to hold a ball gets underway, Mr. Woodhouse has a panic about drafts, and Emma is concerned with adequate space in which to dance. “ ‘It would be dreadful to be standing so close. Nothing can be farther from pleasure than to be dancing in a crowd—and a crowd in a little room’ ” (p. 224). Emma loves to dance, and Mrs. Weston, “capital in her country-dances,” is seated, and a waltz is beginning. Frank Churchill takes Emma’s hand “and [leads] her up to the top” (p. 207); the dance itself, however, seems less a combination of the two styles than a British domestication of the still notorious waltz. It is in any case not to be confused with the sexual arousal and turmoil reportedly induced by the waltz and represented as such by Goethe, in The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), by Byron in The Waltz: An Apostrophic Hymn (1813), and in the testimony of numberless others.
Similarly Emma’s response to Harriet is also in part deflected. She is at first attracted to Harriet “on account of her beauty.” Harriet’s lovely good looks “happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair, with a fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of great sweetness.” And Emma spends the evening “admiring those soft blue eyes” (p. 20). In recent years a number of feminist and gay commentators have taken such remarks (along with others) to suggest a lesbian interest on the part of Emma and Jane Austen. Whatever the merit of this contention (and I believe that there is quite a bit of merit to it), it seems to me that Emma’s warm response to Harriet is also an expression of her suspended state of affective development and of her narcissism. xxv In being physically attracted to Harriet, she is in effect also admiring and arousing herself. For Harriet throughout the novel functions as Emma’s sexual stand-in. Her imaginings juxtapose Harriet sexually with the available but, for her, socially ineligible men in the novel—EIton, Frank, Knightley—while Harriet’s one real opportunity, Robert Martin, is fiercely embargoed by Emma herself.
When Frank has to leave Highbury to attend to the caprices of his sick aunt, Emma reflects that Frank has “almost told her that he
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