Blog #19

     Upon reading the first few pages of Emma, I realized that this novel is not going to be the “old fashioned gossip girl” novel that I was hoping it was going to be. The sentence structure and word usage are so rich that it takes a long while to be able to read a paragraph once and fully understand it. In addition to the atypical structure of this novel, I also have come to realize that the setting of this novel will also take some getting-used-to. Now, I must admit that I have read my fair share of historical fiction novels, some of my favorites being Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir. In fact, historical fiction in the Victorian time period has become one of my favorite genres to read. Something about corsets and huge dresses and fabulous balls makes reading about this time period so interesting. Of course in the AP Lit spirit, I decided to do a little background on Emma to help with the reading of the beginning of the novel.

     Emma was published in 1816 and is set in the early Victorian time period. During this time, a woman’s breeding was what defined her. It was as much a part of her identification as were her physical characteristics. The vast importance of this aspect of life resulted in an extremely exaggerated focus on marriage. The basis of a “good” marriage prospect is based majorly on good breeding and less so on affection and compatibility. These main points of society in this time period are what make the book, so interesting. Emma decides that she is inherently gifted with the ability to play “cupid” and be a professional matchmaker. However, my prognosis is that her talents will be ill-received in regards to the fact that in that time period, marriage was not only a ceremony to join two people together and make them happy, but it was also a business deal and more often than not it was not just two human’s being joined together for the rest of their life but rather two families or two enterprises or two empires being joined together for the rest of their lives.

     In reflecting on this aspect, this is where I believe the majority of the conflict between characters will come from. From my preliminary reading as well as Mrs. Clinch’s lectures, I have gathered that Emma is a very controlling and a very demanding person. She is someone who always wants to have it her way. Also, the fact that she is dealing with something as important (during this time) as marriage, she is going to definitely come across problems within the society.