Post

I’m getting the sense that Mr Woodhouse is very gently daffy.

Mrs Bates is an old vicar’s old widow who is very old, and she lives with her daughter, Miss Bates, who is not Old-old, but she is old enough that it’s an impediment to her prospects. Also Miss Bates is mid in every respect, except that she is incredibly convivial, which people seem to like.

I feel like the book is giving us a foil to Emma in Miss Bates. They’re both affable, but Emma is young, pretty, clever, and rich. Miss Bates is middle-aged, plain, not especially sharp, and has no money.

But Miss Bates is so overwhelmingly affable and good-natures that people love her in spite of her being aggressively mid, and I can’t decide if that’s a little mean on the part of the book.

Is Emma the character as judgmental as Emma the book? This is such a frank and unkind description of Miss Bates, apparently a gijinka of a subtly scented votive candle.

Now we have Mrs Goddard, who runs a school, but not a very good school. She is also very mid, but very kindly and caring to her students. Okay, so this really is the world as Emma sees it in the narrative.

MISS TAYLOR IS MRS WESTON, FINALLY!!! Good job, Woodhouses. I assume this means they’re briskly trotting through the stages of grief toward a dull, warm acceptance.

LMAO Mrs Goddard asks if she can bring a young Miss Smith to the card-table gathering at the Woodhouses, to which Emma graciously approves, and here we find out that Emma finds the gatherings very boring.

The very chipper air of responsibility and care for Mr Woodhouse’s happiness suddenly tripping into to a moment where Emma is like, “OH THANK GOD a young person!” has me rolling 😆

“Harriet Smith was the natural daughter of somebody.” Okay.

OH NO bsky.app/profile/virg...

Harriet Smith is described as, essentially, a Kewpie (shout out to my girl, Rose O’Neill!!!), which Emma seems to enjoy in a “Daddy can I pretty please have this dolly” sort of way.

Okay, so Emma knows the Martins are good and decent people, but she’s still like, “REGARDLESS, Harriet must have better influences than those people—better influences such as, I suppose, my-own-self.

Oh my god Mr Woodhouse and his vapors wishing the pretty table settings just didn’t have all that food on it 😭😭😭

Wait GRUEL???

What is gruel.

Oh wow, so gruel is a soup so boring that the other soups made it sit at another table by itself.

Oh my god Mr Woodhouse is directing everybody’s meals by the guidance of his own frail constitution, and it is deeply aggravating.

“Have an egg! A soft-boiled egg. A small egg. A completely harmless, small, soft-boiled egg. Also have a tart. BUT just a LITTLE tart. Just a little.” Sir, you are eating like a prison inmate.

Emma believes she has made a positive impression on Harriet, which is sweet. It also occurs to me that Emma stays through all of these social engagements to ensure that she can counterbalance her extremely finicky father so the guests don’t leave feeling negatively about him!!!

Especially since the eldest daughter actually bolted (by marriage) ASAP, leaving Emma behind without a thought for her future.

Oh, absolutely not. Emma was 12 when Isabella married. Isabella may have thought that having a sister settled in London would be a wonderful opportunity for Emma in a few years, but Mr. Woodhouse has declined, and it's hard for Emma to get away

I always felt that Isabella was selfish.

You'd think Izzy would have *known* that Dad would never let her sister visit, even if it's only a day's journey

I'd forgotten there was another Woodhouse, despite I think her being mentioned early in the thread, and I cannot recall her role in the plot at all... Like forgetting about the third Dashwood sister (Margaret)

Margaret Dashwood likes atlases. And that is the sum total of what I know about her! 😄

Yeah, I didn't especially like Emma (the character) on first read, but on a recent re-read I noticed just how much she has to be the Adult In The Room for her preposterous family.

Yeah, I'm realizing this now too. Justice for Emma! She does invisible emotional and social labor, invisible even to herself. She seems to carry it very well, and of course she's rich, so it isn't an enormous burden, but she definitely isn't the spoiled brat that a shallow reading can paint her as.

As Trung would say, someone should give Emma a gun. ; )

I’m just realizing I misspelled—well, fully mistook—Mr Elton as “Mr Eston” because of the existence of Mr Weston, which is not as egregious as when I kept confusing Jane and Elizabeth in P&P. I’ll never claim to be adept at keeping these names straight in my little head. It will happen again.

Anyway, Chapter 4 begins with the blossoming friendship between Harriet and Emma. Emma is utterly delighted that Harriet can be a walking companion for her since Mr Woodhouse—bless his rheumatic, consumptive little head—would not set his frail footfalls beyond a certain threshold of shrubberies.

I’m also realizing that I am predisposed to root for these characters since I had such a nice time with Pride and Prejudice, and that might color my reading of Emma. I’m not sure how, yet, but I can see my journey with these characters is about to be pretty different.