Women and Space in Jane Austen’s Emma and Pride and Prejudice
The relationship between women and space has been explored, disrupted, and reimagined throughout the Jane Austen canon. In Emma and Pride and Prejudice especially, Austen’s heroines exercise mobility in ways that counter traditional notions of femininity and exemplify her nuanced approach to critiquing the patriarchal society within and on which she writes. Her gendered social critique is neither overt nor openly revolutionary; rather, it is cleverly and subtly planted within the conduct of her heroines—so subtly, that there exists a school of thought within these texts’ critical histories that argues for their embodiment of conservative or non-feminist messages. That is the genius of Austen’s approach; following Johnson, “Austen has contrived Pride and Prejudice in such a way that virtually every argument about it can be undercut with a built-in countervailing argument, a qualifying ‘on the other hand.’”[1] In Pride and Prejudice, and in Emma, her exploration of female mobility between gender roles exists under the radar; it is easily glossed over, and yet, once seen, cannot be missed. Whether or not her critique is engaged with depends on the perspective of the reader: as Johnson writes, for “our […] recognition of this critique we have to thank, not the discovery of any new information, but rather a disposition to pay attention to what has always been before us”— it is with this analytical approach in mind that this essay proceeds.[2]
Emma and Elizabeth are strong, active characters, and their physical and social movement is propelled by their broader mobility in and around the invisible borders of the social expectations of their gender. An investigation into their (di)similar mobility will demonstrate how Austen’s social critique is embedded in her heroines’ movement; both women demonstrate a crucial understanding of the elasticity of these borders and how to stretch them. Emma’s movement between and renegotiation of gender roles is seen through her usurping of male positions, while Elizabeth’s is seen through her dance around ‘improprietous’ behavior; however, the underlying parallel between their mobility is rooted in their self-asserted autonomy and their ability to subvert their gender roles without ever fully departing from them. By ramming against the boundaries of socially accepted behavior and conduct, they necessarily broaden the perimeter of expectations for women within their social climate, and their overarching happiness at either novel’s conclusion demonstrates Austen’s approval of female transgression, nudging her readers to push the bounds within which they are confined.
Emma's gender transgressions are masked underneath Austen's compliant portrayal of social rank within the text. However, as Johnson writes, “Emma is a world apart from conservative fiction in accepting a hierarchical social structure […] because within its parameters class can actually supersede sex.”[3] In other words, it is because Austen is “fundamentally accepting English class structure” that she can experiment with gender; it is the freedom granted by Emma’s social superiority, her being “first in consequence,” that offers Austen the leeway to renegotiate her autonomy and her movement between the boundaries of male and female gender roles (9).[4] The success of this masking is felt within Emma’s critical history, as even its more conservative critics contradict their own commentaries. Duckworth, who asserts that “the novel is not the ‘throwing off the chains’ it has been considered,” and who describes Emma as “a Mary [Crawford] made central and stationary,” still contends that “Emma’s boundaries are where she wishes to place them.”[5] And Butler, who argues that Emma embodies “the classic plot of the conservative novel,” still calls it “an exceptionally active” text.[6] This activity is located in its protagonist’s navigation and disruption of the patriarchally-constructed distinctions between male and female. Again, her critics fail to see their own misinterpretations, examining her male traits without naming them as such; as Johnson contends, “though Mudrick complains that Emma ‘plays God,’ what he really means is that she plays man.”[7] Far from Tanner’s argument that Emma “never contemplates transgressing its norms and restrictions and obligations,” Emma “consistently questions the traditional parameters of desirable femininity,” and her social cushion allows her to renegotiate and reimagine power and gender in both the home and in marriage.[8]
Austen associates her heroine with masculine language and imagery from the very first word: “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich” (9). Perhaps Emma’s most commanding movement or departure from her gender confinement is her usurping of the role of estate patriarch. Not only does she maintain the relationships between Hartfield and the rest of Highbury but, as Malone contends, she “rules the home and wields as much social influence as any man.”[9] While Moffat argues that Emma “continues to accommodate and coddle Mr. Woodhouse because she mistakes her situation for power,” if one considers Emma’s power through her “manly trespasses,” it becomes clear that she navigates her circumstances with as much focus on autonomy as possible.[10] She declares, “I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband’s house, as I am of Hartfield” (82); acutely aware of her power, she asserts it wherever she can to maintain its existence and stretch its influence. She accomplishes this within Hartfield by absorbing the space left by “the absence of strong, patriarchal leadership.”[11] Emma’s command over Hartfield— and her father— is conveyed through Austen’s use of language; Mr. Woodhouse’s organizing of social plans at Hartfield is described as being arranged “through Emma’s persuasion,” and at one such gathering, “Emma allowed her father to talk—but supplied her visitors in a much more satisfactory style” (25, emphasis added). In Wenner’s words, “the landscape is [hers].”[12] Moreover, this view of Emma isn’t confined to herself or the narrator; as Knightley states, “ever since she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and of you all” (36). Johnson even draws the comparison between Emma and Hartfield, and Sir Thomas and Mansfield Park, concluding that their parallel running of the home is located in their matchmaking: “Sir Thomas’s principal activities are much the same as Emma’s: he manages his household— with less aplomb— and he oversees the destinies of those around him. This he accomplishes principally by encouraging or discouraging specific marriages.”[13] Emma exercises power not only over her own life, but also “over the destinies of others— and in doing so she poaches on what is felt to be male turf.”[14] Seizing the role of fathers marrying off their daughters, Emma wishes to marry off her friends; she sees matchmaking as “the greatest amusement in the world,” and the start of the text finds her boasting of her continual success (13).
Emma further demonstrates her consistent ‘poaching’ of male traits and command over her autonomy in her male-centered views on marriage. Emma does not want to marry; as Johnson writes, “she already possesses an independence and consequence that marriage to a ‘lord and master’ would, if anything, probably diminish.”[15] Ever aware of her governing power over Hartfield, her eventual engagement to Knightley unquestionably subverts the traditional expectations of a marital union. As Malone highlights, Emma “[retains] her individuality” even in marriage: “she remains ‘Miss Woodhouse’ to the last (p. 528).”[16] Not only does she retain her autonomy, she uses it: she decides the rules and construction of their union. Crucially, even in the one exception of female mobility—that of the wife moving into her husband’s home—Emma does not stray from her male usurping; she subverts the seemingly inevitable trope of female marital mobility, instead embodying the role of the immobile man. Knightley moves into her home, which, following Johnson, “is extraordinary considering his own power and independence.”[17]
One reading of this conclusion argues for its “tamely and placidly conservative” nature; returning to Moffat, she contends that “Emma gently scolds and persuades her father throughout the novel, but she never separates from him.”[18] However, this one-sided argument can, and should, be flipped on its head: he never separates from her. The root cause of Emma’s remaining in Hartfield is not bound to her father’s power over her, but rather her overwhelming power over him. From the start of the text, she has embodied the role of the patriarch; as the head of the home, those within her sphere of influence are dependent on her, her father most of all. Emma’s remaining at Hartfield demonstrates this dependence; far from being the immobile daughter, Emma is the product of a revolutionary role reversal: she is the stable, fortified, caring matriarch, not letting her marriage take her away from her governing responsibilities or neglect those under her care. Moffat goes on to write that Emma “and Knightley acquiesce in Mr. Woodhouse’s plan to live with him and care for him after their marriage,” again overlooking Emma’s active role in this ending.[19] As Emma issues a complete role reversal in making Knightley move to her, the effects of this reversal necessarily trickle down. Knightley does not join in line with Emma in the caretaking of Mr. Woodhouse; rather, in the same manner as a woman moving into a man’s estate does Knightley move into Emma’s. The text thus leaves the reader with a powerful concluding image, that of two men under the care and law of the female leader of the home. Ultimately, Moffat suggests that “we may read [this concluding dynamic] either as the triumph of her autonomy (and her definition of independence) or as a frightening regression”; with an appreciation for Austen’s social critique, the most nuanced reading is, categorically, the former.[20]
Elizabeth’s gender renegotiations are different from Emma’s. In contrast with Austen’s proprietous reigning heroine, Elizabeth openly verges on impropriety. As such, the “balancing act” Austen relies on in her subversive commentaries is slightly different from that of Emma.[21] While Butler writes that “generations of Jane Austen readers have agreed in finding Pride and Prejudice the lightest, most consistently entertaining, and least didactic of the novels,” it is precisely the novel’s surface level ‘lightness’ with which Austen balances the social critiques she makes through her heroine.[22] In Johnson’s wording, the text “does subscribe at least partially” to “conservative myths about the gentry”— like “the glamour of social status and the fulfillment ideally offered by marriage”— however, this is “only so that it can proceed to modify and repossess them from within.”[23] These modifications are located in Elizabeth’s cunning transgressions, in her playing with socially deemed improprietous behavior, namely in her movement through nature and in conversation with those in higher social standing.
Elizabeth’s association with the picturesque, and her movement through it, is perhaps Austen’s most embedded gender commentary. The picturesque, which sits between Burke’s “system of the sublime and the beautiful” is “a destabilizing and mediating term, taking the energy from the sublime and the languor from the beautiful and intermixing them.”[24] The text is set within the context of a then crucial aesthetic debate— “to preserve or alter” the landscape; Austen, who was “well aware of aesthetic debates,” “deliberately endorses picturesque aesthetics and satirizes picturesque improvement.”[25] This is seen in the language parallels between descriptions of Elizabeth and of picturesque landscapes, and through her appreciation for such landscapes. Picturesque nature is beautiful for its wildness, for its unrestrained and untrimmed natural elements, and Austen’s heroine embodies just that: Mrs. Hurst says that “[s]he really looked almost wild,” and Mrs. Bennet later tells her not to “run on in the wild manner that you are suffered to do at home” (36, 42).[26] Elizabeth not only embodies this definition of the picturesque, the passages depicting her movement are also rooted in such environments. As Johnson writes, she “not only treks for miles alone— something the propriety-conscious Emma would never do— but she also runs, jumps, springs, and rambles.”[27] She demonstrates “unladylike athleticism” in her unrestrained walks through nature, “crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity,” arriving at Netherfield “with weary ancles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise” (33). Elizabeth thus moves through both the physical and the symbolic—in both her physical movement through the landscape, and in her movement within the Burkean binary, “[overcoming] dichotomies between beauty and sublimity, passivity and aggression, intellect and emotion, by embracing both sides of these oppositional principles.”[28]
In more ways than one, Elizabeth moves in and out of decorous behavior, exhibiting “a most country town indifference to decorum” (36). In her final conversation with Lady Catherine, she asserts her autonomy by openly re-establishing the terms of their dynamic: in stark contrast to the passive obedience expected of her, she stands her ground. From the first mention of their approaching exchange, Austen writes that “Elizabeth was determined to make no effort for conversation” with her; she of course does, though on her own terms (334). As Johnson contends, this interaction is both “bold and delicate” on Austen’s part; a perfect example of her balance between social compliance and critique in the text, it “typifies her entire relationship to the novelistic tradition of social criticism under discussion.”[29] This balance is here rooted in the fact that, in this conversation, the one time Elizabeth steps completely outside the bounds of her expected conduct, she does so with the utmost propriety. Her socially rebellious, so-called “unfeeling, selfish” message, is balanced with its decorous, almost impervious delivery (338). Her bold defiance of Lady Catherine is softened through her language choice, “coolly” deflecting her harsh questions and attacks (335). In response to her warning not to “quit the sphere, in which [she has been] brought up,” Elizabeth contends, “[i]n marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter; so far we are equal” (337), cleverly critiquing Lady Catherine’s view of social hierarchies though complimentary language. Her subversion of Lady Catherine’s projected hierarchical views is further seen through her commanding of an equal footing; she asserts, “you may ask questions, which I shall choose not to answer,” demanding a more level playing field by restructuring the terms of their power dynamic (335). By the end of their conversation, Austen hints at their roles having flipped completely, with Elizabeth as the leader of the pair: “she rose as she spoke. Lady Catherine rose also” (338).
This is not the only interaction in which Elizabeth demonstrates social transgressions, nor is she the only heroine to do so. One of the key parallels between Emma’s and Elizabeth’s autonomy is their conversational mobility, specifically, their simultaneous compliance with and subversion of feminine conduct in conversation and communication with Knightley and Darcy. As Moffat writes of Emma, “she thinks of herself as a man’s equal and says of Knightley, ‘We always say what we like to one another (10).’”[30] Johnson contends that the pair “[stands] on equal footing”; this truth is seen with particular clarity in one conversation between them at the ball, which, as Malone argues, stresses Austen’s “renegotiation of gender roles.”[31] In this scene she asks Knightley, to ask her, to dance:
“‘Whom are you going to dance with?’ asked Mr. Knightley. She hesitated a moment, and then replied, ‘With you, if you will ask me.’ ‘Will you?’ said he, offering his hand. ‘Indeed I will’” (310).
Elizabeth portrays a similar mobility within her and Darcy’s dynamic, which is laid bare for the reader in one particular scene, again through Austen’s precise use of dialogue. As Malone writes, during their dance at the Netherfield ball, “[a]s they progress down the set, Elizabeth satirizes the conventionally vapid flirtation in which they are expected to engage”:[32]
“He replied, and was silent again. After a pause of some minutes she addressed him a second time with ‘It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy.— I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples’” (90).
Just as Emma guides Knightley towards asking her to dance, here Elizabeth guides Darcy towards the expected movement of their exchange. Demonstrating the malleability of the so-called boundaries of accepted feminine behavior, and how women can renegotiate and reclaim power, either heroine “[dismisses] her society’s demands for female passivity in the realm of courtship”;[33] though they do not fully stray from the expected gendered dynamic, both heroines assert and command more autonomy and space within it, playing the role of passive woman, but only as they decide to. Emma and Elizabeth both blanket their authority underneath the traditional dynamic of male leader and female follower. And yet, in this subtle puppeteering, Austen’s heroines are the clear leaders, and their male counterparts the followers, of their conversational dance.
In conversation and beyond, Emma and Elizabeth move out of female-associated passivity and into male-associated autonomy. They both break the mold of “modest young heroines” who “disclaim power” and “attend with admirable patience to the directions of others even when they are wrong”; instead, it “never occurs to [them] to apologize” for the movement they exhibit and the power they assume.[34] And while their transgressions may be classified as insignificant, as Newton asserts, “to allow a nineteenth-century heroine to get away with being critical and challenging—especially about male power and feminine submission—is still to rebel, no matter how charmingly that heroine may be represented, no matter how safe her rebellion is made to appear.”[35] Austen grants her heroines an autonomy they might have in reality been denied, and in creating for her heroines fictional worlds that allow for their transgressions, she uses her most respected voice—her voice as a writer—to express and carry out the social critiques she was otherwise not offered the chance to vocalize.
Footnotes:
[1] Claudia B. Johnson, “Pride and Prejudice and the Pursuit of Happiness,” in Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 77.
[2] Claudia B Johnson, “Emma: Woman, Lovely Woman Reigns Alone,” in Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 121.
[3] Ibid., 127.
[4] All quotes from Emma are taken from Jane Austen, Emma, (United Kingdom: Penguin Random House, 2015).
[5] Emma Duckworth, “Chapter 4: Emma and the Dangers of Individualism,” in The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen’s Novels (Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), 147,148.
[6] Marilyn Butler, “Emma,” in Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002), 251.
[7] Johnson, “Emma,” 132.
[8] Tony Tanner, “The Match-Maker: Emma,” in Jane Austen (Hampshire: Red Globe Press, 1987), 199; Meaghan Malone, “Jane Austen’s Balls: Emma’s Dance of Masculinity,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 70, no. 4 (2016), 435.
[9] Malone, “Jane Austen’s Balls,” 436.
[10] Wendy Moffat, “Identifying with Emma: Some Problems for the Feminist Reader,” College English 53, no. 1 (1991), 52; Johnson, “Emma,” 124.
[11] Malone, “Jane Austen’s Balls,” 436.
[12] Emma Wenner, “Chapter 5: Enclaves of Civility Amidst Clamorous Impertinence,” in Prospect and Refuge in the Landscape of Jane Austen (London: Routledge, 2006), 65.
[13] Johnson, “Emma,” 131.
[14] Ibid., 125.
[15] Ibid., 124.
[16] Malone, “Jane Austen’s Balls,” 446.
[17] Johnson, “Emma,” 143.
[18] Ibid.; Moffat, “Identifying with Emma,” 52.
[19] Ibid., 53.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Johnson, “Pride and Prejudice,” 89.
[22] Marilyn Butler, “Pride and Prejudice,” in Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002), 197.
[23] Johnson, “Pride and Prejudice,” 89,91.
[24] Jill Heydt-Stevenson, “Liberty, Connection, and Tyranny: The Novels of Jane Austen and the Aesthetic Movement of the Picturesque,” in Lessons of Romanticism: A Critical Companion, edited by Thomas Pfau and Robert F. Gleckner, (New York, USA: Duke University Press, 1998), 269.
[25] Heydt-Stevenson, “Liberty,” 262.
[26] All quotes from Pride and Prejudice are taken from Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, (United Kingdom: Penguin Random House, 2014).
[27] Johnson, “Pride and Prejudice,” 76.
[] Heydt-Stevenson, “Liberty,” 271.
[29] Ibid., 87.
[30] Moffat, “Identifying,” 46.
[31] Johnson, “Emma,” 141; Malone, “Jane Austen’s Balls,” 442.
[32] Ibid., 443.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Johnson, “Emma,” 127,122.
[35] Judith Lowder Newton, “‘Pride and Prejudice’: Power, Fantasy, and Subversion in Jane Austen,” in Feminist Studies 4, no. 1 (1978), 35.
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