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A review by theangelssing
Emma by Jane Austen
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Spoilers in my review!
Follow Emma through her journey to find a husband to Harriet, her friend! Emma will also give us her view upon marriage, letting us dive into questioning on friendship, relationship and neighborhood relations. Will Emma find her own place?
I really enjoyed reading this book. It was honestly my first Jane Austen’s book so I wasn’t familiar with her writing. I had questions all along the book and still had questions at the end but I think that it is good. The book and Jane Austen’s writing give us the opportunity to think about marriage during Austen’s time and also today. It also gives us the opportunity to think about friendship (between men and women, women and women, men and men), family dynamics (death of Emma’s mother, the place of her father, her own place in her family for example), the place in society (the example of Harriet but also Miss Taylor, a governor marrying a man and so changing her status) but also relation with the neighborhood (how people saw Frank Churchill at first, the first impression on Jane). I really love how the book deals with a lot of different things and even if it is from a romantic author, I think it can be seen as realistic. Some struggles the characters encounter, in their own period of time, can be a mirror of our own struggles in our own society. It is as if the book is intemporal even though the setting is not the same as our current period and society.
I had some hard moments with different characters and I didn’t understand them all (I still don’t understand why Jane and Frank decided to not speak about their engagement nor understand why Harriet didn’t tell Emma earlier about her feelings for Mr. Knightley and I don’t always understand Emma’s actions) but overall, I think they are all really interesting and they all bring something new, fresh and a reflection upon the book and the different topics. I also think it is quite interesting to view all the different type of “happily ever after”. It is always with a wedding, true, but the characters experience a different type of wedding and their own are not the same. I think it was great to see that even the end of a story can have multiple happily ever after. If we were to do a retelling where Emma did not marry Mr. Knightley, could we have had considered it a “happily ever after”? I think so because she would have had been happy either way. In the end what matters the most for it to be a happily ever after it is if the characters are happy more than our own vision of this sentence.
I really enjoyed reading this book. It was honestly my first Jane Austen’s book so I wasn’t familiar with her writing. I had questions all along the book and still had questions at the end but I think that it is good. The book and Jane Austen’s writing give us the opportunity to think about marriage during Austen’s time and also today. It also gives us the opportunity to think about friendship (between men and women, women and women, men and men), family dynamics (death of Emma’s mother, the place of her father, her own place in her family for example), the place in society (the example of Harriet but also Miss Taylor, a governor marrying a man and so changing her status) but also relation with the neighborhood (how people saw Frank Churchill at first, the first impression on Jane). I really love how the book deals with a lot of different things and even if it is from a romantic author, I think it can be seen as realistic. Some struggles the characters encounter, in their own period of time, can be a mirror of our own struggles in our own society. It is as if the book is intemporal even though the setting is not the same as our current period and society.
I had some hard moments with different characters and I didn’t understand them all (I still don’t understand why Jane and Frank decided to not speak about their engagement nor understand why Harriet didn’t tell Emma earlier about her feelings for Mr. Knightley and I don’t always understand Emma’s actions) but overall, I think they are all really interesting and they all bring something new, fresh and a reflection upon the book and the different topics. I also think it is quite interesting to view all the different type of “happily ever after”. It is always with a wedding, true, but the characters experience a different type of wedding and their own are not the same. I think it was great to see that even the end of a story can have multiple happily ever after. If we were to do a retelling where Emma did not marry Mr. Knightley, could we have had considered it a “happily ever after”? I think so because she would have had been happy either way. In the end what matters the most for it to be a happily ever after it is if the characters are happy more than our own vision of this sentence.