[ book tip by Ann Morgan ] Looking at Jane Austen’s oeuvre, it might be tempting to draw out the moral that flightiness does not pay. Time and again in the early works, characters with a tendency to frivolity, such as Marianne Dashwood and Lydia Bennet, are brought low and forced to pay, often dearly, for their insufficiently serious approach to life. But then there’s Emma. Perhaps the most flawed of Austen’s leading ladies, Emma Woodhouse has led a charmed existence up until the point at which the novel introduces her and consequently has come to think of the world and the people in it as toys set out for her amusement. It is not that she is deliberately cruel, it is simply that she has never had to feel the cost of the indignities and thoughtless acts to which she submits the more helpless of the characters around her, most notably her poor, unprepossessing friend Harriet Smith. Austen is not about to let Emma get away with it and the second half of the novel sees the consequences of Emma’s selfishness visiting themselves upon her, forcing rigorous self-examination and almost costing her the love of the man she comes to realise is perfect for her. Yet, unlike the unfortunate Lydia and Marianne, Emma is not to be doomed to a botched future. If she can only find the necessary humility, the way is clear for her to marry the man of her dreams. In the right hands, it seems, flightiness is sometimes forgivable.    

[ book info ] Austen, Jane : Emma. (Book language: English) Penguin, 1996 (1816).