She does not go unchallenged by Mr. Knightley.
“I do not know what you mean by ‘success,’” he says, and observes, with brotherly bluntness and irony, that her time has been properly and delicately spent if she has been endeavouring for the last four years to bring about a marriage—a worthy employment for a young lady’s mind. Then he treats her pretensions with smiling scorn, and alleges she made a lucky guess, which is all that can be said.
Emma argues that she promoted Mr. Weston’s visits to Hartfield, and when her father begs in all sincerity that she will make no more matches, craves mischievously to be allowed one exception. “Only one more, papa, only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton!—you like Mr. Elton, papa—I must look about for a wife for him. He has been here a whole year, and he has fitted up his house so comfortably that it would be a shame to have him single any longer; and I thought when he was joining their hands to-day, he looked so very much as if he would like to have the same kind office done for him! I think very well of Mr. Elton, and this is the only way of doing him service.”
“Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish and the chicken,” said Mr. Knightley, “but leave him to choose his own wife. Depend upon it, a man of six or seven and twenty can take care of himself.”
My readers will observe that Emma is as disengaged and disinterested in making matches for her friends as if she were a young matron. She has not a notion of the incumbency of marriage on herself, as even Jane and Elizabeth Bennet felt it, to a certain extent, to be an obligation on them. There is no worldly necessity for it in Emma’s case. She is the independent mistress of Hartfield, at the head of her indulgent father’s establishment, and amply provided for in the future. Jane Austen’s women, as a rule, are not too susceptible. Love and marriage for themselves are not the beginning, middle, and end of their dreams. They are quite willing to grant due prominence to other influences and interests. They would have blushed to have been engrossed by one passion, however lawful—even honourable. It is only because Catherine Morland is very young and simple that she is so entranced by Henry Tilney’s attentions. As it is, had the couple been finally separated, she would have submitted to the inevitable, and been content in time without him. Fanny Price’s devotion to her cousin Edmund is the habit of many years, and is largely made up of gratitude for constant protection and kindness. When Edmund Bertram’s marriage to Mary Crawford appears certain, and when Henry Crawford is wooing Fanny with manly ardour and tender consideration for her difficulties, she is in a fair way—Jane Austen does not conceal it—for transferring her gentle affections from Edmund to Henry. The author’s older women are fine, sensible creatures, capable of being useful and happy in all the relations of life. They can love, with what unselfish fidelity after hope is gone, Anne Elliot shows; but they are always mistresses of themselves, never love-sick—the poor puppets and slaves of passion.
Mr. Weston, Miss Taylor’s husband, has been a widower like Mr. Woodhouse, and his son by the first wife is destined to play a prominent part in the story. Frank Churchill has been early adopted by a wealthy, childless uncle and aunt—his mother’s relations—who give him their name, and are to make him their heir. He has been seldom seen in Highbury, but his praises have gone before him, and it does not diminish his popularity that he writes “a very handsome letter” to his stepmother, though he is not able to pay her a visit.
Within the round of Hartfield visiting—abridged, as it is, by Mr. Woodhouse’s delicate health and invalid habits—are Donwell Abbey,[47] Mr. Knightley’s seat; the vicarage occupied by the young bachelor clergyman, Mr. Elton; the houses in the village which belong respectively to Mr. and Mrs. Perry, the country doctor and his wife; Mrs. Bates, the widow of the late vicar, and her daughter; and Mrs. Goddard, who was the mistress of a school—not a seminary.
Jane Austen gives her view of the education of the period, which was in a transition state, in her definition of a school as distinguished from a seminary—not “an establishment, or anything which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality, upon new principles and new systems, and where young ladies, for enormous pay, might be screwed out of health and into vanity—but a real, honest, old-fashioned boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies.” These views were regarded as eminently sensible, moderate, and practical in their day; and no doubt there was, and is, some truth in them. At the same time, the general notion of education is narrow and prejudiced, to be held by so able a woman.
Mr. Woodhouse’s habits make him go abroad rarely, but he is fond of company in a quiet way at home, and Emma finds such company is best secured in the form of “tea visits” from such accommodating old neighbours as the Bateses and Mrs. Goddard. She is delighted to see her father look comfortable, and very much pleased with herself for contriving things so well; but the prosings of the elderly and homely guests do not prove very congenial entertainment for the bright, clever young girl. Therefore she welcomes Mrs. Goddard’s respectful request to be allowed to bring a parlour boarder,[48] Miss Smith, with her.
Harriet Smith is a plump, blooming, blue-eyed, sweet-tempered girl, whose beauty delights Emma’s eye, while her innocent deference and gratitude, together with her unqualified admiration for everything at Hartfield—including its young mistress—touch Emma’s heart and flatter her vanity. She determines, in modern parlance, to “cultivate” Harriet Smith, who is to a great extent friendless, to improve her, to raise her into better society, and to make a companion of her.