emma and austen

Why does everyone give a bad rating to a comment that criticizes the book? You made a great comment, and I gave you 10 points for actually bothering to make an intelligent point.<br><br>I'm with you all the way about Emma (Emma sucks--I can't understand why people think she's "the complete heroine"), but I have to disagree with your general analysis of Jane Austen. Imagination may not have been what Jane Austen was going for in her books so much as flawless representation--and subtle critique--of her own class's bizarre social system based entirely on polite subtleties. Appropriately, the differences in her novels are subtle as well, but most people even now can sense a significant difference of tone and theme between Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. Also, the fact that Jane Austen wrote about the day-to-day lives of women, with actual female protagonists, broke some significant literary ground.<br>

I agree with Ruth and please go and read the Juvinillia before making such a sweaping staitment about a very talented woman who was well restriced by her own class and possition as well as a need to write good books for publication to support her family!<br><br>I also disagree on Emma, I do think it is well written. Everything in the three books ties together at the end... and as Wilde once said "The good ended happy and the bad unhappy, that is what fiction is all about". As a work of fictional amusment the book is briliantly consturucted for that exact task and is a good resource for those interested in the expectations of 19th Cetuary soceity.

Jane Austen's whole problem was that she was afraid to feel. Only in Persuasion and a little in Mansfield Park do we really see anything touching. Yet she is highly entertaining and I feel people admire her so because so many people are themselves not in touch with their feelings. For the more emotional, the Bronte's win every time, hands down, over Austen.

i do not know how one could possibly label Jane Austen or any of her works as boring, obviously you have not been reading it in relation to the context it was set in. Austen was an intelligent woman well before her time, and her views on social and marital status' at that time are classic. pride and prejudice is and always will be a classic, not because it has been labelled as one, but because it is still being read and loved all these years later.i suggest you read it through once more instead of immediately saying it 'sucks', and maybe if you have the maturity and depth of character, you will realise it is in fact a classic.

An excellent, well written comment. Strong vocabulary was used and a great passion for what you wanted to pass on to others! A job well done.

How it is possible to argue that jane austen is at all a talented writer i do not know. The obvious similarities of plot, character and setting in each of her 6 novels testify not to a literary genius but to a narrow scope of imagination. Emma in particular is a novel which is so attuned to trivialities that it becomes painful to read. Persuasion is Austen's only novel which truly results in any character development. Emma as a character is not a heroine but a shameful example of the elitist society which Austen prefers to write on. Emma in fact does not mature into a clever young woman. Her plans to matchmake the Weston's baby is one example of how Emma ends the novel in the same position as she begins it, in delusion of her naive presumption. i have read each of Austen's novels twice and will never read them again. As a fan of 19th century literature it pains me to compare the bland austen works to Scott or Stevenson or Hogg.

What's wrong with trivialities? Isn't that what makes Austen novels original? You don't always have to go to war or plan a trip around the world to reveal great themes. Think about NOW - the most observant people are not those that see what's in the news, but see things in people around them that others can't see.

Without making any comparison between the "value" of Austen compared to other writers, I simply think it is a bit rude to judge Austen based on the narrow scope of life which her characters live in.

You have to remember, the historical context around Austen's time was the Industrial Revolution. She KNOWS that the revolution is happening and that there's the bourgeouise (can't spell this word!), the factory workers, the tyrant factory owners etc. But she purposely chose this setting which is totally different from the real world at the time. And you just have to appreciate it. That IS original!

at least she knew her limitations; that's relevant enough.