by Elizabeth R Nelson

Created on: July 17, 2008   Last Updated: July 18, 2008

Study of Society in Jane Austen's Emma

Jane Austen portrays the society of the novel, Emma, through the values and standards of the Highbury world. Highbury is a "large and prosperous village almost amounting to a town," sixteen miles out of London. In Emma we find there is an emphasis placed on social organisation and mores.

Hartfield is the home of the Woodhouses, who are the "first in consequence in Highbury." Indeed, all the fully developed characters in the novel belong to the upper middle class - the cultural elite. Consequently Highbury life is seen from this level.

There are persons of higher rank than the Woodhouses within the realm of the novel but they are not developed to any great extent. For example, the Churchills are represented from this higher echelon.

In addition there are those characters seen as below Emma's station in life such as Robin Martin whom Emma remarks rather snobbishly about. The lower middle class also include the former Miss Taylor, Mrs Goddard and Miss Bates.

The social life of Highbury seems to be one of ideal pleasure. In the leisured gentry the attributes of snobbery, condescension, unkindness and lack of consideration are often seen. This is apparent in Emma's comments on the lower orders and her visits to the poor are undoubtedly undertaken as they were a social requirement.

The characters within Emma are related by kinship or common social duties. In Highbury society the people are inhibited by a strong sense of rank and social duty. We find through the course of the novel that there is no real violation of rank perpetuated. As a person's rank changes in relation to the Woodhouses, a distance is seen. The vicar is not close, the schoolmistress is received, and the poor are visited.

The society in which the action of the novel takes place is local, limited and stylized. It has its own operative values. These values place constraints on the society and fix the limits by which all will live. The tension within the novel arises through discrepancies between the ways the different classes think about things.

The values that the Highbury elite believe are important are rank, courtesy, refined humour, reason and decorum. Frivolity such as can be seen within the lower classes is considered unseemly. A friendly and social disposition is valued along with good manners.

Within the English society of Emma the problems facing women of the day can be clearly seen. For example Mr Knightly says of Mrs Weston, "You are better placed here; very fit for a wife, but not at all for a governess... but you were receiving a very good education from her (Emma), on the very material matrimonial point of submitting your own will, and doing as you were bid." This emphasises that the role of the woman was to stay at home doing such pretty things as painting and embroidery, running the household and looking beautiful. Women were not expected to engage in high intellectual pursuits but were expected to carry an amusing, witty conversation.

Austen herself was a genteel bourgeois and wrote mainly of the upper middle class in society, presenting a unique vision that continues to provide great enjoyment and moral lessons for today.

Bibliography

Austen, Jane, Emma (Oxford, 1990)

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