Little to Vex, and Yet I’m Vexed
Jane Austen’s most unlikeable heroine may hit a little too close to home for most of us—but also offers a clue to the real meaning of love.
Review by Ali Holcomb
I recently reread Jane Austen’s Emma, the perfect summery read. The story takes place in the dainty town of Highbury, with a cast of characters of whom none are particularly magnificent. The paranoid father, the spinster bore, the demure and dull Jane Fairfax, the feather-brained Harriet, the smarmy Mr. Elton—the list goes on, with Emma in the center. The whole tale is Emma meddling where she ought not be meddling, thinking she alone understands the hearts of Highbury. The book tells of the ordinary—the silly little gossiping drama of a small town—but it is Emma who attempts to force things to happen. It is she who believes herself to have the wisdom to control the human heart, only to be wrong again and again. It is the charming Mr. Knightley who, on the other hand, approaches the small-town drama of Highbury with good humor and humility. Emma is sick of the ordinariness, while Knightley seems to embrace it. Is it any irony that the book starts off with the lines: “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her”? And then, throughout the book we soon realize that much does vex her: namely Highbury, and the people of Highbury. She is a rather irritated person, even though she doesn’t show it at the dinner parties. It is Knightley who sees through her.
Finally, something does occur, but not what Emma planned—though it is by her doing. In one of the most painful scenes in all of literature (really!) she dresses down the little town spinster in front of everyone; Highbury is taken aback, for the woman who was supposed to set the example for them all has just revealed her spite and resentment. It is after this painful exposure that we see the change in Emma. Knightley pulls her aside afterwards to tell her, “Badly done.” Emma, the queen and socialite of Highbury, must make amends, ask for forgiveness, and come to terms with the desires of her own heart: her own deep desire to be loved and to love. She must even face her own deep inadequacies.
Jane Austen once remarked that she would write a character no one but she herself would like, and then she wrote Emma. Emma has hitherto received her satisfaction from comparing herself to those around her. She remarks that even if she never marries, she will never be as low as Miss Bates, as, after all, Miss Bates is poor and she is wealthy. When Jane Fairfax arrives in town, Emma snubs her and belittles her, annoyed that she’s always been compared to the accomplished Jane (and feeling that she falls short of the prim and proper Jane). She is pleased to be friends with Harriet, feeling that she can show her the ways of finer society, but when Harriet begins to chase something outside of Emma’s direction and approval, her reaction is not friendly or kind.
Don’t all of us make ourselves out to be the hero or heroine of our stories, who knows exactly what’s going on with everyone else?
In short, Emma is imperfect, though many in the town pretend that she is or hold her up on a pedestal, and she’s quite pleased to be up there, right up until she exposes herself as just as petty and spiteful as the rest of us are. Emma, when corrected and lectured by the person she loves most, finds herself in the place of not knowing if her love is returned—or if her poor behavior has reduced her to a new lowness, unworthy of the love she desires. But there is grace in Emma. There is forgiveness for Emma, certainly a little humbling for her, but she is welcomed back into the fold of Highbury. And Emma also receives a love higher than the one that has been offered to her at Highbury her whole life. We think we want to be loved for our performance, for our achievements. We so desire to earn it. Until, that is, we are offered the highest love, the one that sees us at our worst, and still says “I love you.” This love is not based on feeling, but on a constant choice. It is humbling to accept, and it is what Emma must learn. The person who has seen her in all her faults has still deemed her “loved.”
So, perhaps Emma is easy to dislike because she is too close to all of us. Don’t all of us make ourselves out to be the hero or heroine of our stories, who knows exactly what’s going on with everyone else? We want to know all the gossip, and to always be the cleverest and the savviest in the room: we who alone can read the social cues perfectly, who are best decision makers for our friends and their relationships. I know I want to say, “I called that relationship before it even began.” In what feels like harmless play, I’m trying to be God. Emma felt like the goddess of Highbury, and I have often felt that way about my little Capitol Hill life. But usually there is a moment of correction needed. Perhaps it’s from friends I love, or perhaps it’s just me tripping on a brick in our root strewn sidewalks when I was getting just a bit too full of myself.
I honestly have been immeasurably blessed. There is little in my world that should distress or vex me. And yet I am vexed… all the time. I hit one too many red lights, and I am irked. I get an email at the second I was planning to leave work, and I start muttering. Yes, we are all too close to being Emma, vexed when we’ve been blessed. We are puffed up on our pride because we’ve compared ourselves to those around us and decided we come out on top. Then we exile those who show us where we are falling short. Sometimes, a mirror must be held up for us to see ourselves for what we really are.
Knightley confronting Emma for her petty unkindness is one of the deepest acts of love one human being can offer another. He does care for this person, in all her fallenness and shortcomings, but he knows she can grow from it, that she is better than what she displayed in that ugly moment. Speaking truth in love is not easy, and yet Knightley does exactly this. It is only when our truest form is revealed that a deeper love can form; the very hardest to receive because it promises to love us not for our perfection, but in our imperfection. At one point in Emma, someone makes a joke that there are two letters that equate perfection: “M” and “A” (or “Emma”). But this is mere flattery, because real love never tells us we are perfect. It is being loved even while being imperfect that will call the human soul ever higher, for once we have tasted grace, we long to share it.
Ali Holcomb is a newly minted military wife and still marvels at being walking distance to the ocean from her house in Virginia. She has written for Mere Orthodoxy and is a regular contributor at Mockingbird Theology, and just launched a Substack where she sorts through her latest “life thoughts.”
Emma was published by John Murray in 1816. You can get a copy pretty much anywhere.
