Jane Austen For Dummies (59 page)
Read Jane Austen For Dummies Online
Authors: Joan Elizabeth Klingel Ray
This is the novel that your group might wish to discuss twice: once the first time they read it and then again, after everyone re-reads it, noting all the clues Austen plants about the book's secret that causes Emma to be “duped.”
Austen said of this heroine that nobody but she, Emma's creator, would much like her. Do you like Emma? Why or why not?
What are Emma's good qualities?
How do you interpret Emma's interfering with people's lives? What are her motivations? Can you forgive her? Why?
Emma and her father appear to be highly different. How are they alike?
Trace the clues Austen presents regarding Frank Churchill's real reason for visiting Highbury. In so doing, trace how Frank covers his tracks.
Watch Amy Heckerling's updating of
Emma
in the film
Clueless
. How does she change some of the characters to make them more relevant to your own time? Does the change work in still presenting the basic Austen character on whom the Heckerling character is modeled? Why?
Watch the Gwyneth Paltrow
Emma
film. What is gained or lost in the presentation of Harriet Smith, played by Toni Collete? How does the film present Emma and Mr. Knightley's relationship? Is it effective? Why?
Watch the Kate Beckensale television miniseries of
Emma.
This version is closer to the book. Compare and contrast the way the lead characters are played in this version and in and the Paltrow version.
Austen never had the chance â because of her fatal illness â to go through this book and revise it after letting the manuscript sit for a while. But she did make some changes in the final chapters of Volume 2: Revising her original Chapter 10 to what it is now, she wrote a new Chapter 11, and made changes in her old Chapter 11 to make it the current Chapter 12. Most editions of
Persuasion
have what are called “Austen's cancelled chapters” in an appendix at the end of the novel. Ask the group to read those chapters so that you can discuss and evaluate her changes.
What was Lady Elliot like? Why did she marry Sir Walter?
How do persuasion and persuading operate in the novel?
Why did Lady Russell persuade Anne to drop Wentworth back in 1806? Can you justify Lady Russell's actions?
What are your feelings about Mrs. Clay? What hints does Austen plant earlier in the novel for Mrs. Clay's final action?
Evaluate the Crofts as a married couple.
What do the senior Musgroves represent?
Wentworth seems very romantic and heroic. Yet a case could be made for his being wimpy and unpleasant. Make that case
or
argue against it!
Analyze the changes in Anne Elliot: how she goes from being “only Anne,” as in “just Anne,” to “only Anne,” as in “uniquely Anne!”
