The critics of talk in Emma.

McMaster, Juliet

Let me remind you of a lively exchange between Emma and Mrs. Weston on the possibility of Mr. Knightley's marrying Jane Fairfax. No, no, argues Emma,

"How would he bear to have Miss Bates belonging to him? ... and thanking him all day long for his great kindness in marrying Jane?--'So very kind and obliging!--But he always had been such a very kind neighbour!' and then fly off", through half a sentence, to her mother's old petticoat. 'Not that it was such a very old petticoat either--for still it would last a great while--and indeed, she must thankfully say that their petticoats were all very strong."

"For shame, Emma! [says Mrs. Weston.] Do not mimic her.

You divert me against my conscience." (225)

But Mrs. Weston is diverted, and so are we. Like her author, Emma is a very able parodist, and the parodist has to be an expert in language, alert to the quirks of expression, the signature phrases, the idiosyncrasies that hover on the edge of absurdity. Here Emma captures Miss Bates's everlasting thankfulness, her fragmented syntax, her tendency to get stuck in inappropriate domestic detail. (1) More fleetingly, Emma parodies the speech patterns of other characters too: Mr. Elton '"will suit Harriet exactly; it will be an 'Exactly so,' as he says himself" (49). She notes, but can't emulate, her sister's '"Very true, my love"' response to the curmudgeonly John Knightley (113). When Mrs. Elton comes on the scene, Emma's parody is less playful than indignant: '"A little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr. E., and her caro sposo, and her resources'" (279). And despite her devotion to her father, she can parody him too. Dreading to tell him of her engagement, '"I wish I may not sink into 'poor Emma' with him at once"' (464).

And what is it all for, this sharp ear for idiolect, this critical habit, this intense scrutiny of human expression? Emma, I suggest, is like Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. His delight in the absurdities of character in the people around him teaches us readers, as it teaches his daughter Elizabeth, to become connoisseurs of "follies and nonsense'" (57), to enjoy to the fullest the human comedy before us. And Emma's alert response to the individual characteristics of speech teaches us to be alert too, to savor the individual subtleties and varieties of oral expression--and to recognize the art of the creator of them.

Emma has honed skills in critical perception. Think of the "courtship" charade, where we see her take on a written text: "She cast her eye over it, pondered, caught the meaning," and in a few minutes is "quite mistress of the lines" (72). (Wow! How many of us could do that?) But there is a kind of hubris that goes with such cleverness. Mr. Bennet finds that in savoring human absurdity for its own sake he has become defective in human sympathy. And likewise Emma, drunk with the power of her critical perception, can miss truths that stare her in the face. The critical perception is sharp. But, as we know, it is her fatal flaw to interpret according to her wishes.

After she has solved the "courtship" charade with the speed of an arrow, she takes it upon herself to "translate" it for Harriet:

"This is saying very plainly--'Pray, Miss Smith, give me leave to pay my addresses to you. Approve my charade and my intentions in the same glance.'"

She has got it all exactly right, except for one thing, the "Miss Smith"! And she has to work hard to make it come out the way she wants. "Thy ready wit the word will soon supply" is a major clue, since her own ready wit has indeed just supplied the word. But she determinedly sticks with her "Miss Smith": '"Humph--Harriet's ready wit! All the better. A man must be very much in love indeed, to describe her so'" (72).

We see the same pattern when she takes on another written courtship text--Robert Martin's letter of proposal. She reads it with every intention of ridiculing it. But she recognizes at once that it is '"a very good letter,'" and says so. But since this judgment goes against her wishes, she looks for a way to discredit the letter: '"so good a letter, Harriet, that everything considered, I think one of his sisters must have helped him.'" Still, her strong understanding and sense of justice won't let her rest there. No, it is '"not the style of a woman.'" So how can she dismiss it? She hits upon the happy expedient of suggesting automatic writing! "'[W]hen he takes a pen in hand, his thoughts naturally find proper words. It is so with some men'" (51). There's no way Robert's letter can win!

We know about Emma's biased readings. Her considered response to these written texts makes the process clear.

Emma, like other novels, is made up of words. But more than other novels, it is about words; and words, spoken and written, make up a high proportion of the action. There is no war of nations as in Waverley, no guillotine as in A Tale of Two Cities, no physical love-making as in Lady Chatterley's Lover. Childbearing happens discreetly off-stage, wedding ceremonies are encapsulated in Mr. Woodhouse's worries about wedding cake or Mrs. Elton's sneers about "'[v]ery little white satin"' (484). Some words almost take on agency. Emma talks of '"my poor word 'success,' which you quarrel with'" (13). Words can provide therapy. Harriet, at the end, can achieve a kind of catharsis through confession: "having once owned that she had been presumptuous and silly, and self-deceived, before, her pain and confusion seemed to die away with the words" (481). Words can precipitate major action: the "blunder" in the game of alphabet that tips off Mr. Knightley on the Frank/Jane affair; the oral tournament that Frank Churchill sets up in which the weapons are to be speaking '"one thing very clever, ... or two things moderately clever'" et cetera--a hugely significant event that leads to a major revolution in Emma's moral development (370). These verbal happenings constitute the major action of the novel.

A scene that is especially rich for showing speech as action is the one where the John Knightleys have come to visit, and Emma as hostess has to be on the watch for recurring threats to family peace. On the one side are the two vigorously healthy Knightley brothers with their mutually absorbing talk about the affairs of the Donwell estate; on the other, Mr. Woodhouse and Isabella and their valetudinarian concerns about health and treatments. Aware of the danger of war between the two factions, Emma constitutes herself a peacekeeping force, monitoring threats of conflict and carefully forestalling outbreaks of hostility.

Predictably, perhaps, "discourse in praise of gruel" (101) becomes something like a nuclear build-up. Mr. Woodhouse proposes basins of gruel all round. Knowing gruel is anathema to the Knightley men, Emma swiftly sidesteps the threat by ordering just two basins, for Isabella and her father.

The next minefield to negotiate is the fraught subject of the John Knightleys' visit to South End. Mr. Woodhouse objects that '"the sea is very rarely of use to any body."' '"Come, come,'" Emma intervenes hastily. '"I must beg you not to talk of the sea.... I who have never seen it! South End is prohibited, if you please'" (101). And she reminds Isabella that she hasn't yet asked after Mr. Perry, again steering into safer waters. Still, Mr. Wingfield and Mr. Perry, the two oracles of Isabella and her father, are themselves provocative names, and Emma must invoke enquiries after Miss Bates to avoid an outbreak of hostilities. By now she must be fairly mopping her brow.

London's unhealthy climate is the next minefield, and when Mr. Wood-house contends his son-in-law is '"very far from looking well"' (103), John Knightley picks up on his own name and crustily tells his wife, '"Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself and the children, and let me look as I chuse'" (104). The peace of the family reunion at Hartfield is seriously under threat, and Emma, in some desperation, tunes her voice to the male discourse that she parodies elsewhere and asks cunningly, '"I did not thoroughly understand what you were telling your brother ... about your friend Mr. Graham's intending to have a bailiff from Scotland"'--thus proving that in her vigilant peacekeeping she has kept up with both conversations: no mean feat. Of course she doesn't care two straws about Mr. Graham's bailiff; her apparent interest is merely strategic.

But for all her efforts, her success is only partial. Finally, Mr. Woodhouse goes too far in blaming the Knightleys for flying in the face of Mr. Perry's prescriptions; and John Knightley issues something like a declaration of war. '"Mr. Perry' said he, in a voice of very strong displeasure, 'would do as well to keep his opinion till it is asked for'"--and much more in the same vein (106). This is the rhetoric of war. And this time Mr. Knightley has to step in as a second peacekeeper, and he too acts strategically, on the dual principle of "mollify, and distract." '"True, true,'" he responds swiftly; and then: '"But John, as to what I was telling you'" (106). Evidently Mr. Knightley, however engaged in the Donwell subject, has been aware of Emma's efforts, and when the time comes he can step in as her ally. And family peace is restored again.

It's a wonderfully comic scene, where a quiet evening of family conversation is fraught with suggestions of the unthinkable. I use the metaphors of war to back up my claim that, in Emma, speech is action and can provide the sort of thrills we usually associate with more muscular kinds of action. My analogies, I realize, turn the scene into something like mock-heroic; and indeed heroism is explicitly invoked. In another of John Knightleys grumpy sallies Emma realizes, during the carriage ride on Christmas Eve, she can't bring herself to placate him with the "Very true, my love" that he is used to receiving from his wife. "She could not be complying, she dreaded being quarrelsome; her heroism reached only to silence" (114). And heroic indeed her silence is, given the provocation of John Knightley's complaints against her friend Mr. Weston and his notable lack of a Christmas spirit.

To negotiate such a world successfully, the heroine needs to be skilled at assessing speech, and--with notable exceptions--Emma is indeed a highly qualified critic of oral discourse. She busily assesses the talk of one character after another, and for the most part she is a useful guide to us.

Though she is generous to Mr. Elton while she believes him to be courting Harriet, she swiftly assesses his excesses, noting privately, '"he does sigh and languish, and study for compliments rather more than I could endure as a principal"'--blissfully unaware that she is the principal (49). And after the proposal scene she accurately judges the state of his heart from his speeches: "There had been no real affection either in his language or manners. Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance; but she could hardly devise any set of expressions, or fancy any tone of voice, less allied with real love. She need not trouble herself to pity him" (135). And if not for her, had there been any for Harriet? Emma does not trouble herself about that either.

Frank Churchill lives up to her prediction that '"he can adapt his conversation to the taste of every body'" (150). When she actually meets him, "Emma was directly sure that he knew how to make himself agreeable" (191). She recognizes that in praising her friend, his stepmother, he is buttering her up: "He got as near as he could to thanking her for Miss Taylor's merits" (192). She is not bamboozled, but she likes it anyway, and only later compares his talk with Mr. Knightley's steady truthfulness.

She judges Harriet's unstructured talk and unsteady opinions accurately too. But again she is tolerant because Harriet is so full of praise and respect for her and Hartfield. When, after the dinner at the Coles, Emma regrets the inferiority of her musical performance in relation to Jane Fairfax's, we hear, "if Harriet's praise could have satisfied her, she might soon have been comforted" (231). Emma's own assessment has a certain poetry: '"My playing is no more like her's, than a lamp is like sunshine'" (231). Harriet's best effort to convince her otherwise is

"I saw she had execution, but I did not know she had any taste. Nobody talked about it. And I hate Italian singing.--There is no understanding a word of it. Besides, if she does play so very well, you know, it is no more than she is obliged to do, because she w ill have to teach." (232)

Clearly Harriet takes her opinions from others; she is culturally uninformed; and she ends with the gratuitous sneer of the amateur at the professional. Therefore Emma is not comforted. She is a more discriminating critic than that.

Emma's most serious misjudgment as a critic of speech, of course, is of Miss Bates. She knows, as Mr. Knightley knows, that "what is good and what is ridiculous are most unfortunately blended in her'" (375). But she habitually hears the ridiculous and overlooks the good. On the matter of the suitability of the room at the Crown for a ball, Emma says dismissively, '"You will get nothing to the purpose from Miss Bates.... She will be all delight and gratitude, but she will tell you nothing'" (255). But others recognize her useful responses: "As a counsellor she was not wanted; but as an approver, (a much safer character,) she was truly welcome. Her approbation, at once general and minute, warm and incessant, could not but please" (256). Such a narrative comment recognizes the different but still legitimate uses of speech.

Emma thinks that because Miss Bates is undiscriminating in what she blurts out, she must be impervious to criticism. But Miss Bates has her own kind of sensibility, which is wounded by Emma's brutal sally about '"only three [dull things] at once'" (370). '"I must make myself very disagreeable, or she would not have said such a thing to an old friend,'" says Miss Bates pathetically (371). And she has an endearing self-knowledge that should awaken Emma's sympathy. '"I am a talker, you know,'" she admits; '"and now and then I have let a thing escape me which should not. I am not like Jane.... I will answer for it she never betrayed the least thing in the world'" (346). She's absolutely right there! (2)

The contrast between aunt and niece in their talking habits is indeed a striking one: plethora versus zero! And Jane Fairfax's "reserve," her niggardliness in communication, comes up recurrently for criticism. Reserve '"is a most repulsive quality, indeed,"' says Frank Churchill disingenuously. '"One cannot love a reserved person.'" '"Not till the reserve ceases towards oneself,"' says Emma shrewdly, '"and then the attraction may be the greater"' (203). This may be one of the moments when Frank suspects that Emma may have penetrated his secret. And indeed Emma's commentary often suggests it. '"[S]uch extreme and perpetual cautiousness of word and manner, such a dread of giving a distinct idea about any body, is apt to suggest suspicions of there being something to conceal'" (203). Shrewd again!

Jane Fairfax herself knows how hard to love her reserve makes her. When at last she can speak freely, she apologizes for that behavior: '"So cold and artificial!--I had always a part to act.--... I know that I must have disgusted you'" (459). "Disgust" is a strong word. But her withholding of communication in a social world is offensive in its own way.

Is her reserve only artificial, and ended when her secret is out? Mr. Knightley, who is an authority to be trusted on such matters, says, '"She has a fault. She has not the open temper which a man would wish for in a wife'" (288). Are we to suppose that once her secret is out, Jane Fairfax will become "open" and fully communicative--and hence that Mr. Knightley would find she is faultless after all and busily fall in love with her? I don't think so! Her reserve goes deeper than her disguise, or she and Emma would have become friends sooner.

Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill share the same secret, but their strategies for concealing it are opposed. She goes silent, he disguises the secret with a flurry of words and deceptive professions: he the glib talker, she taciturn sphinx; and we are invited to savor the difference. But every so often, it seems, he is relieved to let the truth emerge. When he pretends to follow Emma through her different dangled theories of who gave the piano to Jane, he settles for Mr. Dixon. '"And now I can see it in no other light than as an offering of love,"' he acknowledges, and Emma notes, "he looked as if he felt it." For once he can drop his mask momentarily, though in effect he maintains the deception (219). For the most part, however, he evidently delights in his wily trickery, as Emma reminds him later. "'[W]hat an impudent clog I was!"' he congratulates himself unrepentantly (478).

Emma's bias is audible in her critical reaction to Mrs. Elton's speech. '"Insufferable woman!'" she fumes. '"Knightley!--never seen him in her life before, and call him Knightley!--and discover that he is a gentleman! A little upstart, vulgar being'" (279). Emma's indignant soliloquy is fascinating for what it reveals of her personal attitudes: her snobbery and her loyalty to the people she loves. At the end of it she analyzes her own response: '"Oh! what would Frank Churchill say.... Ah! ... Always the first person to be thought of! How I catch myself out!'" (279). But here we readers have a chance to prove we are alert critics of speech too. With the reader's privilege, we can look back to the beginning of her speech, as Emma herself cannot, and recognize that Frank Churchill was actually not the first person she thought of: Mr. Knightley was.

As for what Frank Churchill has to say about Mrs. Elton's over-familiar locutions: "'Jane!'--repeated Frank Churchill, with a look of surprise and displeasure.--'That is easy--"' (324). So it's not only Emma who reacts to Mrs. Elton's speech in this way. The main fault of Mrs. Elton's "easy" familiarities is that they go only one way: downward. "Jane" does not call Mrs. Elton "Augusta." And neither does "Knightley." Mrs. Elton uses these familiar epithets "'with all the vulgarity of needless repetition, and all the insolence of imaginary superiority,'" as Frank Churchill notes (442).

Mr. Knightleys speech habits are before us too, and Emma is subliminally conscious of them, though she takes them for granted. We hear her estimation of him when she reacts to the news of Frank Churchill's secret engagement: '"None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life'" (397). And Mr. Knightley himself can claim, '"You hear nothing but truth from me'" (430).

From the outset we learn that Emma needs Mr. Knightley as interlocutor for the intellectual stimulation he provides. She is surrounded by yea-sayers: Harriet with her regular '"to be sure'" (24, 30 31, 32); Mr. Elton and '"Exactly so!'" (42, 44); Isabella and her '"Very true'"; and their doting father, in whose eyes Emma can do no wrong. Mr. Knightley gives her the challenge of opposition. Indeed, she is so hungry for it that in discussing with Mr. Knightley the issue of whether Frank Churchill should pay an early visit to his new stepmother, Emma, "to her great amusement, perceived that she was taking the other side of the question from her real opinion" (145). Throughout the novel, though most noticeably in the Box Hill episode, he has been '"proving [him-] self [her] friend by very faithful counsel'" (375); and that "faithful counsel" hums through the cacophony of voices like a theme in a symphony. But there is a dynamic to their relation of action and reaction--though as usual the action is in the form of speech. In the debriefing scene, when after their engagement they discuss the history of their relationship, Mr. Knightley reminds her,

"How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your saucy looks--'Mr. Knightley, I am going to do so and so ...'--something which, you knew, I did not approve. In such cases my interference was giving you two bad feelings instead of one." (462)

Such an analysis leaves it open to us to speculate on whether Mr. Knightley is in some sense to blame for Emma's worst behavior. If he had not disapproved, in that opening scene, of her matchmaking, would she have swung in to her Harriet/Mr. Elton project?

Mr. Knightley is no mean critic of talk in his own right. In a discussion with Emma and Mrs. Weston about the outrageous familiarity Mrs. Elton assumes with Jane Fairfax, when Emma wonders how Jane can stand it, he makes an important distinction: '"Mrs. Elton does not talk to Miss Fairfax as she speaks of her. We all know the difference between the pronouns he or she and thou'" (286). (It's interesting to note, by the way, that he doesn't say just "he and thou," though the grammar books would give ample precedent for it. He has a more developed sensitivity to gender issues.) He brings knowledgeable reference to grammatical parts of speech, pronouns, to his analysis. And we immediately get a demonstration of his point. On a previous occasion Emma and Mrs. Weston had speculated freely with each other on the possibility that Mr. Knightley may be in love with Jane Fairfax; but now, in his presence, Emma introduces the subject very differently. When he proclaims, "'[A]ny body may know how highly I think of [Jane Fairfax]'" (proving again that he '"does nothing mysteriously'" [226]), Emma is very cautious: '"And yet,' said Emma, beginning hastily and with an arch look, but soon stopping--... 'And yet, perhaps, you may hardly be aware yourself how highly it is'" (287). The free exchange with Mrs. Weston about Mr. Knightley's love life, now that she is talking to Mr. Knightley, is reduced to surreptitious pressures on each other's feet. And later Emma has cause to regret deeply all that she has said to Frank Churchill about that same Jane Fairfax. Mrs. Weston, when she learns of the engagement, can say serenely, '"I am very sure that I never said any thing of either to the other, which both might not have heard'" (399). '"You are in luck,"' Emma responds bitterly, remembering all her unworthy suspicions of Jane Fairfax that she has inappropriately shared with the man who turns out to be her fiance.

(Mrs. Weston has the moral high ground. But, given the choice, how many of us would choose Mrs. Weston and her careful discretion over Emma and her dangerous outspokenness? I know which /would rather converse with!)

When Emma parodies Miss Bates, suggesting that Mr. Knightley could never bear to have her as an aunt-in-law, Mrs. Weston responds shrewdly, '"Little things do not irritate him. She might talk on; and if he wanted to say any thing himself, he would only talk louder'" (226)--and indeed, subsequently we hear him doing just that, when from her window Miss Bates is effusively thanking him for the apples (245). Nor is he victimized by Mrs. Elton's officious talk, as others are. When she proposes to invite his guests to Donwell, he prevents her, but without offense, by saying that only a putative "'Mrs. Knightley'" will have that privilege (355). Other people either suffer under the onslaughts of Mrs. Elton's and Miss Bates's talk, like Jane Fairfax, or, like Emma, fume and insult. Mr. Knightley can maintain courtesy and still have his way.

In the interstices of these conversations between these well-matched critics of talk, Emma and Mr. Knightley, we hear a good deal about male and female discourse. In a sense, men and women have different languages, though some are partly bilingual. '"Elton may talk sentimentally,"' Mr. Knightley warns Emma, '"but lie will act rationally.... [A]nd from his general way of talking in unreserved moments, when there are only men present, I am convinced that he does not mean to throw himself away'" (66). As critics have noticed for decades, Jane Austen doesn't supply any scenes where there are only men present because, by definition, she was never present at such. (No "locker room talk" for her!) But here is a strong clue that she knows what goes on there.

We get passing comments on the different thoughts and concerns of the two sexes: when Mrs. Weston complains about the dirty wallpaper at the Crown, and Mr. Weston brushes off the matter, "the ladies ... probably exchanged looks which meant, 'Men never know when things are dirty or not,'" while the gentlemen "perhaps" privately thought, '"Women will have their little nonsenses and needless cares'" (253).

But in the exchanges between Emma and Mr. Knightley we get more thoughtful and sustained commentary. The two sides specialize, as they both recognize: women in relationships and "particulars," men in business, farming, and the general and abstract. When Mr. Knightley tells Emma of Harriet's engagement to Robert Martin, after her initial disbelief she prods him: '"Well, now tell me every thing; make this intelligible to me. How, where, when?"' (471). He responds succinctly, and adds,

"Your friend Harriet will make a much longer history when you see her.--She will give you all the minute particulars, which only woman's language can make interesting.--In our communications [that is, men's] we deal only in the great." (472)

He is being playful, but he means it too. And sure enough, Harriet does later provide "every particular of the evening at Astley's" when Robert received the encouragement he needed (481). And presently Emma proceeds to parody male discourse to Mr. Knightley:

"Did you not misunderstand [Robert Martin]?--You were both talking of other things; of business, shows of cattle, or new drills....--It was not Harriet's hand that he was certain of--it was the dimensions of some famous ox." (473)

How dare she suppose him such a blockhead? he proceeds. It is lovers' talk, playfully continuing the stimulating opposition that has characterized their relation throughout. And despite the characteristic gender differences, each can enter the discourse of the other to some extent. Emma can convincingly ask her question about the bailiff when keeping the peace in the early family gathering (104); Mr. Knightley does provide some interesting particulars on Robert Martin's courtship of Harriet (472).

Emma's developed sensitivity to other people's talk, to the nuances of both verbal communication and bodily expression, does provide an invaluable guide for the reader, so that we too can hear exactly and appreciate fully. Yes, she does get things wrong, and in some disastrous ways. But her errors also train us to be alert, to take in all the subtleties of what is going on in these highly expressive exchanges, and to appreciate afresh Jane Austen's consummate artistry in dialogue.

JULIET MCMASTER

A founding member of and frequent speaker at JASNA, Juliet McMaster of the University of Alberta is the author of Jane Austen the Novelist and Jane Austen, Young Author and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. She also has books on Thackeray, Trollope, Dickens, and the eighteenth-century novel.

NOTES

(1.) John Wiltshire acknowledges that though the petticoat in Austen's day was "an outer garment," there was nevertheless "a whiff of the naughty" in the mention of one (110). Carol Houlihan Flynn, in her essay on Austen's letters, notes that "Miss Bates's monologues, stuffed with roast pork and baked apples, chimneys that want sweeping, spectacles that need mending, sound suspiciously like her creator's own prosy, rambling letters" (101). And she suggests that petticoats provide something like a motif in the letters, culminating in Austen's last recorded letter, where she remarks that fashion allows "rather longer petticoats than last year" (?28-29 May 1817).

(2.) Was it an indiscretion of Jane Fairfax's to have let slip Mr. Perry's intention of setting up a carriage in her letter to Frank Churchill? My view is that Miss Bates discusses such local matters freely within the family, and probably Jane wasn't even aware it was meant to be a secret. The indiscretion was Frank Churchill's, in his "blunder" in mentioning the matter in mixed audience. I thank the reader who brought up this possible exception to Jane Fairfax's usual iron-clad discretion.

WORKS CITED

Austen, Jane. The Novels of .lane Austen. Ed. R. W. Chapman. 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 1933-69.

--. Jane Austen's Letters. Ed. Deirdre Le Faye. 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 1995.

Flynn, Carol Houlihan. "The Letters." Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Ed. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster. 2nd ed. Cambridge: CUP, 2011. 97-110.

Wiltshire, John. "The Heroine." The Cambridge Companion to Emma. Ed. Peter Sabor. Cambridge: CUP, 2015. 105-19.