's politics
are highly contested (was she high Tory or secret radical sympathizer: see Marilyn Butler on
Austen as Tory and the new book by Helena Kelly: Jane Austen: The Secret
Radical for Austen as subversive.) While her politics may be ambiguous, we can locate
places in the social order that Austen critiques
in .
Austen's text builds sympathy for the plight of
poorer gentry women. While Miss Bates is seen through Emma's eyes as ridiculous, we as readers
are also shown a woman trying to survive in reduced circumstances who has been rendered
ridiculous by a society that looks down on older, poorer, unmarried women (incidentally, Austen
herself a single woman, would have been about Miss Bates's age at the time she
wrote Emma.) In having Mr. Knightley scold Emma, and in having Emma herself
recognize and repent of her cruelty in making a rude comment to Miss Bates at Box Hill, Austen
critiques the casual verbal savagery that can make life a misery for women on the social
periphery. Her novel at least suggests changes in attitudes and practices.
In
making Jane Fairfax a sympathetic character, which she is even as we see her refracted through
Emma's eyes, Austen again critiques a society that doesn't take care of poor gentry woman of
intelligence, beauty, talent, and grace. Jane's fate is to become a governess, a career which
entails social humiliation and which Jane equates to a form of slavery. Jane is
"saved" from governessing through marriage to frivolous Frank Churchill, but implicit
in the novel is the lack of choice for a talented woman like Jane.
Finally,
Austen critiques snobbery. Emma's snobbery in trying to prevent Harriet Smith from marrying the
farmer Robert Martin could have had dire consequences for Harriet, an illegitimate child with
little money, no connections, and few prospects. Luckily, it all works out for Harriet, but the
reader can easily see, if Emma cannot, how snobbery could have ruined Harriet's
prospects.
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