Tumblr crosspost (10 February 2020)
Sep. 17th, 2021 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineAn anon said:
Google just shared an article from scholar Barbara Z. Thaden, arguing the real heroine of “Emma” is Jane Fairfax, that Emma is never supposed to be a sympathetic character, and that “our job as readers is to resist Emma’s charm.” Would you agree with that interpretation?
I replied:
Hell no.
It’s honestly hard to say much else beyond that. If that scenario were true, Jane would be extremely underwritten, and the novel would become both very didactic for Austen and a failure as such. It’s pretty ??????? to me.
(tbh I turned off the Google article sharing function awhile back, specifically because I kept getting terribad Austen articles.)
Google just shared an article from scholar Barbara Z. Thaden, arguing the real heroine of “Emma” is Jane Fairfax, that Emma is never supposed to be a sympathetic character, and that “our job as readers is to resist Emma’s charm.” Would you agree with that interpretation?
I replied:
Hell no.
It’s honestly hard to say much else beyond that. If that scenario were true, Jane would be extremely underwritten, and the novel would become both very didactic for Austen and a failure as such. It’s pretty ??????? to me.
(tbh I turned off the Google article sharing function awhile back, specifically because I kept getting terribad Austen articles.)