Emma

            I have recently begun reading the book, "Emma" by the celebrated and renowned author Jane Austen. Austen has written many classic novels such as "Sense and Sensibility,""Persuasion" and "Mansfeild Park," to name those most widely known. Reading Jane Austen, or most authors from the time period of the 18th and 19th centuries is a unique experience, so different from the one when I read more recently written novels. Because the book comes from a completely different time period, the vocabulary and terms used in the book such as, "profligate" or "shew" as well as food such as gruel and dances like the quadrille that we are not normally familiar with today. Not only does this effect the reading experience because you have to extrapolate the true meaning from phrases you are unaccustomed to, it transports you into a different time where such words were used and truly absorbs you into the book. Another reason Austen's books are an experience is the rich descriptionary tactics that have been lost, in my opinion, in our modern literature. There are few books today in which you will find pages upon pages of description on a building or landscape or even a person's countenance. The same is true for the long paragraphs of dialogue between characters, our modern language and customs have conditioned us to speak in choppier, shorter turns without the flowery overtures found in Jane Austen's world, although in each there is found vehement expression and colorful languages and slangs of the time. This brings me to another point, how similar and different Jane Austen and our worlds are. Specifically in terms of women's place in society.
               Women as portrayed in Austen's works seem to have a great deal of power in terms of their own affairs and often the affairs of their superiors. Now, I have only read "Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma" out of her books, but both depict father figures or elders of authority who bow to the will and respect the minds of their daughters, albeit sometimes condescendingly. This is evidenced in Mr. Woodhouse (Emma's father)'s description of his daughter, "Emma never thinks of herself, if she can do good to others" and describes her intelligence and talents to anyone who will listen. He admonishes himself to a great degree and seems to put Emma on a pedestal, wiser and cleverer than himself and fit to run his estate and take care of herself all in one. This seemed not to fit with what we know of how past societies thought of women- beneath them and only useful in terms of marriage. This is because of the families' social standing. Richer women often had more say and power than poor women, particularly if the family in question did not have a son. Such is evidenced in the fact that Emma's father did not make her get married, even though she was extremely eligible at age 21, and pretty. Poorer families had to marry their daughters in order to gain better standing in society and often used their female offspring purely as a way to get richer, disregarding their feelings and wishes. In wealthier families the need to get married for money is not as great, and therefor women are given more power and leeway over choice. If Austen had written about less endowed families, then the powerlessness over marriage would have surfaced.
                The ideas of marriage in the teens and early twenties and such powerlessness seems silly today. After all, in this day and age we think women are  equal to men in all ways of the world- but are they? Women still get payed less than men at the same jobs and gender discrimination reigns world wide. I observe this kind of misogamy in school and on television. It seems as though women are "supposed" to be stay at home moms, and if they're not, they're criticized and characterized as being distant and cold towards their children. We have yet to elect a female president and it seems like the only position in the white house America will allow women to hold is the office of "first lady." Further proving my point is the term "slut." When guys have a lot of sex they are "players" and celebrated for their interactions. If a woman has a lot of sex she is labeled a "slut" or a "whore." It seems to me that although society has made some progress in terms of how women are thought of in society, we haven't matured as much from the times of "Emma." In fact, Emma seems to be respect and held in higher esteem than many women today.