Category: Jane Austen

Explaining what I’ve uncovered in Jane Austen’s “Emma”

❧ Between Chapter 1 and Chapter 32 there are a total of 4 exceptions to the Miss Bates Rule.
❧ How “Miss Bates”—the device—commonly works.
❧ Finding Frank on those walks with Mr. Dixon, Miss Campbell, and Jane.
❧ The piano scene is romantic?

If Frank Churchill believed Emma knew the truth…

He’d almost confessed, and suddenly Emma asks Jane to dinner. And then after talking about Jane’s walk to the post office Emma says how nice Frank’s handwriting is, and then she takes Jane’s arm to escort her into the dining room? That’s it, Emma must know.

CH 38: “Jane on one arm, and me on the other”

“I am not helpless.” Miss Bates is just blinking “ERROR, ERROR, ERROR” at this point, trying to make sense of what Frank is doing, and not having any success. Why is he taking her arm? Since it can’t be to escort her into supper, maybe he thinks she’s about to fall over?

I know Miss Bates is much more than a device, no matter how I sound when I get over-enthusiastic

Jane Austen uses one single picture in the ABC game to show us how carefully attuned Miss Bates is to her niece’s well-being and when the word “Dixon” lands like a slap on Jane’s heart and Miss Bates somehow feels it.

“Aye, very true, my dear,” cried the latter, though Jane had not spoken a word—“I was just going to say the same thing. It is time for us to be going indeed…”

The Piano Scene: through Jane’s eyes

Which, no Frank did not just tell a beautiful woman that he would have “given worlds —all the worlds one ever has to give—” for anything, let alone another half hour to dance, because he wanted to get away from Miss Bates!
And Jane responds with maybe the most magical sentence of the novel, because it’s all right there.
“She played.”