My girlfriend and I went on a Jane Austin kick lately, watching all the movies that aren’t Pride and Prejudice. We ended up watching two different versions of Emma, the 1996 version with Gwyneth Paltrow and the 2020 version with Anya-Taylor Joy. They felt so different I decided to re-read the book to see which one was closer to the actual text.
So full confession, I didn’t like Emma the first time I read it. I thought she was an awful snob and I never could figure out what Knightley saw in her.
I won’t say I am now Emma’s biggest fan, but I think watching the movies and the different way they treated the text did bring up some new ways of looking at her.
One of the things that is made much more explicit in the text is how much work it is taking care of Mr Woodhouse. The man obviously suffers from anxiety and OCD and Emma has to spend a lot of time managing his stress. Because of both this and the weird social striation of the times, she’s pretty isolated and her closest friend is her governess. Until she decides to start spending time with Harriet she has nobody her own age to socialize with. Normally having an older sister would mean there would be somebody to knock the pointy edges off, but Isabelle is so easy-going and focused on her family they don’t really have much in common.
Speaking of which, the 2020 movie really played Mr Woodhouse for laughs and Bill Nighy absolutely knocks it out of the park. He’s wonderful. Isabelle is portrayed as being just like him, but that’s not supported by the text. Also she and her husband are weirdly combative in the movie which is just not true. Her husband is a grump, but pretty much only at people who are not his wife.
My Knightley is also a massive grump so I guess it runs in the family. I get the impression from the book that one of the reasons he likes Jane is because she challenges him and she wins him over completely when she demonstrates that she can admit when she’s wrong and tries to fix her mistakes. In the 1996 movie they really do come across as friends who bicker, and I much preferred that interpretation. In the 2020 version he is only ever criticizing her, and so his falling in love seems to spring out of nowhere.
I found it interesting how differently the two movies treated Mr Elton. Alan Cummings in the 1996 movie plays him as a obsequious little coward. I interpreted his treatment of Harriet at the ball as not having the courage to address a potentially awkward situation. In the 2020 version, he is actually scary – manipulative and with a nasty temper. The book is kind of open ended as to his true nature, but interestingly his treatment of Harriet seems to be directed by his wife.
Neither movie really came close to showing just how odious Mrs Elton was. Apart from being conceited, self-involved and constantly name-dropping, she rides over other peoples’ boundaries like they don’t exist. If I were Jane Fairfax I would not have been able to restrain myself from hauling off and belting her.
Something that is more emphasized in the movies and it think it improves on the book, there is much more focus on the incident where Emma is rule to Miss Bates. In the book it’s almost glossed over – the other characters continue talking and it’s not until Knightley catches up with Emma to yell at her that it registers how shitty she was acting. In the movies there is an awkward pause and you get to see Miss Bates get all tearful. The way the two actresses handle that scene is very different in the two movies I watched – Paltrow looks smug like she did it on purpose, while Joy looked horrified, like she hadn’t realized what was coming out of her mouth until it was too late.
Frank Churchill comes off better in the book, at least in regards to how he reconciles with the other characters. There is a subplot where Jane Fairfax breaks off their engagement in the novel that is just never addressed in the movies – in fact the movies always cut off after Knightley’s proposal, give you a quick wedding scene and done. Meanwhile in the novel there are several more chapters explaining how the characters resolve some of the other conflicts. Mr Woodhouse hates the idea of Emma marrying and hilariously only comes around on the subject when a group of local thieves start breaking into poultry barns in the neighbourhood. That finally convinces Mr Woodhouse that having a son-in-law around the house to protect them is a good idea after all.
And then after this, I decided I wanted to watch Clueless. (With a very young Ant-Man playing Knightley!) It wasn’t entirely true to the book but it hit most of the major plot points. The Frank Churchill character being gay was a nice twist. It definitely suffered from the lack of a Mrs Elton however, she was a wonderful character in that she was so much to hate.
I still don’t think Emma is my favourite Austin book, but I will say I have more appreciation of it now.