Lydia and Kitty can be shown as more disagreeable than Liz and Jane only by the slightly greater coarseness of their language. Any differentiation of character is hard to perceive through the artificiality and monotony of the dialogue. The five Bennet sisters and their parents speak to one another only in this style: peevish and self-assertive, relentlessly striving for wit through mere insult. “They’d never speak to one another otherwise,” Mr Bennet said. “Stop quarrelling, girls,” Mrs Bennet said. “Especially for someone who scored as low as you did on the verbal part of the SATs.” “Or do you find that circumlocution always magnifies life’s conviviality?” “Do you ever pass up a chance to use a big word?” Lydia replied. “Is your ass-kicking restricted to your opponents or is it indiscriminate?” “What if we’re on the same team?” Liz asked. “I hope you know I’ll kick your asses,” Lydia said, and Mary said, “By cheating, you mean?” To Liz’s surprise, both Lydia and Kitty exclaimed with delight hearing at dinner of Charlotte’s charades invitation. Well, that’s a different world from this one: And she cries silently in the carriage all the way home. At this (the final blow of a disappointing, frustrating day) Emma is ashamed, indeed humiliated, grieved beyond words. Miss Bates, deceived by the mock ceremony of her manner, did not immediately catch her meaning but when it burst on her, it could not anger, though a slight blush showed that it could pain her.Įmma is not ashamed of this until Mr Knightley tells her, with controlled but passionate anger, that her words were cruel, that “it was badly done”. Pardon me – but you will be limited as to number – only three at once.” “Ah! ma’am, but there may be a difficulty. “I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan’t I?” – (looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on every body’s assent) – “Do not you all think I shall?” The turning point of Emma and its most shocking moment is Emma’s slight but stinging gibe at poor, talky, tiresome Miss Bates.

Of these good-mannered, good-natured women, Emma Woodhouse is the most self-confident, even to the point of self-congratulation, and thereby runs a risk, for her author sees presumptuousness as a fault to which even diffidence is preferable. M ost of her readers would agree, I think, that Jane Austen’s heroines, even the witty Elizabeth Bennet, do not indulge in hateful or spiteful talk.

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld