Article: "Insidious designs": reading Jane Fairfax in and out of Highbury.(National Humanities Center: Emma Seminar)(Critical Essay)

OUR GROUP SPOKE MUCH OF JANE AUSTEN'S DESIGN to "merge aesthetic and moral values" into a Highbury universe that shows us how to "live well within a culture" through the affirmation of "right conduct within existing norms" (seminar notes). We, like Emma herself, are meant to value Knightley's knowledge and artless decision-making and so sanction the design of mind and caste he would orchestrate for everyone else. For Emma to take her own place as just such a guardian of Highbury's "right conduct," she must be educated to the aesthetic and ethical world-design Austen locates in Knightley's governing narration (in his criticism of Frank Churchill, his demand for hierarchy, ...

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