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Article: The anxiety of Emma.(AGM 2007: Vancouver)(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal
- Article date:
- January 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Jane Austen Society of North America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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EMMA IS A DANGEROUS NOVEL: it threatens to despise the reader. Who has not feared she would be the not-quite-proper Mrs. Elton if she had to move to Highbury? That her grammar wouldn't be correct, her Italian in case disagreement like Augusta Elton's, her words "non-U," in Nancy Mitford's famous 1950s phrase, which taught many of us Britons that we were not socially of the class that we culturally intended to inhabit. And yet it was Emma that made Walter Scott call Jane Austen middle-class. Of course, the phrase means different things to different people.
When Mr. Knightley proposes to Emma in Jane Austen's novel, the narrator comments: "What did she say?--Just ...