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Today I want to actually use my BA in English by doing a literary analysis of one of my favorite books: Emma by Jane Austen. I’ve loved Emma for years, way before I realized I was ace, because of the deeply flawed yet entertaining heroine, the aforementioned Emma. Throughout the book, Emma fails in various ways to read the emotions and intentions of those around her, including failing in reading her own emotions. The basic plot runs thus: Emma makes friends with a girl her social inferior named Harriet and attempts to matchmake her with the curate, Mr. Elton. Elton, unfortunately, falls for Emma, who is deeply mortified by her mistake and decides to give up matchmaking (well, she mostly succeeds). Emma then meets Frank Churchill, the step-son of her old governess, and carries on a flirtation with him, but ultimately decides she does not love him (luckily, as he is secretly engaged to Jane Fairfax). By the end of the novel, after Harriet confesses to loving Emma’s good friend, Mr. Knightley, Emma realizes that she wants to marry him instead. Eventually, everyone is duly paired off into their happily ever afters. What’s struck me about this book, years after I first read it, is how well Emma fits the mold of an aro/ace heroine. Despite the fact that the book is all about romance, and that Emma winds up happily married at the end, I am firmly convinced that Emma is aro/ace based on her reactions and experiences with romance throughout the text. Recently, I had the pleasure of rereading the book and I took the liberty of pulling out certain quotes and scenes to support this reading.
At the beginning of the novel, Emma states that she plans to never marry. She has this wonderful line after Harriet says that Emma is so charming, it seems strange she should not marry: “My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry; I must find other people charming —one other person at least. And I am not only not going to be married at present, but have very little intention of ever marrying at all.” She then goes on to say: “I must see somebody very superior to any one I have seen yet, to be tempted … and I do not wish to see any such person. I would rather not be tempted . I cannot really change for the better. If I were to marry, I must expect to repent it.” Already, Emma is set up as different to your typical regency romance heroine; she not only has no need to marry, she has no desire to marry. While a traditional reading takes this as her sense of independence, an aro/ace reading sees this as the first evidence that Emma is uninterested in romance at all. When prompted for more, she replies: “Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing; but I never have been in love : it is not my way or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine.” To me these lines are very telling. Not only is she disinclined to love, she has never been in love. By love here, we can infer any sort of crush or burgeoning attachment to any man; in short, Emma has gotten all the way into her twenties without the least romantic feelings whatsoever. When other girls around her were at least giggling behind their hands at attractive suitors, Emma was happily making her own path with no desire to change her attachments. Her only inducement to marrying, she later revels, would be wanting children to dote on, and even there she is satisfied: “And as for objects of interest, objects for the affections, which is, in truth the great point of inferiority, the want of which is really the great evil to be avoided in not marrying, I shall be very well off, with all the children of a sister I love so much to care about.” So from the start, we are given a heroine wholly uninterested in love and marriage.
Her first brush with love during the course of the novel itself comes with her matchmaking attempts between Harriet and Mr. Elton, and from this sequence we can see what many of us in the community go through when faced with romance. It is generally supposed that her inability to see Mr. Elton’s true affections lies in willful ignorance and her own pride; however it is also easy to see that she is incapable of assuming his attentions are for her. When faced with romantic interest for the first time, aro/ace people are often wholly oblivious; it makes much more sense that Mr. Elton must be in love with Harriet, the only other person present for all his gallantries and a person already proven to be romantically inclined. Emma is incapable of thinking of herself in romantic terms, and therefore it is impossible for her to assume Elton in love with her. In fact, she only begins to suspect once someone else alludes to it; then she begins to see his attentions as what they are, and shortly afterwards comes the ignominious proposal. Again, a traditional reading of this portion of the novel is that Emma is incapable of seeing the obvious because she is too caught up in her own idea of reality. And I wouldn’t say that’s a wrong reading, but I would suggest that Emma’s version of reality does not involve a romantic-Emma or an Emma who could ever be involved in romance.
Emma’s next brush with love is her brief attraction to Frank Churchill. First off, it is important to note that not only is she influenced by the wishes of her dear friends the Westons for an attachment between them, but she also comes to the decision that Frank loves her first before she settles in on her own feelings. Here is the entire sequence:
Emma continued to entertain no doubt of her being in love. Her ideas only varied as to the how much. At first, she thought it was a good deal; and afterwards, but little. She had great pleasure in hearing Frank Churchill talked of; and, for his sake, greater pleasure than ever in seeing Mr. and Mrs. Weston; she was very often thinking of him, and quite impatient for a letter, that she might know how he was, how were his spirits, how was his aunt, and what was the chance of his coming to Randalls again this spring. But, on the other hand, she could not admit herself to be unhappy, nor, after the first morning, to be less disposed for employment than usual; she was still busy and cheerful; and, pleasing as he was, she could yet imagine him to have faults; and farther, though thinking of him so much, and, as she sat drawing or working, forming a thousand amusing schemes for the progress and close of their attachment, fancying interesting dialogues and inventing elegant letters; the conclusion of every imaginary declaration on his side was that she refused him. Their affection was always to subside into friendship. Every thing tender and charming was to mark their parting; but still they were to part. When she became sensible of this, it struck her that she could not be very much in love; for in spite of her previous and fixed determination never to quit her father, never to marry, a strong attachment certainly must produce more of a struggle than she could foresee in her own feelings. / ‘I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice,’ said she. ‘In not one of all my clever replies, my delicate negatives, is there any allusion to making a sacrifice. I do suspect that he is not really necessary to my happiness. So much the better I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be more.’
This is textbook aro’s first “crush.” Because of what other people have said to her in the past, because of what society expects between two unattached young people, and because of what she has heard experiencing love is like, Emma assumes that she feels love for Frank. Certainly she feels something for him. But look at the way she almost immediately undermines this assumption! She realizes that her feelings aren’t strong enough to really miss him, and she very quickly decides that not only will she not marry him, but that his love is in no way necessary for her own happiness. And less than a page later, she is already thinking about how grand it would be for him to marry Harriet! These are not the thoughts of a person in romantic love. These are the thoughts of a person who wants to be in love, of a person who does not experience romance but wants to know what it is like. She finds someone who all outside interference tells her she should love, and fancies herself to actually love. But the feeling does not hold up to scrutiny; almost as soon as she has it, she is out of love.
The final piece of the puzzle and what some might think of as the proof against my analysis, is Emma’s love and eventual marriage to Knightley. This realization comes about only after it seems as though Knightley might marry someone else, and then the line reads: “Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!” Importantly, she does not mention love anywhere in her thoughts; instead, Emma seems to invoke a possession over Knightley and his affections. Next, we have further confirmation that Emma never loved Frank: “She saw, that in persuading herself, in fancying, in acting to the contrary, she had been entirely under a delusion, totally ignorant of her own heart—and, in short, that she had never really cared for Frank Churchill at all!” Now, with the reality of her feelings towards Knightley, she is better able to see how little she thought of Frank at all. Well, you might say, doesn’t that prove she is romantically interested in Knightley then? Further scrutiny of the text seems to read otherwise.
Throughout the section where Emma parses out her feelings, the strongest words she uses for Knightley are “affection” and “dear to her;” never once in the text does she say she loves him. Austen has no scruple applying the word to other characters in their own and other’s words—to Harriet, to Robert Martin, to Elton, to Mrs. Weston, to Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax, to Knightley multiple times, and even to Emma herself when she first thought she loved Frank. But the word “love” is curiously absent from Emma’s thoughts and speech about Knightley, right through to the end of the book. We are now to read Emma as finally in full awareness of her feelings, so why does she never mention love? This line, I think summarizes it well: “Emma had never known how much of her happiness depended on being first with Mr. Knightley, first in interest and affection.” Emma wants to be first with Knightley. Not in love with, not loved by, but first in his thoughts. And while that can have a romantic reading, it can also have a platonic reading, or more specifically, a queerplatonic reading. There is no doubt that Emma loves Knightley very much. However, this love can very easily be read through a queerplatonic lens; Emma wants she and Knightley to be each other’s number one’s, and whether that is romantic or not is immaterial. After all, “Could she be secure of that, indeed, of his never marrying at all, she believed she should be perfectly satisfied.” She doesn’t see marrying him as the be-all-end-all of her happiness; she simply does not want him to marry anyone else. In short, she doesn’t need Knightley’s romantic love so long as he doesn’t love anyone more than her.
Even further, she does not expressly want to marry him: “Marriage, in fact, would not do for her. It would be incompatible with what she owed to her father, and with what she felt for him. Nothing should separate her from her father. She would not marry, even if she were asked by Mr. Knightley.” This might seem like weaker evidence: it only shows how much she loves her father and feels filial responsibility and in no way means she loves Knightley less. But then, Jane Fairfax, who is set up as a foil to her throughout the book, is so in love with Frank Churchill, she becomes engaged to him in secret. Jane is often set up as what Emma should be, and while everyone agrees she does wrong in a secret engagement, her love is never called into question. This quote, to me, seems to show how immaterial marriage, i.e. romantic obligation, is to Emma’s happiness; she is fine not marrying Knightley, rather, she wants to secure his affections towards her without losing the other principle relationships in her life. Aro/ace’s derive our emotional fulfillment from the familial and platonic relationships we have, and in this sense I see this as more evidence of Emma trying to maintain those strong relationships for herself. She may love Knightley and want him to stay by her, but she equally loves her father and would not injure him by marrying. A true romantic would come up with any solution for the lovers to be together while keeping her father happy, but it is Knightley, not Emma, who sees the solution; putting all of Emma’s favorite people in one house.
So much is made, throughout the book, of Emma’s attachment to her friends—to Mrs. Weston, to Knightley, to Harriet Smith, etc. In fact, social relationships make up the crux of the storytelling, romantic and otherwise. When lamenting her loss of Knightley, Emma reflects on all the friendships she is losing to other relationships: “The child to be born at Randalls must be a tie there even dearer than herself; and Mrs Weston's heart and time would be occupied by it. They should lose her; and probably, in great measure, her husband also. Frank Churchill would return among them no more; and Miss Fairfax, it was reasonable to suppose, would soon cease to belong to Highbury. … and if to these losses the loss of Donwell were to be added, what would remain of cheerful or of rational society within their reach? Mr. Knightley to be no longer coming there for his evening comfort! No longer walking in at all hours, as if ever willing to change his own home for theirs!” Here we see that Emma’s fear of losing Knightley to Harriet is tied in with her sadness over losing her other friends: Mrs. Weston to her new child, Frank and Jane to each other. Further, look at the way she describes the loss of Knightley; it is not his love or regard she is sad to lose, but his attention, his presence in her home. To have Knightley as a companion for life is Emma’s chief desire, and until she was faced with the possibility of his marrying and abandoning her for a wife, she was perfectly satisfied with the status quo, as seen in the above quotes. It is only when her place in his life becomes jeopardized that Emma decides to marry him. All of this evidence combined points to an Emma who marries Knightley with real affection and love, but without romantic intent; she wants to keep his place in her life, and if marrying him is how she can do it, she is more than happy to do so.
Emma’s disinclination to marry can be read as independence for a woman in a world where marriage means subordination. Her first approaches to love can be read as the thoughts of a naïve girl unware of her true feelings. And Emma’s eventually marriage can be read as the culmination of a romantic love. It is true that a traditional reading points to a romantic Emma. But the books can also very easily be read as the tale of an aro/ace woman navigating a romantic world. She tries to understand romance in others and ultimately fails to see someone being attracted to her. She attempts romance herself but realizes that it holds no appeal. And she holds her relationships to her friends in such esteem, that she cannot bear the thought of being supplanted by other people in their hearts. Emma ends the novel in perfect happiness, but we are never explicitly told that she is in love. Instead, we see her surrounded by those she cares for, her family and friends, and we know she has reached a happy ending. If you’re ever inclined to read this book, I encourage you to go in with these ideas in mind. I find an aro/ace reading of Emma to be thoroughly rewarding.