In Our Time - Archive: Emma

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Misha Glenny delves in to the In Our Time archive to select ten episodes for listeners to revisit. His ninth choice is the episode on Jane Austen’s novel Emma, first released in November 2015. Austen described her leading character as "a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like." Emma is one of Austen’s most popular novels and arguably her masterpiece, a brilliantly sparkling comedy of manners published in December 1815 by John Murray, the last to be published in Austen's lifetime. This followed Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Mansfield Park (1814), with her brother Henry handling publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1817).WithJanet Todd Professor Emerita of Literature, University of Aberdeen and Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, CambridgeJohn Mullan Professor of English at University College, LondonAndEmma Clery Professor of English at the University of Southampton.Producer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (first published 1975; Oxford University Press, 1988)Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen (Cambridge University Press, 2010)Richard Jenkyns, A Fine Brush on Ivory: An Appreciation of Jane Austen (Oxford University Press, 2004)Claudia Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel (University of Chicago Press, 1988)Peter Knox-Shaw, Jane Austen and the Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2004)David Monaghan (ed.), Emma (New Casebook Series, Palgrave Macmillan, 1992)Anthony Mandal, Jane Austen and the Popular Novel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)John Mullan, What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved (Bloomsbury, 2012)Bharat Tandon, Jane Austen and the Morality of Conversation (Anthem, 2003)Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (first published 1986; Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)Janet Todd, The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen (Cambridge University Press, 2015)John Wiltshire, The Hidden Jane Austen (Cambridge University Press, 2014)John Wiltshire, Jane Austen and the Body (Cambridge University Press, 1992)In Our Time is a BBC Studios productionSpanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Growing businesses deal with the same problem. Too many tools, too much back and forth and not enough time. Odu helps bring it all together. It's an all-in-one business management platform, fully integrated from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, so your team can spend less time chasing information and focus on growth. Whether you're in retail, manufacturing or service,

Odo gives you one place to manage your business. Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's ODbolo.com. Is Facebook Dying? I'm Tristan Redmond, hosted the Global Story podcast from the BBC. More than 15 years after the social network, a new movie on the inner workings of Facebook hits cinemas in October.

The journalist who's reporting inspired the film tells us why Facebook stopped being cool and whether meta its parent company can reinvent itself. For more, listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your pods. This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, for this week's In Our Time classic, I've picked Jane.

Austin's novel Emma, described by Melvin's guests as the author's masterpiece. I first read Emma when it was chosen as a set text for my A-level English. It was also the first novel that I read more than once. And as Melvin's guests agree, one of the greatest pleasures of this magnificent novel is how every reading reveals something new about character, morays and plot. Jane Austen weaves personal ambition, desire, snobbery and instinct on a backcloth of a closed social circle in a small community in Surrey. While the eponymous heroine Emma is vivacious, clever and, let's face it, self-regarding, she slowly learns through mistake after mistake that she must wield her social power with greater care and attention to other people's feelings. Melvin's guests demonstrate how subtly Austin creates each character,

from the slightly pompous but stable and wise Mr Knightley, through to the mysterious governess Jane Fairfax, and her lover Frank Churchill, who Emma erroneously believes is destined to marry herself. After listening to this episode, characterized by one of the live lists and most entertaining examples of verbal jousting between Melvin and his guests, I defy you not to want to return to Emma

or read it for the first time. Enjoy listening. Hello, at the end of 1815, the great London publisher John Murray brought out a novel by an anonymous writer identified as the author of Pride and Prejudice, etc., etc. This writer we know to be Jane Austen, and the novel was Emma,

described by some of the speakers in our programme today as her masterpiece and by one as the greatest novel written in English. The plot revolves around Emma Woodhouse, described by Austenus, a heroine whom no one but myself will much like. Several of the other characters do very much like her, though, in particular for a while, the conceited vicar Mr. Elton, the gentlemanly Mr. Knightley, and in his way the charming Frank Churchill. Emma, meanwhile, tries to reign marriages for her female friends. She claims success for that of her governess, and now wants even greater success for the lowly Harriet Smith.

It also takes place in the small Surrey village, a place in which Emma is virtually immured. Her father wouldn't let her leave the place and she has little inclination to displease him. With me to discuss Emma are, John Mullen, Professor of English at University College London. Janet Todd, Professor Emerita of Literature, University of Aberdeen, an honorary fellow of Newham College, Cambridge, and Emma Cleary, Professor of English at the University of Southampton.

Emma Cleary, to understand Emma better, what do we need to know about Jane Austen's early life? Well, it was around the time that Emma was written and published, that Jane Austen began to define her specific field as a novelist. She wrote to one correspondent, three or four families in a village is the very thing to work on, and to another that she specialised in scenes of domestic life in a country village. And so these were her roots. This is where she came from, what she knew best.

And she decided that this is what defined her as a writer. She was born in December 1775 in a small village, Steventon, 16 miles south of Basingstoke. Her father was George Austin, a clergyman, but not a clergyman like Mr. Elton in Emma. He was very well-educated, cultivated and very hard-working. He was also quite poor, and it wasn't quite enough. to live off his earnings as a vicar at Steventon. And so he also on the side ran a boarding school for boys from his own home and did a little bit of farming on the side as well.

Her mother, Cassandra, was also very intelligent. She had a dry sense of humour. She had aristocratic connections, but was really willing to put her shoulders the wheel as well. Together they raised six points. boys and two girls. The boys, well, the oldest one went into the clergy, like his father. You don't need to go through all the boys. Let's need to go to the girls. Okay, but it's interesting. I think it will be important later on. Yes, he will, but six is enough to start with at this day.

Okay, okay. And in various ways, they influenced her life and her thinking, the careers that they went into. What did Jane Austen written before Emma? She had written three full novels by the time she was in her mid-20s in the 1790s. She had drafts or first versions of sense and sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, but she didn't have the connections or the Savoyal Fair somehow to get these works published. And so it didn't happen. And it wasn't until 1810 that, with the help of her brother Henry, who was by that time a banker in London, she managed to get a contract for sense and sensibility. As I understood it, her parents wrote as well, didn't they? I'm very much encouraged her. And her father, but her father, but she'd educated her at home, but more than anything,

gave her access to a very big library. That's right. Yes, I don't know about a very big library, but certainly a choice library. They were enthusiastic about novels. That was an unusual thing about them. I think her father even read Gothic novels. We've got a record of that in her letters. So it was a very stimulating environment. There were amateur theatricals, There were riddles games like in Emma. And they were all scribblers. You know, almost all of them did some form of writing, wrote comic poems or essays.

Two of her brothers even ran a journal called the loiterer for a little while. He died without much money and left Jane Austen and her sister and her mother, virtually penniless, saved by one of the six brothers. Yes, that's right. And then she felt she could get on with being a more professional writer. Yes, well, it took a while still to get established. There were sort of years in the wilderness, yes, they lived in Bath for a while, the unmarried daughters with their mother and father.

And then when the father died in 1805, they moved to Southampton for a little while to live with a sailor brother. And then finally they got to this little house, this cottage in Chorton, which was part of the estate of her brother Edward. And it's at that point that she took out her manuscript, started to revise them and away she went with her career, with sense and sensibility, pride and prejudice in Mansfield Park. John Mullen, what reputation did Jane Austen have at the time of Emma's publication? Well, you read out the title page of Emma by the author of Pride and Prejudice, etc., etc.

And sense and sensibility, pride and prejudice in particular, and Mansfield Park as well, to a lesser extent, were, quite successful, quite widely admired, quite widely read. She made some money from at least a couple of them anyway. And this sort of body of novels did, I think, had begun to exist in the imagination of a polite reading public. But many of those people would not, most of those people, I think, would not have known who Jane Austen was. It's actually with the publication of Mansfield part of the year before Emma, that the secret, if that's the right word, began to leak out. I mean, her brother Henry started boasting about it.

And it's evident that, I mean, it's the famous fact that Emma, when it appeared, was dedicated to the Prince Regent, a man whom Jane Austen abhorred, a dissolute garment with many mistresses. but he was a fan of her writing and requested her through his librarian to dedicate her next novel to him. So she had begun to acquire a sort of reputation, but not necessarily, I mean, quite a few of those people

wouldn't have known who she was. They certainly wouldn't have known that she was this person in a village in Hampshire. And I think it's quite important comparing Jane Austen to, well, the writers, that she knew no understanding. other writers. I mean, she was member of no circle,

no literary circle. There were comical attempts later in her last years to meet a famous person. She thought she might meet George Crabb. She never did. And this is in the age where, the age of romantic literature, where literary circles are the thing.

Everybody hangs out with everybody else. I mean, every writer in Britain meets Coleridge, but even sort of the peasant poet John Clare comes to London and meets other writers. And this extraordinary sense of her work is being read and talked about by friends and acquaintances and members of her family, but not other novelists, let alone other major literary figures. Yet she has, as I learned probably from your notes, she has ambitions to be a literary figure.

She has ambitions to make money from her writing. She isn't in it for just the hobby. And that's very much part of her intent. And she does get some critical attention, even though that too is an anonymous. She does. Well, she does. I mean, her early fiction gets some good reviews, and Emma eventually, he gets a review by Sir Walter Scott, although he's probably kind of told to do so by John Murray. And it is anonymous. And it is anonymous. But I think you're, I mean, the first thing you said is absolutely right. Jane Auster, I think there's two important things. One provable and one, my feeling. The provable thing is she cared a great deal about making money. She didn't have much money. money that she made from her novels was sort of extra money for her. She didn't have an income. She relied on the charity in a sense of her brothers. And so that was very important. But the second

thing, I think, is that anybody who steeps themselves in Jane Austen, particularly the novels from Mansfield Park onwards, cannot doubt that she was an artist with really high ambitions. I think she knew. She was doing completely new things with fiction. She didn't have anybody. I think Mansfield Park was the first novel, which wasn't, as it were, responding to other people's novels. She was responding to herself from Mansfield Park. Can we just take that on briskly, John?

She reworked her. When she started to get published, she reworked some of the earlier novels. Yes, I mean, so it's very important, as Emma says, sense and sensibility, pride and prejudice. We don't have the originals of those, but they were reworked versions of early stuff. Mansfield Park was not.

and from Mansfield Park onwards she is doing entirely new things and she is inventing technical I mean you know people think of her as this sort of beautiful, brilliant, elegant, perfect but conservative limited, restrained writer

oh contraire I think she is one of the great experimental writers of European fiction. I'm sure we'll come back to that John if I come back to you I'm sure we'll come back to that and I can repeat that because Jan and Todd, for those who haven't read Emma, would you... I'm sorry, but you can be as brisk as you want. It's seven sentences you do it.

Well, I think not, actually. Brishly. A summary, but wants a summary. It's either... You can either do it very, very quickly, or you can do it in a great long time. Well, I should try to be something in between, brisk, I think. Because it's either about nothing or it's about everything. It's a fantastic novel. If you start actually describing it,

to feel a bit like Mariah Edgeworth saying, well, what is it about? All we know is that, you know, Mr. Woodhouse liked very thin gruel. What is it about? I think the story would do to tell you the truth. Well, I'm trying to do the story. I'm getting there. There's the three or four families in the...

I did get the short story in this one. The three or four families in the country village. And it's about a community as well as about a character, Emma. It's called Emma. And it begins with Emma alone in... intellectual solitude, although she's rich, privileged, healthy, only 20 and beautiful. She is living with a sickly, selfish, foolish, adoring elderly father. And she's just lost her governess and friend, and she is lonely.

And she's also bored. Boredom is much disgust in this period. And she seeks a friend, and she lights on. Smith, a boarding school girl below her in social status of only 17. And she proposes to train her up to be a friend. She treats her rather like a doll. She says, come and walk and we walk and come and stay and she stays. And Mr. Knightley, the neighbouring squire who's been advising her and talking to her since

she was a very small child, warns her that this is wrong and that she will do Harriet damage. And sure enough, she does. because she persuades the girl to not to be interested in the very pleasant tenant farmer who's in love with her and who is more on her status, but to go for the rather, with a very handsome new vicar, Mr Elton. Of course, it turns out that Mr. Elton is more interested in Emma and her £30,000. And when the mistake is realised in a very, very funny scene, Mr. Elton goes off in high dudgeon and comes back with, with a wife so ridiculous that she is one of the joys of the book,

Mrs. Elton and her snobbishness and her apparatus of happiness is, I think, to me, a great pleasure. After that, two more people come in. I am moving along briskly here. First, there is Jane Fairfax, a beautiful orphan of great accomplishments, and Emma is jealous of her. This is the friend she should have had,

except that of course she wasn't around at the time, but nonetheless Mr Knightley feels this is the friend she should have had. Emma tries, but Jane is very reserved. And as a result, Emma, who has a great deal of imagination and spirit, invents a back plot for her, which is malicious. She's helped in this by the other visitor to the town, Frank Churchill, a rich young man, whom Emma had always thought dedicated to herself when he finally showed up.

he does come and they have a very edgy scorchip I am coming to the end you have got all the main characters and it's this and that and the other and then they end up with this but it's like a great party everybody comes in it ends up with marriages it's about marriage very heavily so no it was very good it was very good

it was just you know I think you'd done it so that's fine they all marry the right people all marry the right people that's right sort of Exactly. I enjoyed it. We all enjoyed it. This is written in 1815. Just to put the demarcation in place, Waterloo, things going on, turmoil, revolution, terror and all that sort of. Not a whiff of it. Not a whiff of it. Well, there is a whiff. There's a whiff. There's a whiff. There's a whiff. There's a whiff. There's a whiff. There's a kind of interesting and maybe ironic or maybe absolutely sincere, patriotic. in it. It's very clear about England. That's a waft more than a whiff, isn't it really? No, it's whiff.

But it's about England. It's England versus France. Moderate England. Versus French and their silly language and their ways. That is very much there. And I think it's also about what is the kind of England that is coming into being. It's an England where things are changing,

where people are coming back from the war. The war is over. There's not going to be another war for a long. time. How is it going to work? How is it going to work as people go back into positions they should perhaps be holding? You think there's much about there really? I mean I just you're reading deep. It's more about those people you've mentioned and the machinations and intricacies and the evolutions of the plot around the eight or nine of them. Isn't it? But the people are moving up. The Coles and Mr. Perry are moving up in a social status and Emma,

through his eyes we mostly look, is worried about it. She doesn't know what to make of it. There are shifting things in the village. And the village is being as close to London. It feels London pushing against it. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck.

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a new movie on the inner workings of Facebook hit cinemas in October. The journalist who's reporting inspired the film tells us why Facebook stopped being cool and whether meta its parent company can reinvent itself. For more, listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your pods. We've got our own, Emma here.

Yeah, Clary. How does Emma Woodhouse compare to other Austin heroines? Yes, well, she is spotlit by the title. This is the only one of Austin's title, which features the heroine. And in doing that, she's sort of highlighting her own daring in creating such an original, such an unusual heroine. Heroines, in the proper mould, were underdogs. They were Cinderella's. They had to face all sorts of melodramatic trials and tribulations. They were bereaved. They fell into poverty. They had threats to their reputation. They had pursuing villains, seducers. And so all of that was swept aside by the opening paragraph of Emma, which lays down all her advantages, her material, worldly advantages, and insist that nevertheless this is going to be an interesting person to follow. But it does highlight a danger. in the first chapter, the danger, she's facing the danger of intellectual solitude, is the phrase that's used there. And Austin takes that really seriously. And I think that is the sort of driving

force of the entire novel, this danger of intellectual solitude, which really is based on the very limited horizons that even a very privileged woman had at that time. She also takes seriously the fact that she fears that no readers will like Emma pay for herself because she is conceited and snobbish and manipulating and very classist and intolerable in many ways. That's why a lot of readers didn't like her at the time. Now, you've all marinated into admiration, but at the time. Oh, yes, absolutely. So, I mean, that's another aspect of her experimentalism and her, and her daring. Yeah, but let's stick to the point. She's a very, I mean, so people, she's very snobbish. She's very manipulative. She's very spoiled. This is okay. I mean this is

what she is, though, isn't she? She's mixed. She's mixed. She is intelligent, she's resourceful, she's imaginative, she's funny, she's funny, she's witty, exactly. She's kind and she's compassionate as well

and she's pragmatic. She has all sorts of good features. We're just simply wasted in the environment. Yeah, so she's warped by these narrow circumstances that she's forced to fit with him. I was just going to say yes. I mean, all these qualities are there, but in a way it's beside the point, because we're standing and talking

about her, as if, you know, we're in our favourite heroine, unfavorant heroin competition, but the point about the novel is it's almost not entirely, but almost entirely narrated through Emma's consciousness in incredibly

sophisticated and funny ways. And so, we don't look at Emma. I mean, we do, we do judge her, we're expected to judge her, but also we inhabit her. We see the world through her eyes. And a lot of the plot things that Jan, I think, brilliantly managed to pack in,

are things, some of them are things we see immediately. But some of them, I think, are things that on first reading, we don't see immediately because we're seeing the world as Emma sees it. And Jane Austen uses this technique, which wasn't described until the early 20th century, called Free and Direct Style, which she invented, actually. I mean, she invented it. And novelists since have sort of used it,

and nowadays novelists use it without even thinking about or knowing what it is, which is to narrate a novel, not in the voice of a character, but through the mind and warping predilections and prejudices of the character. And that's what she does. And that's why Jane Austen's thing about nobody will like her.

It's a joke. I think it's a joke. I don't think she minded about it at all. She was laughing about it. Chad, can I come to you? Sticking rather obstinately to the character of Emma. Nobody's willing to It's very strange. She is fictional. You all want to wash, I know, but I'm

interested in fictional characters, I'm sure you are otherwise you wouldn't be here. I mean, the fact is that she's being washed clean all the time. It is, her snobbery makes you cringe. Her manipulation of Harriet. She's very cruel to Harriet. She takes Harriet away from a very good marriage

and Mr. Knightley reprimands her, Emma, for that. She's nasty about the on Box Hill. She has a spasm of nastiness. snobbish nastiness. When she rejects, Mr. Ellen, she says it's partly because he doesn't realize the number of, the distance between himself and herself. She's so much higher up the social scale than he.

How dare he even propose to her? Let's get that on the table, and then we can move forward. Well, I think you've put it on the table, actually, but I think it is there. I think the cruelty is there, and I think it's there more perhaps than both of you have stressed. I think there are times when I really found her intolerable. There's one point where Harriet, you know, the simple child, she's only 17, she's had no background at all, sees the Martins again. And it's a very awkward situation. They all like her very, very much in the shop.

And she narrates this in a very simple, straightforward way. And Emma is almost moved for a moment. And then it says, but what can you expect from a silly, shallow girl like Harriet? And this is a girl. she's taken into her house as supposedly her friend. Things like that, I think, are almost unforgivable. She's played with her as if she were a doll, really. Yes, she is.

And it goes on, and I think the Box Hill, yes, of course, she's shadowed by Miss Bates in many ways and she worries about her. But nonetheless, to say something like that in a public place is not acceptable. Emma. I do feel you're exaggerating the dark side of Emma, because I think.

I'm drawing attention to it. I was about to switch and say, but they're a great quality. Which you can do for me. Okay, that is what I will try to do. I'll try to make a case for her. I think it's made very apparent to the reader just how constraining, how claustrophobic her circumstances are. And that really it's through the lack of any options in her life that she is forced into this sort of fantasist role.

And I think there's a real feminist agenda, actually, with this novel, which can be seen through an array of female characters. We've got Jane Fairfax, who by rights really should be the heroine of the novel. She is more of the standard heroine. She's an orphan. She has no means. She has no dowry. She's doomed to life as a governess.

And she has this extraordinary outburst where she says, you know, the trade in governess is, is like the slave trade. You know, she doesn't say that it's got the same cruelty involved, but that nevertheless there's something involuntary and oppressive about it. One feels fundamentally sympathetic to

sympathetic words of her because she's ruled over by a tyrant. Yes. And her have, her father is either sick or pretends to be sick, and he won't let her out of his sight. He wants her to eat what he wants her to eat. He won't let her go out of the place. She lives, she's never been to London, since 15 miles away, never been to seaside. And can't go

anywhere with, so she's tyrannized by this man, whom she, for whom she is what we would now call, a devoted carer. And we see this extraordinary forbearance. We see the way she checks what she wants to say. She tries to compensate for his damaging behaviour to others. I mean, she's absolutely masterful in that. And in different circumstances, if there were an Emma today,

you know, she would be, you know, a businesswoman. She would be someone, you know, showing these sort of extraordinary ability she had to best advantage. You could go to Oxford, study PPP and become Prime Minister. I think it's John's turn. I'll come to you. All right. I mean, yeah, Mr. Woodhouse is with his habits of gentle, selfishness. It's a verbally wonderful novel full of these kind of killing phrases. And he's hilarious. But the thing about Mr. Woodhouse is that in some ways he's the opposite of his daughter. She thinks that she knows what other people are like.

And this is one of the many ways in which, you know, that when you're reading it, however awful, she sometimes is. There's a bit of most readers that think Emma Woodhouse, Seymour, because she's always coming, she's trying to work out what's going on in other people's heads, and that's what makes her interesting, but most of the time she's wrong. He is incapable of thinking that anybody's different from him.

So this is an absolute sort of deadly neutralising thing. So he assumes that everybody thinks like him. And, I mean, the most incredible thing about Mr. Woodhouse, this sort of valetudinarian, is that he must have had sex at least twice in his life because he's got two daughters. And he's a sort of enemy to matrimony. But he's conceivable because it was conceivable.

And this is a novel which everybody, every possible pairing of young people is being imagined except the one that's going to really happen to Emma and Mr. Knightley, of course. And he can't see it at all because to him matrimony is the enemy and he doesn't realise what's going on around him. Just to come in on that, I think Jane Austen has a sort of, a soft, ironic spot for these vegetable people. Because she likes Lady Bertram, not doesn't like,

but she presents with a sort of loving concern, Lady Bertram in Mansfield Park as well. People who can hardly get off the sofa. And Mr. Woodhouse is like that. And yes, indeed, he's an absolute tyrant of his daughter. At the same time, and he has warped her because, of course, she is first with him. He also adores her.

And so she can't imagine a life or she worries about a life where she isn't so totally central. The mother's died when she was young. Yes, when she was five. And she needs to be central to somebody, so that man is the centre. But to go back also to your point that you,

yes, one is Emma, and you are because you're in the book. But I always feel a certain, I have a sort of anxiety about Emma that if I was there, I'd be more like Mrs. Elton and that, you know, she would find one quite inelegant and be incredibly snobbish.

I mean, I find the whole, I found Emma very interesting, but I also found a whole of Highbury interesting and all these people in it. And there is something about Emma, because we're inside her, that is terribly appealing, as is anybody we're inside. At the same time, I still think you have to hold on to.

There is a kind of, there is a cruelty and something quite disturbing in the centre of her. I agree with Emma, that, with Emma Cleary, not Emma, what has that, that, that you are misjudging her a bit because the point is that Jane Austen, as it were, gives you the material to make your judgment. So the example you gave, which is a brilliant one,

of Harriet Smith meeting the man she's rejected and her sister, and telling, guilelessly, telling Emma her puppet mistress about this. And the brilliant thing is Emma doesn't respond by thinking, oh, but they're silly people. She has to conquer her immediate realisation that, what is it, there's a mixture of wounded feelings and delicacy in their response. she knows that. She's clever. She's understanding. And she has to fight to reassert her absurd pride and power. And it's because of that

that she's a character like no characters ever existed at all. She's also a reader and she does the same thing when she looks at him and reads the letter. She realizes that it's a very good letter. So she has to wipe it out. This is the letter that Martin writes to. Emma, yes. And she's always trying to avoid other people's words in a way. She goes... And she learns. I mean, that's what's so great about.

She has conscience. She has ferociously judgmental, isn't she? That isn't me being unfair to her, Emma. I mean, she is ferociously judgmental. Absolutely. But I think you've got to measure that against the pressures on her. Her only purpose in life is to be Queen B of this village. So anyone who challenges that is going to be in trouble.

When I say these things, I think I'm on John Mullen side, describing somebody who the contradictions and the delusions, which are the enrichment, but one mustn't duck the fact that they are contradicting there some pretty dark, well, they're not dark, some distasteful things are going. Let's talk about marriage. Okay.

Go on then, John. Marriage? Oh, well, I mean, I said the hybrid, and Jan was saying this wonderful world of Highbury where sort of nothing happens, yet everything's happening. And one of the everything that is happening is that people are imagining pairings, you know, and this is something that Jane Austen knew in her own life,

and she makes the humming heart of her fiction. So everybody sort of between the age of 15 and 40 who isn't married might marry somebody. And everybody is speculating and thinking and wondering who will marry who. And Emma is a matchmaker, and she's making matches in her mind, and this is nearly disastrous. But also for the reader, this is a kind of, it's a kind of, Kind of a detective story, actually, as well, because we talked about,

Jan talked about Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax. I think most people, the first time you read the novel, you absolutely know that Mr. Elton is really after Emma, and what a fool she is not to see it. And as he himself says, when she says to him he proposes, and she says, but what about Miss Smith? He says, Miss Smith. I mean, he says one of the most truly evil lines in literature.

He says, I mean, some men might not, everyone has his level. I mean, isn't that fantastic? But we all see that, but I think on the first reading, we don't see what Frank Churchill's up to. He is so cunning, and he has arrived in order to,

let us say, canoodle with Jane Fairfax. But he can't do it most of the time on his own. He manages to get him around once, and he has to do it in front of other people. And she, Emma, has no idea what he's up to. and I think the first time we read it we don't. And I think every time you read it you see how cunning, even

more cunning he is. Can I go to John Hian? Sir do you want that, because I want to ask you a question as well. Can I just say that Mr. Knightley is the sort of detective of the whole book? He's the great landowner squire. He's the squire. He's a good man. He's a good man, except that he's a bit unimaginative and he doesn't

dance when he should and he doesn't necessarily use his carriage. And he hasn't got quite enough money either to do up his grounds and his house. He dances quite well eventually. He dances quite well in the end. But he is a kind of detective. And he has a reason because, of course, he's in love with Emma. It transpires.

Since the age, since she was 13. Exactly so. Some people find this a little odd. But he also knew her as a baby. I mean, he has always been there. He's one of these familial lovers who comes into the story. He's a brother-in-law as well. But he is the kind of detective.

He's looking for clues throughout because he thinks that there is something wrong about Frank Churchill. And so he's always looking. They play games, they play riddles, they do all these things, and they try to second-guess each other. They try to look for clues as if the whole place was playing a game.

And they listen to their other people's weird language and see if underneath it, they can hear something that they shouldn't perhaps know. What's your view on the role of Mr. Knightley? Now, Mr. Wrightley has a central... Mr. Wrightley. Of course it's called Knight, perfect. gentle 90s. He is, he is

he in his own way, he's not so much a manipulator, but he he sort of, he's going around the village clearing up the mess really, isn't he? That's not quite how I see him, no. We have slight disagreements. No, I mean he enters the novel in the first chapter

as a sort of figure of salvation almost. I mean, he is Emma's only resource really in this novel. He is the one who is going to make life possible. for her. And the first conversation between him and Emma is so exhilarating. It's just wonderful. I mean, there's a massive age gap between them, as you've mentioned, about 17, 18 years. But she gives as good as she gets. It's like Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy again.

But sort of in a slightly different way. He's not a stranger. He's someone familiar. They have this wonderful sparring relationship. And, you know, it's like a screwball comedy. Or it's like Oberon and Titania in Mid-Summer Nightstream and there are many allusions to Shakespeare in the course of the novel. The course of True Love Never Did Run True and all that. Can I go back to Jan for one second, Jan Todd? Miss Bates and Mrs. Elton,

it can be something rather annoying and over-verbose. What can we tell about Emma from the way she reacts to them? Well, in some ways, they're shadows of Emma. I actually enjoy them thoroughly. there are people who find Miss Bates utterly irritating. I mean, it's an interesting thing, isn't it? How you actually write in a novel describe a rattle

and you want to show a medley of indiscriminate prose without boring somebody. And I think she does, though there are people who find Miss Bates boring, as Emma clearly does. But it's also been pointed out that if you listen to her speech, you will find out a lot more about the village than you would otherwise know, and she actually gives away a fair number of clues.

But I think the point you're actually asking is why does Emma so much dislike her, because she's boring and stupid and so on and so forth, but not entirely stupid. She understands when she's been got at by Emma very quickly. But I think in some ways she shadows her. After all, she is stuck there with an elderly mother. She is a spinster. And one of the things where Harriet does catch Emma is where she says,

if you don't marry, as you say you won't because you're first and your father's house and you are everything to your father. Why do you need any other man? Why do you need to go when you're rich? Harriet says, but you'll be like Miss Bates. So there's that shadow of that, always there. And then, of course, Miss Bates is the aunt and has to live with Jane Fairfax. And again, these relationships of tyranny, of kindly tyranny is something that Emma knows all about. So I think it's to do with that, with the fear of spinsterhood. and what it means. But I also think Mrs. Elton is another thing altogether.

Mrs. Elton has come in with her apparatus of happiness and her music and her accomplishments. And in some ways, she's a terrible sort of shadow of what Emma is. I mean, she's much stupider, and she has no ability in the way that Emma has to change and to grow and to learn from her mistakes. At the same time, that snobbishness, that manner of patronising people, of taking them up, of feeling oneself superior, of not understanding that you have to create a community all the time.

That is something that is a bit close to the worst side of Emma. Would you like to talk a bit more of Mr Knightley, Emma? You're in a great position to do it with your name. Yes, well, he's often... Well, he's been rather neglected in this conversation. Yes, he has a little bit, hasn't he? So Mr Knightley is an interesting figure. In a way he represents tradition.

Donwell, Abbey is described in a beautiful passage through Emma's point of view as the epitome of Englishness. It's calm, it's sort of lit by this beautiful soft sun and so on. But at the same time, he's a working man. He's absolutely involved in the life of the community. he is the presiding genius over the various plans for upholding. I think he's a magistrate, probably. He runs a parish council.

So he's a very active man, and you get a glimpse of that side of things. I think there's a sort of taste of Hardy almost in the picture of Mr. Knightley and also actually of Robert Martin. There's a tiny little vignette where we get that side of the life of Highbury. And Mr Knightley's love for Emma, which has been sort of touched on as being, it's a bit weird because, you know, he said he started loving him when she was 13. But actually within the novel, I think it's very brilliantly done. You can read Emma. I mean, if you've read it lots and lots of times, you might think, I'm going to read it just for Mr. Knightley this time.

And if you read it just thinking about him, Frank Churchill comes in. And one of the subsidiary points about Frank Churchill is he, even as soon as his name's mentioned, he starts generating. something that Jane Austen's very interested in, which is jealousy. Jealousy. And very, very subtly, I think, Mr. Knightley starts changing in his address to Emma, actually, and his response to her. And she doesn't see it, or she sees it and is puzzled by it. Why is he so cross about this man he hasn't even met?

And Mr. Knightley's love, I mean, Jane Austen knows exactly what she's doing. his love for Emma, which comes right at the end as a sort of surprise to Emma, but it shouldn't be a surprise to the reader, because his sort of love story is there too. And also for the first time he's got a real rival, and that terrifies him, I think. I think it's clever the way that... No, I'm just going to say it's also clever the way that, if you go back through the book, you see that Emma has been noticing him over and over again.

She notices where he stood in a particular time. He said, well, oh, that was where Mr. Knightley said, stood that he came in his carriage. Yes, he came, of course, to bring the bates, as you find later, but she notices it. And over and over again, although it's a massed, and Jane Austen is wonderful at these great mass social scenes, she knows where Mr Knightley is at every moment. Is there any true, sorry, please say. Just to add to that, I mean, there is something again so unusual about their relationship, Mr. Knightley and Emmers. It's very egalitarian and it's not blind to faults. There's no

idealisation going on here. In what ways does she fault him? In what ways does she find fault with him? Oh, often. You know, she criticises him for instance for not sort of living up to his status in the community. She teases him on numerous

cows. She says you're so unfair to Frank Churchill. She goes, nonsense, nonsense. She gets him on jealousy. Yes. And very clearly. And that is such, as you've said, is such a big theme in a whole book. Sorry.

And there's a lovely bit where she teases him about his notion that he's going to look after his young nephews, who she actually has responsibility for, because he has more time. Of course, he doesn't have more time. Emma's the one with all the time on her hands. And she

does it in such a kind of loving but also teasing way. It's like nothing else, I think, in the fiction up to this point. He also is the best man in the book. And Emma says at one point, I deserve the best because I never booked up with anything else. He thinks he's the best woman. He has this, says, I blame you and lectured you and you have born. There's no other woman

in England. What does wonder how many other women in England he knows, but still. Well, neither of them knows very many other people. But in Highbury, they are the best, and the two best marry. Highbury I could have put up with, but the best know the woman in England, hard to swallow. But it's hyperbole. But it's hyperbole. I say it's hyperbole. We don't hear what she says up, also we do want to hear what he says. Why did Emma... All right, finally.

Where does Emma rank among the novels of Jane Austen in your opinions? We've got a whiff or a wharf from John, but let's end with him. Briefly. I think it is her masterpiece. It's the last book that she,

we know that she absolutely finished. Persuasion may well, and I think has not been entirely revised. So Emma is the culmination of her career and it is the cleverest, the most subtle, the one in which she thinks about her own artistry as well as putting artistry into the book. So yes, I think it's her masterpiece.

Emma. For artistry, it must be first. I think for feeling and plot for myself, it's persuasion. But yes, it is an extraordinary achievement. And of course it's had a great legacy, which I hope will be at a time to do. talk about. Yeah, I mean, I think

we have half a minute. I think it's her greatest novel. I mean, persuasion, lots of Jane Austen fans, and I'm with Emma on this, will find persuasion, the most moving of her novels,

and most powerful in a way, the most visceral. But Emma is just fictionally, the most complicated. It's as if, with Emma, you feel, it's like reading 12th night or something. You feel the person who wrote this

can do anything they want. They are totally in control. And I think because of that, it's also one of the very greatest of all novels in English. And you can read it over and over again. And see things, and see little tricks. But she's left for posterity.

And only on the 10th reading do you manage to find. We all think it's brilliant. Yes. Thank you very much. Janet Todd. Emma and McLeary and John Mullen. There's a quiz on Emma on our webpage. Next week we'll be talking about the sale in which trials.

Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. This is when we complain about all the things we didn't get in. Say how terrible I was and how we didn't do anything. We should have done. This is now going down very well. If I ever come again, not the plot, please.

You did the plot. I keep saying we should do Anne Radcliffe. If anybody ever else wants to do the mysteries you would do... You're right. Mrs. Elton is just... I think Mrs. Elton is brilliant. Sorry, it's the Garden of England. It's the Garden of England and the Baruch-Land-O. It's just so funny.

And then when Emma says... Well, I think quite a few counties have been called the garden. No, I think not. Only sorry. But see, I think what we didn't catch, if I'd say anything, it's the humour. It is a very funny book. And I think that's why I like it now that I'm old. I think when I was a bit younger, I wanted passion of the sort that you get in persuasion.

I always liked that. But now that I am now, oh, I think that I think there's a lot in this that is wonderful. It shows you how to carry on. Because even the thing that you were talking about, Melvin, about having cruel with Harriet Smith, which is completely true. But even then, Emma sometimes, I mean, one of the cruelties is that Emma and you sometimes laugh at Harriet Smith's suffering. So Harriet Smith, after she's discovered Mr. O'n never loved her. There's a bit I was just reading another day where Emma's trying to find other things to talk about.

So if she doesn't go on about Mr. Elton and she's talking about the poor. in Highbury and Harriet naturally says Mr. Elton was so kind to the poor. And she brings out these little things that she's kept like a child. I mean, the poor guy, yes. I mean, maybe I feel more distressed. Because Mr. Weldon's not kind to the poor. He's a horrible person. I'm not interested in Mr. Elton, that's.

I'm interested in Harriet that stage. And that's a, that's a remark from a stricken 17-year-old who's been horribly snubbed and let down. And so that's where my attention is and I'm banging the table. Attention, I'm not banging the table, I'm just tapping on it, practicing my piano. And that's a different thing. So I think it is funny in a way,

but I'm more moved by it. This girl's not knowing what's happening to her. She's been taken up by this very superior, this is this sort of goddess of the village and May just tried to, Emma tries to turn her into somebody else, and of course it doesn't work. I feel very sorry for it.

Am I the only one? I feel sorry to her. At one point she looks at her and she says, there's Harriet, sitting, looking pretty and that's all she needs. And we have no idea. She is such a child. But that's a...

The brilliant dialogue, isn't it, between Mr Knightley and Emma, when Mr Knightley discovers what she's done? And when Mr. Knightley really lays it on the table. And Emma says it's quite clever things. And he says, rubbish. You're talking balded at you, you know.

That's the occasion for one of these wonderful phrases. that the novel abounds with. He rises in tall indignation. But at the end of it, there is Mr Knightley talking to Harriet and saying, I found more in her than I had thought. She has improved. Hold on, hold on, hold on. She actually does improve.

Has she improved or has she for the first time met her genuine person who's prepared to take her seriously? No, she's been improved because she actually comes. First of all, she just echoes everything that Emma says. She uses the same words. Oh, that Jane Fairfax has only technique or something, which is exactly what Emma would say, that's rubbish. But later, when she says, and there's a wonderful moment

where Emma is suddenly realizing she means Mr. Knightley, and she says, oh, Miss Woodhouse, you do forget. Yes. Now, the early, that's, that's, the hair's on the back of my neck out with that style. That's a sophisticated statement. And so although she may not be made more suitable for the wife of Robert Martin, she has improved. She's learned to self...

I mean, Emma doesn't see it like that. Emma sees herself as somebody who's made a Frankenstein, has become a Frankenstein, made a monster who's grown self-important. But in fact, she's made somebody who has more self-esteem that she could say that to her patroness.

What about legacy? Yeah, Simon, there is some tea or coffee. Yes, yes. Because the amazing things, I was reading that, I was reading that George Henry Lewis essay about Jane Auster. in the other day. And actually I think even he

doesn't realize how good it is. But he is really interesting that he's saying, you know, in the 1860s, well, people are still buying these novels. And there are obviously people out there who like them. But he's essentially saying, but none of the clever people I know pay any attention to them at all.

And nobody, and still, you know, even And it's still not on the level of George Eliot. No, he says she's better. He says in that article, she's better than George Lerner. But only in certain respects, in certain respects, intellectually. But isn't it incredible that sort of in the 1890s, Henry James, who gets his techniques in a way from Jane Austen. But he's still really condescending.

I think people offer a remarkably negative about Austin's work in the 19th century. But even the 20th century, Conrad writes and says, what's it all about? I've just read Pride and Prejudice. Nabok. They're jealous. I don't understand why people say. It's jealousy. It's jealousy.

What about Henry James saying, everybody's dear, dear Jane. She's so cried up. So I think we're talking about... And then you get one or two people. Virginia Woolf gets it, doesn't she? She totally gets it. There are many more Radio 4 arts and discussion programs to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.co.com.uk slash radio 4. Zandi, happy anniversary.

What are you talking about? Have I missed something? Yes, Zandi, you have. We are over a year into making WhatsApp docs. You didn't even get me a card. Is it really over a year? It is. Think of all the episodes we've done, how to look after our feet, our shoulders, our hips, our teeth. We've explored snoring, cholesterol, the immune system, endometriosis.

All with the help of expert guests, I think it's fair to say we have plundered the world of health and well-being, equipping ourselves and our listeners with the best information out there on how to look after our minds, our bodies, our souls even. And we're not stopping, aren't we, Chris? We're most certainly not, Sond. We have a lot of new topics coming up, from tinnitus to acne, crying, male, fertility, we are holding steadfast in our mission to sort facts from fiction, debunking wellness myths along the way, and you can find all of our previous episodes of WhatsApp docs in the feed

on BBC Sounds. And don't forget to subscribe on BBC Sounds and turn on the notifications so you don't miss any of these upcoming episodes. Is Facebook Dying? I'm Tristan Redmond, hosted the Global Story podcast from the BBC. More than 15 years after the social network, a new movie on the Inner World. workings of Facebook hit cinemas in October. The journalist who's reporting inspired the film tells us why Facebook stopped being cool and whether meta, its parent company, can reinvent itself.

For more, listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your pods.