Undeception

Part four of a four-part series on Jane Austen, virtue, and friendship

This is the final installation of my four part series on Jane Austen, virtue, and friendship. Part one on how Jane Austen taught virtue can be found here, part two on her conditions for friendship can be found here, and part three on how Austen thinks one can cultivate virtue can be found here.

Part Four: Undeception 

Austen’s heroines in general can be put into two categories: those possessing virtue to begin with, and those who must learn to cultivate virtue. Heroines who have not cultivated virtue are not without hope, however. Their stories always involve what CS Lewis called ‘undeception’ or ‘awakening.’

In his essay, “A Note on Jane Austen,” he says,

All four heroines painfully, though with varying degrees of pain, discover that they have been making mistakes both about themselves and about the world in which they live. All their data have to be reinterpreted…All realize that the cause of the deception lay within.” He points out that in the four novels that involve a heroine’s moral education, the “undeception, structurally considered, is the very pivot or watershed of the story. (Essays in Literary Criticism,179)

Emma is particularly self-deceived, and so she actually has a series of undeceptions. The first undeception comes with Mr. Elton’s proposal, which dashes all the romantic schemes Emma had in store for Harriet. The two-fold blow was both of feeling foolish at being so mistaken, and knowing that her foolishness had deeply hurt her friend. 

The second blow was perhaps the most severe, as Mr. Knightly confronts Emma after insulting Miss Bates. In her article, Aristotelian Ethical Ideas in the Novels of Jane Austen, Amanda Marie Kubic says, 

The shame and grief Emma feels upon recognizing her cruelty to Miss Bates serves as an educational force, steering her towards embracing the virtues of friendliness and respect in future interactions. Emma acquires the virtues of respect and kind charity, as Aristotle states, “by learning or by habituation or some other sort of training” (1:9)—in this case through Mr. Knightley’s chastisement and her own subsequent reflection.

Mr. Knightly, “a very old and intimate friend of the family,” (Emma, 691¹) is “one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them.” (Emma, 692) By his constant habits of sharpening Emma and telling her the truth, Mr. Knightley shows himself to be Emma’s true friend. He is truly charitable, but not in the perfunctory way we see Emma “doing” charity toward Miss Bates and the poor. He is filled with genuine affection and concern for those around him. He is energetic in using his personal resources primarily for the good of those around him rather than his own indulgence. He is often away from the comforts of Donwell Abbey to settle local disputes or check in on his tenants. He is intentional and zealous to care for the orphans and widows of Highbury, in particular the vulnerable Mrs. and Miss Bates and Jane Fairfax. He has a carriage but he only ever uses it to bring these women to and from social engagements. He sends them the last good apples from his harvest, and the best cuts of meat from his kitchen.

Mr. Knightley is very obviously a stand-in for Austen’s ideal man, probably more so even than other great Austen male protagonists. He might be the only Austen hero who doesn’t particularly have anything to learn. Mr. Darcy must learn to temper his pride; Captain Wentworth must learn to see that persuadability can be a good trait; Henry Tilney must learn that sometimes our imagination can train our discernment when reason cannot; Edward Ferrars is in relational purgatory, suffering for his youthful folly; and Edmund Bertram must contend for his calling to serve the church against the worldly temptation to abandon piety for progress. But Mr. Knightley, as his name suggests, is the knight who comes in to save the day. He has nothing to learn through painful and acute self-revelation, because he has been imposing the strategic pain of self-discipline on himself for nearly four decades. 

Having practiced charity, Mr. Knightley is therefore qualified to teach Emma, and to be a moral guide for her. He has imposed gentle but sometimes critical feedback and helped shape Emma’s moral sense for years. And with his final harsh rebuke of Emma’s uncharitableness towards Miss Bates, he also serves to be the painful mechanism of undeception that Emma needs. As painful as it is, Mr. Knightley’s rebuke is the truth that Emma needs to hear, and it serves to build up her virtue. It is therefore an act of charity, even though it is extremely unpleasant for Emma.

The conversation that finally leads to Mr. Knightley’s proposal, after a series of misunderstandings is, I believe, actually Emma’s final test. Will she hear what she believes is the truth, as excruciating as it might be for her? Will she be able to overcome herself to become Mr. Knightley’s true friend?  Emma has become convinced that Mr. Knightley is in love with Harriet Smith, and wants to consult Emma on the matter. Unfortunately, the conviction that he is in love with Miss Smith has coincided with the realization that she is herself in love with Mr. Knightley. 

In their conversation, at first, Emma stops Mr. Knightley, because she can’t bear to hear what she thinks is the truth, that he loves Miss Smith. Ironically, she stops him from saying the one thing she really longs to hear, which is that he is in love with her. 

“Oh! Then don’t speak it, don’t speak it,” she eagerly cried, “Take a little time, consider, do not commit yourself.” “Thank you,” said he, in an accent of deep mortification, and not another syllable followed.

A few moments later, she realizes that she has caused him pain.

“I stopped you ungraciously, just now, Mr. Knightley, and, I am afraid, gave you pain.—But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or to ask my opinion of anything that you may have in contemplation—as a friend, indeed, you may command me.—I will hear whatever you like. I will tell you exactly what I think.” 

“As a friend!”—repeated Mr. Knightly.—“Emma, that is I fear a word—No, I have no wish—Stay, yes, why should I hesitate?—I have gone too far already for concealment.—Emma, I accept your offer—Extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to you as a friend.—Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?” (Emma, 926)

The conversation unfolds now in mutual understanding, resulting in their engagement. But it seems to me that Austen is doing more with the word “friend” here than showing that even Mr. Knightly can feel friend-zoned. Mr. Knightley has been the only true friend that Emma has had. He is the only one who has spoken the truth to her, who has seen her as she is, and still loved her with all her faults. Now, finally, Emma has learned to be a friend. She will accept the truth from Mr. Knightley, whatever it is, and will speak truth back to him. It is in this very act of selflessness that Emma passes her final test, and is able to enter into a mutual true friendship with Mr. Knightley, which is also the foundation for their future marriage.

For Jane Austen, people either learn virtue the easy way or the hard way. They can submit to discipline and instruction from childhood, or they can be confirmed in “habits of gentle selfishness”, (Mr. Woodhouse), officious vanity (Mrs. Elton), or pliable gullibility (Miss Smith). Emma’s moments of truth break upon her with all the pain of Christian conviction. Having ignored her moral education for twenty years, she must learn self-knowledge the hard way, after her own attempts at controlling the people in her community crash and burn around her. 

Conclusion

Austen leaves the last word for, of all people, Mrs. Elton. “The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own.”

It’s easy to miss, but Austen is slyly showing the reader that despite having plenty to say about the wedding, Mrs. Elton was not even present. Returning briefly to our consideration of character and music, Mrs. Elton is one who “is doatingly fond of music–passionately fond;—and my friends say I am not entirely devoid of taste; but as to anything else, upon my honor my performance is mediocre at best.” She goes on to insist that she and Emma form a musical society in Highbury, something that would be “an inducement to keep me in practice; for married women, you know–there is a sad story against them, in general. They are but too apt to give up music.” 

Emma replies, “But you, who are so extremely fond of it–there can be no danger, surely.” 

Mrs. Elton replies with example after example of accomplished women who, after marriage, fell out of practice completely. “Emma, finding her so determined upon neglecting her music, had nothing more to say.” (Emma, 841)

Mrs. Elton is almost a cartoon caricature of what Emma could have become as a woman who fancies herself allowed to have an opinion on everything, but without the inner will and discipline to practice virtue herself. But Emma repents, and learns how to submit her fancies to reason, and how to practice charity instead of officiousness and meddling. 

The novel ends with the “true band of friends” at the wedding-feast of Mr. Knightley and Miss Woodhouse. Although Emma’s moral education is not complete (no one's is), she has at least risen to the moral requirements of her status of the Great Lady of Highbury, and she has become a suitable wife for Mr. Knightley.

But Mrs. Elton has been left out of the circle of true friends. Mrs. Elton’s vanity, self-absorption, and lack of any real virtues makes her unfit to be true friends with anyone. The true band of friends in Highbury goes into the marriage supper of Emma and Mr. Knightly, while Mrs. Elton is cast out where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, or at least where the only thing she has left to offer is snarky comments on Emma’s taste in finery, and the only person left to hear them is Mr. Elton. Mrs. Elton would not put on her wedding clothes. She “was determined not to practice” charity, and so at the end could only snipe from a distance.

1. All Emma citations are taken from Jane Austen: The Complete Novels, Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition