Hablando de Jane Austen

Emma era una persona muy sociable, pero en realidad no mantenía una relación de intimidad afectiva con nadie, hasta que se desencadena el matrimonio con el Sr. Knightley. Pero ¿es el matrimonio el sustituto adecuado de la amistad? Emma nos muestra que una mujer podría encontrar la amistad de una manera más sincera a través del matrimonio, que de la propia amistad. Al menos, en el siglo XVIII. Una de las críticas presentes en la novela hace referencia a cómo la presión social separaba a las mujeres entre sí, para introducirlas en sus obligaciones domésticas. La amistad no es una prioridad, y en última instancia Emma la define como una relación jerárquica. Por esta misma razón, es difícil que ocurra entre mujeres, siendo un tipo de relación que es admirable y deseable, pero una misión imposible precisamente para aquellas que más podrían necesitarlo.

(Resumen en Inglés)

The heroine of Jane Austen’s Emma (1815) is well liked by all of the novel’s characters but intimate with none until the marriage plot intervenes in the final pages to match her with Mr. Knightley. Yet the novel’s reversion to the marriage plot offers little reassurance that marriage is an adequate substitute for friendship. Emma shows that a woman could better fulfill the goals of friendship as the eighteenth century defined it through companionate marriage than through friendship itself, but that marriage is at best a problematic substitute for friendship. This novel criticizes not only the marriage plot as a narrative device, but also the social pressure that steered women away from each other as it steered them toward domesticity. The nature and purpose of marriage was clear, its primacy established by law and custom. Friendship, by contrast, with its unstable boundaries and contradictory definitions, was not a priority. From the contradictions that make up the eighteenth century’s definition of friendship, Emma ultimately defines friendship as a hierarchical, power-driven relationship. Women, largely lacking power, could not succeed as friends. Emma’s failed attempts at friendship remind readers that no real substitute for egalitarian, intimate feminine friendship exists or should exist. Emma suggests that such a relationship is admirable, desirable, and worthy of pursuit but that the people who need it most cannot achieve it.

Este artículo ha sido publia¡cado en:

The Eighteenth Century
Volume 56, Number 2, Summer 2015
pp. 227-241 | 10.1353/ecy.2015.0018

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