Jane Austen s Clueless - 1949 Words

In Emma, the character Jane Austen presents in the novel is the type of person who likes to meddle in other people’s lives. In the film Clueless, Cher is an impersonation of Emma’s character. She also manipulates the situation, meddles in people’s lives because she feels she can manage them better than they can. In this particular adaptation of Emma, Emma is portrayed through the character Cher. Cher is also a meddler in other people’s lives. This sets the film up for an interesting and developing plot. Cher Horowitz illuminates Emma Woodhouse because they both exist in that precarious realm where lovable threatens to tip over into loathsome, but doesn’t. In the process of narrowly avoiding awfulness, both of these princesses give us†¦show more content†¦The ensuing disconnect between Emma’s perception and the reality of her surroundings forms the crux of Austen’s novel. Just as Cher convinces herself that Elton loves Tai and Christian loves her, everything that Emma imagines is occurring in her small village turns out to be wrong, and she manipulates people and events with disastrous results. Emma suffers little limitation as she goes to the Cole’s party, to the ball at the Crown, and to the excursion at Box Hill, provided all was safe at Hartfield. The fact that this represents Emma s change of response to her father rather than being a change in Mr. Woodhouse himself is made clear by details which would have felt inconceivable in book three, for instance, we casually hear that Emma had replaced the small uncomfortable table at Hartfield with a modern round table sometime in the unspecified past. Emma can make the reader sympathize with her. She is the only person in the novel who actually decides to make over another character in her own image, but she’s not alone in being constrained by ego. And so it was with Jane Austen as person and novelist. To establish a connection between her art and classicism viewed as measure and balance is al- most to belabor the obvious. Nor is it necessary to prove a direct relationship of study and influence. It is enough to see that Jane intuitively understood the rules,