I am in the highly enjoyable process of reading Jane Austen's Emma. "Process" may seem like a negative word, but I do not mean it this way. If you have read her, maybe you know what I'm talking about. She is the queen of lofty language, and to me, it is so beautiful. But, it is not read without difficulty. I find myself having to reread sentences here and there, and very slowly, carefully. I have to pause to look up words in the dictionary. This is so I can extract the full meaning of what Austen is saying. That's the thing about lofty language - you have to work harder to decipher the sentence, but it is so rewarding in the end because Austen, or whoever, has told you in the most delightful, detailed terms what is occurring, how it's occurring, and how those involved are feeling. For instance, look at this sentence that tells of Emma and her clan being snowed in during Christmas, and her brother-in-law's change of mood:
"These days of confinement would have been, but for her private perplexities, remarkably comfortable, as such seclusion exactly suited her brother, whose feelings must always be of great importance to his companions; and he had, besides, so thoroughly cleared off his ill-humour at Randalls, that his amiableness never failed him during the rest of his stay at Hartfield."
It's pretty packed with word-age. "Private perplexities"! I love it! What a way of saying that Emma is anxious and not willing to share her feelings with anyone. And the phrase about her brother-in-law, Mr. John Knightley - "whose feelings must always be of great importance to his companions" - is this suggesting Knightley is one of those "if I'm not happy, no one's happy" kind of person, or is everyone just concerned about him because he is so loved? I'm still not sure, but it's fun trying to figure it out.
I'm adoring this novel so far. I love the characters - Emma is such a snob, her father so fussy, her friend so comically innocent, and Mr. Knightley, the main Mr. of this Austen, is so attractively confident. Jane Austen is so clever, and Emma seems to be more playful and fanciful in plot and style than her other works. Out of her six major novels, this is the third I've read (the other two being Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice) and I was really excited, at first, about not knowing the story beforehand - because before I read the other two, I had seen the movies, so I knew what was going to happen. It took me only a few pages of reading Emma to remember, "Oh yes, Clueless was totally modeled after this novel." (I mean... Elton/Mr. Elton? Same character!) I had forgotten. So, a lot of the major romantic plot twists are no longer twists - I pretty much know what's going to happen. But no matter, for Jane Austen, in my opinion, can do no wrong.
