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May 12, 2022

12th May (Old May Day Eve): The Crown Inn ball occurs at last

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Read: Vol. 3, ch. 2 [38]; pp. 207–216 (from "No misfortune occurred" to "'no, indeed'").

Context

This date is not definite. Jo Modert writes: “Events between the Crown Inn ball and the first of June show it occurs during the second week in May. No weekday is given, but I suggest Thursday the twelfth (Old May Day Eve) with Harriet’s encounter with the gypsies on Old May Day—Friday the thirteenth” (p. 57).

This occasion is the fifth of eight “major scenes” identified by Marcia Folsom (2004, pp. xxx-xxxi).

Note that this write-up contains spoilers.

Readings and Interpretations

General Benevolence, Specific Friendship

Emma, upon finding out that her reserved role of advance inspector has in fact been reserved for half the company, mentally chides Mr. Weston: “General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.—She could fancy such a man” (vol. 3, ch. 2 [38]; p. 208). Critics generally point out that this remark shows Emma to be thinking, perhaps unconsciously, of Mr. Knightley. G. A. Wilkes cites it as evidence that “Mr Knightley [has become] for Emma a standard by which other men are measured,” writing that Mr Knightley seems to be by this point “Emma’s special preserve” (p. 83). Edward Neill similarly writes that “[I]n the light of the playing on the word [“fancy”] which takes place, the text seems to twit Emma here—she has no need to ‘fancy such a man’ because she already has an example to hand in the person of Mr Knightley” (p. 45). J. F. Burrows points out the change in Emma’s thinking which this represents: “This is scarcely the Emma who had allowed Mr. Elton’s agreeableness the advantage over “‘Mr. Knightley’s downright, decided, commanding sort of manner’” [vol. 1, ch. 4; p. 21] or who, on the evening of the snow, had taken as little notice of Mr. Knightley’s thoughtfulness as of Mr. Weston’s heartless sociability” (p. 102).1

Other commenters emphasize this passage’s implications for the novel’s themes over its psychological significance to its protagonist. Eugene Goodheart writes that Emma’s moral “seriousness,” to her credit, is occasionally “reflected in her own autonomous spirit”: “From time to time she does display a capacity for seeing her friends and neighbors with a cool discriminating eye, unaffected by any investment of her own ego. Her judgment of Mr. Weston’s character has the sharpness and the gravity of Austen herself: [Quotes from ‘Emma perceived that and felt’ to ‘She could fancy such a man’]. Austen herself is speaking through Emma” (pp. 592–3).

Sarah Emsley similarly argues that this passage mirrors Austen’s (/ the narrator’s) perspective. She writes that the distinction here drawn between “benevolence” and “friendship” has to do with the novel’s perspective on the virtue of charity:

It is not Emma’s vanity alone that is damaged by being considered “the favourite and intimate of a man who had so many intimates and confidantes”; although her vanity is hurt here, she is right to see the contradictions inherent in this way Mr.Weston has of treating everybody. […] Where is tolerance and where is charity, in the debate about the difference between benevolence and friendship? How does one determine who one’s friends are, and how treatment of a friend differs from treatment of everyone else? Does one merely tolerate all others, or does tolerance also require one to be amiable, charitable, and benevolent? Charity involves more than just the right attitude toward giving gifts and paying visits. In Emma, Austen suggests that an understanding of charity also involves careful judgments about friendships and intimate relationships. […] Austen suggests that while one may cultivate a charitable attitude and a healthy respect for other people, one need not treat everyone as a “favourite” or an “intimate.” (pp. 139–40)

Claudia Johnson cites Emma’s reflection as an example of “the novel’s tendentiousness on the ever-recurrent subject man,” writing that “[w]hat ‘true’ masculinity is like—what a ‘man’ is, how a man speaks and behaves, what a man really wants—is the subject of continual debate” in Emma. Emma is a novel that is consistently “concerned with gender transgression […] from the masculine, not the feminine side.” Ultimately, it seeks to distance its model of masculinity from the highly courtly, sentimental ideal popular in the eighteenth century: “it is engaged in the enterprise of purging masculine gender codes from the ostensible ‘excesses’ of sentimental gallantry and ‘feminized’ display, redefining English manhood instead as brisk, energetic, downright, ‘natural,’ unaffected, reserved, businesslike, plain-speaking; gentlemanly, to be sure, but not courtly” (pp. 201–2). Mr. Weston’s too “general friendship” thus marks him out (as, to a greater extent, Mr. Woodhouse is marked out) as given to such sentimental excess.

Mr. Frank Churchill So Extremely—

As the ball begins, a full page is given over to Miss Bates’s speech, with us being left to supply her auditors’ probable interjections and responses (an appropriate formatting choice, given that we are told upon her entrance that “every body’s words, were soon lost under the incessant flow of Miss Bates” (p. 209)). I have previously made mention of commenters who point out the plot-relevant content and “clues” riddled throughout Miss Bates’s speeches, precisely where they are most likely to be missed. Joe Bray quotes Miss Bates’s quasi-monologue from “‘Thank you, my mother is remarkably well’” to “‘Here’s Miss Woodhouse’” (p. 210), writing:

A number of crucial details are discernible here amidst what appears to be Miss Bates’s inconsequential rambling: the fact that Jane, along with Mr. Dixon, was involved in the choice of her friend Mrs. Dixon’s present to Mrs. Bates (presenting a view of the relationship between the three of them which is contrary to Emma’s wild supposition of a secret affair between Jane and Mr. Dixon); Frank’s solicitude for Miss Bates (which can by implication be extended to Jane too); and the fact that he is often talked of at their home. […] [A]n attentive reader can certainly pick up hints of [Frank and Jane’s] attachment in this and other similar examples of Miss Bates’s speech. (p. 170)

Indeed, Miss Bates’s speech does seem to imply that Frank escorted Jane in as well as Miss Bates (“‘My dear Jane, are you sure you did not wet your feet? […]—but Mr Frank Churchill was so extremely—and there was a mat to step upon’”); Lloyd Brown writes of this speech that “the recurrent minutiae about Frank Churchill imply a degree of intimacy that prepares for the eventual disclosure of his involvement with Jane Fairfax.”2 However, “with a totally unconscious touch of irony, Miss Bates disguises these hints by prefacing them with precisely the kind of irrelevant chitchat (about Jane and Mr. Dixon) which distracts Emma from the real truth” (p. 156). Ultimately, Brown argues,

the structure of Miss Bates’s conversation is a microcosm of Jane Austen’s narrative form. The innocent details about Frank Churchill are subtle pointers to facts of crucial importance; and the universal gratitude which recalls Mr. Dixon’s thoughtfulness is an ironic parallel to Emma’s reprehensible suspicions about Jane’s romantic misadventures. Moreover, the strategy whereby Jane Austen juxtaposes factual experience and Emma’s fantasies is reproduced by the effects of Miss Bates’s seemingly chaotic style: we are led from the misleading side issue of the Dixons, to the real drama represented by Frank Churchill, then, appropriately, to Emma Woodhouse herself. (pp. 135–6)

Here we may recall Mary Hong’s argument that Miss Bates’s syntax was in part responsible for giving rise to Emma’s suspicions regarding Jane and Mr. Dixon (see “An Animating Suspicion”).

Miss Bates’s speech also has the effect of causing Highbury to “seem a more densely populated place than we had conceived”: Deidre Lynch notes that

Miss Bates no sooner enters the Crown inn on the evening of the ball than she meets a ‘host of friends’ [p. 210]: in the elongated paragraph that records her salutations, Miss Woodhouse’s, Mr and Mrs Weston’s and Mr Churchill’s names—the names of our acquaintance—are items in a much longer list that also comprehends a Mrs Stokes, a Dr and Mrs Hughes, a Mr Richard, a Mrs Otway, a Mr Otway, two Misses Otways and their two brothers. But what Austen gives with one hand she takes away with another. Her narrative names names, but as a consequence of focalising the story through Emma, whose circle of acquaintance is a rather more exclusive and restricted one than Miss Bates’s, it programmatically does no more than that. (p. 196)3

Miss Bates’s conversation at other points in this section tells us more of the ball than the narrator does: J. F. Burrows notes through her we hear “of the matting in the passage and the lighting in the hall; of her being served soup and her mother’s being denied the Hartfield asparagus. Through her, in short, the ball grows real as we read of it. And, because she is so willing to chronicle small beer, the narrator proper is left free to comment more coolly and intelligently” (p. 102).

An Upright Figure

When the dancing begins, Emma is “more disturbed by Mr. Knightley’s not dancing” than by Mrs. Elton’s usurpation of her place at the head of the set: “His tall, firm, upright figure, among the bulky forms and stooping shoulders of the elderly men, was such as Emma felt must draw every body’s eyes” (p. 212). Critics of course largely feel that these reflections bespeak Emma’s sublimated sexual attraction to Mr. Knightley. Wilkes writes that Emma’s romantic vision of Mr. Knightley has been shaped by her earlier instinctual recoiling from the idea of his marrying Jane Fairfax: the passage from “There he was, among the standers-by” to “would he but take the trouble” (p. 212) is “clearly rendered from Emma’s point of view, and it is in her perception that Mr Knightley is ‘so young’, with his tall, firm, upright figure, standing out from the bulky forms and stooping shoulders of the standers-by. His role as mentor has here disappeared” (pp. 85–6). Juliet McMaster, who argues that sexual and sensual (that is, of the senses) detail is present throughout Austen’s oeuvre for those who “know how to read” (p. 42), writes:

Emma, who has sturdily resisted the evidence of how how much she cares for Knightley, has […] a sudden unexpected awakening to his physicality, when she sees him, as the song says, “across a crowded room” […]. She clearly experiences a frisson of desire. And when he presently performs his rescue, by leading Harriet to dance, Emma’s eyes still follow him: “His dancing proved to be just what she had believed it, extremely good; and Harriet would have seemed almost too lucky . . .” (328). We can catch Emma in her brief pang of sexual jealousy, but she doesn’t catch herself. (pp. 33–4)4

Some commenters use this scene to probe the novel’s perspective on age. William Deresiewicz writes that Austen uses this scene to tell us “[y]outh and age are not to be determined […] by the calendar” (p. 124); Emma keeps Mr. Knightley young “by retrieving [him] from the class of husbands and fathers and drawing him back into the mating dance” (p. 124). Stephanie Eddleman connects the scene to contemporary perspectives on aging and gender:

“Women were generally perceived to be ‘old’ before men throughout the early modern period,” Ottaway observes (35). “Rather than [being tied to] a loss of specific attractive features” as was true for women, the physical signs of aging for men were declining strength and a loss of physical abilities. Thus, men crossed the threshold of old age much later in life than women (34–35). On this point, Austen’s representation of Mr. Knightley reflects the general perceptions of the era. […] As she studies him, Emma focuses on his physique rather than his face […]. She judges George Knightley youthful and attractive because of his commanding, vigorous physical appearance, which is especially emphasized when contrasted with physical decline. (p. 130)

It is interesting to note that Emma is also spoken of as having “a firm and upright figure” (vol. 1, ch. 5; p. 24); and, when not speaking of physical bodies, phrases such as “upright integrity” (vol. 3, ch. 10 [46]; p. 261) and “upright justice” (vol. 3, ch. 12 [48]; p. 273) recur throughout the novel. John Wiltshire writes of Emma’s “upright” figure as something “other than [a] moral propert[y]” (p. 133); but I suspect that physical qualities almost become moral qualities here, as Mr. Knightley’s physical no less than his moral uprightness point him out as an appropriate marriage partner for Emma.5

I Could Have Danced All Night

Many scholars point out the important role balls and dancing play in Austen’s novels. As a socially sanctioned means of courtship, they paradoxically combine rules and regulations with invigorating physical movement, formality and organization with gaiety and the opportunity for choice. This particular ball has, of course, been engineered to allow Frank Churchill another opportunity of dancing with Jane Fairfax: Joseph Wiesenfarth writes that Frank Churchill’s “sexually induced madness and insanity for Jane Fairfax constantly leads him into schemes that allow them to be together,” including this “extravagantly public” one (p. 13). As such, the ball is an overthrow of the usual course of social life in Highbury, which David Monaghan points out has until now “been regulated to a pace and level of energy that suits Mr Woodhouse, and has therefore placed such an overwhelming emphasis on the familiar as to become almost static and extremely soporific”:

Dancing, however, while it operates within confined and well-regulated limits, is an activity which allows movement and scope for choosing and changing partners. As such it encourages a much more open and dynamic society than that over which Mr Woodhouse presides, and it is significant that while his needs are not ignored on this occasion, they cannot be met within the framework of the ball itself. Thus, while the community as a whole gathers at the Crown, Mr Woodhouse is left safe at home to enjoy ‘a vast deal of chat, and backgammon’ [p. 214] with Mrs Bates. (p. 133)

Mr. Elton violates one of the usual civilities of dancing when, rather than retreat to the card room to cover his unwillingness to dance with Harriet, he makes a point to “show his liberty” and engage those around her in conversation (p. 213). The ball’s significance both “as a courtship ritual and agent of change” (Monaghan, p. 133) is most notable when it calls on Mr. Knightley to “ensure the preservation of harmony” (p. 134) threatened by this slight:

Mr Knightley must now come forward and rescue Harriet by engaging her himself. This display of polite heroism, and the position into which it forces him amongst the young and eligible […] has a profound effect on Emma’s view of Mr Knightley. Thus, she does not find it strange that when they next meet he asks her to dance, and indeed replies in such a way as to indicate that she is on the verge of viewing him as a suitor: [quotes from “‘Will you?’” to “‘at all improper’”]. (p. 134)

Similarly, Wiesenfarth writes that “[t]he rules that govern conduct in dancing are meant as society’s way of introducing civility into sexual expression. The Eltons ignore such decorum in exhibiting their sexual rancor for Harriet Smith. Their violation of civility […] puts Mr. Knightley to dancing with Haniet and thereby continues Emma’s sharpening sexual perception of his person and manners” (p. 14).

No Indeed!

Emma’s and Knightley’s conversation at the close of the ball scene draws frequent critical comment as a turning point in their relationship. Paul Fry points out that Knightley’s statement contradicts an earlier comment of his: “Mr. Knightley is already equivocating with his feelings when he says of Emma that ‘Isabella does not seem any more my sister’ [vol. 1, ch. 6; p. 25]. The fraternal incubus arises to be expelled, not fostered [in the conversation at the ball]” (p. 136).6 For Joseph Duffy, the “incubus” arises in the first place due to Emma’s newfound sexual attraction: “[t]he fact that the question of propriety does arise at all is significant of Emma’s fear that there may really be something shocking in physical contact with Knightley” (FN 3, p. 44).

Emma and Knightley’s relationship is genuinely ambiguous, as Deresiewicz points out:

Emma and Knightley are not brother and sister, but then again, in the language of the day, they are [through Isabella’s and John’s marriage]. Emma, still oblivious to her sexual feelings, is undisturbed by the ambiguity. But Knightley, already alive to his, is very much disturbed. “Brother and sister! no, indeed,” he exclaims—to which the novel ultimately replies, “Brother and sister! yes, indeed.” The exchange concludes a chapter—concludes, indeed the whole long episode of the ball—and the effect of this pregnant placement is to make it into a signpost that points us toward Emma and Knightley’s climactic encounters. (p. 121)

Langdon Elsbree writes of this conversation:

Comment upon Mr. Knightley’s mature, quiet, good-natured love and Emma’s incipient passion is probably superfluous. It should be said, however, that this bit of dialogue, as well as others, this bit of dialogue, as well as others, gives the lie to the commonplace that Jane Austen is incapable of rendering love. Indeed, one of the main comic functions performed by the dance motif is the contrasting of Emma’s frivolous but viable affections and Frank’s capricious, vexatious devotion with Knightley’s steady, self-effacing, undeceived warmth. (p. 132)

A Hidden Plot

As with many other episodes in Emma, a rereading of this section with full knowledge of future events puts seemingly insignificant details into a new light. We may notice, for example, that Frank beginning to speak “vigorously” upon overhearing Mrs. Elton speak well of him to Jane Fairfax prevents us from overhearing Jane’s reply (p. 211). When Frank disapproves of Mrs. Elton’s habit of addressing “Miss Fairfax” as “Jane,” Emma catches on what this implies of his opinion of Mrs. Elton, rather than what it implies of his relationship with Jane. We may also understand better than Emma Frank’s “odd humour” and impatience to begin dancing (ibid.).

This episode also lays the groundwork, not only for Harriet’s infatuation with Mr. Knightley, but for Emma’s future belief in Knightley’s love for Harriet (“‘Harriet Smith has some first-rate qualities […]. An unpretending, single-minded, artless girl—infinitely to be preferred by any man of sense and taste to such a woman as Mrs. Elton’” (p. 216)). John Hagan points out the fact that “the beginning of [Knightley’s] change of attitude toward Harriet coincides exactly in time with the beginning of her infatuation with him” (p. 556), and argues that this coincidence may point to some ego in Mr. Knightley: “to assume that he perceives Harriet's great and obvious pleasure in his company, that he himself is pleased by her response, and that, accordingly, he begins to modify his attitude toward her would seem completely justified” (p. 557).

Footnotes

See also Monaghan (p. 133); Mooneyham (p. 132).

On Frank’s rushing to attend Miss Bates and company with umbrellas see Wiltshire, who writes that Frank uses health as a “pretext” (p. 112) when he “rushes out with umbrellas on the excuse that ‘Miss Bates must not be forgotten’ to welcome Jane to the ball” (p. 113); and Watson, who notes that Frank’s kindness tends, unlike Knightley’s to have “flourish” and “fuss” to it: “The fact that this action of Frank’s is immediately the subject of Mrs. Elton's approbation is a small detail of malicious irony on Jane Austen’s part” (p. 338).

On the evidence of social connectedness in this speech of Miss Bates’s see also Bromberg (p. 132); Burrows (pp. 101–2).

See also Mooneyham on the evidence of Emma’s “sexual interest” in this scene (p. 136). Contrast Korba, who argues that Emma never sexually responds to a man in the novel.

See Pallarés-García on the syntax of this passage (p. 178); also Folsom (p. 52); Roulston (p. 56).

On the “contrast” between these two statements see also Stovel (n.p.).

Discussion Questions

Does Emma (to any extent) morally condemn Mr. Weston’s temperament or behavior? To what end is he contrasted with Mr. Knightley?

What is the purpose of Miss Bates’s volubility in this section? Do you notice any details in her speech that have not been mentioned here?

What connections between dancing, civility, and sexuality become clear in this section?

How and why does Emma’s and Mr. Knightley’s relationship change over the course of the night?

Does anything else about this section become clearer upon rereading?

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. Emma (Norton Critical Edition). 3rd ed. Ed. Stephen M. Parrish. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, [1815] 2000.

Bray, Joe. The Language of Jane Austen. London: Palgrave Macmillan (2018).

Bromberg, Pamela S. “Learning to Listen: Teaching About the Talk of Miss Bates.” In Folsom (2004), pp. 127–33.

Brown, Lloyd W. Bits of Ivory: Narrative Techniques in Jane Austen’s Fiction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press (1973).

Deresiewicz, William. “Emma: Ambiguous Relationships.” In Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets. New York: Columbia University Press (2004), pp. 86–126.

Duffy, Joseph M. “Emma: The Awakening from Innocence.” ELH 21.1 (March 1954), pp. 39–53. DOI: 10.2307/2871932.

Eddleman, Stephanie M. “Past the Bloom: Aging and Beauty in the Novels of Jane Austen.” Persuasions 37 (2015), pp. 119–33.

Elsbree, Langdon. “Jane Austen and the Dance of Fidelity and Complaisance.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 19.2 (September 1960), pp. 113–36.

Emsley, Sarah. “Learning the Art of Charity in Emma.” In Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2005), pp. 129–44.

Folsom, Marcia McClintock, ed. Approaches to Teaching Austen's Emma. New York: MLA (2004).

_____. “Emma: Knowing Her Mind.” Persuasions 38 (2016), pp. 41–55.

Fry, Paul H. “Georgic Comedy: The Fictive Territory of Jane Austen’s Emma.” Studies in the Novel 11.2 (Summer 1979), pp. 129–46.

Goodheart, Eugene. “Emma: Jane Austen’s Errant Heroine.” The Sewanee Review 116.4 (Fall 2008), pp. 589–604. DOI:10.1353/SEW.0.0087.

Hagan, John. “The Closure of Emma.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 15.4 (Autumn 1975), pp. 545-561. DOI: 10.2307/450010.

Hong, Mary. “‘A Great Talker upon Little Matters’: Trivializing the Everyday in Emma.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 38.2/3 (Spring – Summer 2005), pp. 235–53. DOI: 10.1215/ddnov.038020235.

Korba, Susan M. “‘Improper and Dangerous Distinctions’: Female Relationships and Erotic Domination in Emma,” Studies in the Novel 29.2 (1997), pp. 139–63.

Lynch, Deidre Shauna. “Screen Versions.” In The Cambridge Companion to ‘Emma,’ ed. Peter Sabor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2015), pp. 186–203.

McMaster, Juliet. “Sex and the Senses.” Persuasions 34 (2012), pp. 42–56.

Monaghan, David. “Emma.” In Jane Austen: Structure and Social Vision. London: Macmillan (1980), pp. 115–42. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-04847-2_6.

Neill, Edward. The Politics of Jane Austen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (1999).

Ottaway, Susannah R. The Decline of Life: Old Age in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2004).

Pallarés-García, Elena. “Narrated Perception Revisited: The Case of Jane Austen’s Emma.” Language and Literature 21.2, pp. 170–88. DOI: 10.1177/0963947011435862.

Roulston, Christine. “Discourse, Gender, and Gossip: Some Reflections On Bakhtin and Emma.” In Ambiguous Discourse: Feminist Narratology and British Women Writers, ed. Kathy Mezei. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1996), pp. 40–65.

Stovel, Bruce. “The New Emma in Emma.” Persuasions On-Line 28.1 (Winter 2007).

Wilkes, G.A. “Unconscious Motives in Jane Austen’s Emma.” Sydney Studies 13 (1987), pp. 74–89.

Wiesenfarth, Joseph. “The Civility of Emma.” Persuasions 18 (1996), pp. 8–23.

Wiltshire, John. “Emma: The Picture of Health.” In Jane Austen and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1992), pp. 110–54. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511586248.005.

#Emma #Jane Austen #Emma Woodhouse #Mrs. Weston #Mr. Weston #Mr. Woodhouse #Mr. Elton #Mrs. Elton #Harriet Smith #Frank Churchill #Jane Fairfax #Miss Bates #Mrs. Bates #e

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