Emma essay #3 - question

Hi ladies-


REMEMBER: re-do's are due MONDAY.

Okay, and here we go on the next one!  Remember to look critically at both question and quote, determine the relevant events / symbols / characters / supporting quotes, and finally considering which critical commentary would most effectively address the issues at hand.

"The first error, and the worst, lay at her door. It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious—a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more."

Discuss some of the effects of Austen's use of relationships, riddles and games in Emma.

I'd like to see a plan and a few comments on Monday.  Let's make this one due Thursday 3rd March.

- T. Marcus

Emma essay #2 - question

Hi everyone,


Use the Emma - Marriage handout and your notes (and of course the text!) to investigate this next one.

"And as for objects of interest, objects for the affections, which is in truth the great point of inferiority, the want of which is really the great evil to be avoided in not marrying, I shall be very well off."
- Ch 10, p83

Discuss the role and characterisation of Emma Woodhouse in the light of her comment about marriage.

Good luck!

- T. Marcus

Emma essay #1

Hi everyone,


Here's your question.  Good luck!

"'That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.'" Chapter 9, pg. 79

Discuss Austen's presentation of Emma Woodhouse in the light of this quotation from Emma.

Write about 3 sides in your response.


This essay will be due Wednesday 17th February.


As a side note, please notice the new additions to the Emma tab on the right of the screen.  Here's an extract from Duckworth's critique:

"The narrator of Emma quotes a line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “The course of true love never did run smooth” (I), commenting that a Hartfield edition of Shakespeare “would have a long note on that passage” (75).  Such a note could mention that, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the lovers in Emma are laughably confused, that one of them is revealed to be an ass, that the heroine, who pretends to play the part of Puck, finds that she is only one of the confused lovers, while the narrator is the real Puck, and that both works end with three weddings.  Emma’s narrator, like Elizabeth Bennet, is diverted by the “‘follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies’” of her characters, and “‘laugh[s] at them whenever [she] can’” (57)."

This observation is worth noting down for possible use in your essays.  Also note the title on the essay and the year it was published.


- T. Marcus