FREE ESSAY ON EMMA AND THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION

EMMA AND THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION

Jane Austen's Emma and the Romantic Imagination
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
-William Blake, 'Auguries of Innocence'
Imagination, to the people of the eighteenth century of whom William Blake and Jane
Austen are but two, involves the twisting of the relationship between fantasy and reality
to arrive at a fantastical point at which a world can be extrapolated from a single grain
of sand, and all the time that has been and ever will be can be compressed into the space
of an hour. What is proposed by Blake is clearly ludicrous-it runs against the very tide
of reason and sense-and yet the picture that the imagination paints of his verse inspires
awe. The human imagination supplies the emotional undercurrents that allows us to see the
next wild flower we pass on the side of the road in an entirely different and amazing
light.
In Austen's Emma, the imagination is less strenuously taxed because her story of
sensibility is more easily enhanced by the imagination, more easily given life than
Blake's abstract vision of the great in the small because Emma is more aesthetically
realistic. However, both rely on the fact that [t]he correspondence of world and subject
is at the center of any sensibility story, yet that correspondence is often twisted in
unusual and terrifying shapes, (Edward Young, 1741). The heroine of Austen's novel, Emma
Woodhouse, a girl of immense imagination, maintains it by keeping up with her reading and
art because, as Young contends, these are the mediums through which imagination is
chiefly expressed by manipulating the relationships between the world and the subject at
hand. However, even in this, Emma's imagination falls short. The soul might have the
capacity to take in the 'world' or the 'atom' if it weren't for the body's limitations
getting in the way, (Joseph Addison, 1712). As Addison supposes, the limitations of
Emma's body keeps her from seeing the truths that her soul, if let free, would show her.
One of these is that Frank Churchill, a handsome and well-bred man, is insincere and
fake, while Mr. Knightley truly loves her like no other.
In Emma's love theme, Austen shows us how emotions and imagination can augment each
other. [I]t was...sensibility which originally aroused imagination;...on the other
hand...imagination increases and prolongs...sensibility, (Dugald Stewart, 1792). Due to
Emma's endorsement of Mr. Elton, Harriet imagines feelings for him which become so real
for her that she can't get him out of her mind. Although the situation is a tragic one,
it shouldn't be believed that a fantasy-generated reality is always bad. Sympathy, the
fellow-feeling with the passions of others, operates through a logic of mirroring, in
which a spectator imaginatively reconstructs the experience of the person he watches,
(Adam Smith, 1759). Emma is miserably inept at this; she completely fails to use her
imagination to construct a reality for herself as might be seen through Miss Bates's eyes
and thus generate some sympathy for the poor woman's situation. Emotions can also be
enhanced by imagined details. I saw the iron enter into his soul-I burst into tears-I
could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn, (Laurence Sterne,
1768). Through details, Emma stokes the fires of Harriet's imagination and turns her
emotions for Mr. Martin against him. Smith's idea of sympathy and Sterne's idea of
details come together to form that extensive influence which language hath over the
heart,...strengthens the bond of society, and attracts individuals...to perform acts of
generosity and benevolence, (Henry Home, Lord Kames, 1762). Language holds power through
the impression from memory that it conjures, that which Kames calls ideal presence.
Individuals in society employ details in their imagination to form a common ideal
presence in language. The word love, for example, conjures up the same group of images
with most people; the word has power because it is greater than the sum of its four
letters. This sympathy of meaning between one person and the next is what allows people
to identify with one another and galvanizes society. It is this that allows Emma to read
between the lines of Mr. Elton's charade and understand its underlying meaning.
Because imagination enhances emotion, but emotion often contradicts reason, imagination
was also seen to oppose reason and principle. Particular incidents and situations occur,
which either throw a false light on the objects, or hinder the true from conveying to the
imagination the proper sentiment and perception, (David Hume, 1757). Hume suggests that,
in order to imagine truly and effectively, the mind must be as clear as possible. Mr.
Woodhouse's inability to clear his head leads him to imagine problems with the food and
health of other people. Or worse, [t]his separation of conscience from feeling is a
depravity of the most pernicious sort;...when the ties of the first bind the sentiment
and not the will, and the rewards of the latter crown not the heart but the imagination,
individuals will take leave of reason (Henry Mackenzie, 1785). Mackenzie's concern is
that the limitless freedom of imagination will seduce people out of the more disciplined
act of thinking and reasoning, just as Emma is fueled by the thought of all the potential
matches that she can make and ignores reason and principle which would have suggested for
her to stop meddling. Reason can also be interpreted as the willingness to function
socially, that is, to work. Reasonable people preoccupied with physical labor lose their
ability to imagine because there is no need for it and they remain in the best of health.
In contrast, in the decline of life, [imaginers] pay dearly for the youthful days of
their vanity, (George Cheyne, 1725). Jane Fairfax does just this. She gets so carried
away with the idea of Frank and Emma being together that she imagines herself into a
serious illness.
To people of the eighteenth century, imagination can serve as a source of aesthetic
pleasure, or it can stimulate emotional responses that enhance visual images in
opposition to reason. It has the capability to wrangle the body and make it sick, to
falsify emotions, and charge a language with meaning. To imagine is to blend fantasy and
reality in abstract but beautiful ways, to have a mind open to ideas, and to have a hand
large enough to hold in its palm all of infinity and more.
Bibliography
Addison, Joseph. The Spectator, 26 September, 1712.
Austen, Jane. Emma. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1993 (1816).
Blake, William. Auguries of Innocence. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1993 (c.1803).
Cheyne, George. Retrospection. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989 (1725).
Home, Henry, Lord Kames. Letter to Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Wm. C. Brown Publishers,
Oxford, 1978 (1762).
Hume, David. On the Standard of Taste. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1990 (1757).
Mackenzie, Henry. Emotions of the Mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984 (1785).
Smith, Adam. The Spectator, 27 April, 1759.
Sterne, Laurence. Tristram Shandy. Wm. C. Brown Publishers, Oxford, 1990 (1768).
Stewart, Dugald. The Process of Thought. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1995 (1792).
Young, Edward, Night Thoughts. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990 (1741).