module b

Seite 1

Dr Octavia Cox on Emma

"she walked on, amusing herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgment are for ever falling into" --> layers of irony: emma is smug and doing the very same thing she criticises Knightly for. Dr Cox identifies a layer of "meta-irony", as we the reader feel similarly smug at criticising Emma's pretensiousness and the blunders it causes. Austen warns us not to become Emma in our critique of her, especially since we are constantly underinformed by the free indirect discourse and the narrator's hiding of facts from the audience. The quote both reveals Emma's contradictions in feeling superior to pretentiousness, and in doing so becoming pretentious, and pokes fun at readers in general if we should commit similar blunders.