Wait… Jane Austen Copied Clueless…

a review of Jane Austen’s Emma

At the Hartfield estate, mischievous brat hours are 24/7. Emma is the popular girl in a motley crew of lovers and friends that ranges 20 - 65 years old but is united by their love for: gossiping about other people’s constitutions, eating cold meats, this one fabric shop. She takes on guileless Harriet Smith as her “project” and spends a lot of time with her cranky dad and older, serious neighbor, Mr. Knightley. If you’re thinking “Wait… Jane Austen copied Clueless…” then, fair reader, you’re totally right (kind of). 

Emma inspired Clueless and in both tales, frivolities abound. The pages-long debate of whom is going in whom’s carriage is the 18th century “who’s calling the uber?” And just as I willfully fritter away ¾ of a Sunday recapping the night before, Austen spares no detail--the book is 450 pages of tiny font. Strap the fuck in for the ball at the Crown Inn, which is covered in granular detail over 80 pages. Emma is a verbal thicket of passive voice that exhausts contemporary readers (or at least… this contemporary reader). I spent the entire book not knowing Isabella was Emma’s sister, confused as to why this random family kept stopping by Hartfield and talking about the health benefits of sea air. 

In the 2020 movie, they signaled Harriet’s inferiority by giving her no eyebrows :(

Emma is a Beyoncé-style Single Lady whose life’s work is to sit next to her dad and help him determine whether or not there is a draft. She plans to sidestep marriage because 1) she is already rich 2) actually she doesn’t need a reason because even in the 18th-century women were capable of making their own decisions. Regardless, she is hot and charming, so she doesn't lack suitors. The most promising of which is Mr. Frank Churchill, who incites appeal by being shrouded in mystery. Frank Churchill is like a hot guy in the back of someone’s insta story of the party you’re going to. He’s as attractive as you want him to be because you actually don’t know! Until you get to the party and see he has Juul vapor coming out of every orifice and non-ironically requests My House by Flo Rida. 

Jane Austen is lauded for social commentary peppered with irony and humor, all of which Emma offers by the pound. But it lacks an ethical stance. Emma’s matchmaking, and treatment of Harriet, is demeaning and wrong, borderline cruel. She knows this. She has nothing else to do. In Emma, we learn the line between frivolity and cruelty is hard to define (for women, at least).

So many books demote women’s ethical lapses as bitchy; they’re not as impactful as men’s treacherous betrayals. I wish Austen allowed Emma to lean in to her penchant for social manipulation, in true Sandbergian fashion. If you’re itching to know who gifted Jane Fairfax the pianoforte, then this is a must-read. Or watch the movie. Or watch Clueless for the 1000th time instead.