"Not what you would think anything of": Robert Martin and Harriet Smith.

Ford, Susan Allen

PERHAPS AS MUCH AS Northanger Abbey, Emma is about reading. The heroine herself has made what Mr. Knightley terms '"very good lists'" of books, though among his early criticism is that Emma has never read what she ought--or even what she's planned (37). With Harriet, Emma has collected enough riddles to fill a thin quarto of hot-pressed paper; she seems to have read Madame de Genlis's Adelaide and Theodore (503); she quotes from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and has at least a passing familiarity with the kind of notes provided in the many editions of Shakespeare available to contemporary readers (80); she misquotes Romeo arid Juliet or, as Patrick McGraw has recently shown, aptly quotes an essay from The Rambler that has adapted Shakespeare's line (436); and, as indicated by her playful response to Mr. Knightley's request that she call him '"George,"' she has studied at least the marriage ceremony in the Book of Common Prayer (505). As Mr. Knightley's criticism suggests, the extent of one's reading is a marker of intellectual discipline. But it's also, for Emma, a standard by which to determine culture and status--and that's a mode of valuation she appears to have passed to Harriet.

As Emma realizes that young Mr. Martin is not married, her questions to Harriet "increase[] in number and meaning" (27). Harriet talks about "moonlight walks and merry evening games," Mr. Martin's temper and obliging qualities, his cleverness, his success with his wool (27). Emma's first judgment spoken in both Harriet's and the reader's hearing defines Robert Martin in terms of reading: '"Mr. Martin, I suppose, is not a man of information beyond the line of his own business. He does not read?'" (28). The opening assertion, as the "I suppose" suggests, is the product of Emma's imagination. What follows, despite its punctuation, is not a question but a declaration thinly disguised. And Harriet's immediate response is a jumble of defense and compliance:

"Oh, yes!--that is, no--I do not know--but I believe he has read a good deal--but not what you would think any thing of. He reads the Agricultural Reports and some other books, that lay in one of the window seats--but he reads all them to himself. But sometimes of an evening, before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out of the Elegant Extracts--very entertaining. And I know he has read the Vicar of Wakefield. He never read the Romance of the Forest, nor the Children of the Abbey. He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now as soon as ever he can." (28)

This description provides a history and a program of reading for another character '"meaning to read more'" (37)--this one for different motives. Emma inquires about Robert Martin's looks, remarks on the social status of the yeomanry, determines that his age makes him '"too young to settle'" (29), and puts his future wife--'"probably ... some mere farmer's daughter, without education'" (30)--securely in her place. When "the very next clay" he appears on the Donwell road, Emma "soon [makes] her quick eye sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Robert Martin" (31) to define him as "clownish"' and project his destiny as '"a completely gross, vulgar farmer--totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of nothing but profit and loss'" (32, 33).

These pages set the plot developments in motion: Emma's serial plans for Harriet; Emma's mistaken readings of Mr. Elton's, Frank Churchill's, and Mr. Knightley's intentions; Emma's discovery that "Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself" (444). My point here (which, I'm afraid, is not coming with the speed of an arrow) is that the question about reading practices and the book list that Harriet provides establish a way of thinking about these particular characters and also suggest ways for us to think about the novel as a whole.

Harriet's picture of Abbey-Mill Farm suggests the scope of Robert Martin's reading life: the Agricultural Reports and other books, presumably about farming, lying conveniently in the window seat, that he reads to himself; the Elegant Extracts, a set of anthologies of poetry and prose from which he reads aloud to the family; and The Vicar of Wakefield, one of the most celebrated novels of the day.

In their Cambridge Edition of Emma, Richard Cronin and Dorothy McMillan conjecture that the "Agricultural Reports" to which Harriet refers might be the General View of the Agriculture of the County of Surrey by William Stevenson, published in 1809 and 1813, a revision of a 1794 study by William James and Jacob Malcolm (542 n.11). These works, as each announces on its title page, have been "Drawn up for the Consideration of the Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement." In more than six hundred pages, Stevenson covers the geography (including soil types and climate) and property of the county, and provides description and advice on implements, enclosure, specific crops and crop rotation, grasslands, gardens and orchards, heaths and commons, improvements, and livestock. He also analyzes the state of labor and political economy (under which he includes roads, canals, fares, manufactures, the poor, and population) and considers the obstacles to and means of improvement.

Robert Martin's study of this book--and others--suggests a commitment not merely to "profit and loss" (though those are certainly topics considered) but also to understanding the principles behind agricultural best practices. Stevenson considers the change in the character of farmers across the nation, including those of Surrey, as they learn from scientific advances and adapt new technologies. He identifies three types of the farmer, one of which must surely describe Robert Martin: first, "the old class of farmers, ... shy and jealous in their communications; unwilling to adopt any new mode of husbandry; in short, with much of the ignorance and prejudice of former times ..., little affected by the change of opinion and practice," with "no idea that any different education from what they themselves received is necessary to enable their sons to conduct their farms or to sell their corn. I learnt none of those things, and I have done well enough without them; then why should my son learn them?' is the only argument by which they reply to the alleged necessity of giving their sons a superior education" (88). Closer to London, however, lie finds a second category of farmers, "more on a level with the age; they understand their own business, according to the new and more improved methods of conducting it, extremely well; but they are either unable or unwilling to communicate the knowledge they possess" (88).

But there is also a third category among the Surrey farmers: "men who would lose nothing in point of liberal and useful knowledge, if they were placed by the side of the most intelligent agriculturists in the island. A knowledge of botany and natural history, sufficiently extensive and practical, to be of use to them in conducting their improvements upon some certain principles, is to be found among many.... [T]he knowledge they possess and are willing to communicate, the clearness of their minds, and the character of their studies, enables them to communicate in a pleasing and satisfactory manner" (88-89, my emphasis). Robert Martin promises to be among this third group if not there already. His ability to communicate is verified, against her will, by Emma, who acknowledges that his letter to Harriet is '"strong and concise,'" evidence that he '"thinks strongly and clearly'" and possesses a vigorous mind (53). The indication of commitment and curiosity that Stevenson describes and that Mr. Martin's habit of reading these reports suggests also accords with Mr. Knightley's judgment of his tenant's value, his statement that he '"could quite as ill spare Robert Martin'" as William Larkins, his bailiff (516).

The General View of the Agriculture of the County of Surrey also reveals the realistic foundation upon which Austen builds her fiction. Stevenson indicates how we might place Robert Martin in social terms. Surrey has no Mr. Rushworth and not many Mr. Darcys: "There are no very large estates in Surrey: it is supposed, that the largest does not much exceed 10,000l. per annum; and there are but few which reach near to that annual rent" (73). The farmers, however, as Linda Slothouber tells us, are "the heart of the community," supporting it by employing workers, "paying rates, and ... play[ing] important roles in parochial government" (67). Stevenson defines the yeomanry--'"precisely the order of people with whom,"' Emma says, '"I can have nothing to do'" (29), and the category to which she assigns Robert Martin--as less common than in other areas: "by no means so numerous as they are in the adjoining county of Kent; though in the western part of the county, round Guildford, and in some parts of the Weald, there are several gentlemen who farm their own estates, of from 200l. to 400l. per annum" (73). (1) Though Robert Martin's farm is part of Mr. Knightley's estate, the income Stevenson assigns to the yeomanry encompasses the range from the 200 [pounds sterling] per year income Edward Ferrars receives from the Delaford living to James Morland's 400 [pounds sterling] (SS 320; NA 137; Francus).

Even within such an income range, Surrey farmers are generally prosperous: "the farm-houses are generally sufficiently large and convenient, in good repair, and kept neat and clean" (79). We might recall Abbey-Mill Farm's '"two very good parlours'" (26), '"very handsome summer-house, large enough to hold a dozen people'" (27), "the broad, neat gravel-walk, which led between espalier apple-trees to the front door" (200), "its appendages of prosperity and beauty, its rich pastures, spreading flocks, orchard in blossom" (391). And there's further evidence of prosperity and status in the form of the Martins' cows. According to Stevenson, cattle are not profitable in Surrey because of the high cost of feeding them, but families do keep the animals for their own use. The Martins have "'eight cows, two of them Alderneys, and one a little Welch cow, a very pretty little Welch cow indeed'" (26): Stevenson mentions that Alderneys are often kept by "gentlemen's families" and "Welsh" cows by those living "at a distance from town" (520).

These "Agricultural Reports" also help us place a bit more precisely two of the novel's gifts of love and charity. We can partly measure the value and thoughtfulness of one of Robert Martin's gifts. Harriet tells Emma, as evidence of his obligingness, '"He had gone three miles round one day, in order to bring her some walnuts, because she had said how fond she was of them'" (27). Stevenson remarks that the walnut tree "is found in many parts of Surrey ... though no where in any great numbers" (443). Further, the nuts command a high price. "Perhaps," Stevenson adds, "the greatest number of valuable walnut-trees in Surrey, are in Norbury-park, near Box-hill" (443 n.). Mr. Knightley's gift of apples to the Bates family certainly underscores his thoughtful generosity. Shannon Campbell has argued that his apple orchard--at a time when many farmers were devoting the land to wheat or cattle--is also evidence of his steadfast character (91). Stevenson observes, however, that "the oldest and best kinds of apple-trees have fallen off very much within these few years; so much so, indeed, that a very moderate crop of apples is seldom got from them" (420). Two possible reasons, he speculates, are climate change and the age of the trees, a "natural decline" that pruning can either hasten or retard (421). Mr. Knightley's continued success with apples suggests his skilful cultivation, but Stevenson also remarks that "in vegetable and in animal life, disease which proceeds from debility w ill, if suffered to remain, most certainly increase that debility, and accelerate death" (422). Mr. Knightley's gift reads as a small stay against the certain decline that the Bateses endure.

As this last example suggests, the information from these Agricultural Reports widens our understanding of the novel's realism well beyond Robert Martin's concerns. Mr. Knightley, the Churchills, and Mr. Weston all can be located in Stevenson's account of the state of property in Surrey. According to Stevenson, Surrey is a county in which "the most considerable and respectable landed proprietors ... reside generally on their estates" (78); near London (for example, in Richmond) are small estates for those wanting proximity to the metropolis with only land enough for pleasure grounds; "at greater distance" estates have been broken up "for the retirement of such commercial men as have made their fortune" (73). Moreover, this book reveals Surrey to be the happiest of situations for Mr. Woodhouse. It is dry (17). Spring comes early, "not so often checked and thrown back by frosty mornings, or cold raw easterly winds, as in some other counties more to the south"; "summers are generally very dry and warm" (18). And the air is good: "It possesses a great advantage over Middlesex and Essex, in lying to the south of London, and of course in being almost entirely, and at all seasons of the year, free from the haze and smoke of the metropolis, which, by the prevalence of the south-west winds, are driven from it" (77). No wonder Mr. Woodhouse wants Isabella and the children to spend more time at Hartfield, away from Brunswick Square.

In fact, in his chapter on Political Economy, Stevenson devotes a small section to these advantages and their effects: Healthiness of the District.--Surrey may be esteemed as on the whole a very healthy county: in the neighbourhood of the Downs, it is indeed considered so favourable to health, from the purity of its air and the dryness of its soil, that this part is frequently resorted to with great success by invalids. In the neighbourhood of Bagshot, I heard of a Dame Taylor, who was said to be 120 years old. Even in the Weald, where the surface is flat and low, the soil moist, and the ground blocked up from free and regular ventilation by the quantity of timber, diseases are by no means frequent, nor did I hear that life was shortened within the usual limit of existence. (582-83)

If Mr. Woodhouse emulates Dame Taylor, Emma and Mr. Knightley may be living at Hartfield for a long time to come.

Robert Martin's desire for information or enlightenment extends--despite Emma's assumptions--"beyond the line of his own business" as his recourse to Elegant Extracts and his reading of The Vicar of Wakefield indicate. Harriet defines these books in terms of entertainment, but at least in the case of Elegant Extracts, education is a significant component of the intent and appeal. (2) Elegant Extracts were a set of massive, densely printed, double-columned anthologies assembled by Vicesimus Knox, which went through many editions between the early 1780s and the 1820s: the first covered prose, another poetry, and a third (after the runaway success of the first two) was entitled Elegant Epistles. Knox marketed these volumes as textbooks: "The utility of the collection is obvious," he wrote in the "Advertisement to the Second Edition" of Prose. It is calculated for classical schools, and for those in which English only is taught. Young persons cannot read a book, containing so much matter, without acquiring a great improvement in the English Language; together with ideas on many pleasing subjects of Taste and Literature; and, which is of much higher importance, they will imbibe with an increase of knowledge, the purest principles of Virtue and Religion, (v)

Language, Taste, Virtue, Religion: these books were designed, as the subtitle to the Poetry volume declares, for "IMPROVEMENT" not merely in "Speaking, Reading, Thinking, Composing" but in "the CONDUCT of LIFE."

The Elegant Extracts were purchased for schools, but they were also bought for private or domestic use--by the Austen family, for instance: the Reverend George Austen gave his son Frank a copy to take with him when he embarked on his naval career at age fourteen (Collins 51); Jane Austen owned the prose volume, which she gave to her eight-year-old niece Anna in 1801 (Gilson 433). The Knight Collection at Chawton House Library has a copy belonging to Edward Austen--"the gift of his Papa"--dated May 6, 1806, just four days shy of his twelfth birthday. Hartfield's library also has a copy, which Emma says she consulted in the compilation of the riddle book (84). Knox argues that not only is Elegant Extracts "a little Library for Learners, from the age of nine or ten to the age at which they leave school," but that it "abounds with such extracts as may be read by them at any age with pleasure and improvement.... [A]ll readers may find it an agreeable companion, and particularly well adapted to fill up short intervals of accidental leisure" (iii, Prose 2nd ed.). And in the Preface to the Poetry volume, he expresses the hope that it "will be particularly agreeable and useful in the private studies of the amiable young student, whose first love is the love of the Muse, and who courts her in his summer's walk, and his winter's solitude" (v).

Repeatedly, Knox stresses the dual function of this library: to instruct and delight. For the Prose volume, he culls, as he acknowledges, from "[t]he Spectators, Guardians, and Tatlers" as well as from "more modern books" (v). While in the Prase volume Knox emphasizes instruction, in Poetry he highlights the delightful part of the equation: "The Author of Nature has kindly implanted in man a love of Poetry, to solace him under the labours and sorrows of life" (iii). Here Knox provides "something satisfactory to every taste" (iv): from sacred and moral, to descriptive and pathetic, to dramatic (including more than one hundred pages of snippets from Shakespeare), to epic.

As Knox defines the canon of British literature in these anthologies, he also recognizes another national project: "it will be enough if this work shall be united with others in furnishing, what it professes and intends, a copious source of entertainment and improvement to the rising generation" (Prose iv). Knox's anthologies, as William Benzie has pointed out, became the pattern for a large number of imitators (69); the popularity of these anthologies was related to the Elocution Movement, in which a taste for literature and an ability to read it aloud was becoming "a necessary social accomplishment" (77). Knox prefaces the Prose volume of Elegant Extracts with an essay by Hugh Blair, "On Pronunciation, or Delivery." Blair urges his pupils to be natural: Let your manner, whatever it is, be your own; neither imitated from another, nor assumed upon some imaginary model, which is unnatural to you. Whatever is native, even though accompanied with several defects, yet is likely to please; because it shows us a man; because it has the appearance of coming from the heart, (xiii)

Harriet's description of Robert Martin's reading from Elegant Extracts as '"very entertaining'" suggests his success at a natural style--as do Emma's later, private thoughts on the "real feeling," the "interesting mixture of wounded affection and genuine delicacy" in the behavior of Robert Martin and his sister Elizabeth (192). In her attempt to move Harriet, Emma must read the evidence of Robert Martin against Blair's standard of value. While her "opportunity [to] survey" him initially reveals a "very neat" and apparently "sensible young man," she quickly focuses on manner: "Mr. Martin looked as if he did not know what manner was" (31). She then represents to Harriet his '"entire want of gentility,'" '"his awkward look and abrupt manner--and the uncouthness of a voice, which I heard to be wholly unmodulated'" (32), and implies his future development into '"loudness, or coarseness, or awkwardness'" (33).

In his treatise Liberal Education, Knox expresses his hope for the nation: "True patriotism and true valour originate from that enlargement of mind, which the well-regulated study of philosophy, poetry, and history tends to produce; and if we can recal the ancient discipline, we may perhaps recal the generous spirit of ancient virtue" (1:4). Knox doesn't go so far as to argue for universal classical learning: "the good of the community requires, that there should be grosser understandings to fill the illiberal and the servile stations in society. Some of us must be hewers of wood and drawers of water" (1:11). The traits necessary for humane and amiable conduct are not necessarily equivalent. Knox acknowledges that "goodness of heart is superior to intellectual excellence, and the possession of innocence more to be desired than taste," but then he adds, "I cannot help feeling and expressing an ardent wish, that those amiable qualities may always be combined" (1:12). At this stage of the novel, as Emma encounters Robert Martin, the value of goodness of heart is still to be discovered; instead Emma gives more weight to taste, elegance, and intellectual excellence--and, ever the imaginist, bends the evidence to her own desires.

Robert Martin has read Oliver Goldsmith's novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, and so, it seems, has everyone in England--including Austen's narrator, who cites The Vicar of Wakefield at the announcement of Mrs. Churchill's death: "Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame" (422). An edition of the novel published in Bath in 1804 is part of the Knight Collection, originally the property of Austen's nephew Edward and then of his brother William. (3) According to Robert L. Mack, there were at least ill editions of The Vicar of Wakefield between 1766 and 1820 (Goldsmith xxxix). The novel was hailed for what the Monthly Review described as "its moral tendency; particularly for the exemplary manner in which it recommends and enforces the great obligations of universal benevolence: the most amiable quality that can possibly distinguish and adorn the worthy man and the good CHRISTIAN!" (Rousseau 44). The Critical Review celebrated the novel for its "[g]enuine touches of nature, easy strokes of humour, pathetic pictures of domestic happiness and domestic distress" (Rousseau 46). Lady Sarah Pennington, in An Unfortunate Mother's Advice to Her Absent Daughters, made The Vicar of Wakefield the one exception to her rule against novel reading because it "is equally entertaining and instructive" (68). The novel continued to be honored for its combination of morality and sensibility, but especially for its effect on its readers. Frances Burney described, halfway through the first volume, being "surprised into tears--and in the second volume, I really sobb'd. It appears to me, to be impossible any person could read this book thro' with a dry eye." She adds, "at the same time the best part of it is that which turns one's grief out of doors, to open them to laughter" (Rousseau 52-53). For Clara Reeve, it "must ever afford both pleasure and benefit to a good heart" (2:39). Anna Laetitia Barbauld included it in her collection, The British Novelists: "whatever be its faults, we easily forgive the author, who has made us laugh, and has made us cry" (xi--xii).

Robert Martin, then, is introduced to readers in the context of virtue and feeling. The Vicar of Wakefield is the story of Dr. Primrose, a man who, as Goldsmith writes in the Advertisement, "unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth; he is a priest, an husbandman, and the father of a family" (3). The novel's appeal to Robert Martin might well center in a character whose occupation as a farmer he shares, whose family situation he aspires to, and whose religious fortitude is a model. For Austen's readers, the idyllic descriptions of Abbey-Mill Farm--the moonlight walks, merry evening games, the singing of his shepherd's son--might recall Goldsmith's rural, domestic scenes: "Our little habitation was situated at the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and a prattling river before; on one side a meadow, on the other a green" (22). In lieu of the parlor or summerhouse, Goldsmith provides a rural seat, "overshaded by a hedge of hawthorn and honeysuckle": Here, when the weather was fine, and our labour soon finished, we usually sate together, to enjoy an extensive landscape, in the calm of the evening. Here too we drank tea.... On these occasions, our two little ones always read for us, and they were regularly served after we had done. Sometimes, to give a variety to our amusements, the girls sung to the guitar; and while they thus formed a little concert, my wife and I would stroll down the sloping field ... and enjoy the breeze that wafted both health and harmony. (24-25)

The connections between Robert Martin's domestic happiness and harmony and that of the Primrose family associate him also with the virtues that Primrose embodies: "honest simplicity," "goodness and piety," "kind feelings toward his family," "affecting tenderness," "hospitality and flowing benevolence" (Barbauld xi).

But Goldsmith's pastoral is more fragile than it first appears or than it might live in memory. From an idyllic life at the beginning of the novel, the family experiences a series of trials and misadventures: financial losses, a seduced and abandoned daughter, illness, fire, debt, imprisonment. Although the ending restores the family to happiness and prosperity, celebrated with two marriages, The Vicar of Wakefield, might serve not as a comfortable model but as a warning. "Sperate miseri, cavete faelices" is the epigraph: Hope, you miserable ones; beware, you happy ones. At the beginning of their novel, the Vicar and his family, too, seem to unite the best blessings of existence.

Austen's readers might hear other echoes that suggest the darker contours of the world Austen creates. In Goldsmith's novel, in an effort to bring Mr. Thornhill, the "very fine gentleman" (33) who appears to be courting Olivia Primrose, to a declaration, the Primroses propose marrying her to one of Thornhill's tenants, farmer Williams (73). Mr. Williams is "in easy circumstances, prudent, and sincere" (74), and when Mr. Thornhill does not propose to Olivia, Primrose is "sincerely pleased" at the prospect of her marriage to farmer Williams, "thinking that my child was going to be secured in a continuance of competence and peace" (75)--language that looks forward to Emma's conclusion that marriage to Robert Martin will offer Harriet "security, stability, and improvement," a home "retired enough for safety, and occupied enough for cheerfulness" (526). Olivia, however, elopes with Thornhill, a serial seducer and debauchee, and it's only at the end of the novel--after much suffering--that their marriage is revealed as valid. Mr. Williams's pain and faithfulness (even after Olivia's fall) becomes a model for Robert Martin's. When Emma says that she "only want[s] to know that Mr. Martin is not very, very bitterly disappointed,"' Mr. Knightley's "short, full answer" spotlights his pain: "A man cannot be more so'" (106-07).

Finally, like Elegant Extracts, The Vicar of Wakefield is implicated in the ongoing articulation of the national identity. The German writer Johann Wilhelm von Goethe recognized this aspect of the novel's power, which he traced to the way it represented and encompassed a community: "The family, with whose delineation [Goldsmith] has here busied himself, stands upon one of the lowest steps of citizen-comfort, and yet comes in contact with the highest; its narrow circle, which becomes still more contracted, extends its influence into the great world through the natural and common course of things; this little skiff floats full on the agitated waves of English life, and in weal or woe it has to expect injury or help from the vast fleet which sails around it" (Rousseau 310). And in 1808, Edward Mangin, in An Essay on Light Reading, ties the novel's virtues to what it is to be English: It would not be easy to find, within the compass of light literature, any tiling more perfect in its kind than the scene unfolded in the opening chapters of the Vicar of Wakefield-, it abounds in strokes of humour and tenderness; and fixes the attention by a most affecting picture of a happy home, enjoyed by persons in the middle rank of life, citizens of a free country, and possessing competent means and innocent minds. The group of characters, their circumstances, and local situation, are truly English, and could only belong to the enviable land within whose confines the scene is laid. (123-24)

Both Goethe and Mangin read The Vicar of Wakefield as a novel that could only have been written in England; they see it not as critique but as celebration of Englishness.

Robert Martin--as a tenant of George Knightley, the defender of amiability in English rather than French, whose name shouts an allusion to England's patron saint, George, the red-cross knight--is elsewhere securely tied to Englishness. And of course it's Robert Martin's home at which Emma gazes during the visit to Donwell Abbey: [A]t a half mile distant was a bank of considerable abruptness and grandeur, well clothed with wood;--and at the bottom of this bank, favourably placed and sheltered, rose the Abbey-Mill Farm, with meadows in front, and the river making a close and handsome curve around it. It was a sweet view--sweet to the eye and the mind. English verdure, English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive. (391)

Robert Martin's Englishness is celebrated here--but Emma's vision, hedged by the repetition of "sweet" and "English," doesn't take in the complexity of his identity. Brian Southam suggests that Emma is "one version ... of England's national tale" that "record [s] ... an English way of life, a rich parochialism to be treasured and smiled at" (199). That happier view, to a large extent, belongs to Emma herself: Emma's view of Abbey-Mill Farm, as Mary Jane Curry notes, belongs to decorative pastoral. It ignores not only the potentially tragic elements of the Vicar's and Robert Martin's stories, but also Mr. Martin's energy and aspiration; hers is not a vision that comprehends the changing world or the complexity of character that Austen's novel documents. (4)

Emma might not think anything of Mr. Martin's reading--nor might her pupil, Harriet--but Robert Martin's reading list allows us to imagine an interior life for a character who does not have a speaking role. In the space of a five-title list, however, Austen defines limits to his reading experience. As Harriet tells Emma, '"He never read the Romance of the Forest, nor the Children of the Abbey'" (28). Unlike Henry Tilney, who assures Catherine Morland that he spent two days reading The Mysteries of Udolpho, '"hair standing on end the whole time"' (NA 108), Robert Martin seems to have missed the fad for the gothic: '"He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now as soon as ever he can'" (E 28). The straggling urgency of that final clause sounds like Harriet Smith rather than the concise and sensible Robert Martin. Perhaps we're not surprised that he hasn't borrowed these novels on his weekly Saturday trips to the market at Kingston.

These novels were popular. Both Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest and Regina Maria Roche's The Children of the Abbey were fashionable enough to go through many editions in short order. Radcliffe's novel was published in 1791, with eight editions (and a stage version) by 1816. With its inclusion in Barbauld's British Novelists, it achieved a kind of canonical status. Roche's novel, published by the Minerva Press in 1798, reached a seventh edition in 1815. Both begin in female nightmare and end in female wish-fulfillment. The heroines, Adeline and Amanda, are effectively orphaned for most of the time; their identities are either unknown or necessarily concealed. Adeline wanders across France and Switzerland; Amanda circles the British Isles. They are constantly subject to male predation. At the same time, both heroines are in search of a father's love and protection, and both revere paternal authority--a desire that often leads them to danger or misery. Finally acknowledged, they are rewarded with money and power, which they can then bestow on their needy future husbands.

Does Harriet Smith have an imaginative life connected to her reading? If so, that life is kept from Austen's readers. Harriet is certainly no Catherine Morland. Donwell Abbey holds no terrors for her and, apparently, no particular attraction until Emma "encourage[s] her to think of" (446) Mr. Knightley, and he "talk[s] to her ... in a very particular way indeed!" (447). What imagination Harriet has is not exercised in inquiring into the secret of her birth or in speculating on the mystery of Jane Fairfax. There's no evidence that Harriet assumes that she--the natural daughter of somebody--will turn out to be the long-lost heiress. Even Austen's gothic parody--the encounter with the gypsies from which Frank Churchill rescues her--doesn't stimulate Harriet's imagination as it does Emma's. For Harriet, there seems to be a separation between the imaginative world of books and the world she lives in--even as what she sees is redefined by the romances Emma creates for her.

There are warnings in these two novels that a more attentive reader than Harriet might have noticed. One of those is embedded in the plot of The Children of the Abbey. Stephen Derry has pointed out that Ellen, the daughter of Amanda's nurse, believes that the local clergyman is in love with her, though he really is in love with Amanda, and so dismisses her true swain, Tim Chip (70). The parallels, however, are not perfect: Harriet may not, of course, see herself in the role of servant to the heroine; further, Emma works hard to convince Harriet to see herself as the object of Mr. Elton's courtship: '"Receive it on my judgment'" (79).

Another connection suggests more strongly that Harriet has not learned from her reading. When some of the villains attempt to embarrass Amanda by demanding that she play before company, she is so "susceptible of the powers of harmony" that "her style [becomes] so masterly and elegant, as to excite universal admiration" in all except those jealous of her (232). She then sings "a plaintive Italian air" with "exquisite taste and sweetness" (233). Lady Euphrasia, Amanda's cousin and enemy, declares, "I never knew anything so monstrously absurd ... as to let a girl in her situation learn such things, except, indeed, it was to qualify her for a governess, or an opera singer" (233). (And, in fact, Amanda later is employed as a schoolteacher and then as a governess.) Harriet repeats elements of this scene after the evening at the Coles' as she asserts Emma's musical superiority over Jane Fairfax: '"Mr. Frank Churchill talked a great deal about your taste, and that he valued taste much more than execution.'" When Emma replies that '"Jane Fairfax has them both,'" Harriet still resists: '"I saw she had execution, but I did not know she had any taste. Nobody talked about it. And I hate Italian singing.... Besides, if she does play so very well, you know, it is no more than she is obliged to do, because she will have to teach'" (250). Not only does this echo suggest that Harriet is a poor reader, impervious to Roche's moral ironies (and has no "taste" herself), but it also indicates that she shares Emma's jealousy of Jane Fairfax, without being able to disguise it as well.

Better readers than Harriet will see parallels in her experience to the novels about which she's so enthusiastic. Gothic novels, of course, explore repetitively the confinement or imprisonment of women, not merely by individual men but by the patriarchal institutions in which they must live. As Anne Williams has argued, "Like all dreams--even nightmares--Gothic narratives enabled their audiences to confront and explore, and simultaneously to deny a theme that marks the birth of the Romantic (and modern) sensibility: that 'the Law of the Father' is a tyrannical paterfamilias and that we dwell in his ruins" (24). Harriet, defined by the "stain of illegitimacy" (526), is imprisoned by the patriarchal definition of and value for legitimate birth; as Mr. Knightley says, she is '"known only as parlour-boarder at a common school'" (64).

The roles for male characters in these novels provide evidence of Williams's formulation. Male predators populate the landscape. Chief among these in The Romance of the Forest is the Marquis de Montalt, whose efforts to seduce Adeline extend to abduction and a plan to rape her--until he discovers that she is the daughter of his elder brother (whom he murdered), at which point he pressures her guardian, LaMotte, to murder her. In The Children of the Abbey, Belgrave is an absolute villain, scheming, in his lust for sex, money, and power, against Amanda, her father, and brother. Curiously, his estate is named "Woodhouse": it is the site of duplicity, seduction, and intended rape.

The paternal figures in these novels are more problematic: often tyrannical, and, even when benevolent, unable to protect. In The Romance of the Forest, Adeline has a series of father figures who confine her, abandon her to sexual violence, and even agree to murder her (though one of them, La Motte, ultimately does help her escape). When in the novel's second phase, she finds a benevolent father, he is too infirm to save either her or his son. Rescue is not in the father's power. In The Children of the Abbey, Amanda's father is virtuous but at the financial mercy of others, and then he dies. Paternal power is then represented by the hero's father, Lord Cherbury, a gamester and embezzler. Even though Amanda recognizes the father's venality, she gives up her love, Mortimer, out of respect for paternal authority.

The hero figures, as often in the gothic, are weak. In The Romance of the Forest, Theodore rescues Adeline from Montalt, but since he is an officer under Montalt's command, he cannot protect Adeline and spends much of the novel in prison. Mortimer, the hero of The Children of the Abbey, is more complex. Though his first approach to Amanda is as a seducer, he is quickly converted by her virtue. But Mortimer's repeated response to the mysteries surrounding Amanda--assumed names and flight from male sexual violence--is to assume that she is guilty. (Mystery equals guilt in this novel.) By the end, his father's crimes leave him fortuneless; Amanda, endowed by her brother with an estate Mortimer has had to sell, provides the financial ground for their new life.

Though Austen is not writing a gothic novel, Emma reads through sentimental and gothic conventions: for example, reading rescue (Mr. Dixon's catching hold of Jane Fairfax's habit, Frank's saving Harriet from the gypsies) as stage one in a love plot. In Austen's novel, it's Emma for whom mystery equals guilt. Emma contains toned-down, or mixed, versions of the purely good and evil characters created by Radcliffe and Roche. Mr. Elton is Austen's version of the predator--in the carriage on Christmas eve, "she [finds] ... her hand seized--her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton actually making violent love to her" (140)--though Emma's fortune and status rather than her body seem to be his object. (5) Part of the comedy of this failed abduction scene is the slowness of the carriage, carefully driven "at a foot pace" at Emma's father's command (143). Mr. Woodhouse comprises both elements of the gothic paterfamilias: weak and tyrannical, desiring to protect her and responsible for her imprisonment. Harriet's father, the object of Emma's fantasy, turns out to be "rich enough to afford her the comfortable maintenance which had ever been her's, and decent enough to have always wished for concealment" (526), but, as Mr. Knightley points out, he has "left [her] in Mrs. Goddard's hands to shift as she can"' (66).

And what of the heroes? Frank Churchill, torturing Jane Fairfax by his attentions to Emma, might be the most gothic--and almost villainous--of the group: discovering the '"treachery"' (435) of their secret engagement, Emma is "horror-struck" (430) and understands Jane's jealousy as "the rack" and "poison" (439). Mr. Knightley is the rescuer not of the woman he loves, but of her protege; for Emma he merely holds the mirror in which she can see herself. Like the gothic heroes, however, he moves after marriage to his wife's home. Robert Martin stands apart from gothic conventions--neither rescuer, nor almost-seducer, nor a weakened hero, but someone whose love is constant and generous, out of all reason--though Emma's recognition that Harriet needs to be protected from temptation (526) hints at a darker story.

Finally each of these novels concludes with a small band of true friends together in a world purged of horrors, with patriarchal structures redeemed. In The Romance of the Forest, the virtuous characters return to Savoy, where everyone assembles around the father, La Luc, "in one grand compact of harmony and joy" (362). Adeline and Theodore look forward to "hand in hand ... tread[ing] the flowery scenes of life" (355), possessing "the pure and rational delights of a love refined into the most tender friendship, surrounded by the friends so dear to them, and visited by a select and enlightened society" (362). In The Children of the Abbey, Amanda and Mortimer, the new Lord and Lady Cherbury, believe that "the humble scenes of life [are] best calculated for the promotion of felicity" (620). At their wedding there are no pearls, white satin, lace veils: Amanda wears "no ornaments but those which could never decay, namely, modesty and meekness" (625). They establish "a pleasing abode to the prosperous, and an asylum of comfort to the afflicted" (627).

Through this collective reading list, then, Jane Austen provides a grounding for Emma that is simultaneously realistic and Active. Characters who share our reading experiences become more dimensional, more "like us," more typical in human terms. But, simultaneously, as these characters and their plots are measured against their literary predecessors, placed in the landscape of their literary context, they become more obviously Active, more invented (i.e., both constructed and found), more essentially like their literary counterparts. This paradox of realism and fictiveness matches for me the difficulty of capturing Austen's most complicated novel. I've always appreciated Terry Castle's description of Highbury as a place where "children are never dropped" (51). I'm increasingly unsure, however, that it's true. As these books Austen conjures bring together the real and Active natures of Robert Martin, Harriet Smith, and the world of Highbury--pointing to the tyrannies of gender and the allure of connection, celebrating the virtues of nation or kingdom and the necessity of improvement--they reveal the peculiar combination of sparkling light and looming shadow that is Emma.

Susan Allen Ford, JASNA's North American Scholar for the 2016 AGM, is Professor of English and Writing Center Coordinator at Delta State University and editor of Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line. She is at work on a book about what Austen's characters are reading.

NOTES

(1.) "Yeomanry" is sometimes--as here--used to signify farmers who own their own land. Emma, however, includes tenant farmers in her definition.

(2.) For more on Elegant Extracts (and riddle books), see Susan Allen Ford's "Reading Elegant Extracts in Emma: Very Entertaining!"

(3.) My thanks to Marilyn Francus, who shared with me her notes on the annotations in this edition and her photographs of the owners' names on the flyleaf.

(4.) See Tara Goshal Wallace on the "suburbanization" of Highbury.

(5.) For the Gothic villain, these objects are usually combined. See also Celia Easton's reading of the carriage scene in terms of the context of eighteenth-century rape narratives in fact and fiction.

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Caption: From Elegant Extracts in Prose, inscribed for Jane Austen's nephew. Courtesy of Chawton House Library.