‘Emma’ - A Man’s View

Men may not read much of today’s romantic fiction, but some of them certainly read and enjoy Jane Austen. And several men of my acquaintance (my own husband included, who claims to have been been the subject of extensive author research - and not just the descriptions of Ashridge) have managed to get beyond the rather fetching cover of The Importance of Being Emma and read the words inside.

They include respected members of the community:

  • golf club captains past and present - who are looking forward to featuring in my version of Mansfield Park now that I’ve warned them it will be set in a golf and country club
  • my bank manager - who got more excited than I have ever known him in a 15-year relationship that has certainly been ‘in the red’, although not with passion
  • my accountant - who is nothing like Philip Elton except in terms of Emma’s initial glowing description of him on page 40
  • and, most recently, my friendly estate agent whose review is below. Must admit, when he told me he would send me his review by Friday 13th and then leave the country for a week, I was a little apprehensive to say the least. But I needn’t have worried!

‘Emma’ - a man’s view:

‘The author warned me that her new book, “The importance of being Emma” was very much chick lit and it may not be suitable for a middle-age man like me. However, having just finished reading it I have to say I’m extremely impressed. I read the other JA’s Emma just once, nearly forty years ago when I studied it at school but immediately recognised the characters and plot.  That alone might have kept me turning pages at chill-out-holiday rate but the prose combined a lightness of touch with a confidence of pace which frequently held my attention well after normal lights-out.

‘That art imitates art is a given – any student of painting, music, fashion and literature will see ideas, themes and plots resurrected and reworked throughout their history. There is no shame in this – it’s both a compliment and a complement to the original if it’s accomplished with admiration of the original, dedication to the craft and a pinch of inspiration. Archer’s love of Austen shines through the book’s fabric. Her craft has been to make the update fit so comfortably into the equally complex society of twenty-first-century middle-class Britain. And her inspiration has without doubt been the narrative’s alternation between Mark’s and Emma’s viewpoints. As a sixteen-year-old boy in a single-sex school, I needed a good teacher to reveal Austen’s subtext, which then enabled me to enjoy more of her dual-layer novels. Whilst some might find Archer’s dual narrative over-egging the pudding, she writes the two characters so convincingly that she should be forgiven by the more sophisticated reader and thanked by the ingénue. It works also on the level of echoing the evident competitiveness between the protagonists.

‘I must be honest that as the star-crossed lovers’ story unfolded there were times when I wanted to throttle them and when, momentarily, I felt my credulity stretched by their obtuseness. But then I remembered feeling the same way about Austen’s original and then, looking back at my own and friends’ actual roller-coaster love lives, I could see frustratingly similar blind spots and misconstructions. Archer has managed to retain and build on Austen’s dance between forgiveness of her characters and flinty exposure of their fallibility.

‘The humour in this novel was not for me of the side-splitting variety. Rather it raised regular wry smiles particularly at the supporting cast; Harriet Smith, the ‘Essex girl’, Philip Elton’s pushy girlfriend and Batty are all recognisable stereotypes who provide colour and amusement in real and literary life.

‘Feminism, absence of censorship and the pill have brought sex out in the open but was Archer right to allow us to witness Emma’s lovemaking? Whilst early-nineteenth-century literature was painfully coy in this area, Austen’s books have a powerful undercurrent of sex and it would surely be negligent to pretend that modern-day red-blooded characters wouldn’t have their minds on shagging. Indeed, a major theme of the book was the tension between Emma’s and Mark’s quasi-sibling relationship and their overwhelming sexual attraction. As a male, I can vouch for the realism in Mark’s frequent observations of Emma’s secondary sexual characteristics. Plus debate is rife on the subject of women’s drunkenness and consequent post-coital remorse. For me this episode added depth to the characters as I couldn’t help wondering what had damaged Emma’s self-esteem so much that she assumed Mark was just using her as a substitute for Tamara; her mother’s supposed early death and her father’s hypochondria perhaps?

‘To summarise this was for me a worthy and enjoyable read plus a truly fascinating experiment in standing on the shoulders of a giant. It’s not a great novel but was never intended to be. As page-turning chick lit it is executed with warmth and business-like concision – I’m going to read Austen’s Persuasion to prepare for Archer’s next release.

‘I’m just left wondering whether I’ve missed something in the Wildean reference of the title.’

JA adds: ‘You can see why he’s a successful estate agent, can’t you? He could almost persuade me to buy my own book from him - at a premium!’