EMMA（ISBN=9780679405818）pdf/txt下载_在线阅读全文

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《爱玛》是英国乡村中产阶级生活的工笔浮世绘，也是奥斯丁六部小说中*成功的一部，它以滑稽曲折的情节而独占鳌头，讲述一个任性自负的女子如何发现真爱就在身边的故事。奥斯丁笔下的女主人公大多热情聪明独立、言谈机智风趣，与现代女性心理有灵犀，处处相通。

内容简介

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The most perfect of Jane Austen's perfect novels begins with twenty-one-year-old Emma Woodhouse comfortably dominating the social order in the village of Highbury, convinced that she has both the understanding and the right to manage other people's lives-for their own good, of course. Her well-meant interfering centers on the aloof Jane Fairfax, the dangerously attractive Frank Churchill, the foolish if appealing Harriet Smith, and the ambitious young vicar Mr. Elton-and ends with her complacency shattered, her mind awakened to some of life's more intractable dilemmas, and her happiness assured. Jane Austen's comic imagination was so deft and beautifully fluent that she could use it to probe the deepest human ironies while setting before us a dazzling gallery of characters-some pretentious or ridiculous, some admirable and moving, all utterly true.

作者简介

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was extremely modest about her own genius but has become one of English literature's most famous women writers. She is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion, Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey.

目　　录

IINTRODUCTION
CHRONOLOGY OF JANE AUSTEN'S LIFE AND WORK
HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF Emma
EMMA
NOTES
INTERPRETIVE NOTES
CRITICAL EXCERPTS
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
SUCCESTIONS FOR THE INTERESTED READER

在线试读部分章节

From Steven Marcus's Introduction to EmmaThe first sentence of Emma is only less well known thanthe legendary opening of Pride and Prejudice. "EmmaWoodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home andhappy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings ofexistence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world withvery little to distress or vex her." The immediate effect of thisstatement is to stop us, we readers, in our tracks. It is also aheads-up or alert, signaling to us as the narrator's adherents andcollaborators to step up the volume and fine-tune the attentivenessthat we direct toward the page. It begins with a broadside ofaffirmations and modulates into a conclusion that intimates seriousproblems may exist in the offing. Emma is very good looking in arather striking and forceful way (not pretty or, here, beautiful);she is intelligent and quick-witted; and she is more than affluentwhen it comes to material means. She takes pleasure as well in theamenities of an established place in which to live, theestablishment being part of a settled order in which she also feelsat home. And best of all, perhaps, she is blessed with a "happy"temperament or general tone of well-being. With all these fortunateand combined bestowals, is there anything else to ask for? Well,yes—since they amount, the narrator remarks without pausing, to nomore than "seemed." The dubiety carried in that ironic reservationturns the sentence around and prepares us for vexation anddistress.
Emma has also reached a conventional juncture or locus ofpassage in the life cycle of European women and men. And thisreference to numbers leads to a series of statements that informsus about how, in turn, those twenty-one years are to be regarded.Emma's mother has been dead for about sixteen years, since that isthe interval during which Miss Taylor has been employed as herbeloved governess—Emma's memory of her goes back to the age offive. Emma's older married sister, Isabella, is at least six yearsher senior, since we soon learn that she has been married for sevenyears and already has five children, the youngest of whom is lessthan a year old. It is reasonable to assume that Emma "had beenmistress" of her father's house since she was about thirteen (anumber that will come up later). Her father's age we will get to ina bit.

<div>From Steven Marcus's Introduction to Emma
The first sentence of Emma is only less well known than
the legendary opening of Pride and Prejudice. "Emma
Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and
happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of
existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with
very little to distress or vex her." The immediate effect of this
statement is to stop us, we readers, in our tracks. It is also a
heads-up or alert, signaling to us as the narrator's adherents and
collaborators to step up the volume and fine-tune the attentiveness
that we direct toward the page. It begins with a broadside of
affirmations and modulates into a conclusion that intimates serious
problems may exist in the offing. Emma is very good looking in a
rather striking and forceful way (not pretty or, here, beautiful);
she is intelligent and quick-witted; and she is more than affluent
when it comes to material means. She takes pleasure as well in the
amenities of an established place in which to live, the
establishment being part of a settled order in which she also feels
at home. And best of all, perhaps, she is blessed with a "happy"
temperament or general tone of well-being. With all these fortunate
and combined bestowals, is there anything else to ask for? Well,
yes—since they amount, the narrator remarks without pausing, to no
more than "seemed." The dubiety carried in that ironic reservation
turns the sentence around and prepares us for vexation and
distress.
Emma has also reached a conventional juncture or locus of
passage in the life cycle of European women and men. And this
reference to numbers leads to a series of statements that informs
us about how, in turn, those twenty-one years are to be regarded.
Emma's mother has been dead for about sixteen years, since that is
the interval during which Miss Taylor has been employed as her
beloved governess—Emma's memory of her goes back to the age of
five. Emma's older married sister, Isabella, is at least six years
her senior, since we soon learn that she has been married for seven
years and already has five children, the youngest of whom is less
than a year old. It is reasonable to assume that Emma "had been
mistress" of her father's house since she was about thirteen (a
number that will come up later). Her father's age we will get to in
a bit.
Her father and governess have raised Emma with great affection
and equal indulgence. Restraint and authority have been close to
absent from her experience, and she has, within this atmosphere of
tenderness, permissiveness, and admiration, grown up "doing just
what she liked; highly esteeming Miss Taylor's judgment, but
directed chiefly by her own." The consequent disadvantages of
Emma's situation were "the power of having rather too much her own
way, and a disposition to think a little too much of herself."
These "real evils" are at once modulated by "rather" and "a little
too much." There may be forebodings, but they are neither very dark
nor desperate.
The novel begins, however, with Miss Taylor's departure from the
Woodhouse home of Hartfield. She has become Mrs. Weston, having
just married a prosperous widower neighbor and taken up residence
at Randalls, his recently purchased "little estate," only a
half-mile from the Woodhouses. The wedding guests have gone, and
Emma and her father are left to themselves "to dine together, with
no prospect of a third to cheer a long evening." Miss Taylor's
wedding precipitates in Emma a "gentle sorrow." She understandably
experiences Mrs. Weston's happiness as a "loss" as well, and sits
in "mournful thought" pondering "what she had lost." The good
fortune of her dear friend is both a source of "satisfaction" to
her and yet, more questionably, "a black morning's work." The
lightly stressed irony is that Emma is responding to her idealized
surrogate mother's marriage as if it were an echo or shadow
reenactment of her natural mother's death sixteen years before.
Even more, in recent years the two of them have stood on "equal
footing" and in "perfect unreserve"; to Emma, Miss Taylor has been
that most rare "friend and companion," someone "peculiarly
interested in herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of hers;—one
to whom she could speak every thought as it arose, and . . . could
never find fault."
With this approving mirror of another consciousness, another
affirming yet senior female self, moving away into separateness and
independence, Emma recognizes in herself the sense that things can
never be the same for her again. "How was she to bear the change?"
Indeed.
The "melancholy change" is compounded by Emma's awareness that
"she was now in great danger of suffering from intellectual
solitude. She dearly loved her father, but he was no companion for
her. He could not meet her in conversation, rational or playful."
Mr. Woodhouse is somewhere between sixty-five and seventy years
old. Yet
the evil of the actual disparity in their ages . . . was much
increased by his constitution and habits; for having been a
valetudinarian all his life, without activity of mind or body, he
was a much older man in ways than in years; and though every where
beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable temper,
his talents could not have recommended him at any time.Although
Emma dearly loves her father, they don't have interests or
resources in common. Emma loves talk, the back and forth of
conversation, the playfulness of wit and the bite of argument; her
father is somewhere else. He is obsessed to the point of looniness
with his health; he lives in terror of the weather; drafts, heat,
cold and colds, damp, snow, the dews of a summer evening all
imperil him and everyone he can warn. And he is equally endangered
by food: His fearful admonitions on thin gruel, pork, boiled eggs,
and baked apples are the stuff of unforgettable comic turns. He has
behaved as "quite an invalid" all his life and has in fact become
one. He claims that he goes "no where" and is torpid and inert. He
exists at such a depressed level of vitality that he seems to be
far older than his years. Friendly, affectionate, and amiable as he
may be, he is neither brainy nor energetic. Mr. Woodhouse is
effectively old enough to be Emma's grandfather, and in the
far-distant resolution of this novel he partially fills that
functional role.
</div>

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