Emma by Jane Austen is a novel I really like a lot.

By chance and one might say, luck, I read Emma by Jane Austen this last week. It was the one novel by Austen that I had not (really) read. I suppose I flipped through its pages several times and read passages, but not a deep read. Perhaps I thought it a straight comedy and was never in the mood for that. I hardly know or remember. Emma has left a deep impression on me, which may or may not have something to do with the Romantic Period or Percy Shelley or English gardens, I don’t know or care, but I have decided to put aside my previous reading plans and reread all of Jane Austen along with some biographies, letters, and other non-fiction materials. I am going to reread Richard Holmes’ biography of Shelley, too. And it’s spring and summer and I am thinking of gardens and flowers and paintings and the beauty of nature. If I had lived in England, I would have loved a cottage and a garden and country life. I have lived a country life. Emma is a very mature work by Austen, a novel with themes that explore self-reflection, self-awareness, and the how people can move from self-delusion to reality. It should be taught in senior year of high school where young women can discuss these themes and ask themselves questions. I’d love to teach it. There is a harshness to Austen that many overlook. She might have even been more radical than we normally think. No, she didn’t run off with a married poet like Mary Godwin but just maybe Austen had more psychological insights than the former authoress, perhaps because Mary Godwin Shelley was plagued by depression and abandonment issues. There is such clarity to Austen’s work. That was her gift. One just has to read closely.