Content area
Full Text
Cft extrait d'un roman basé sur la réécriture de "Emma" de Jane Austen, s'attache au personnage de Jane Fairfax, cette jeune femme timide, effacée dont la situation et le caractère en faisaient un agent de critique sociale selon Austen, ce que Emma, riche et gâtée ne peut pas faire. Jane Fairfax se sent obligée envers les Campbell qui l'ont hébergée et éduquée mais seulement « pour quelle éduque les autres » - elle sera gouvernante- alors que leur propre fille (sa meilleure amie) est un beau parti. Pendant ce temps, à Weymouth (avant quelle écrive «Emma » "), Jane Austen et Frank Churchill étaient amoureux mais le fossé social et économique qui les séparait semble avoir rendu ce mariage impossible.
This is an excerpt of a novel, based on a re-telling of Jane Austen's Emma, that centres on the character of Jane Fairfax. Jane is a shadowy, background figure in Emma, but in fact her character and her situation act as the agent of Austen's social critique-which the privileged, wealthy Emma herself cannot do. Jane is bound by a sense of obligation to the kindly Campbells, who have brought her up, and educated her-but only to "educate others," to be a governess-while their own daughter (her "best friend") makes a splendid match.
While in Weymouth (before the actual opening of Austen's Emma), Jane and Frank Churchill meet and fall in love, but the vast social and economic gap between them would seem to make marriage impossible.
This is but one of many ironies with which Jane has to contend; the novel tracks her growing feminist awareness as she comes to recognize the powerlessness of so many of the women she encounters. Personally, she is caught in a web of complex emotions: anger at social injustice; loyalty towards the Campbells and her aunt and grandmother, Mrs. and Miss Bates; despair at the realization that equality and independence for most women are an effective impossibility; frustration at the social gap that means she and Frank can never marry; jealousy as she must passively watch while he flirts with the handsome heiress, Emma; and humiliation as she is "taken up" by the insufferable Mrs. Elton who is determined to find the perfect governess position for her.
The Campbells...