Emma [Worth Press]

Jane Austen's Emma is the story of Emma Woodhouse, an inveterate would-be match-maker. Emma always tends to misjudge the romantic intentions of other people, causing surprise and sometimes dismay amongst herself and some of her friends. This is a long novel with no plot to speak of other than the drama of which male characters will pair up with which female characters (don't worry, everyone ends up happily married at the end), and I have to admit I found it to drag at places.

There are a couple of really fun, well-drawn characters. First, Emma's father is a perfect portrait of an older man who becomes almost an ascetic recluse because of all the imaginary dangers the world has to offer (bad air, bad food, too much noise, etc.). He's very funny to read about, though he'd be quite miserable to be around in real life. Second, there's a minor character named Miss Bates who simply can't stop talking about anything and everything that comes into her head. One of the better scenes of the book, actually, is where Emma makes a mildly sarcastic remark because Miss Bates is rattling on, and then Emma realizes how much she's embarrased and hurt the woman's feelings.

The book is entirely set within a small English village, and most of the main characters live off the income from estates or inheritances--hardly anybody actually works for a living, and those who do are definitely pitied by others. One's social status is implicitly a major part of the book, as finding "a suitable match" for marriage is very much a class-based process (money is great way to climb the ladder, otherwise education and family reknown or "breeding" are markers of social status).

The Worth edition comes with four short essays by Austen scholars, covering modern literary interpretations of the novel, the geography of the story's setting, etc. There's a lot of characters in the book, so the illustration and summaries of the major ones is quite helpful. Unfortunately, the edition has a surprising number of typos, both in the essays and the main text (the type of mistakes even spellcheck would catch).

All in all, not a novel I would look forward to reading again.

Up next: The Hound of the Baskervilles and the Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle