I’ve just reread Emma by Jane Austen, and I can completely understand why it didn’t particularly engage the younger Rukaya, who had even less patience than I do with idiots.

To be fair, I don’t really know enough about the period to understand how important class was in those days, and whether the opinions and prejudices which lie so openly in Emma were the norm. I suppose they must have been, but I know Lord Byron and his fashionable set were around at that sort of time and quite contrary to the stuffiness we see in Emma I think it would be fair to say there was a veritable hurricane of excitement whirling around that dear little island. Anyway I have no problem with Emma being a snotty, arrogant, stuck up, self righteous and self important bitch as long as her character develops and grows. Now perhaps I’m revealing my own bigotry here, but at the end of the book I really wanted to see, besides the inevitable acquittal of her evils by her lover, some kind of shame and some kind of change in her opinions of the importance of class. Continue reading →