“Relax into laughter”: Jane Austen’s Emma and the Sentimental Novel

This dissertation argues for the value of studying Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) in context, not as a singular masterpiece by a singular author, but as a book with a plot constructed upon the tropes of the typical domestic-sentimental novel as published between 1780 and 1815. Modern interpretations of Austen sometimes overlook the critical insights to be derived from comparing her work to her contemporaries. Although many Austen scholars have examined her work in relation to other pre-eminent writers of her age such as Maria Edgeworth and Charlotte Smith, comparatively little attention has been paid to the now-obscure novelists who produced domestic-sentimental novels for the reading public. Emma Woodhouse’s deluded attempts at matchmaking are derived from the tropes of the sentimental genre. Austen parodies novel clichés in Emma, and sometimes she substitutes prosaic everyday situations for melodramatic novel scenarios, but she does not overthrow the essential conventions of the marriage-plot novel. Compared to the overt parody of Northanger Abbey (1818), Emma is markedly more subtle. Textual clues suggest that Emma may have begun as a spoof of the domestic-sentimental novel which Austen revised in her artistic maturity into a pathbreaking experiment in domestic realism. A close reading of Emma reveals many allusions to popular domestic-sentimental novels, which were widely read but widely derided during Austen’s lifetime. Examining Austen’s work in the context of both the popular novels of her time as well as in the context of the debate around popular novels reveals her deep engagement with the popular literature of the day. In Emma, Austen found a way to marry her love of burlesque to her commitment to realism.