Aha!
Did we surprise you? Did you think we’d abandoned our Emma readalong in a fit of pique? Did you put the novel down, or finish it without us? Might you be stuck in the middle of what is turning out to be a surprisingly long book? No matter what the situation, we do hope you’ll come back and read with us: Mrs. Fitzpatrick is indeed taking a brief holiday from posting, on account of the Emma-rage-induced coma she’s currently experiencing (not really), but I’ll be taking over and continuing our stroll through the novel. Probably with Mr. Knightley. The man loves a good walk almost as much as he despises a graceless lady. Or so I hear.
If you’re questioning my credentials as Emma readalong ringmistress, let me tell you: I may not have Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s existential malaise about it, and about Emma in particular, but I do have my own complete lack of opinion, which surely must be just as good? It’s been so long since I’ve encountered Miss Woodhouse that I’m practically, as they say, experiencing it again for the very first time.
Even better, my own mental landscape for Emma is the weirdest possible mishmash: since I barely remember the novel, my brain is like some kind of crazy Regency Surrealist painting, mostly of Clueless and the most recent BBC adaptation. It’s Romola Garai and Michael Gambon (pterodactyl arms and all) and Breckin Meyer and everything else, and let me tell you, it’s super strange and entertaining.
But let’s get down to business.
So, it’s not exactly that I have a problem with Mr. Knightley in the broad sense—there’s some stuff later that’s downright delightful—but I sometimes think he’s my least favorite Austen love interest (though that may have been before I met Edmund Bertram). Here is why I have a hard time with Mr. Knightley: “Hey, let’s be friends and make up,” he says, three seconds after calling her a spoiled child who’s always wrong. To her face! I guess we’re supposed to think that because he’s kind of right, he must not also be kind of a jerk. I just, I don’t know, think those things are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Which brings me to something else: Does Mr. Knightley learn anything over the course of the novel? Does he change at all, or is it only Emma who needs to get in touch with her better self? (I suppose in a book called Emma, the onus of personal growth might lie with, well, EMMA. But he can be awfully judgy.)
So, there’s half an inch of snow on the ground, and Isabella’s freaking out about getting home. Which I would mock if I hadn’t once made Miss Osborne drive us through Rocky Mountain National Park in exactly this same situation. Snow is scary, people! It will make your car slide off the road, and nobody will ever find you, and if you fall asleep, you’ll freeze to death (or so my fourth-grade reading book told me) and be one of those people who’s uncovered six months later, at the thaw. Or, you know, after the half-inch of snow melts. I’m from California! What do you want from me?
Anyway, Jane calls Isabella Knightley “the good-hearted Mrs. John Knightley,” which I’ve now decided is the Regency version of “she has a good personality.” Well, bless her heart.
Every once in awhile, it kills me that Jane lived and wrote before the heyday of the screwball comedy film. The part with Mr. Woodhouse and the new maid and the perfect consistency of gruel? You guys, that is a bit, and neither Laurel and Hardy nor Lorelai Gilmore could do any better.
On the other hand, neither Laurel and Hardy nor Lorelai Gilmore had the endurance to write an entire chapter of Miss Bates (Chapter 19, or Volume 2, Chapter 1, if you’re using my weird library copy). Nor did, I must say, I have the fortitude of heart to read it all in one sitting. Or, like, five sittings. That woman makes my everything glaze over, AND SHE ISN’T EVEN REAL.
So what do you say, Austen Nation? Another ten chapters? See you soon; same bat time, same bat channel. Same bat judgmental dude out for a walk.
austenacious 
Yay! So glad the Emma readalong is back! I finished it (first time ever) and then read S&S for the heck of it. I too have concerns about Mr. Knightly. Yeah, he’s already pretty darn awesome most of the time, but the patronizing thing is annoying. Let your hair down, George!
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Edmund Bertram, bleh. Mr. Knightly is at least named Mr. Knightly. That seems kind of cool. Also he and Emma are both jerks, so in that way they are meant for each other. Romantic!
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Disclaimer: It’s been a long time since I read the book so I’m writing this based off dim memories and movie adaptations, so it’s entirely possible I’m wrong.
So the thing about Mr. Knightley is that him telling her off occasionally is really the only way she grows, right? Every person in her life, except him, treats her like a princess and would never dream of calling her out when she’s done something stupid. It’s only Knightley, and occasionally the school of hard knocks, that ever tries to curb her bad behavior. In a way, Knightley is more of a father figure that Mr. Woodhouse ever was (Emma looks after her father as much as he looks after her, and he certainly never tries to curb her) so it never particularly bothered me when K told her off.
Except, of course, now that I say that out loud it’s kind of squicky that they end up together, as though ever since she was a baby he’s been grooming her into the kind of woman he wants? That’s definitely a bit off. Let’s assume that’s not what was intended.
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