Disclaimer: I'm about to go Full English Major here...
It’s hard to believe that Romance Required is already two years old! A lot has happened in these two years: our group has grown in members, I began this blog, and we’ve read a wide variety of romances. Every February I like to assign (for lack of a better word) a real classic romance – using the original definition of the word.
When we hear the word “romance” today in reference to novels, we tend to think of books our mothers or grandmothers would hide in nightstand drawers or under mattresses. They often sported covers featuring brawny men and beautiful women in varying stages of undress, and we’d read them (or I would, anyway) in secret, maybe passing them around clandestinely among our friends. The term “bodice ripper” comes to mind. And while romance as a genre hasn’t always been so… shall we say…racy, it has been around for longer than we may think.
The New York Public Library has a great article detailing the genre’s origins (https://www.nypl.org/blog/2019/02/15/brief-history-romance-novel-recommendations). Romance as a genre of fiction first emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, and unlike many other books of the time period these books focused on the lives and struggles of female protagonists. This must have been revolutionary and maybe even shocking to readers of the age! Some early examples of romance novels include Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe, and of course Pride and Prejudice by my homegirl Jane Austen. When the genre first emerged, it was written by both male and female authors but in today’s market romances are generally written by women, for women. Even during Austen’s day, romances often touched on satirizing the common conventions and manners of the day for white, heterosexual women and men. (In modern romances, we find a variety of authors—male, female, and non-binary—writing for a variety of orientations and races.)
And that, dear reader, brings us to Emma, our Romance Required book for February. Emma was the last of Jane Austen’s novels published while she was still alive (Persuasion was published posthumously), in 1815. In it we meet Emma Woodhouse, a young woman living in Georgian/Regency era England. The opening sentence details what we can expect from Miss Woodhouse pretty well: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." Emma is a bit spoiled and headstrong, and self-satisfied. She considers herself to be a keen matchmaker, like the Dolly Levi of her day, although sometimes she fails to see the damage her meddling – however well-meaning it may be – can do to her friends’ relationships.
Like her first novel Pride & Prejudice, Austen’s Emma is considered a “Comedy of Manners.” A Comedy of Manners is a work of literature that shows a realistic satire of the manners and conventions of the day – in the Georgian/Regency era the satire is often of the landed gentry or “sophisticated” classes. Other examples of this type of satire include: Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (one of my favorites!), Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (which we may know better as the basis for My Fair Lady), and Hay Fever by Noel Coward. The comedies would feature archetypical characters all the readers would have known, characters like the “braggart soldier,” the “fop,” and the “rake.” These archetypes weren’t invented by the genre but rather have been seen as far back as Shakespeare and even ancient Greek playwrights.
Stories such as Emma are popular with readers, I think, because we all know someone like her and the other characters. We all probably have a friend who sometimes speaks without thinking first (I’m probably that one for my friends), or the guy who exaggerates his exploits in service, or the friend who might overdress for whatever the situation calls for. As such, Emma has been made into many different more modern adaptions, from 1948 to the present day. Perhaps the most famous modern adaptation is Clueless, a romantic comedy made in 1995, starring Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd. Clueless is an iconic movie not only for the fashions but the lingo. Who hasn’t uttered, “As if!” or “I, like, totally paused!” when someone doesn’t quite come to a complete stop at a stop sign? Not to be outdone by modernity, a more historically-accurate adaptation starring Gwyneth Paltrow came out the year after Clueless, in 1996. The most recent film adaptation of Emma stars Anya Taylor-Joy, from 2020. Fun Fact, the library will be showing this version at our Matinee Movie on February 26th! And if you enjoy international adaptations, there is a 2010 Indian film called Aisha, which retells the Emma story, starring Sonam Kapoor.
We still have a couple of copies left of Emma, if you would like to read it, and maybe join us later in the month for the movie. Remember, Romance Required meets the last Friday every month at 1pm. Join us for sweet treats, laughter, and some great romantic reads!
