Vanity and the Bildungsroman
Stacey Vandas
Romantic literature is notoriously hard to define due to the plethora of authors, genres, and themes that emerged over a period of several decades. Romantic-era writers were interested in a multitude of subjects, and although it is difficult to find commonalities among every writer in the Romantic category, two recurring themes are introspection and the growth of the self. Both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Jane Austen’s Emma, novels of two highly different genres, explore these concepts in detail through their respective protagonists, Victor Frankenstein and Emma Woodhouse. Whether either work can be considered a bildungsroman has been heavily debated; I align with the traditional viewpoint in the affirmative, yet arguing that the education and growth of the protagonists is a more complicated matter than it initially appears. Emma and Victor are both educated in the sense that they gain self-awareness by the end of the novel. Through their respective characterizations, narrative structures, and uses of irony, Shelley and Austen achieve this education in different ways, ultimately illustrating that the protagonist’s self-growth is twofold: it requires both a realization of the autonomy and interests of others as well a threat to his or her own interests. This has implications for what it means to be a protagonist or to experience self-growth. However, a comparison of Emma and Victor Frankenstein, taken together with the novels’ resolutions, reveals Emma’s growth to be more complete and effective than Victor’s.
To begin a discussion of how Emma and Frankenstein undergo comparable inner educations, it is necessary to bring together these two seemingly disparate characters. Upon simply a superficial comparison, Emma and Victor both come from prosperous families and experienced happy, untroubled childhoods. The first sentence of Austen’s work confirms this, for Emma is “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition…and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her” (E 5). Victor’s childhood mirrors hers, and he dictates to Robert Walton, “No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence” (F 39). Furthermore, as suggested by this last quotation, both protagonists had loving, indulgent parents. Emma feels “beloved and important...always first and always right” in her father’s eyes (E 68). Living in worlds of familial harmony and contentment and being doted on by affectionate parents, Emma and Victor faced few problems in their youth and developed active and intelligent minds. Even though they are grateful for this good fortune, nevertheless their childhoods ultimately result in boredom and vanity as young adults, leading them to undertake ambitious ventures.
Emma and Victor are imaginative, ambitious creators with a desire and skill for manipulation—Victor in his scientific endeavors and Emma in her social ones. This creative impulse is born out of boredom with their employments and self-idealization. Emma fears “intellectual solitude” after Miss Taylor marries Mr. Weston and she is left with neither suitable companions for conversation nor an occupation to pass the time with (E 6). She reflects on her “success" in matching the pair, which, feeding on her vanity, induces her to resolve to continue matchmaking with Mr. Elton and Harriet (E 10-11). As Susan Morgan puts it, “Emma’s fancies, her manipulations, her imagination, are all those of a creator…Emma creates from love of power and love of self” (28). Her egotistic tendencies are made clear when Austen describes her “disposition to think a little too well of herself” immediately in the novel (E 5). This seems to present an obstacle for Emma to change at all, for as Knightley points out, “How can Emma imagine she has any thing to learn herself, while Harriet is presenting such a delightful inferiority?” (E 31). Notwithstanding this apparent hindrance, Austen will eventually use Emma’s vanity as the means of correcting it.
For Frankenstein’s part, he expresses his boredom as leading to his scientific pursuits when he describes his “thirst for knowledge” and the night when he lazily picked up a natural philosophy book with “apathy,” only to become immediately enthralled (F 40-42). His vanity surfaces in the same manner as Emma’s; he is flattered by his own successes and that drives him to take his experiments even further (F 54). Clearly, conceit and boredom impel the protagonists to ambition beyond the scope of their powers, as the reader later realizes. As for their creations themselves, Victor’s is the literal formation of the creature, while Emma makes matches in Highbury.[1] Harriet Smith is Emma’s primary “creation,” as she ascribes to her a genteel parentage and designs for her to marry into a higher social milieu. Austen gives us Emma’s thoughts toward Harriet, which once again demonstrate her belief in her own superiority: “[S]he would improve her…she would form her opinions and her manners…” (E 19). Thus, Emma and Victor are spurred on by their imaginations and visions of future success. The like elements of vanity and boredom found in both characters is coupled with extreme overconfidence and desire for glory;[2] all of these things together play into the irony which both authors use to bring their protagonists to a state of self-awareness.
Shelley and Austen cast both of their characters’ creative pursuits in the light of striving to achieve personal glory. Because of their self-importance, they are ready to reap the benefits of success in the form of a boost to their reputation and self-esteem. For example, Emma revels in the fact that she has been “proved in the right, when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry again” (E 10). With Harriet and Mr. Elton, she anticipates self-satisfaction and the praise of others for having made a good match once again. In the other novel, Frankenstein declares: “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me” (F 55). Clearly, the sense of being praised and revered by others is echoed in Victor’s inner desires, and he even speaks of glory as more attractive than any wealth he would obtain through his discoveries (F 42). In Harry Keyishian’s work “Vindictiveness and the Search for Glory in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” he notes that often this kind of imaginative, relentless quest can suppress our understanding of our own limitations (203). On that ground, Emma’s and Frankenstein’s self-assurance, which boosts their desire for glory, also gives them a reckless misunderstanding of their limits. In other words, they lack self-awareness because they are overconfident to the point of not recognizing their limitations.[3] Victor remarks, “my imagination was too much exalted to permit me to doubt of my ability” (F 54). Similarly Emma “[cannot] feel a doubt” and is “confident” and “convinced” that Mr. Elton loves Harriet, completely missing all hints at his otherwise-inclined affections. Both protagonists ultimately illustrate “a mind delighted with its own ideas,” which is dangerous for Shelley and Austen, because it means self-importance, self-delusion, and an inability to truly understand others (E 20).
Moving on from these preliminary comparisons, a discussion of one major difference between the novels aids in understanding how Shelley and Austen educate their characters separately into self-awareness, and how the reader is to regard that self-awareness. First, the narrative structure of the novels is very different. Frankenstein makes use of first-person narration coming from three different sources: Walton, Frankenstein, and the creature. This unique and fragmented approach to first person allows us to see from multiple perspectives, yet we still feel the full force of each character’s individual emotions and thoughts. This is especially helpful in understanding Frankenstein, as his perspective constitutes the majority of the text. From this we can discern that Victor has gained at least some self-awareness by the end of the story, because he confesses it all to Walton in an attempt to curtail his ambition and thirst for glory. Furthermore, Frankenstein reproaches his own conduct throughout the entire narrative. To give an example, Frankenstein instructs Walton by scolding himself, “Learn from me…how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” (F 54). This illustrates that Victor is capable of introspection and now recognizes the limits of his nature as well as the pitfalls of his former aspirations.
By contrast, in Emma, Austen utilizes free indirect discourse in the third person. The narrative voice is separate from the characters, yet at times enters into their consciousnesses as Rachel Oberman discusses (9). In this way, the narrator and reader are able to distance themselves from the characters’ emotions and perceptions, and understand truths that they cannot. They are also able to form objective judgments on the characters, because their flaws are revealed through light mockery in the narration. For example, when Emma reflects on the Cole’s party, she thinks, “The Coles were very respectable in their way, but they ought to be taught that it was not for them to arrange the terms on which the superior families would visit them” (E 163). Here the reader sees and chides Emma’s haughtiness and snobbery. In each novel, then, the narration shifts perspectives; the difference is that in Frankenstein this is subjective, while in Emma it is objective. In both cases, we recognize that the protagonist has achieved self-awareness by the end of the novel. For Emma, this is displayed in the huge differences in her thoughts and words at the beginning versus the end of the story. At the start, her self-importance makes her dismissive of others, as in this example with Mr. Knightley: “It was most convenient to Emma not to make a direct reply to this assertion; she chose rather to take up her own line of the subject again” (E 50). At the end, conversely, she overrides her own wishes in order to care for him, resolving that “cost her what it would, she would listen” (E 337). Oberman points out that the use of free indirect discourse is not accidental, and that Austen uses it to emphasize the way in which Emma’s education comes about. She writes, “…there is a connection between the ability to recognize and incorporate other people’s words into one’s thoughts and the level of moral development reached” (12). This is clear from the evidence just given, as well as Oberman’s examples of where Emma integrates the other characters’ opinions into her own thoughts.[4] Undoubtedly, an other-consciousness, or an awareness of the feelings and a valuation of other people, is a crucial component of individual moral growth and self-awareness.
Even though both Emma and Frankenstein use a narration style that merges perspectives, it remains unclear whether Shelley’s protagonist has effectively incorporated any of them into his own. At the end, Victor still exhorts Walton to finish his quest and kill the monster for him, despite the danger involved. Yet, as previously determined, his self-awareness is evident from his reflections. If an awareness of the concerns of others is so central to Emma’s growth, how is the apparent lack thereof to be accounted for with Frankenstein? I argue that there is another important element to the education in a bildungsroman: self-interest.[5] If they do not share an integrated understanding of others by the story’s resolution, Victor and Emma do share the experienced of a major threat to their interests and their happiness. This major event is the vehicle that the authors use to instruct their protagonists in self-awareness, and irony is the fuel. For Frankenstein, the threat is plainly the creature, who murders almost everyone he cares about. He certainly grieves his brother, Clerval, and Justine, but it is the sudden loss of Elizabeth that truly jeopardizes Victor’s future happiness. He reflects, “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change…A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness” (F 201). His hope of a happy marriage has been dashed, he imagines the creature’s further destruction of his family, and he immediately vows to destroy him at all costs (F 200, 206). Ironically, the creature had warned Frankenstein what would happen, but Frankenstein’s vanity got in the way, and he could only imagine that his life would be in peril on his wedding night, not his bride’s (F 195).
Emma’s threatening moment is Harriet’s confession of interest in Mr. Knightley and belief that he returns her affections. As soon as Emma realizes that she loves Mr. Knightley, and feels her future happiness menaced by her own creation, Emma is “shocked into self-knowledge” (Morgan 29). Austen writes, “Her own conduct, as well as her own heart, was before her in the same few minutes. She saw it all and with a clearness which had never blessed her before…how indelicate, how irrational, how unfeeling had been her conduct! What blindness, what madness, had led her on!” (E 320-21). Emma finally recognizes that her actions have produced her own unhappiness by her adoption of Harriet as a project, and like Victor, imagines a dreadfully bleak future (E 324-25). Both protagonists, then, feel the sting of irony applied by their authors, and are educated in their own misdeeds by it. They are given a larger perspective of the consequences of their actions; paradoxically, it is their self-interest and vanity that ultimately allows them to overcome that vanity and recognize their own faults. James Murray, writing on the need for and application of balance in Emma, writes, “…irony is measure and balance: it corrects and sets aright and restores order. It puts things and people in a proper perspective” (163). Evidently, irony is a corrective force in the novels;[6] it is also the primary tool of instruction for Austen and Shelley, which they apply through circumstances that wound their protagonists’ vanity. It is clear that this threatening use of irony is necessary for growth, because at early points in the novel before their interests are put in peril, both characters vow to stop their actions unsuccessfully. Victor swears off natural philosophy only to return to it again later, and Emma resolves to discontinue matchmaking, yet still works at it with herself and Frank Churchill, and then Harriet and Frank. An additional example of irony at work is the way that Emma’s and Victor’s creations ultimately take on a life of their own, asserting their own will outside of their creator’s. Thus, neither Harriet nor the creature turns out as their creators have expected or wanted. The authors’ narration styles also feed into the irony. In Frankenstein, the reader is made aware of the creature’s baiting of Victor through his narrations, which Victor never realizes. Emma is rife with many small instances of irony in addition to the pivotal ironic event that changes the main character. We understand these ironies through free indirect discourse, which points out to us when characters have blundered without knowing it.
Left to consider is the degree to which Shelley’s and Austen’s ironic educations of their protagonists are effective. As mentioned before, Frankenstein does not seem able to incorporate other characters’ interests well by the end of the novel, despite his good intentions and his newfound self-awareness. Emma, on the other hand, experiences a more complete change, because both elements of self-growth are present, namely a threat to her happiness and an awareness of others’ importance. Enit Steiner argues that Emma learns “self-criticism and self-monitored behaviour” (150). The narrative takes Emma from someone who “could not quarrel with herself” to someone who “ponder[s] the motives and ethical consequences of her actions” as in her reflections on Harriet’s admission (E 55; Steiner 150). Her ability to quarrel with herself has grown along with her incorporation of other’s consciousnesses. Emma’s vanity is also greatly reduced as she now recognizes it in herself and admits that others are superior to her, like Mr. Knightley (E 376). Thus, Emma’s education is made more complete because it includes both elements necessary to achieve self-awareness. Murray points out that Emma also had a corrective force in Mr. Knightley (164-65). Speaking of his advice, Emma says, “I doubt whether my own sense would have corrected me without it” (E 363). This could be another reason why Frankenstein does not appear to have learned as much; his self-isolation denied the possibility of outside correction, and ironically leads to a life of isolation.
In conclusion, what Shelley and Austen are ultimately saying about protagonists is that they are far from perfect, and need to be corrected. The bildungsroman must present a character with major personal flaws that they do not recognize. Emma Woodhouse and Victor Frankenstein fit these criteria perfectly because of their self-importance and imaginative desire for personal glory. Both writers employ a narrative structure that allows the reader to view the plot from multiple perspectives, and notice the ways in which the protagonists are committing serious blunders out of vanity and boredom. All of this ultimately feeds into the irony at play in both novels; the authors put their characters’ happiness at risk at a pivotal moment, and they must acknowledge that they were the cause of their own misfortunes in order to gain self-awareness. Both an “examination of conscience,” as Murray puts it, and an other-integration are vital for self-growth, and only Emma learns how to do both (164). Shelley and Austen maintain in their characterizations of Emma and Victor that major character flaws are necessary in a protagonist, and that it is the writer’s task to wound these flaws and raise others’ importance. It is this kind of internal education that makes a bildungsroman compelling.
Notes
[1] Their creative choices can also be compared on a deeper level. Emma and Victor both choose based on physical attractiveness; Emma first notices Harriet’s beauty, and Frankenstein admits of his creature that he “had selected his features as beautiful” (E 19; F 58). Their focus on physical beauty reflects their vanity in a new way.
[2] To be fair, Emma and Frankenstein do both have good intentions and desire to be helpful to others. Victor describes his “bright visions of extensive usefulness,” and Emma likewise reflects on wanting to be “useful” to Harriet (F 40, E 21). Unfortunately, the desire for usefulness is not enough to temper their overconfidence, which they must later reckon with.
[3] As James Murray points out on 164, Emma does in fact know “the limitations of her own powers too well to attempt more than she [can] perform with credit” (E 178). However, this instance of recognition refers to her piano-playing skills, a triviality of talent. When it comes to her major character flaws and limitations, Emma, and nearly everyone else except for Mr. Knightley, is in the dark. This ironic circumstance becomes important later in understanding how Austen teaches Emma about herself.
[4] See Oberman 11-12.
[5] The point need not be stressed that without their vanity and egotism, Emma and Victor Frankenstein would arguably have little to learn, and it is these very qualities that drive the novels’ plots.
[6] Murray notes that because Emma is a comedy, order is re-established by the end (162). This is not necessarily true with Mary Shelley’s work, because both Victor and the creature die, in addition to all those who have already sadly perished. Mary Shelley employs dramatic irony, which results in tragedy, unlike traditional irony (“Dramatic”; “Irony”).
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. James Kinsley and Adela Pinch. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.
"Dramatic, adj. and n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, Sept. 2014. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
"Irony, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, Sept. 2014. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
Keyishian, Harry. "Vindictiveness and the Search for Glory in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." The American Journal of Psychoanalysis 49.3 (1989): 201-10. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.
Morgan, Susan. "Emma and the Charms of Imagination." In the Meantime: Character and Perception in Jane Austen's Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1980. 23-50. Print.
Murray, James Gregory. "Measure and Balance in Jane Austen's Emma." College English 16.3 (1954): 160-66. JSTOR. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.
Oberman, Rachel Provenzano. "Fused Voices: Narrated Monologue in Jane Austen's Emma." Nineteenth-Century Literature 64.1 (2009): 1-15. JSTOR. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Maurice Hindle. London: Penguin, 1992. Print.
Steiner, Enit Karafili. “Emma: The Art of Quarrelling.” Jane Austen's Civilized Women: Morality, Gender And The Civilizing Process. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 20 Nov. 2014.
To begin a discussion of how Emma and Frankenstein undergo comparable inner educations, it is necessary to bring together these two seemingly disparate characters. Upon simply a superficial comparison, Emma and Victor both come from prosperous families and experienced happy, untroubled childhoods. The first sentence of Austen’s work confirms this, for Emma is “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition…and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her” (E 5). Victor’s childhood mirrors hers, and he dictates to Robert Walton, “No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence” (F 39). Furthermore, as suggested by this last quotation, both protagonists had loving, indulgent parents. Emma feels “beloved and important...always first and always right” in her father’s eyes (E 68). Living in worlds of familial harmony and contentment and being doted on by affectionate parents, Emma and Victor faced few problems in their youth and developed active and intelligent minds. Even though they are grateful for this good fortune, nevertheless their childhoods ultimately result in boredom and vanity as young adults, leading them to undertake ambitious ventures.
Emma and Victor are imaginative, ambitious creators with a desire and skill for manipulation—Victor in his scientific endeavors and Emma in her social ones. This creative impulse is born out of boredom with their employments and self-idealization. Emma fears “intellectual solitude” after Miss Taylor marries Mr. Weston and she is left with neither suitable companions for conversation nor an occupation to pass the time with (E 6). She reflects on her “success" in matching the pair, which, feeding on her vanity, induces her to resolve to continue matchmaking with Mr. Elton and Harriet (E 10-11). As Susan Morgan puts it, “Emma’s fancies, her manipulations, her imagination, are all those of a creator…Emma creates from love of power and love of self” (28). Her egotistic tendencies are made clear when Austen describes her “disposition to think a little too well of herself” immediately in the novel (E 5). This seems to present an obstacle for Emma to change at all, for as Knightley points out, “How can Emma imagine she has any thing to learn herself, while Harriet is presenting such a delightful inferiority?” (E 31). Notwithstanding this apparent hindrance, Austen will eventually use Emma’s vanity as the means of correcting it.
For Frankenstein’s part, he expresses his boredom as leading to his scientific pursuits when he describes his “thirst for knowledge” and the night when he lazily picked up a natural philosophy book with “apathy,” only to become immediately enthralled (F 40-42). His vanity surfaces in the same manner as Emma’s; he is flattered by his own successes and that drives him to take his experiments even further (F 54). Clearly, conceit and boredom impel the protagonists to ambition beyond the scope of their powers, as the reader later realizes. As for their creations themselves, Victor’s is the literal formation of the creature, while Emma makes matches in Highbury.[1] Harriet Smith is Emma’s primary “creation,” as she ascribes to her a genteel parentage and designs for her to marry into a higher social milieu. Austen gives us Emma’s thoughts toward Harriet, which once again demonstrate her belief in her own superiority: “[S]he would improve her…she would form her opinions and her manners…” (E 19). Thus, Emma and Victor are spurred on by their imaginations and visions of future success. The like elements of vanity and boredom found in both characters is coupled with extreme overconfidence and desire for glory;[2] all of these things together play into the irony which both authors use to bring their protagonists to a state of self-awareness.
Shelley and Austen cast both of their characters’ creative pursuits in the light of striving to achieve personal glory. Because of their self-importance, they are ready to reap the benefits of success in the form of a boost to their reputation and self-esteem. For example, Emma revels in the fact that she has been “proved in the right, when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry again” (E 10). With Harriet and Mr. Elton, she anticipates self-satisfaction and the praise of others for having made a good match once again. In the other novel, Frankenstein declares: “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me” (F 55). Clearly, the sense of being praised and revered by others is echoed in Victor’s inner desires, and he even speaks of glory as more attractive than any wealth he would obtain through his discoveries (F 42). In Harry Keyishian’s work “Vindictiveness and the Search for Glory in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” he notes that often this kind of imaginative, relentless quest can suppress our understanding of our own limitations (203). On that ground, Emma’s and Frankenstein’s self-assurance, which boosts their desire for glory, also gives them a reckless misunderstanding of their limits. In other words, they lack self-awareness because they are overconfident to the point of not recognizing their limitations.[3] Victor remarks, “my imagination was too much exalted to permit me to doubt of my ability” (F 54). Similarly Emma “[cannot] feel a doubt” and is “confident” and “convinced” that Mr. Elton loves Harriet, completely missing all hints at his otherwise-inclined affections. Both protagonists ultimately illustrate “a mind delighted with its own ideas,” which is dangerous for Shelley and Austen, because it means self-importance, self-delusion, and an inability to truly understand others (E 20).
Moving on from these preliminary comparisons, a discussion of one major difference between the novels aids in understanding how Shelley and Austen educate their characters separately into self-awareness, and how the reader is to regard that self-awareness. First, the narrative structure of the novels is very different. Frankenstein makes use of first-person narration coming from three different sources: Walton, Frankenstein, and the creature. This unique and fragmented approach to first person allows us to see from multiple perspectives, yet we still feel the full force of each character’s individual emotions and thoughts. This is especially helpful in understanding Frankenstein, as his perspective constitutes the majority of the text. From this we can discern that Victor has gained at least some self-awareness by the end of the story, because he confesses it all to Walton in an attempt to curtail his ambition and thirst for glory. Furthermore, Frankenstein reproaches his own conduct throughout the entire narrative. To give an example, Frankenstein instructs Walton by scolding himself, “Learn from me…how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” (F 54). This illustrates that Victor is capable of introspection and now recognizes the limits of his nature as well as the pitfalls of his former aspirations.
By contrast, in Emma, Austen utilizes free indirect discourse in the third person. The narrative voice is separate from the characters, yet at times enters into their consciousnesses as Rachel Oberman discusses (9). In this way, the narrator and reader are able to distance themselves from the characters’ emotions and perceptions, and understand truths that they cannot. They are also able to form objective judgments on the characters, because their flaws are revealed through light mockery in the narration. For example, when Emma reflects on the Cole’s party, she thinks, “The Coles were very respectable in their way, but they ought to be taught that it was not for them to arrange the terms on which the superior families would visit them” (E 163). Here the reader sees and chides Emma’s haughtiness and snobbery. In each novel, then, the narration shifts perspectives; the difference is that in Frankenstein this is subjective, while in Emma it is objective. In both cases, we recognize that the protagonist has achieved self-awareness by the end of the novel. For Emma, this is displayed in the huge differences in her thoughts and words at the beginning versus the end of the story. At the start, her self-importance makes her dismissive of others, as in this example with Mr. Knightley: “It was most convenient to Emma not to make a direct reply to this assertion; she chose rather to take up her own line of the subject again” (E 50). At the end, conversely, she overrides her own wishes in order to care for him, resolving that “cost her what it would, she would listen” (E 337). Oberman points out that the use of free indirect discourse is not accidental, and that Austen uses it to emphasize the way in which Emma’s education comes about. She writes, “…there is a connection between the ability to recognize and incorporate other people’s words into one’s thoughts and the level of moral development reached” (12). This is clear from the evidence just given, as well as Oberman’s examples of where Emma integrates the other characters’ opinions into her own thoughts.[4] Undoubtedly, an other-consciousness, or an awareness of the feelings and a valuation of other people, is a crucial component of individual moral growth and self-awareness.
Even though both Emma and Frankenstein use a narration style that merges perspectives, it remains unclear whether Shelley’s protagonist has effectively incorporated any of them into his own. At the end, Victor still exhorts Walton to finish his quest and kill the monster for him, despite the danger involved. Yet, as previously determined, his self-awareness is evident from his reflections. If an awareness of the concerns of others is so central to Emma’s growth, how is the apparent lack thereof to be accounted for with Frankenstein? I argue that there is another important element to the education in a bildungsroman: self-interest.[5] If they do not share an integrated understanding of others by the story’s resolution, Victor and Emma do share the experienced of a major threat to their interests and their happiness. This major event is the vehicle that the authors use to instruct their protagonists in self-awareness, and irony is the fuel. For Frankenstein, the threat is plainly the creature, who murders almost everyone he cares about. He certainly grieves his brother, Clerval, and Justine, but it is the sudden loss of Elizabeth that truly jeopardizes Victor’s future happiness. He reflects, “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change…A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness” (F 201). His hope of a happy marriage has been dashed, he imagines the creature’s further destruction of his family, and he immediately vows to destroy him at all costs (F 200, 206). Ironically, the creature had warned Frankenstein what would happen, but Frankenstein’s vanity got in the way, and he could only imagine that his life would be in peril on his wedding night, not his bride’s (F 195).
Emma’s threatening moment is Harriet’s confession of interest in Mr. Knightley and belief that he returns her affections. As soon as Emma realizes that she loves Mr. Knightley, and feels her future happiness menaced by her own creation, Emma is “shocked into self-knowledge” (Morgan 29). Austen writes, “Her own conduct, as well as her own heart, was before her in the same few minutes. She saw it all and with a clearness which had never blessed her before…how indelicate, how irrational, how unfeeling had been her conduct! What blindness, what madness, had led her on!” (E 320-21). Emma finally recognizes that her actions have produced her own unhappiness by her adoption of Harriet as a project, and like Victor, imagines a dreadfully bleak future (E 324-25). Both protagonists, then, feel the sting of irony applied by their authors, and are educated in their own misdeeds by it. They are given a larger perspective of the consequences of their actions; paradoxically, it is their self-interest and vanity that ultimately allows them to overcome that vanity and recognize their own faults. James Murray, writing on the need for and application of balance in Emma, writes, “…irony is measure and balance: it corrects and sets aright and restores order. It puts things and people in a proper perspective” (163). Evidently, irony is a corrective force in the novels;[6] it is also the primary tool of instruction for Austen and Shelley, which they apply through circumstances that wound their protagonists’ vanity. It is clear that this threatening use of irony is necessary for growth, because at early points in the novel before their interests are put in peril, both characters vow to stop their actions unsuccessfully. Victor swears off natural philosophy only to return to it again later, and Emma resolves to discontinue matchmaking, yet still works at it with herself and Frank Churchill, and then Harriet and Frank. An additional example of irony at work is the way that Emma’s and Victor’s creations ultimately take on a life of their own, asserting their own will outside of their creator’s. Thus, neither Harriet nor the creature turns out as their creators have expected or wanted. The authors’ narration styles also feed into the irony. In Frankenstein, the reader is made aware of the creature’s baiting of Victor through his narrations, which Victor never realizes. Emma is rife with many small instances of irony in addition to the pivotal ironic event that changes the main character. We understand these ironies through free indirect discourse, which points out to us when characters have blundered without knowing it.
Left to consider is the degree to which Shelley’s and Austen’s ironic educations of their protagonists are effective. As mentioned before, Frankenstein does not seem able to incorporate other characters’ interests well by the end of the novel, despite his good intentions and his newfound self-awareness. Emma, on the other hand, experiences a more complete change, because both elements of self-growth are present, namely a threat to her happiness and an awareness of others’ importance. Enit Steiner argues that Emma learns “self-criticism and self-monitored behaviour” (150). The narrative takes Emma from someone who “could not quarrel with herself” to someone who “ponder[s] the motives and ethical consequences of her actions” as in her reflections on Harriet’s admission (E 55; Steiner 150). Her ability to quarrel with herself has grown along with her incorporation of other’s consciousnesses. Emma’s vanity is also greatly reduced as she now recognizes it in herself and admits that others are superior to her, like Mr. Knightley (E 376). Thus, Emma’s education is made more complete because it includes both elements necessary to achieve self-awareness. Murray points out that Emma also had a corrective force in Mr. Knightley (164-65). Speaking of his advice, Emma says, “I doubt whether my own sense would have corrected me without it” (E 363). This could be another reason why Frankenstein does not appear to have learned as much; his self-isolation denied the possibility of outside correction, and ironically leads to a life of isolation.
In conclusion, what Shelley and Austen are ultimately saying about protagonists is that they are far from perfect, and need to be corrected. The bildungsroman must present a character with major personal flaws that they do not recognize. Emma Woodhouse and Victor Frankenstein fit these criteria perfectly because of their self-importance and imaginative desire for personal glory. Both writers employ a narrative structure that allows the reader to view the plot from multiple perspectives, and notice the ways in which the protagonists are committing serious blunders out of vanity and boredom. All of this ultimately feeds into the irony at play in both novels; the authors put their characters’ happiness at risk at a pivotal moment, and they must acknowledge that they were the cause of their own misfortunes in order to gain self-awareness. Both an “examination of conscience,” as Murray puts it, and an other-integration are vital for self-growth, and only Emma learns how to do both (164). Shelley and Austen maintain in their characterizations of Emma and Victor that major character flaws are necessary in a protagonist, and that it is the writer’s task to wound these flaws and raise others’ importance. It is this kind of internal education that makes a bildungsroman compelling.
Notes
[1] Their creative choices can also be compared on a deeper level. Emma and Victor both choose based on physical attractiveness; Emma first notices Harriet’s beauty, and Frankenstein admits of his creature that he “had selected his features as beautiful” (E 19; F 58). Their focus on physical beauty reflects their vanity in a new way.
[2] To be fair, Emma and Frankenstein do both have good intentions and desire to be helpful to others. Victor describes his “bright visions of extensive usefulness,” and Emma likewise reflects on wanting to be “useful” to Harriet (F 40, E 21). Unfortunately, the desire for usefulness is not enough to temper their overconfidence, which they must later reckon with.
[3] As James Murray points out on 164, Emma does in fact know “the limitations of her own powers too well to attempt more than she [can] perform with credit” (E 178). However, this instance of recognition refers to her piano-playing skills, a triviality of talent. When it comes to her major character flaws and limitations, Emma, and nearly everyone else except for Mr. Knightley, is in the dark. This ironic circumstance becomes important later in understanding how Austen teaches Emma about herself.
[4] See Oberman 11-12.
[5] The point need not be stressed that without their vanity and egotism, Emma and Victor Frankenstein would arguably have little to learn, and it is these very qualities that drive the novels’ plots.
[6] Murray notes that because Emma is a comedy, order is re-established by the end (162). This is not necessarily true with Mary Shelley’s work, because both Victor and the creature die, in addition to all those who have already sadly perished. Mary Shelley employs dramatic irony, which results in tragedy, unlike traditional irony (“Dramatic”; “Irony”).
Works Cited
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"Irony, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, Sept. 2014. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
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