#Emma-May Dixon design

[paintedcrows]

Assorted Gravity Falls doodles!

[scurvyboy]

MORE RELATIVITY FALLS PLEASE 🙏

*robbiefies your emma may*

because like what if she was in the au and also 2012 emo

[non-plutonian-druid]

[ID: Four drawings from darklordofawesomeness' cat Stan series.

The first is a compilation of cat Stan and Wendy; Wendy petting cat Stan, cat Stan sitting on her shoulders, Wendy hugging cat Stan while she cries; toddler Wendy hugging cat Stan to her chest. There is also one human Stan, hugging a despondent Wendy.

The second is a series of drawings of Fiddleford, Ford, and Stan, all cats, curled up together. Stan and Ford are both nearly identical, with dark fur and white markings, although Ford obviously has extra toes. Fiddleford is a tabby.

The third is from the same chapter; Emma May with Fiddleford in one hand and Ford in the other. She's holding Ford to her face and says "Stanford Pines..."; young Tate holding Fiddleford to his chest and squeezing too hard while Fiddleford looks distressed; cat Stan licking cat Ford's head while Ford looks uncomfortable.

The fourth drawing is of Emma May, leaning back and cackling. She is a fat light skinned woman with Tate's nose and dark hair, which covers her eyes. She is wearing a lab coat, and rubber gloves and boots. Her hair is pinned up with a pencil. End ID.]

More cat stans (and some cat fordses), still from @dark-lord-of-awesomeness's cat stan series, this time from Cat Stan Extras. From the wendy chapter, and from the chapter where ford turns himself and fiddleford into cats too. also featuring a design for Emma-May, when i realized that i would need a design for Emma-May

[kuj0goth]

HES SO FREAKING BRIGHT MY EYES ARE BURNING

[emmabirb8]

My first official venture into a super rare pair, EmmaStan, aka Emma-May Dixon and Stanley Pines!! @cosmo-shell and @slug-ball opened my eyes to the concept of these two, and WHOA the potential really stole my heart. It's absolutely not what they're serving out front, lmao, but the ship has bewitched me body and soul nonetheless. I just fell in love with the idea of these two tortured souls finding comfort in each other during the most difficult periods of their lives. They've been through HELL and deserve nice things. 😊💖 (And Emma-May in particular deserves WAY more love and attention in this fandom!)

My personal interpretation of Emma-May was mainly inspired by this piece by @birdskullz and this piece by @cosmo-shell.

Check out my AU fic for them here if you want! I haven't attempted a multi-chaptered fic in a VERY long time, lol, so hopefully this one will pan out well. First two chapters are up, but I've got more drafted out that will be posted very soon!

Writing out some key HCs about Emma-May and a rough timeline of events I constructed for my AU fic under the cut here:

Emma-May's family moved from Kansas to Tennessee when she was less than a year old, so she was raised in TN

Her mother is black while her father is white, and she has two older sisters

She became friends with Fiddleford and his siblings sometime during childhood

She attended college in New Jersey (went to a school I made up called “Gertrude University,” sort of a ref to the real university of Rutgers), majoring in botany, while Fidds ofc went to Backupsmore somewhere in the midwest 

Met Stan by chance once as a college student about a year after he was kicked out of his house and was still struggling with treasure hunting (probably around 1970 or 1971)

Married Fidds anywhere from 1973-1975 when they were in their 20s – felt pressured from family and society to get married, but they were best friends and did love each other (but the marriage was covertly strained from the beginning bc neither could get what they truly needed from each other – best friends don't necessarily work as a married couple even if some level of attraction is there along with the love)

Had Tate in the early-mid 70s, both love him to pieces and Fidds was a very devoted father up until he started unraveling 

Fidds left his family around the very late 70s to early 80s to work with Ford

Fidds abandoned the portal project in the early 80s, at that point already having started his descent into madness due to his reliance on the memory gun

Emma-May filed for divorce after becoming fed up with his bizarre behavior, lack of calls home, and a big fight they had around Christmas of the early 80s

The “homicidal pterodactyl-tron” attack happened during springtime after that Christmas, and this solidified Emma-May's decision to take Tate someplace safe (to stay with her aunt who lives in another state) while she set off to Gravity Falls herself to try to track Fiddleford down and figure out wtf happened to make him so different and dangerous 

At some point either right before or after the pterodactyl attack, Fidds created the Society of the Blind Eye and subsequently lost what remained of his mind and memories

Emma-May bumped into Stan, once again by chance, the night before he arrived in Gravity Falls upon Ford's request

[shootingc0rpse]

PYRAMID STEVE ‼️‼️

[idlechili]

last of the doodles from todays dump

[martwy-basen]

"we didn't even get emma-may's design" "we'll never know if tate's more like his dad or mom" OF COURSE NOT, FIDDLEFORD DOESN'T REMEMBER WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE

[newgfblogontheblock]

Eepy guys from a Gravity Falls Taz Balance au for an eepy guy <- me (also for practice but shhh-)

[manicpumpkindreamgirl]

What a happy family, sure hope they don't fall apart due to the actions of the father figure. Also, debuting my design for Emma May Dixon

[pixeltwix]

⚠️Emma May & Ciphertology⚠️

-Backpacking off of my theory from yesterday!! Very long text post incoming-

I’m of the mind where not only do I believe Emma May’s family was in a cult, but that they continued to practice its teachings after being disbanded. From here this is just my own personal ramblings as I have a very long and personal take on Emma May and Fiddleford’s lives and history as a whole and separately. Today will be dedicated to Em’s side (ft her families designs as well :3 )

Emma May’s father, Dale Dixon, is the older brother of Madeline Dixon- the teenage girl who was one of the first to be swayed by this Silas Birchtree. It’s implied she fell for him in place of her boyfriend at the time, but I choose to believe this was a lingering affection she’d keep for life in her worship.

Being a young man at the birth, peak, and end of Ciphertology already with a wife and children, Dale was too closely wooed by the teachings of Silas and the inter-dimensional being that was Bill Cipher. He was a bit of a cult kiss ass, if you will. He’d be the first to do whatever Silas would suggest or order of the cults people and the man was happy to do it. Be it shaving his head and painting on an eye or attempting to build the portal he had zero qualifications for alongside everyone else.

Naturally after the cult was disbanded and everyone was put into witness protection, while Dale accepted the state relocation for his family (to Virginia) he refused any government aid beyond that. Instead dragging his young family and sister into the woods where he constructed a shabby little home for them. A home where no one would contradict his word and he could continue the teachings of Ciphertology.

Emma May was born only a few short years later. And while her father had already named one of her older brothers as a namesake to his idol, Silas, her mother named her in turn for her secret idol, Emmaline Butternubbins. She knew Dale would never accept the original name, so she did what she could to compromise- it was a cope of sorts. Thelma Lou, Em’s mother, unfortunately has no say in her husbands madness and is slowly being broken down to the cult. While she had some resistance when Em was born it wouldn’t last too terribly long as soon every adult figure in the family believed in Ciphertology.

Growing up in the middle of nowhere Appalachia’s, Emma May didn’t have much outside influence other than the mini cult community her father had created over the years within neighboring people. She knew no different than the madness and basic cult ideas of ‘have as many kids and wives as you want just so we can create more followers’ sort of mindset. The only hiccup was that Emma May was never dumb, she wasn’t so easily swayed by the triangles teachings, she always internally questioned everything- no matter what adult was telling her things she always was left with a feeling of ‘is that really true though?’

She kept such thoughts to herself, assuming she wouldn’t have to actually do anything notable within the cult, she was shocked and horrified when at the age of 15 her father was bringing her before an older man to marry. An older man who already had a handful of wives. She knew even if she was older she wouldn’t want this life, seeing upfront her mothers decay in the cult and the mass of siblings that she had..she didn’t want that. She wanted an education, basic rights, and just? Freedom from this. She didn’t know if the outside world would be different, but at that point she didn’t much care. She wanted out and she needed out fast.

Running away from home before the official marriage ceremony she remains on the run until she makes it to Fredericksburg, VA. A bustling friendly town that otherwise left her feeling like she was in an alien world. She looked straight out of the early 1900s in a wave of hip and groovy late 1960’s styles. While she couldn’t read anymore than simple words she skimmed through the phone book of a nearby cafe, and while unable to find any Dixon outside of her indoctrinated family she found hope in searching for names under her mothers maiden name, ‘Finch’. 

Discovering a man in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey, by the name of Benjamin Finch she manages to find her mothers estranged brother. A man her mother was forced to shun and block out the second he expressed concern over her involvement in a cult. Thankfully upon learning who she was he was more than happy to shelter her, albeit he only lived in a trailer as he practically lived in the museum he worked at. Making her way up the East coast, Emma May finds herself in Jersey, her uncle slowly acclimating her to modern life. Teaching her how to read, to write, and most importantly teaching her the reality of the world. Luckily he wasn’t a religious man of any sorts and rooted her in modern thoughts of science, feminism, and other new age ideas of the time.

Once he felt she was ready he let her attend Glass Shard High, getting the education she always wanted despite struggling to understand the basics. This didn’t get her down though as she was determined to graduate someday. Instead she tracks down local nerd and idea enthusiast, Stanford Pines, someone she hardly finds to be ‘a freak’ considering her cultish upbringing was beyond bizarre (plus she learned from an early age to find beauty in the ‘odd’ or ‘weird’) Befriending a young Ford and learning from him she also befriends Stan, someone who was more than willing to help her break out of her docile and dainty shell. Stan’s girlfriend at the time, Carla McCorkle was equally happy to teach her the modern idea of feminine rather than beaten to death old book concepts. Living in Jersey, in short, was slowly thawing her from the confines of her upbringing- developing into the life she always wanted and frankly? She was thriving!

She was also gaining her own beliefs in this time. Such as ‘marriage is stupid’ and ‘having kids is stupid, I’m never going to have them’ sort of mindset. Thanks to her upbringing she swore then and there that she would never have a family of her own. So, that’s what makes her next phase of life particularly ironic.

After the science project incident in senior year between the Pines brothers the friend circle would face a brutal falling out, the only one keeping in touch with everyone being Emma May herself. Stan is kicked out and the brothers aren’t talking, Carla breaks up with Stan and refuses any more connection to the Pines, and Em is left in limbo to comfort and appease everyone whilst ignoring her own feelings about it all. Between the late night girl talks with Carla, keeping Ford off the edge, and letting Stan stay with her in the trailer it was only a matter of time before her juggling attempts would fall.

And that’s exactly what happened- after Ford discovers she’s been harboring Stan he can’t help the rush of anger, insecurity, and betrayal that someone he considered his only friend left to hide that from him. Also afraid of losing a friend who’s done so much for her in her cult unlearning she’s quick to prove her loyalty. Packing her bags after graduation she joins Ford to Backupsmore to continue supporting him, taking up a diner job beside campus and shacking up in a cheap apartment. She continues secretly offering Stan money when she can as she still feels guilt for her decision, but it becomes less frequent as she’s now supporting herself financially on her own.

But of course her sole company of Ford wouldn’t last forever. Especially when all she tends to hear from him is how cool his roommate is and how’s he’s thrilled to be around another intellectual mind for once. And while he was hesitant to introduce his two friends to one another it was quick history after that-

Em absolutely deals with a lot of survivors guilt and general fear (lots of ‘I can’t believe I left my younger siblings behind, what if thEY were forced to marry that man in my place?!’ and ‘what if the cult tracks me down and forces me back home?!’) and on top of that I already feel she’s got some religious based ptsd and some bpd in there as well, but I think that would make her more endeared to Fiddleford when they first meet. A man who was pretty open about his own anxiety and ocd (idk if that’s a popular hc, but him having ocd makes so much sense to me) definitely helped her understand herself better and the two of them absolutely developed ways to help one another with it. They become each other’s safe spaces essentially <3

I feel like all of this is something I could talk about for hOURS, but I feel I’ve already typed up enough for today. So take this all as you will :) it’s just been super fun rewriting the story I had for her. I always envisioned her to be a teen runaway and living with her estranged uncle in Jersey, but now it makes even more sense plugging in my cult theory. But anywho, I hope this was an enjoyable for y’all to read as it was for me to type

[gfthe-fearsome-foursome]

Have Stan, Ford and Fidds have news about Carla McCorkle, Cathy Crenshaw and Emma-May Dixon?

"Carla? I used to have a thing for her, but never got the guts to say. As far as I'm concerned, she's seein' somebody else now."

"It's alright though, I'm pretty sure I'll meet somebody else eventually."

ooc: On a side note, Carla and Stan are amiable accquaintances at least, they're not on any bad terms. Stan's just a bit downtrodden when he's reminded that he lost his shot but he's getting over it and he already has somebody else in mind.

"Uh... Cathy? I do know her, she's the block rep. We don't get along. Not the faintest idea why."

"We've barely even interacted, let alone talked. It's already getting annoying how she just goes out of her way to antagonize me. We're supposed to be adults."

ooc: Okay, so... gen z is generally a more forgiving or accepting generation(take this with a grain of salt). So Ford isn't often messed with for having odd hands, au contraire most people think it's cool. HOWEVER, this man is painfully oblivious to many social cues and Cathy doesn't have the complete context either. In this AU because Ford is generally seen as an academic giant and a loner, many people think he's intimidating and intense- but that doesn't stop some from liking that sense of "mystery" and he looks well kept. Ford is also pretty old school so sliding into his DMs doesn't often work because he'd sooner be addicted to a book than his phone like most of us. Given that, Cathy figured why not leave an unlabeled letter on his desk about her interest in him. Any sane person would open that letter right? Ford threw it out. Without reading it. He thought it was a chain letter or some bully threat because the envelope wasn't marked at all and couldn't even be traced. The only idea that it was for him was because it was at his assigned desk. Eventually, Cathy heard from a classmate was that Ford simply threw out the letter, and the man in question is still clueless about what the heck that letter even was because he didn't care to read it! Cathy isn't in the wrong for being mad, and honestly Ford's aloofness could be mistaken for haughty arrogance. Even if he doesn't mean it. Either way, they're at odds. I got the design for Cathy from a comic by @stephreynaart!

"Oh! Emma-May! She's a gal! We'd been friends for a while so color me surprised when I met up with her again here!"

"She's got a girlfriend last I heard, but her family's painfully conservative; so I had to act like her boyfriend a couple of times in front of her parents. Just tryin' to help her out when I can."

ooc: Emma-May is gay in this AU, chat come and fight me if you don't like it, but yeah! Fidds is bi and Emma-May is his gay best friend. Both of them grew up in the same neighborhood together and are from old money. Neither have come out to their parents because of the high risk that they would either be murdered, disowned, or scolded into retracting their statements. It's pretty wild.

[bynickmunguia]

Hey do you wanna look at the Emma-May Dixon I designed?

[nulli-cat]

Drew @pixeltwix ‘s Emma may dixon design

[ambafaerie]

Thinking about Human AU Pyramid Steve and Emma May

• Pyramid Steve is a human who moves to the same Southern town Emma May and her family lives in. Despite the ostracization at school for being the new rich kid with a defective right eye (a genetic traithe shares with his cousin Bill) and prosthetic arms, Steve keeps an upbeat attitude. It helps that Emma May is the only kid who approaches him without hesitation to befriend him and chases off the bullies.

• Emma May and her family are kind of outcasts too. They are related to the same Dixons who joined Silas Birchtree’s cult (nothing supernatural here just another business cult venture from the Ciphers with Birchtree as their scapegoat), so even though they are good mannered devoted Christians, a lot of townsfolk gossip behind their backs.

• Emma May is an honest sweet gal who won’t let anyone shove her and she may be practical but she has dreams of making it out of their close minded town. She and Steve spend a lot of time together, collecting bugs and flowers, watching tv shows, reading up on New Age feminist and scientific books they keep a secret from their families who would otherwise ban them from reading such “subversive” materials.

• They grow up and attend Backupsmore University together even though Steve could have afforded a much more prestigious college because he wanted to stay close with his best friend. Emma May gets a bachelor degree in elementary/secondary education and environmental science, desiring to become a schoolteacher who can provide children a great open minded education that will attend to their needs. While Steve majored in psychology and law because it’s family tradition and minored in fashion, designing outfits for Emma May.

• It is here they meet Ford and Fiddleford. The McGuckets and Dixons knew each other as fellow churchgoers but Emma May and Fiddleford never really met until college and hit it off. Steve thought Fiddleford’s t - shirts were lame but he did try to convince the guy to join his psychology club which Fiddleford declined. Ford thought Emma May was nice but found Steve to be kind of weird like the way he talks up people subconsciously reminds him of a twin brother he doesn’t want to think about.

• After graduation, Emma May and Steve tried to keep in contact but their lives were going in different directions. She got married (even though the marriage is beginning to show cracks), had a kid and a teaching job, settling down in Palo Alto, California while he was traveling all over the country as a freelance lawyer and salesman. But then Fiddleford got the call and leaves his family to help Ford with the portal in Gravity Falls, certain cult/memory gun stuff happens that culminate in the Christmas fight and Fiddleford leaving again to be with Ford.

• Emma May is in emotional turmoil and phone calls Steve for help. He drops everything he is doing to travel to Palo Alto and console his best friend, offering to help her manage financial matters and even reach out to Fiddleford to facilitate a reconcilation. He may have been critical of the guy and his relationship with Emma May, but he doesn’t want his best friend to remain sad.

• However, Emma May is done with Fiddleford’s neglect and decides to serve up divorce papers with Steve’s help. He even protects her from the robot pterodactyl a not too mentally stable Fiddleford unleashed in retaliation.

• So after that, Steve decides to stay in Palo Alto for a while to help Emma May get back on her feet, advising her on business finances and babysitting Tate while she works as a schoolteacher. The two fall into a routine, reconnecting and growing closer again. Soon days turn to weeks and then to months and finally years.

• Romantic feelings blossoms between Steve and Emma May that they choose not to vocalize for fear of making their relationship awkward even though they have lived together for so long they are practically a married couple. Tate does ask them point blank if they like like each other, which they nervously deny, but after he grows up and moves out of the house, they realize they got a lot of conversations about their relationship to talk about.

• They confess their feelings and decide to officially upgrade their relationship to the next level, enjoying the time they spend together like they always do.

[synchronousemma]

15th January: Emma and Harriet call on Miss Bates

Read and comment on WordPress

Read: Vol. 2, ch. 1 [19]; pp. 98–104 (“Emma and Harriet had been walking together” through to “able to escape the letter itself.”)

Context

Emma visits Miss Bates in a bid to distract Harriet. She has an ingenious suspicion regarding Jane Fairfax and Mr. Dixon.

We know that this occurs the week of January 9th: Jane Fairfax is expected “next week” “Friday or Saturday” (vol. 2, ch. 1 [19], p. 101), which must be the 21st or 22nd, since it is just before it will have been “four weeks” since Mr. Elton’s departure (vol. 2, ch. 3 [21]; p. 113).

The practice of ‘crossing’ a letter involves filling a page with writing in one direction, then turning the page and adding another set of writing at a 90-degree angle to the first. (Some letters would be crossed twice, which involves adding a third set of writing at a 45-degree angle). This was done to reduce expenditures on paper and on postage; given that postage on letters sent through the postal system at this time was charged to the recipient, not the sender, of a letter, Jane’s crossing her letters may be read as consideration for the Bateses’ financial situation.

Note that the third section (“An Animating Suspicion”) contains spoilers.

Readings and Interpretations

On Structure

Many commenters point out that the sleepy and confined nature of life in Highbury in evidence in volume one opens up slightly with the arrivals that occur throughout volume two. Marcia Folsom, for example, writes that the “newcomers energize the novel, and they displace Emma from the center of her world” (2004, p. xxviii). Adena Rosmarin argues that we leave volume one overconfident in our ability as readers due to our supposedly clear-sighted view of Emma’s errors and penitence; however,

[a]s we leave Volume I the novel broadens and deepens. We need more information and less distraction to continue making sense of Emma’s world, but, not incidentally, we get precisely the reverse. Miss Bates, Jane Fairfax, Frank Churchill, and Mrs. Elton are introduced. The helpful narrator of Volume I appears less frequently and more enigmatically, intimating that more is known than is written […]. Thrown back on our own overconfident and desensitized resources, we are tempted to trust Emma. But because the Elton episode has left her not less unreliable but only more subtly so, the temptation is as dangerous as it is irresistible. Moreover, our very mode of making sense, the passive reading sufficient to the cloistered world of Volume I, becomes suddenly and unexpectedly outmoded, replaced by a hermeneutic dance of bewildering complexity.

[…] The end of Volume I, then, marks our hermeneutic nadir: hubris and complacency are at their height, our faith in the novel’s conventional design at its most naive. From here on the growing subtlety of Emma’s misreadings increasingly challenges and thus develops our reading competence, our misreadings and Emma’s becoming increasingly alike, both in kind and degree […]. This convergence is the novel’s major affective strategy. (p. 325)

The Third Rate of Highbury

This section opens with Emma paying a call to the Bateses in order to spare herself from hearing more of Mr. Elton. Emma’s ulterior motive for paying the call seems to cause her some compunction.1 Folsom writes that,

[i]n many places, Emma seems to be defending herself against the introjected voice of Mr. Knightley, plainly suggesting how deeply his presence and importance have entered her consciousness […]. At […] times, she is not quite able to forget his criticisms; it is he whom Emma sometimes mentally addresses in her self-examinations. [Quotes from “She had had many a hint” to “third rate of Highbury,” p. 99.] […] Emma’s unspoken thoughts capture her habit of listing arguments in groups of three or four items […], and her grasping at exaggerated diction to explain her decision to herself […]. Her “horror” reflects Emma’s almost visceral fear of contamination if she pays a call to the Bateses. (2016, pp. 46–7)2

Some critics assume that the “second and third rate” descriptor applies to rank and thus evidences Emma’s snobbery. U.C. Knoepflmacher, however, connects the phrase to a quality of mind, rather than to rank alone: “those ‘second rate and third rate’ minds of Highbury so contemptuously scorned by Emma for their unimaginativenes” (p. 641). And Paul Pickrel writes of this as one occasion on which Emma’s actions only “seem to be based on snobbery” (p. 300, emphasis mine): Emma’s

reason seems suspect; the women that she meets in the Bateses’ parlor are after all more or less the same women that she meets anywhere else that she goes. The reader suspects that the real objection to the Bateses’ society is Miss Bates’s fondness for singing the praises of her niece Jane Fairfax, when a truly superior society would be occupied with singing the praises of Emma Woodhouse; and this suspicion is borne out by Emma’s decision to call on the Bateses on a certain occasion because she thinks (mistakenly, as it turns out) that there is a less than usual chance that Jane Fairfax will be the topic of conversation that day. (ibid.)

Lloyd Brown points out that the disjointed syntax and repeated em dashes in Emma’s thinking here ironically mirror Miss Bates’s speech, which

similarity is satirically incongruous, for the narrow selfishness that has inspired Emma’s embarrassed self-defense is directly opposed to Miss Bates’s “universal good-will and contented temper” [vol. 1, ch. 3; p. 12]. Emma’s broken sentences express the shamefaced recognition—and simultaneous denial—of insensitivity towards Jane Fairfax. (pp. 130–1)

An Animating Suspicion

Emma and Harriet are given an unexpected indirect recounting of one of Jane Fairfax’s letters upon paying their visit. This meandering summarizing constitutes the first time that we have heard Miss Bates speak at length; we may begin to understand why Emma considers this kind of conversation “tiresome” (vol. 1, ch. 8; p. 37; or vol. 2, ch. 1 [19], p. 98), or test Emma’s claim that “[e]very letter from [Jane] is read forty times over” (which, similarly, “tires [her] to death”; vol. 1, ch. 10; p. 56). After hearing this monologue, Emma violates the (somewhat excessive) resolution with which she ended the first volume, to “supress[] imagination all the rest of her life” (vol. 1, ch. 18; p. 92), in suspecting Jane to be in love with her friend’s husband. Folsom points out that this incident evidences the speed and vigor of Emma’s mind:

In listening to Miss Bates’s undiscriminating and random summary of her niece’s letter […] Emma suddenly discerns something mysterious in Jane Fairfax’s decision to give her time to Highbury. [quotes from “At this moment, an ingenious and animating suspicion” to “‘come to you at such a time’”; vol. 2, ch. 1 [19]; p. 102].

The idea that leaps into Emma’s mind is a way to impose a meaningful narrative on Miss Bates’s fragmentary recounting of events at Weymouth […]. Emma’s thought is both “ingenious,” that is, clever as an interpretation, and “animating,” that is, exhilarating to Emma in her dislike of Jane Fairfax. The suspicion suddenly occurs to her as a way to explain Miss Fairfax’s otherwise incomprehensible decision to come to Surrey in January for three months for her “health.” The narrative Emma imaginesof an adulterous love that Mr. Dixon might have felt for Jane Fairfax while being engaged to her friend Miss Campbell—is entirely Emma’s fantasy, but her sense that there must be a secret reason for Jane’s willingness to be entrapped in the small Bates household is right. […] In such moments, Austen seems to have an image of Emma’s mind—a brain—into which ideas and insights shoot suddenly, perhaps from layers of mind not accessible to conscious thought. (2016, pp. 42–3)

That her suspicion is “animating” is also relevant to Emma’s stultifying situation: as Tony Tanner writes, “what on earth—or, rather, what in Hartfield and Highbury —is going to ‘animate’ Emma, with her constantly brimming high spirits, if not the scenarios, indeed the fantasies, of her own brain?” (p. 188). Mary Hong, however, argues that it is the syntax of Miss Bates’s speech, and not Emma’s mind alone, that gives rise to Emma’s interpretation: “In narrating her niece’s letter […], Miss Bates’s broken syntax links the name of Jane to that of Mr. Dixon while Mrs. Dixon’s name drops out altogether” (p. 243). Among other examples, she notes that,

[b]ook-ended by Jane’s name, the sentence “it was very natural, you know, that he should like to speak of his own place while he was paying his addresses” seems to refer to Jane rather than to the future Mrs. Dixon. The insistent juxtaposition on the level of syntax suggests, to the reader’s and Emma’s ear, an intimacy between Jane and Mr. Dixon that goes beyond their relationship as the close friend and the husband, respectively, of Mrs. Dixon.

[…] [T]he use of (broken) syntax actually conveys a meaning (or encourages a reading) at odds with the intention of the speaker. As a representation of Jane’s letter, it is also at odds with the real intent of the writer. Hence, Emma’s relief that “though she had in fact heard the whole substance of Jane Fairfax’s letter, she had been able to escape the letter itself” is ironic, for had Emma read the actual letter offered by Miss Bates instead of rushing away, she would not have been misled by Miss Bates’s peculiar syntactical paraphrase of it. […] Emma’s imaginative stories, instead of reshaping the world before it, actually result from her immersion in the world (at least in Miss Bates’s version of reality). In contrast to the collapse of subjectivity with the free indirect discourse given in accounts of the novel, the generative capacity of Miss Bates’s superficial description suggests that interiority and narration are not inseparable. (p. 244)

Miss Bates’s speech, then—often ignored by characters and critics like—has significance both at the level of plot and character (Emma is not coming up with fantasies out of whole cloth) and at the level of language and narration (the implications of a character’s language as revealed through free indirect discourse may not always be what they ‘mean’).

Footnotes

For Claudia Johnson, this is in itself evidence of Emma’s good qualities: “although Knightley thinks her ‘rather negligent’ in contributing to the ‘stock’ of Miss Bates’s ‘scanty comforts,’ Emma’s ‘own heart’ ranks visits there an obligation” (p. 128).

See also Morris: “[Emma’s] language suggests an almost visceral fear that contact with the socially unrecognised will contaminate the integrity of her sovereign self. […] To fall from privileged eminence is to lose perceptibility in the mass of undistinguished others” (p. 89).

Discussion Questions

Do you think Emma’s behavior towards the Bateses is really negligent? Why does she dread visiting there as much as she does? Is the “second and third rate of Highbury” a description of rank, a description of a quality of mind that Emma dislikes, or a cover for other sentiments entirely?

What inspires Emma to suspect Jane Fairfax of an illicit affair with her friend’s husband?

What does Miss Bates’s monologue signify for her as a character, or for the narrative strategy of the novel?

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. Emma (Norton Critical Edition). 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, [1815] 2000.

Brown, Lloyd W. Bits of Ivory: Narrative Techniques in Austen’s Fiction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press (1973).

Folsom, Marcia McClintock, ed. Approaches to Teaching Austen’s Emma. New York: MLA (2004).

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