The Moral and Political Economy of Property in Austen's Emma

The Moral and Political Economy of Property in Austen's Emma1Beth Fowkes Tobin This essay explores the ideological implications of landownership in Emma by focusing on Austen's depiction of Mr Knightley as an exemplary gentleman and landlord, and Emma as a less than exemplary member of the wealthy but landless gentry. I will argue that in linking Mr Knightley's gentlemanly virtues with his owning land, and Emma's moral inadequacies with her money and her lack of property, Austen, acting as an apologist for the landed classes, was defending the "paternal system of government"2 from attacks stimulated by the new discourse on political economy, attacks that challenged the hereditary right of the gentry and aristocracy to the exclusive monopoly of the land.3 1 Readers will recognize that I have borrowed and modified more than the title of E.P. Thompson's article "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present 50 (1974), 76-136. 1 wish to acknowledge with gratitude the Newberry Library's support of my work and assistance with my research, and to thank my colleague Craig Howes for his suggestion that I take a closer look at Mr Knightley's relationship with Will Larkins. 2 John Stuart Mill, Principles ofPolitical Economy. Books IV and V, (New York: Penguin, 1985), p. 121. References are to this edition. 3 Since Alistair Duckworth's discussion of Austen in terms of Edmund Burke and Marilyn Butler's treatment of her novels as politically motivated fictions, there has been a growing movement to counteract the idea that Austen "does not involve herself in the events and issues of her time." See Duckworth, The Improvement of the Estate (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), and Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 294. Among those arguing for the presence of the political in Austen's novels are historians such as R.S. Neale, "Zapp Zapped: Property and Alienation in Mansfield Park" in Writing Marxist History: British Society, Economy, and Culture since 1700 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 2, Number 3, April 1990 230 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION On Being Knightley The words "gentleman" and "gentleman-like" recur in Emma as several characters define what it means to be a gentleman. Emma tries to teach Harriet Smith to appreciate the difference between Mr Knightley's gentlemanlike air and Robert Martin's plainer ways; Mrs Elton, assessing her husband's friend, "Knightley," proclaims him "quite the gentleman ... a very gentleman-like man";4 and Mr Knightley fiercely defends Robert Martin's virtues as a "gentleman-farmer" (p. 56), while he declares Frank Churchill not to be a gentleman for shirking his duty (p. 132). Of all the characters it is Emma who is the most concerned with what it means to be a gentleman. When Emma notices that Mr Knightley has come to the Coles' dinner party in his carriage, she is very pleased, for she disapproves of his getting "about as he could" and his not using "his carriage so often as became the owner of Donwell Abbey" (p. 191). Speaking her approbation "warm from her heart," she says to him, "This is coming as you should ... like a gentleman" (p. 191). Too concerned with appearances, Emma misreads Mr Knightley's motives. While she thinks he is displaying his rank as a gentleman, he is really using his carriage to perform a gentlemanly deed of consideration and courtesy: 1985); David A. Spring, "Interpreters of Jane Austen's Social World" in Jane Austen: New Perspectives, ed. Jane Todd (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1983); and Warren Roberts, Jane Austen and the French Revolution (New York: St Martin's Press, 1979); sociologist Terry Lovell, "Jane Austen and Gentry Society" in Literature, Society, and the Sociology of Literature, ed. Francis Barker (Colchester: University of Essex Press, 1976); and feminists such as Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History ofthe Novel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Mary Evans, Jane Austen and the State (London: Tavistock, 1987); Judith Newton, Women, Power, and Subversion: Social Strategies in British Fiction, 17701860 (New York: Methuen, 1985); and Lillian Robinson, "Why Marry Mr...