“Self-Deceived, I Did Deceive You”: Confabulation in Emma

Almost all of Jane Austen’s novels are about the journey of the protagonist to self-knowledge. But, among these novels, says Emily Rohrbach, “Emma is the novel of self-deception” (737), showing the most persistent and unconscious self-delusion. Self-deception, differing from the lack of self-knowledge, is displayed by Emma throughout the first half of the novel in her attitudes towards herself and virtually all the other characters surrounding her. Modern research into the phenomenon of self-deception demonstrates both how accurately Austen observes and limns the failings of human nature in Emma and how she manipulates them to support the conventions of storytelling.

A philosophical study by Jordi Fernandez argues that there are two types of self-deception: intentionalism and motivationalism. In the first type, intentionalism, subjects purposely forms a belief that they take to be false. In other words, they knowingly deceive themselves, a process requiring that one hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time (384). This situation appears to be logically impossible, but as we all know, human beings are not logical creatures. In a letter to his brothers, the poet John Keats advocated the capability of holding opposing or undecided views at the same time, “without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” He called this faculty “negative capability,” attributing it to Shakespeare and holding that it was desirable for all great poets (Keats). Emma Woodhouse might or might not have possessed the makings of such a poet, but she seems instead to display the second type of self-deception, motivationalism.

In motivationalism, says Fernandez, subjects form a false belief due to motivation or desire (385). Subjects have a strong desire for things to be a certain way; for example, Emma strongly desires for Mr. Elton to be in love with Harriet Smith so that she herself can display her matchmaking prowess. And thus, given this desire, the subject, Emma, treats evidence in a biased way, paying selective attention to evidence, using selective means of gathering evidence, and misinterpreting that evidence by ignoring contrary information. In this type of self-deception, the desire to believe that things are a certain way leads to biased assessment of information, thus causing the belief. For example, when Emma paints Harriet’s portrait, Mr. Elton lingers nearby, offering copious compliments on the effort and putting himself to considerable trouble to take the painting to London for framing. Based on her desire, Emma interprets this behavior as love for Harriet, the subject of the painting, ignoring the fact that Mr. Elton is not complimenting Harriet’s beauty but Emma’s own painting abilities. Antonia Losano further suggests that the act of Emma’s painting Harriet is itself a distortion of the usual middle-class artist painting the upper-class subject. This distortion, along with the fact of Emma’s painting Harriet as taller and more elegant than she really is, gives clues to the reader about the extent of Emma’s self-deception.

We are all familiar with the experience of wishfully thinking that something is the case, only to discover that it is not. And, when we encounter the reality, we may recognize that our evidentiary weighing practices were at fault. Regarding Emma’s desire, Shinobu Minma argues that Emma’s matchmaking “has nothing to do with Harriet”; rather, during the absence of intellectual stimulus following Miss Taylor’s marriage, Emma longs to display her own cleverness and exercise her love of managing and arranging (51). Whether Emma’s desire is for Harriet to be well matched or for her own aggrandizement, it appears that Emma was so intent on realizing her goal that she performed motivational self-deception. Minma suggests that the social hierarchy of Highbury, and indeed in all of England, actually encouraged and promoted self-deception in those at the top of the hierarchy. When everyone around you is constantly flattering you and bowing to your wishes, it must be easy to conclude that they are right to do so, and that your merits are far beyond what they actually are.

Current studies in neurophilosophy use the...