Speaker Jeremy Tomlinson made a welcome return to the society for the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’.
He described Emma’s plotting and interference in the lives of others – all with the best of intentions. But in her attempts to secure love and happiness for her friends, she neglects her own future happiness only to have the true love of her life revealed at the very end.
But Jeremy said that romance wasn’t the main thrust of the novel. Jane Austen, as in all her books, depicted provincial life and painted a picture of the lives of women at that time.
A lively discusion followed with opinions for and against the character of Emma.