Emma & the HBP (was Re: Harry Potter and Elizabeth Bennet

[Katharine]

No: HPFGUIDX 140196

Potioncat:
I just finished "Emma" and highly recommend it. The Shippers in our 
group as well as the Anti-shippers would particularly enjoy it. The 
main character spends far too much time "shipping" and the results 
are well...

The most obivious Harry Potter connection is the vast number of 
characters who aren't quite what they seem... or who arent' what Emma 
thinks they seem.

And the part that is straight out of HBP, or perhaps reflected "Emma" 
in HBP is when two of the characters are discussing a letter. I 
forgot to mark the chapter and can't find it now. At any rate, the 
two are arguing about the handwriting and what it says about a 
person. One character thinks the handwriting looks like a woman's 
because it is so small. The other insists it is small but strong. 

Katharine:
I'm afraid I've only seen the movie, and have not yet read the book so far (so please forgive me and correct me if I have it wrong b/c of movie inaccuracies).  But as the romance is the focus of Emma, and as the romance in Emma features a woman and a man with a 'supposedly' "brother/sister"-like platonic relationship (*cough* H/Hr! *cough*) that turns out to be something more in the end, with the protagonist not realizing it until after the partner did.  So, considering how the romance turned out in HBP (R/Hr), Emma is about as different from HBP as one can get--frankly I'm a bit confused myself as to why JK likes the book so much when she scornfully dismisses those kind of relationships as between the protagonist and her love interest in Emma.  *shrug*--but that is, I suppose, part of the mystery of JK's mind.

Plus there's the fact that the romances written by Austen are about ten times the quality of JK's soap opera-like romance scenes.

-Katharine