The 'Seeming' Reality

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 155545

> wynnleaf:
> I recently ran across this quote from JKR from the Readers Digest, 
> 2000.  "I love a good whodunnit and my passion is plot construction. 
> Readers loved to be tricked, but not conned," Rowling says, warming 
> to her theme. "The best twist ever in literature is in Jane Austen's 
> Emma. To me she is the target of perfection at which we shoot in 
> vain."
> <snip>

Neri:
IIRC, no character in Emma turns out to be ESE, and no seemingly evil
person turns out to be good <g>.

OK, so lets take P&P instead (JKR has it in her bookshelf too,
according to her website). Here we seem to have much better parallels:
Wickham is ESE (well, he is in Austen's standards) and Darcy seems to
be evil but is really good. Or are they?

In fact Elizabeth isn't much duped. True, she believes Wickham's story
about Darcy in the beginning, because she doesn't have any data to the
contrary. But she never falls for Wickham. She realizes herself that
he's not a very admirable person, even before she finds out the true
story about him. And she has respect for Darcy almost from the
beginning. She only thinks she hates him because he's proud, which is
true, and because she suspects he ruined the engagements of her
sister, which is also true. So in fact, the only things that Elizabeth
is really duped about are Darcy's feelings about her and her own
feelings about him.

Now back to Emma. Throughout the whole story Emma is never duped about
the true nature of any of the characters. She's only duped about their
motivations, more specifically about a single kind of motivation – who
they fancy. So she doesn't fall for Frank Churchill, even though she
believes he's courting her, because she (and the reader) can feel that
he's not serious about it, and that he isn't worthy of her love.

Like Austen, I think JKR doesn't believe that a character can dupe the
hero for long about his/her true nature. Motivations yes. Personal
history yes. Real nature no. 


Neri