The Six Archetypes - always with us
Let’s take a look at ‘Emma’ in this light. Now, pay attention everyone, because I want us to be alert when PBS screens this one.
Emma is an Innocent who has been turned into an Orphan - her governess has just gone off to marry Mr. Weston and so she has lost her mother figure, and her older sister is married and living in London. Like most well-adopted Orphans Emma has no desire to leave her home (her querulous father clings to her, anyway) and she prides herself on being above romance. She prefers to make matches - for Mrs. Weston and for Harriet.
Harriet actually is an Orphan (the illegitimate daughter of no one knows whom), so it’s not surprising that Emma adopts her so easily.
As Emma makes her plans for her friend, and gets them so wrong, she’s forced to reassess the whole question of love including her own supposed untouchability in this arena. Mr Elton’s abrupt rebound marriage to the odious Mrs. Elton is an affront to Emma herself, as well as to Harriet, and the affront is sufficiently public to hurt them both. It is these misunderstandings that cause Emma to ask questions about the nature of love - although she does it in a rather shabby fashion by creating fantasies around Jane Fairfax’s alleged entanglements. The interesting thing here is that Emma’s instinct is right. There is something odd going on with Jane’s love life. But Emma’s guessed in the wrong direction.
Her instincts about Frank Churchill are good too. She likes him, flirts with him, but does not fall in love. Perhaps she picks up subliminally on the sense that he’s already taken. Somehow, though, she knows better than to be ensnared. In this she is the Pilgrim, refusing poor options, but not knowing yet what the right option may be.
When Emma has her outing to Box Hill and is rude to Miss Bates she learns a significant lesson: she is not above anyone. They are all linked together whether or not they like it. So the lesson is not about love of a romantic kind, but rather about love of the kind that loves one’s neighbor as oneself. Mr Knightley takes her to task and she knows she’s done wrong.
When she sees what he has to say - and she does so right away - she has redefined love in a much more helpful way for herself. She sees that she is part of a community that she has to support (and therefore to love) and that Mr. Knightley’s values are worth paying attention to because they are about respect (and therefore about love).
When she knows this, overtly, she becomes a Warrior-Lover, with a clear sense of what matters, and why it’s worth maintaining those values. She goes to Miss Bates with an apology and arrow-root, and knows the mortification of not being received. For once doing the ‘right’ thing is not just about what she’s expected to do but out of a sense of real regard, real feeling.
When she recognizes that Mr Knightley is the man for her, and that she may have ruined her chances, she takes this possibility with courage. Notice how she wants so very much to maintain her good brother-sister friendship with him that she hesitates to rush after him and declare herself, and thus risk losing her contact with him (for what gentleman could remain a friend after a lady had made such a declaration?). She values his sense, and she loves him romantically. Warrior-Lover as she is, she holds herself with courage and does not resort to silly tactics - which is what she did with Harriet (the broken shoe lace, the portrait, etc. designed to pull Mr. Elton in).
When these two Warrior-Lovers admit their love for each other Emma’s next thought is for her father. There’s that sense of responsibility to the community and the family again (for the two seem almost interchangeable) rather than for her own needs.
And when they marry, Emma and Mr Knightley link in a way that their love is also something that spreads into the community in general. Robert Martin is able to marry Harriet (bringing her into his family circle in a way that will be beneficial for them all, and thus ‘adopting’ her), and Emma and her husband do not leave their community to go to London (which is what her sister did). This matters because absentee landlords, living the high life in London, were the bane of rural communities that were left almost leaderless, or, worse still, were bled white by their landlords’ extravagances. Think of the Irish landlords whose activities led, indirectly, to the potato famine crisis - which was less than 40 years later. Jane Austen knew about the Irish practices and how damaging they could be, (remember how she links Jane Fairfax to her Irish connections?) and in this instance she is strangely prophetic.
Mr and Mrs Knightley become, therefore, the Monarch pair of their small corner of England, and living there as they do, they work the necessary magic of social cohesion.
Six archetypes, without too much doubt.
