Emma...so far..

So I started reading Emma earlier this week and am almost halfway done. I probably would have been finished by now if I could read more than a couple of chapters at a time. The beginning was soooo slow....snooze. I never fully read Pride and Prejudice because Jane Austen tends to describe everything...and I mean EVERYTHING. Luckily for me, I'm a little bit older and more patient so I know I can get through this.

Ridiculous description aside, we also have the problem of language difference. This book was written in 1816 and they definitely spoke more eloquently back then. So say you get past the verbose descriptions and syntactical differences, you are then confronted with the army of characters. Seriously, I can't keep them straight. So many names it makes my head spin. These are my chief complaints so far.

As far as the story line, it's pretty decent. Emma is a 20 year old (which is almost spinster age back then) single girl living with her Dad. Her mother died a while back and her older sister got married a long time ago so her job has been running the household. She's considered very clever and well-liked by everyone except for the family's friend Mr. Knightley. He finds her, as I do, to be rather meddlesome and slightly annoying. You see, Emma is a matchmaker, and an apparently decent one. The problem she has run into, at my point in the book, is trying to match up her friend Harriet with Mr. Elton. Harriet has already had a marriage proposal by Mr. Martin, whom she finds to be sweet and endearing, but Emma talked her into refusing because she feels that Mr. Martin is beneath Harriet's status. This infuriates Mr. Knightley and rightly so because in actuality, there isn't much difference at all and Mr. Martin is a respectable, well- liked member of society. Mr. Knightley and Emma get into a heated blow out and he storms out. I foresee sparks later on between the two of them.

So spoiled Emma continues with her matchmaking, and it doesn't work very well. Emma draws a miniature of Harriet for Mr. Elton and tries to get them to socialize alone. He doesn't seem to be entirely interested though, and at this point, I had an epiphany.

"Holy crap, this sounds like Clueless!!"

Sure enough, after my browse on Wikipedia, Clueless is loosely based upon the novel. So Cher is Emma, Ty is Harriet, and Elton is Mr. Elton (way to hide that one). So who is Cher's step-brother?? My marbles are on Mr. Knightley...he puts her in her place, which is exactly what she needs.

That's it so far, not much in 100 pages (thanks Ms. Austen, cause we really need an entire page to know how Emma felt about dinner). I will post again when I'm finished :)