Jane Fairfax

While the eponymous heroine, Emma, is vivacious, clever, and, let's face it, self-regarding, she slowly learns through mistake after mistake that she must wield her social power with greater care and attention to other people's feelings.

Melvin's guests demonstrate how subtly Austen creates each character, from the slightly pompous but stable and wise Mr. Knightley, through to the mysterious governess, Jane Fairfax, and her lover, Frank Churchill, who Emma erroneously believes is destined to marry herself.

After listening to this episode, characterized by one of the liveliest and most entertaining examples of verbal jousting between Melvin and his guests, I defy you not to want to return to Emma or read it for the first time.

Enjoy listening.

I am moving along briskly here.

[laughs]

Um, [clears throat] first there is Jane Fairfax, uh, a beautiful orphan of great accomplishments, um, and Emma is jealous of her.

This is the friend she should have had, um, except that, of course, she wasn't around at the time.

I mean, it must have been fun writing that for Jane Austen to be thinking about how to set up that contrast.

And then also the contrast with Jane Fairfax, just creating those characters who then highlight other things for each other and throw things into greater relief, I think would have been a really interesting process.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I kind

Graham's intending to have a bailiff from Scotland to look after his new estate.

But will it answer? Will not the old prejudice be too strong?" And she talked in this way so long and successfully that when forced to give her attention again to her father and sister, she had nothing worse to hear than Isabella's kind inquiry after Jane Fairfax, and Jane Fairfax, though no great favorite with her in general, she was at that moment very happy to assist in praising.

"That sweet, amiable Jane Fairfax," said Mrs. Knightley.

"It is so long since I have seen her, except now and then for a moment accidentally in town.

Oh, what happiness it must be to her good old grandmother and excellent aunt when she comes to visit them.

Woodhouse agreed to it all, but added, "Our little friend Harriet Smith, however, is just such another pretty kind of young person.

You will like Harriet.

Emma could not have a better companion than Harriet." "I am most happy to hear it," replied Isabella, "but only Jane Fairfax one knows to be so very accomplished and superior and exactly Emma's age." This topic was discussed very happily, and others succeeded of similar moment and passed away with similar harmony, but the evening did not close without a little return of agitation.

But what a cast.

Her nemesis on stage is just beautifully played by Giulia Santrini as Jane Fairfax.

Jane Fairfax.

Jane.

I love the vocal pitch they use whenever they disapprove of someone.

Jane Fairfax.

Down in the lower register.

Yes, a beautiful performance.

By the by, that is almost enough to put one out of conceit with a niece.

Heaven forbid at least that I should ever bore people half so much about all the nightlies together as she does about Jane Fairfax.

One is sick of the very name of Jane Fairfax.

Every letter from her is read forty times over, her compliments to all friends go round and round again, and if she does but send her aunt the pattern of a stomacher or knit a pair of garters for her grandmother, one hears of nothing else for a month.

I wish Jane Fairfax very well, but she tires me to death.

They were now approaching the cottage, and all idle topics were superseded.

Emma was very compassionate, and the distresses of the poor were as sure of relief from her personal attention and kindness, her counsel and her patience, as from her purse.

Another version of Emma who might die in childbirth.

I just wanted to write the Jane Fairfax story in Emma.

I just put in a postscript, really.

After a year or two, Emma dies in childbirth.

Mr. Knightley goes up to Yorkshire, brings back Jane Fairfax.

[classical music]

This is the second time you've adapted Emma, but yet you're still finding more things to do with it.

And so eventually Henry and her mother are left close to destitute, often relying on the charity of townspeople.

And Henry tries first to cling desperately to her sister Jeanette, then to her niece, Jeanette's daughter Jane Fairfax.

And I'll leave the plot at that, but I thought this book was very well written and thoroughly different from other Austen spinoffs.

Yes, I would agree

Fairfax.

Jane Fairfax,

yeah.

Well, and it's...