Positive Thinking in Jane Austen's Emma

This article considers how present-day popular psychology practices of positive self-talk offer a helpful model for interpreting Emma and Jane Austen's narrative perspective. This context opens up the possibility that rather than conveying the emotions and thoughts that spontaneously arise in the heroine's mind, the narrative instead transmits the reflections the heroine constructs for the purpose of keeping herself in good spirits. In curating positive reflections, Emma applies to herself a caregiving technique described by eighteenth-century novels and conduct books, which recommended that young women converse in a sprightly manner for the purpose of comforting their older family members. Reading Emma in this way orients our understanding of the novel's didacticism away from the chastising Knightley and toward the caregiving heroine.