What if...Nora Ephron wrote Jane Austen's 'Emma?'
Then of course Mr. Knightley & Emma could never be friends.
Mr. George Knightley has known Emma Woodhouse all her life—he also happens to be her sister’s brother-in-law. And while he’s 16 years her senior, Emma & Knightley enjoy an easy friendship. But boiling beneath the surface of that friendship is the understanding that they are wealthier than all other inhabitants of Highbury. Now that’s sexual tension!
While Emma & Knightley try to convince us that they have no intention of entering the marriage state, the narrative voice knows better. Emma’s matchmaking is her way of deflecting her own desire to & fear of falling in love. Mr. Knightley’s jealousy toward Frank Churchill (who Mr. Weston intends to marry Emma) is evident at the mere mention of the young cad’s name. And if Helena Kelly’s reading of the novel is to be agreed with, Mr. Knightley is an encloser of common land who’s always had his sight set on Emma’s inheritance. Emma & her sister Isabella are to become co-heiresses of Hartfield upon Mr. Woodhouse’s death, & George Knightley wants to gain control of it in order to carry out a second enclosure1, Dr. Kelly asserts.
And so, there could be darker reasons for Mr. Knightley to lecture Emma throughout the novel—less the concern of a friend than a man in want of a mistress for Donwell Abbey. But I like to think the best of Mr. George Knightley, that his anxiety for how Emma will turn out has to do with the genuine love he feels for her, & the “serious spirit” he knows she has but requires more attention. That’s why I find it a little darkly humorous to imagine one of his lectures being about what can & can’t exist between men & women.
In Nora Ephron’s classic When Harry Met Sally, Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) tells Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) when they first meet after college graduation on a long drive from Chicago to New York that men & women can never be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. What’s brilliant about the line is that it’s clearly a come-on masked as a universal truth: Why bother being friends when there’s so much sexual tension? It’s the thesis statement the film will have to prove or disprove. And I think Jane Austen is giving us a similar moment between Mr. Knightley & Emma in volume III, chapter II.
They’re at a ball, which is as close to a sex scene as we get in Jane Austen. Mr. Knightley has just gallantly saved Harriet Smith from humiliation at the hands of Mr. Elton by asking her to dance, & Emma begins to see her old friend in a new light. In the brief exchange they have after supper & before the dancing resumes, the sexual tension is overwhelming:
“Whom are you going to dance with?” asked Mr. Knightley.
She hesitated a moment, and then replied, “with you, if you will ask me.”
“Will you?” said he, offering his hand.
“Indeed I will. You have shown that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it all improper.”
“Brother and sister! no, indeed.”
— Emma, Volume III, Chapter ii
Of course in this passage it’s Emma who is doing the lecturing: “We are not really so much brother & sister as to make it all improper.” Emma’s got game! It’s an enticement to dance & feel more than brotherly-sisterly love. But what if the conversation continued while Emma & Knightley were dancing, & he was able to get a lecture in? It might sound a little like what Harry tells Sally.
I haven’t included what Sally says in reply: “Well, I guess we’re not going to be friends then.” This turns out to be true in Emma—in the end, they’re Mr. & Mrs. George Knightley. Just as Nora Ephron2 would have written it.
From Britannica: “In England the movement for enclosure began in the 12th century and proceeded rapidly in the period 1450–1640, when the purpose was mainly to increase the amount of full-time pasturage available to manorial lords. Much enclosure also occurred in the period from 1750 to 1860, when it was done for the sake of agricultural efficiency. By the end of the 19th century the process of the enclosure of common lands in England was virtually complete.”
Fun fact is that Nora Ephron identified with Emma Woodhouse. See https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/magazine/28FOB-domains-t.html.