I reread each of Jane Austen’s six novels about once in ten years. This is the fourth time I have featured her here in this blog which has been running just over five years. It means that I have read each of these novels at least five or six times. And she never fails me.

The really interesting thing is the way that I, and presumably most other Austen-inclined folk, tend to react differently at each rereading. Well, as I used to point out to students, the books don’t change. It’s the reader who brings different experience and shifting cultural attitudes each time he or she opens the covers.

It was certainly the case with Emma which I have just reread for three reasons. First, it’s a novel I have always enjoyed. Second, I thought it would be an interesting title to write about here. Third, I am developing a short story predicated on one of the minor characters.

So what, at surface level, is this novel about? Emma, not quite 21, lives with her widowed, neurasthenic father in Surrey. She has a certain amount of local status and likes to organise other people’s lives. Thus we meet villagers and others, especially her younger, easily-led, less privileged friend Harriet Smith. Also in mix are her London-based married sister and her family along with her former, just married governess who lives nearby. Then there’s the avuncular Mr Knightley, a near neighbour and close family friend. All these groups are interlinked and immaculately, often amusingly observed. And her characterisation is startlingly acute – this is Jane Austen after all.

Beneath the surface simmer issues about social class and changes to perceptions: Mr Knightley’s farming tenant, Robert Martin is well educated and respectable. He is almost gentry and his children probably will be. And of course, marriage is a burning question, Marriages aren’t arranged in this world but they tend to fall into place – or not. Moreover, with that go all the questions about inheritance and legacy.

Austen famously said that in Emma, she had created a character whom nobody would like except her creator. Well that’s disingenuous. Emma is full of herself and very keen on manipulating others but when she eventually realises her folly and its consequences, she is genuinely contrite. Surely she’s just a very young and arguably immature, woman  with a lot to learn? She is rude to Miss Bates too – well I think most young people would be, actually. Miss Bates is one of those marvellous Austenian characters whom we’ve all met: garrulous, self effacing, well-meaning and you certainly don’t want to get stuck with her at a party. No I don’t dislike Emma. She’s learning fast, after all.

What struck me forcibly this time is that I don’t care for Mr Knightley. Did Austen expect me to? He is 16 years older than Emma and has apparently, it eventually turns out, had his eye on her as wife material,  almost ever since she was born. When he was 21 and, presumably out sowing wild oats, Emma was a child of five. It makes me feel a bit queasy.  That’s why, though, despite his prosperity as a landowner he is still single in his late thirties.  To the version of me rereading this in 2026, it feels uncomfortably and unhealthily inappropriate given the age difference and his fraternal relationship with her

Meanwhile Mr Knightley constantly corrects Emma and tells her how to behave. It’s benign and fairly light-hearted but who on earth does he think he is? Eventually when the inevitable Austen happy ending hoves into view he apologises to Emma for his former bossiness. Is he now going to stop being an overbearing quasi older brother and respect her as an equal? Well he might try to but patronising old habits die hard so I’m not holding my breath.

Of course the plot runs on all the usual Austen misunderstandings. A very old friend of mine is an antiquarian book dealer and I honestly thought that he had read every book on the planet. To my astonishment he told me recently that he had never read Austen. “She wasn’t taught in boys’ schools” he said. Then came the pandemic when my friend read them all in a row. His comment was that if you consume them en bloc the novels begin to feel formulaic. And I suppose that’s what I mean by the usual misunderstandings. Emma is mildly drawn to Frank Churchill who’s a bit of a charmer but the reader knows immediately that he’s not quite what he seems – we’ve been here before in the other novels. We can also see that Mr Elton (Austen’s awfully good at clergymen on the make) is simply looking for a wife and doesn’t much mind who she is. And that’s a familiar plotline too.

Not that it matters. It’s all done with such rapier wit that whatever the plot details are you are swept happily along, Or at least I am. I think it will be Sense and Sensibility next. Give me a few months.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix

I don’t remember learning about the 12^th century at school. And that’s odd because our sensibly sequential history syllabus began with the Romans at the beginning of what we now call Year 7. It then, at the end of Year 9, arrived at 1760, which was where the O level syllabus began. So Eleanor and her tribe must have been in there somewhere. I suspect that either the politics were so complicated that they skated over it or, it was just too involved for me to get my pubescent head round so my brain simply wiped it. Either way, all I knew about Eleanor was some outdated nonsense about “fighting the infidel” and a few vague impressions courtesy of Katherine Hepburn in 1968 film The Lion in Winter.

Then I heard Alison Weir talking about Eleanor on the radio. And I was intrigued. I have read Weir before but not this biography, published in 2008, It is, apparently. her personal best seller.

Eleanor was extraordinary. She lived to be 82, married twice (Louis VII of France and Henry II of England) and probably had other liaisons. She bore ten children and there is an assumption of miscarriages and stillbirths in the gaps. She also travelled extensively including a desperately uncomfortable crusade to the middle East. It is hard to imagine her physical stamina in an era without modern medical care or transport.

What is now western France was a patchwork of provinces eagerly coveted both by France and England so there was constant war between factions – often between brothers and other close relations. Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, often had to deal with her own children fighting. She became a skilled and pragmatic politician. Once her second husband (who imprisoned her for supporting his enemies) was dead and their son Richard acceded to the English throne, the elderly Eleanor ruled England with commonsense and skill while he was absent crusading for several years.

I also learned a lot about Thomas Becket with whom Henry II famously quarrelled. And, as so often in this book, Weir debunks many myths. Becket had been Henry’s chancellor and close friend for several years long before Canterbury loomed. He didn’t want the job and was, almost unbelievably in 2026, ordained as a priest only the day before he was installed as Archbishop. After that he became an ascetic – a colourful character and never a man to do things by halves. Thereafter he was a thorn in Henry’s side, as we all know.

Bishoprics were political posts and it was all pretty corrupt. It would be easy to assume, given their behaviour,  that they were a bunch of exploitative,  cynical unbelievers but, no. The superstitions which had by then firmly attached themselves to Christianity were very strong in almost everyone. There was a widespread and deep-seated fear of hell fire so they were constantly seeking absolution for appalling crimes (such as Henry’s murder of Becket). Moreover they were all terrified of excommunication – a punishment issued so readily there was a sense of The Red Queen and “off with his head” to it.

Meanwhile marriage in ruling circles was, of course, simply political. However, I was amused and surprised to read how easily dynastic marriages were ended in the 12^th century – usually on grounds of consanguinity. Well, yes, these people were almost always related to each other at distant cousin level. That seems to have been routinely ignored at the time of the wedding and conveniently foregrounded when the marriage was no longer required.

It all meant, of course, that women and female children were simply pawns in male manoeuvres. But Eleanor was feisty and very much her own woman at a time when for a woman to manage her own life was almost unthinkable. You might almost describe her as an early (the first?) feminist.

This is a wonderfully well researched book. Using contemporary chronicles, Weir has managed to document where Eleanor was and what she was doing for almost every year of her life. Where there are gaps because she isn’t mentioned in accounts, Weir says so and speculates about probabilities.

It’s detailed, thorough and convincing – and best of all, written accessibly without academic fussiness.  It isn’t just about Eleanor either. It is a compressive account of government in the 12^th century. And it has begun to plug a gap in my education.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Emma by Jane Austen