Emma

I think the story is pretty funny. I wouldn’t say I necessarily like Emma, because I really don’t, she’s a brat. However, she does make the story a bit more interesting. Nice can, at times, become boring and so Emma’s arrogance at least gives me someone to dislike. What I found most interesting about the novel would have to be the significant parallels between Emma and the movie Clueless. Clueless is a movie that I grew up watching. It was fun to mock the valley girls and just find humor in their everyday lives. In the movie, Cher, who parallels the character of Emma, started off as your typical wealthy, valley girl. She is arrogant, selfish, and completely consumed in money and material things. However, as the movie plays out her obession with changing people to become more like her seems less a desire. She begins to focus on and appreciate the differences in people. As the the movie develops she experiences changes within herself and she matures as a character. The character of Emma experiences the same sort of changes within herself as Cher experiences. For Emma, the plot plays out in a way that helps to correct her vanity and self-delusion. Knightley is the one to help teach her these things and so Knightley takes over the role of Cher’s step-brother in the movie. I think already having seen the movie and knowing that there were several similarities, made the reading of the novel a bit more interesting and an easier read.