COMEDY AND LANGUAGE IN EMMA

One of the difficult things about teaching comedy is analyzing how exactly a phrase, a sentence a joke is constructed as funny. Emma contains the following introductory description of Emma’s friend. “Harriet Smith was the natural daughter of somebody”(53). Here are some sample questions to pose to your students that should help them understand the construction of this joke.

1. How does beginning of the sentence lead us to believe it will end?

2. What word makes the sentence a joke? Where is the word placed in the sentence? How does this placement matter?

3. Is the sentence “balanced”? How does balance/lack of balance help advance the joke?

4. What does it mean to be the “natural daughter of somebody?” Which words have multiple meanings? How doe these multiple meaning operate to define Harriet in Emma eyes? Does Emma’s society view Harriet the same way?

5. Paraphrase the meaning of this sentence and then explain how Austen’s delivery is different from your own. How is hers “tight”?

6. How does paradox operate in Austen’s joke?

7. How does the joke help to characterize Harriet? Are we supposed to think her clever, pitiable, beneath us?

8. How does this joke allow us to predict future events in the book?

9. Does Austen make similar jokes elsewhere? Where else do you observe her use of paradox, concision, balance and words’ multiple meaning for comic effect? How do these jokes operate?