Douglas McGrath’s Emma (1996) stresses the importance of kindness and familial harmony, themes which are absent from Autumn de Wilde’s cool rendition, Emma. (2020). In the novel, Emma learns to be kind and caring to others as well as be considerate and helpful after her behavior is called out, and McGrath showcases this journey from performed kindness to genuine kindness. In de Wilde’s retelling, Emma remains cool throughout, even as she matures. The novel’s Christmas scene depicts a community gathering with its members caring for each other. Emma is witness to warm family togetherness. She cheerfully banters while talking to the Westons and Mr. Knightley. Family is important to everyone…
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“A Holly Jolly Christmas”: Oppositional Binaries in McGrath and de Wilde’s Emma
Both Douglas McGrath and Autumn de Wilde seize upon the holiday scenes in Emma (1815), the only Austen novel with a Christmas scene. Each film’s Christmas scene display the cultivation of relationships and community-building. However, in their respective representations of Emma and Mr. Elton (McGrath) and Emma and Mr. Knightley (de Wilde), the movies underscore binary and oppositional relationships. In these relationships a mirroring occurs, positioning Mr. Knightley and Mr. Elton against each other with Emma as an anchoring force—all against the backdrop of Christmas. In both films, Christmas becomes a kind of oppositional holiday, one that brings out the combativeness of others, not one that creates relationships among them.…
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Merry Christmas to All, and to Emma a Good Knightley
In both Douglas McGrath’s and Autumn de Wilde’s adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma (1815), Christmas dinner scenes intimate the intersection of the familial love and comfort associated with Emma and Mr. Knightley’s romance. At the same time, these scenes draw attention to Knightley’s often paternalistic love for Emma. Taken together, these scenes at once associate Knightley to the comfort, conventions, and even the colors of the Christmas season, and crystallize his identity as the story’s central patriarchal figure. De Wilde’s Emma. (2020) shapes its “Winter.” chapter along the intersections of the romantic and familial plots of the story. The chapter opens with the arrival of Emma’s sister Isabella and her…
