Emma

By Charlotte Brontë, unfinished at her death, 1855

“Don't you play, little girl?”

“No, sir.”

“No! Why not? Do you think yourself better than other children?”

No answer.

“It is because people tell you you are rich, you won't play?”

The young lady was gone, he stretched his hand to arrest her, but she wheeled beyond his reach, and ran quickly out of sight.

A mysterious girl is left to the care of Misses Wilcox who recently opened a school. First introduced as of wealthy origin, her identity reveals itself to be false. Who is really this so-called heiress, Matilda Fitzgibbon?

Here is the last but unfinished novel of Charlotte Brontë. I do believe it could have been her best novel, even better than “Jane Eyre”. However, reading something incomplete was particularly annoying as you can understand. This makes me want to read one or two completions of this marvelous work.

1. These two chapters are very convincing and give great expectations to the reader. As usual, it is well-written, in addition, it depicts the psychology of the characters with accuracy. Indeed “Jane Eyre” was accused of being too black and white, but this novel entails a great variety of psychologies, especially with the young heiress and her odd behaviour. This proves that the author had really improved her style, novel after novel

2. Being incomplete, it was disappointing. The first problem is that the person of “Emma” is never introduced, I guess C. Brontë planned to do so in chapter 5 or 6 or maybe the young heiress is Emma herself? But, the most striking default is that a big disclosure is done at the end, without further information

3. I saw two completions: “Emma and Another Lady” (1980) by Constance Savery and “Emma Brown” (2003) by Clare Bloyan. I think I will read them if I find the books somewhere!

All in all, two very interesting chapters: it could be a good exercise to imagine the next pages ;)

#questions What is your favourite unfinished novel?

Medicis