The Culture of Time and Space in Emma

Dylan Richards

Emma, by Jane Austen, was not written specifically for the discussion of time. Time and space, however, enter into the discussion when modern readers have to understand how the characters in the novel understood their world because their concept of time and space differed greatly from the modern perception.

The concept of space during the time period in which Emma was written is radically different from today. Emma’s sister, Isabella lived in London, which was sixteen miles away, but was “beyond her daily reach.” (Austen, 9) Today such a distance would mean that Emma could see her sister every day, but at the turn of the century it restricted visits to only Christmas. Even more radical of a change in perception of distance from the modern one is when Miss Taylor gets married and moves a half mile away from Emma. In modern times this would be absolutely no inconvenience to a relationship, as automobiles, telephones, and email all make distances many times that seem small.

The concept of wealth in terms of space has also changed. Before, amount of land that a family owned was an evaluator of social wealth and class, but that is not the exact case in today’s world. An apartment in Manhattan would be worth much more than and area of land that is physically much larger. This concept of space drives Emma to push Harriet’s attention away from Mr. Martin and towards Mr. Elton. Emma does this only because Mr. Martin is of the class of yeomen farmers, and doesn’t actually own the land he farms.

Time in Emma’s day was also thought about radically differently than it is today. Especially to the leisure class, which Emma was a member of, time was more or less indistinct and imprecise. While clocks and watches have been around for several hundred years before this, exact times are rarely mentioned in the book because Emma and those like her have very little need for an exact time.

Information during this time period also lacked the immediacy with which bits of news or gossip now spread. News from friends and family had to come via letters, which took days or weeks to deliver, and news from the outside world took months to reach Hartfield. Today events from around the globe are known of instantly. The advent of new technologies like Facebook and Twitter allow an even greater degree of instantaneous communication in between individuals. Communication has become much more frequent. But at the same time it has lost an element of personal connection that one might feel by writing a letter. A handwritten letter has always meant more to me than an email or Facebook message, and in Emma’s time letters were especially cherished because other ways of communicating over long distance were scarce.

Individual’s concepts of time and space during the eighteen hundreds and during modern times are very different. An understanding of this difference is key to understanding society in the early eighteen hundreds, just as it is key to understanding our current society.

Austen, Jane. Emma. New York: Penguin. 1815.