Emma Cluless Essay 
Amy Heckerling’s Clueless sustains interest in the values represented in Jane Austen’s Emma by the modernization of the initial text through the medium of novel to film. Additionally, Heckerling transforms the ideas of marriage, social class and gender roles from Austen’s early Nineteenth century context, to a late twentieth century context through an examination of relationships, high school cliques and the changing notion of gender roles.
Emma embodies the value of social class by the determination of individuals status through family background, reputation and wealth in the micro of Highbury. Austen employs authorial intrusion to secure and characterize Emma in the first line of the novel, ‘Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence’ to establish Emma’s social class but to also mock Emma as she views herself as above others. Emma abuses her power of wealth and status and views herself as an excellent matchmaker, however she is too naive and her observations are misplaced as Emma attempts to raise Harriet out of social oblivion. The situational irony ‘do not take to match making. You do it very ill” mocks Emma and the hilarity of her attempt to bring Harriet Smith to an equal social level as herself. Austen asserts that she is not an appropriate member of high society and would never be accepted if it were not for Emma’s influence. Mr Elton, when aware of Emma’s plans to attach him to Harriet, expresses his incredulity through hyperbole “I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my existence…never cared if she were dead of alive…” He vehemently opposes any notion of romantic attachment to a social inferior, offering a satirical insight into the shallowness and inflexibility of the post industrialization class.
Clueless, as an adaption of Emma, depicts the concept of social class through the high school hierarchy. As a contrast to Austen’s
Emma embodies the value of social class by the determination of individuals status through family background, reputation and wealth in the micro of Highbury. Austen employs authorial intrusion to secure and characterize Emma in the first line of the novel, ‘Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence’ to establish Emma’s social class but to also mock Emma as she views herself as above others. Emma abuses her power of wealth and status and views herself as an excellent matchmaker, however she is too naive and her observations are misplaced as Emma attempts to raise Harriet out of social oblivion. The situational irony ‘do not take to match making. You do it very ill” mocks Emma and the hilarity of her attempt to bring Harriet Smith to an equal social level as herself. Austen asserts that she is not an appropriate member of high society and would never be accepted if it were not for Emma’s influence. Mr Elton, when aware of Emma’s plans to attach him to Harriet, expresses his incredulity through hyperbole “I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my existence…never cared if she were dead of alive…” He vehemently opposes any notion of romantic attachment to a social inferior, offering a satirical insight into the shallowness and inflexibility of the post industrialization class.
Clueless, as an adaption of Emma, depicts the concept of social class through the high school hierarchy. As a contrast to Austen’s