A Tale of Two Cities
In both the novel Emma by Jane Austen and the movie Clueless written and directed by Amy Heckerling, the main characters deceive themselves through their own arrogance. In Emma, the title character Emma Woodhouse foolishly thinks that she can manage the life of other characters but ultimately learns the reality of her self-delusion. Similarly, in Clueless, the main character Cher Horowitz sets out to also manage the lives of others, and she too is not as successful as she believes herself to be. Both of the main characters, Emma and Cher, are spoiled, high-class snobs who after undergoing a crisis brought on by their own haughtiness and repression of their feelings, transform themselves from a state of shallowness to one of mental and emotional maturity. Emma's arrogance leads her to micromanage the lives of others because she feels that she is best for the job even though all of her interference backfires. Emma decides, for example, that Harriet Smith's acquaintances are not good enough for the girl. She believes that Harriet's "soft blue eyes should not be wasted on the inferior society of Highbury and its connections"(Austen 42), and that the friends Harriet has already made were "unworthy of her" and "causing her harm". S
he embarks on a mission to advance Harriet into a more desirable social circle by trying to match her with an eligible bachelor, Mr. Elton, the local vicar of Highbury. "Emma needs to dominate, she can of course-in her class and time-most easily dominate women; and her need is urgent enough to forego even the pretense of sympathetic understanding."( The latter clearly illustrates Emma's desire to dominate others' lives. While Harriet is perfectly content with her own social standing, Emma's arrogance leads her to meddle into Harriet's life. Emma's arrogance goes so far as to make her feel that Harriet is not clever and desires only "to be guided by any one she looked up to." (Austen 44) Yet, Emma only deludes herself because her plan fails when Mr. Elton falls in love with her instead of Harriet. Emma deceives herself by feeling that she can better manage Harriet's life. Austen uses irony to further illustrate the haughtiness of Emma, when in the end Harriet marries the man whom she would have married even if Emma had not interfered at all. Yet, by the end of the film, Cher realizes that she has turned Tai into a loathsome individual who is concerned only with material things and her self. Ironically, Cher's arrogance deceives her into believing that she was not the same shallow person that Tai has come through her interference. The irony in the film is that Tai had only become so materialistic and self-centered as a result of Cher's desire to make Tai more popular. Cher does not like the person tha
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Approximate Word count = 1027
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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