Is Emma Woodhouse Chaotic Evil?
The Jane Austen Alignment Chart No One Asked For
Alignment What Now?
If you still haven’t tried your hand at the roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons, an alignment determines your character’s personality and how they make decisions. For example, a lawful good persona always makes decisions based on a code they subscribe to, regardless of whether it personally benefits them. A good example of this is a noble knight who is trying to eradicate evil. Hermione Granger displays lawful good traits, using rules to help guide her actions.
Alignment charts fascinate me. The complete set of values include: Chaotic, Neutral, and Lawful; versus, Good, Neutral, and Evil. If only we could organize all of life’s quandaries along this handy x and y axis… I particularly enjoy Witch, Please’s pedagogy episode wherein they classify Hogwarts professors’s teaching styles based on alignment. In this case, ‘Evil’ is defined as a teacher’s active dismissal of a student’s wellbeing and development as a pupil. (You can probably guess that Umbridge hits the mark here.)
If this intrigues you, and you also happen to be a Jane Austen aficionado, read on, dear friend. Yes, I am aware of how extremely niche this crossover is.
Jane Austen Alignments
Let’s define our terms: ‘Chaotic’ for today’s purposes means she’s Romantic with a capital R; it’s the ‘sensibility’ in Sense and so on; it’s Carly Rae Jepson’s raw emotion. ‘Lawful’, on the other hand, is a lady who is more of an Enlightenment gal; she can show restraint during the most awkward party; and even if her heart is tearing in two she can hold a smile.
However, instead of ‘Good’ versus ‘Evil’, I’m going to replace these with ‘Static’ versus ‘Dynamic’. Jane Austen wrote characters who had to learn from their mistakes. When the novel starts, how far away are these ladies from the ultimate completion of their redemption arc? A meager step to the side qualifies as ‘Static’, while a dash through the pouring rain is ‘Dynamic’.
She Puts the ‘Sense’ in Sensibility
The first character I thought of is Fanny Price from Mansfield Park. I know this isn’t the most popular of Austen’s works, but Fanny is such an acutely-written character. Her ethical code does not falter — even in the face of the wicked Crawfords’ influence. She is a star ‘Static’ for me; she hardly changes at all, only having to step out of her comfort zone to repeatedly remind others of right from wrong. Her attitude is encapsulated perfectly here: “‘We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.’” Because Fanny is such a fan of rules — her own perfectly angelic ones — she is also a typical ‘Lawful’ character.
I also see Elinor Dashwood as quite Lawful. Elinor learns to share some of how she’s feeling with her sister Marianne, but she doesn’t have the sweeping transformation and reform that the other does. Elinor has a code: she must uphold her social duty and bear a terrible secret, even when that secret costs her so dearly. This is quintessential lawful energy.
Utter Chaos
On the other side of the spectrum, we have Elinor’s sister, Marianne. I do not judge Marianne, because she and I are honestly quite similar. I feel like Marianne’s outer thoughts (her dramatic monologues) are the soundtrack to my soul. Even when she realizes the errors of her ways, her heart is directly on her sleeve, front and center:
“I cannot express my own abhorrence of myself. Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected, or some failing indulged. Every body seemed injured by me. The kindness, the unceasing kindness of Mrs. Jennings, I had repaid with ungrateful contempt. To the Middletons, to the Palmers, the Steeles, to every common acquaintance even, I had been insolent and unjust; with a heart hardened against their merits, and a temper irritated by their very attention. To John, to Fanny, — yes, even to them, little as they deserve, I had given less than their due. But you, you above all, above my mother, had been wronged by me. I, and only I, knew your heart and its sorrows; yet to what did it influence me? Not to any compassion that could benefit you or myself. Your example was before me; but to what avail? Was I more considerate of you and your comfort? Did I imitate your forbearance, or lessen your restraints, by taking any part in those offices of general complaisance or particular gratitude which you had hitherto been left to discharge alone?”
The lengthy recitation above will surely illustrate the journey Marianne has been on in Sense and Sensibility. In this way, Marianne is wholeheartedly Chaotic-Dynamic.
Similarly, we have Emma Woodhouse. Where to begin? Trashing her best friend’s love life, publicly mocking an unmarried elder in front of all their dearest friends, and basically never doing her homework, Emma is a tough piece of work. But, hey, there’s nothing like hot Mr Knightly calling her out on her misconduct; she does a stylish one-eighty — albeit she takes a lot longer than Robert Martin putting his cows out to pasture.
Neutral Ladies
Catherine Morland, Elizabeth Bennet, and Anne Elliot are fairly neutral. Listen, I know Lizzy has to get over her prejudice of Darcy, so her journey is more dynamic than not, but she holds space for her feelings while also trying to conduct herself respectfully in public. In contrast to Lydia, her younger sister, she does a remarkable job. Yet one-on-one, she will tell you exactly how she feels. This is Elizabeth to Lady Catherine, who privately asks Elizabeth to not marry Darcy: “‘I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.’” Mic drop. This balance of doing her social duty, while holding onto her own convictions places Elizabeth as Neutral-Dynamic in my humble eyes.
Similarly, Catherine must learn how to read the world around her — she has great flights of fancy, like imagining her boyfriend’s dad is a murderer (no big deal) — but she’s also simply enjoying the gothic fiction she loves to read and who am I to condemn a young woman with her nose in a book? It takes most of the novel for Catherine to understand the subtleties in the people around her, and for that I’ll say her growth is dynamic. But she isn’t overly sensitive or controlled. Quite neutral.
Anne Elliot is neutral, but in the inverse way. She is extremely controlled; she daren’t share any emotion. Therefore, she exudes the ‘Lawful’ trait. But her journey is more neutral than static (compared to Fanny and Elinor). At the beginning of the novel, Anne follows her family’s advice and refuses a marriage proposal to a man she loves because of his status and wealth (hence the persuasion in Persuasion). The rest of the novel weighs up this original decision as Anne learns to live with her choice. This is the stuff of the subtle transformations we all undergo in life, as the years pass, and we reflect on what could have been.
In Conclusion
What was the point of this exercise? Was it worth your perusal? For me, the art of the alignment chart forces me to consider sides of a character I may not have considered before, or else it helps me articulate aspects that I didn’t know how else to explain. Like any chart, it is an organizational tool, whereby we can sort and measure and make a little more sense of the world. Of course, not everything fits tidily into a graph — especially not people. And Jane Austen’s heroines are so exquisitely drawn up they are probably even more human than we figure on a day-to-day basis. So, this chart is not perfect. It is ongoing. Please comment where you figure these characters might go, or add any other Austen characters you fancy.
