The music provides a telling structure in Autumn de Wilde’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. In particular, there’s a difference between the music that originates within the narrative — i.e., the songs and music performed by the characters within the plot — and the outside music — i.e., the score that frames the narrative. The outer reflects upon the inner. This strategy points to the drama’s central concern with the class structure, its privileges and its responsibilities.
The internal music is classical, whether symphonic or traditional lyricism. That is, it represents the upper middle class — better educated, richer, in short, privileged — which the wealthy and beautiful Emma rules with her assumed sense of power.
Arguably the key song is the Knightley/Fairfax duet of “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” a period re-setting of the Elizabethan Ben Jonson’s “To Celia.” Popular in Jonson’s day, it’s classical in Austen’s (and in ours, as even Johnny Cash has visited it with gritty ardour).
In addition to the charm of its performance, the song serves a key thematic function. It initially suggests the singers’ romantic pairing. This is what Emma assumes, while she nurses the romantic possibility of the mysterious Frank Churchill. Ms Fairfax has already trumped Emma with a brilliant piano solo that outshone Emma’s song. But we eventually learn Fairfax and Churchill have long been engaged. Emma and Knightley happily graduate from their compulsive antagonism into love.
The ironies around this performance of the Jonson song undermine Emma’s confidence in her own judgment, especially as she contrives marital matches. Also, as the song portends, it is through their eyes — fixed upon each other as they dance — that the climactic love between Knightley and Emma takes hold.
Their dance is a pairing within a collective dance. Their intimate harmony is thus a part within a larger group harmony. This contrasts to the other pairings that would challenge the social order, like Emma’s plan to join Harriet, the woman of unknown (hence inferior) origins, to the respectable but ludicrous Mr Elton (a prospect he indignantly, snobbishly rejects) and Harriet’s subsequent design upon Knightley.
In contrast, the songs that frame the narrative from outside are traditional folk tunes, i.e., the songs of the lower class. That is, this drama of the upper class is framed by, set in the context of, the life and liveliness of the lower class, the ever-present but ignored servants and farmers.. This is the music of the good Mr Martin, the farmer whose appropriate engagement to Harriet Emma thwarts, presuming for her companion to marry above her station. As her governess did.
Their intimate service is exemplified when a servant puts the bare forked Knightley into trousers. Otherwise Knightley is the film’s moral center because he respects and attaches to the working class. In his noblesse oblige, he feels responsible to the people that serve him. To feel closer to the land he spurns the carriage to travel the countryside on foot. He properly criticizes Emma for thoughtlessly insulting the social inferior, Mrs Bates. He gallantly — a Knightley in shining armour — rescues Harriet by asking her to dance after Elton has flagrantly rejected her. His love ultimately redeems Emma.
When Emma is twice forced to apologize to her social inferiors both cases are by generous visits. To pay her new respect to Mrs Bates Emma brings her a basket of flowers. Her very appearance is her apology, as Mrs Bates gratefully resumes praising Emma’s goodness, glossing over her evident hurt. To Mr Martin Emma brings another basket, with a generous goose, and an encouraging articulation of her regret for having interfered with his proposal to Harriet. Harriet and Mr Martin eventually rush to each other with the unbridled enthusiasm of a country ditty.
In song as in life, the upper middle class may have the polish but the lower has the energy.
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