“Difference” as Mode of Resistance in Jane Austen’s Emma

This paper explores “difference” as locus for changing power relations in Jane Austen’s major novel Emma . While Austen’s pre-occupation with courtships has been under scholarly investigations, it has not been properly considered as tool of resistance: one that strives to displace power from physical force to a discursive one. This displacement is a strategic struggle of middle-class ascendency over aristocracy in a changing English milieu. The study examines courtships within two Foucauldian frameworks. The first one is disciplinary that aims to regulate sexual practices like panopticon---an apparatus of power, producing normative/heterosexual identity through surveillance. Embedded in the first is the second approach that examines the very assumptions of the panoptic discourse through ‘micro techniques of power’. It is the ability of her characters (especially the female) to reject not only undesirable sexual advances but desirable proposals as well that transform their otherwise passive and docile bodies into subjects to be reckoned with. In doing so, Austen does transform signs of class and rank into forms of expression as pre-requisite for any exchange. This paper is an attempt to look into the power dynamics in the novel from a different angle---the angle of difference impacted by power/knowledge and discourse. Two sites of contestation are analyzed: the first played between Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Knightly, and the second between Mrs. Elton and Jane Fairfax. This transformation can explicitly be viewed in her novel Emma . Foucauldian insights are certainly innovative to a well-read Austen.


Introduction
Where Austen's critics tend to take her subject matter at face value and read her novels primarily about courtship and marriage, we argue that in doing so she is saying something very important about the foundation of modern political economy namely who may be included and who must be kept out or be marginalized in order for its fabric to endure. In fact, the very subject matter allows Austen to make women's right of refusal that is to say "no" into an important form of socio-economic power. Similarly, while Austen's scholars have debated whether Austen is progressive or traditional, her understanding on these abstract phenomena in everyday life shows that she is a cultural critic that ironically scrutinizes cultural norms, revealing them as products of discourse rather than of truth, while also investigating the tools the characters use to substantiate or challenge these conventions. In this way, she tries to imagine new techniques of resistance to social norms by privileging some characters over others. In Austen's estimation of her characters' decisions and choices of finding happiness, she rejects some uses of power as abusive and esteems others in their ability to resist and follow norms that will bring a sense of happiness to characters. women, the forces of culture and patriarchy can be seen which locate women merely an object and not a desiring subject. They are pictured as 'the other' as object of discourse and not 'the other' as agent in discourse. However, within the given space they do succeed in examining the power and significance of the individual expression. They identify the moral threat women face at the behest of cultural forces viewing them as passive and submissive. The female protagonists symbolize the emergence of middle-class sensibility, which is detrimental to aristocratic power.
Placing class struggle in sexual terms appears politically convenient, as Armstrong believes, "novels rewarding self-assertion on part of those in inferior position undoubtedly provided the middle-class readership with a fable for their own emergence" (50). The reflection of middleclass desire is not specifically physical and sexual but political and economic as well.
Emma demonstrates the truth of self as a powerful discursive moment, one which locates itself as norm in the discourse of marriage and propriety. Despite holding that truth as secret for a long time, Austen finally has Emma urged to divulge it as natural truth, one that is reflective of her subjectivity. Foucault argues that a discourse is continually under contention from competing discourses, wherein domination and resistance are constantly playing in local relations of power, and authority is finally shaped by resistance to it (History 94). We argue that the novel is a demonstration of this Foucauldian premise in two ways: first the inner truth (sex) seems resistant to classical knowledge which relies on visible manifestations. The romantic discourses, symbolizing transition on the other hand, is dark and mysterious. Foucault contrasts classicism to modernism that starts at the beginning of nineteenth century which of course is the onset of English romanticism. In Emma, the protagonist uses Harriet as vehicle for her sexual drive and at the end shifts it back to be told from her own body. Austen seems to locate sex as something to be known as truth of middle-class value. Second, in the novel, characters are using discourse for the construction of identities. This twofold reclamation of power is explored to know whether Austen questions normative values through an analysis of power and its truth.

Theoretical Framework
Difference in Western thinking implies a lack of value and defiance to norms. Michel Foucault's histories specifically illustrate this lack as characterizing those who appear different. This difference entails a threat to those unattached to fixed hierarchies (Boyne, 1990

Analysis
In Emma, Austen scrutinizes the prevailing power and its myths such as the truth of patriarchy and the powerlessness of the femaleupheld by the reigning discourses. In her angst to excavate the unspoken truth of women, she takes on the very thing Foucault stresses newhistorians to do-the revelation of the other history that runs under the prevalent historiography (After Foucault,. Traditional history cannot be accurately understood without the particular history of women. This history can be reexamined in the traditional practices of marriage which Austen seems to revisit. While marriage as norm is traditional and historical, in Austen, this affords a political and counter-reading. Austen's novel does not represent forms of subjectivity that already exist as such. By providing a readership's access to the inner workings of subjectivity and how an individual learns to regulate his/her emotions and read the emotions of others, the novel produces a form of subjectivity, or self, that literate populations came to regard as their own. How a discourse construes the difference between males and females determines marriage rules, distribution of property, those governing the organization of the household (what women can wear, where they can go, whether they can be subjected to corporal punishment, their authority over children, and education). However, the investigation of desire per se is not the intended subject of analysis here. Conversely, this paper explores the very politics of dominance and subversion played in the name of sexuality. Nancy Armstrong aptly puts this dimension in arguing "Foucault alone shifts the investigation of sexuality away from the nature of desire to its political uses" (Desire 9).
Foucault doesn't try to explain the biological difference between male and female but is rather interested in how that difference is interpreted and used for purposes of political organization. His notion of sexuality makes desire by definition resistant to the status quo. The game of power is played in marriage which is a minor component of sexuality. As identified, power is not without contestation or resistance. In Austen, resistance means indifference, or turning away. As pointed, resistance is more creative when it is not simply oppositional in relation to authority-when, that is, it surprises by doing something else, and something not In his influential text, The Order of Things, Foucault argues that an historical era is characterized by a system of knowledge that regulates thoughts within that period. The writers of a given era are governed by the same knowledge and they employ "the same rules to define the objects proper to their own study, to form their concepts, to build their theories" (xi). Foucault talks of three broad historical systems of thoughts: the renaissance, the classical, and the modern. Jane Austen appears to be writing in the transition from classical to the modern period which is equated by critics to the Romantic period. A shift for Foucault signifies a reformation of knowledge and the methods by which an era knows itself and how it constitutes the very meaning of things. Foucault's Discipline explores the political implication of such organization of knowledge. Discipline likewise studies the intimate relation between knowledge and power: the way a historical period looks at the world as an object of knowledge also signifies how that world is controlled, sustained, and manipulated. In a sense, knowledge and power are closely connected to each other, or to say, epistemology and politics are inextricably linked. This is manifested by the intrinsic dispositions of various characters in the novel as analyzed below.
Knightly, Emma's ideological adversary, as Foucauldian panoptic is placed in a position from where he can see every body. The tower in the panopticon (prison house) is located in the center from where to see without being seen. Even if the controlling authority is absent, the inmates in the prison cells internalize the discipline. The game episode in the novel locates Knightley in the very position where the panoptic device is placed. The disciplinary gaze is installed through some inventions in the design, "…an architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act on those it shelters, to provide hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them" (Discipline 172).
Austen very well describes his position, "By acting uninterested, Knightley would appear disinterested as well. But his surreptitious behavior undermines the notion of disinterested reading. Seeing without appearing to observe, reading without appearing to read, Knightley at once admits and suppresses this duplicity" (428). His objection to Frank stems somewhat from fear that the latter may seize the role of master reader. Knightley alone wants to reserve this right "…to read every body's character" to be "…so placed as to see them all" (Emma 124, 287).
The question arises as why there is a tension in Austen's novels between order and individualism or between reason and passion. The balance between these oppositions is quite strange in her novels. Harding argues that Austen follows the humor traditions in portraying minor characters like Allan and Mrs. Elton, characters who cannot act without revealing dominant passion ("Regulated Hatred" 83-105). Passion is usually displayed but it assumes special significance in Austen's novels when remains hidden. Austen is believed to be without much passion which seems less accurate. In Austen's world, passion is the most significant fact to be seen in characters' behavior. However, locating it requires efforts since it lies hidden within the self and is quite resistant to both expression and sight. Mariana's cry that "…if I could but know his heart everything would become easy" (Sense and Sensibility 345), shows the significance of passion. Her characters must know the heart which is not an easy task. Hence, while the end of Austen's novels seems to reinstate a classical order, the overall execution of plot validates a romantic type interpretation in search of depth and meaning. Her novels present a constant tension between truth and surface for any extra dependence on classical interpretation because her heroines' experiences defy a complete classical approach.
As stated, Foucault postulates a thorough agreement between a mode of knowledge and its object of study. In Austen, romantic depths create an essential challenge to classical knowledge, a challenge that is difficult for Austen to overlook. A connoisseur of the art of Austen's regard for the ways of the heart. It is because exteriors for her never reflect full truth.
This very fact has been emphatically described by Austen's narrator: Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken; but where, as in this case, though the conduct is mistaken, the feelings are not, it may not be very material---Mr. Knightley could not impute to Emma a more relenting heart than she possessed, or a heart more disposed to Thus while science as subject has its object the study of natural phenomena, this study and its object varies from era to era. Similarly, once the truth of a person is located, then its subsequent analysis and critique becomes easy. Foucault considers man as an object of knowledge of a vast range of subjects. He himself becomes a subject in so far studying himself, his inner life.
Likewise, he becomes an object when he is investigated by others with knowledge. His self In opposing a gender role materially and psychologically, Emma, the heroine, disrupts the "configuration of power [which] constructs the subject and the Other, that binary relation between 'men' and 'women,' and the internal stability of those terms" (Butler, p. viii Foucault's "arts of existence" is one way of countering normative schemes of creating and assigning subjectivity. Jeffrey Nealon's interpretation of Foucault's "arts of existence" is that they "not only allow us to become self-determining agents, but also provide the grounds for us to challenge and resist power structures" (8). Specific acts essential for existence promote an individual's sense of self. Jane's communication in the form of writing corresponds to Foucault's "arts of existence". Since "power is everywhere" across power relations, Austen encourages Mrs. Elton tries to construct social knowledge of Jane, perceived as truth about Jane's identity.
While Jane has been constructed as such, she is neither timid nor silent, only discourse makes her so. She is an object of Mrs. Elton's superior knowledge. Jane is not timid but is silent taken as timidity. She is a product of her surveillance and is too courteous to challenge Mrs. Elton openly in exchange. This further emboldens Mrs. Elton to build her identity. This is the point where Mrs. Elton's self-authorization is clearly located. Mrs. Elton's account of Jane has very little truth; instead, Mrs. Elton creates an illusory person lower than herself in prestige and position. In describing Jane, Mrs. Elton is projecting a self-constructed version of confidence, knowledge, and social relations. Said writes: "European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self" (Orientalism 3). By pointing who Orientals are Europe virtually engages in defining itself which in reality it is not.
This exemplifies Foucauldian discourse Mrs. Elton uses in her depiction of Jane Fairfax. "I know you, I know you" declares Mrs. Elton to Jane Fairfax, implying that she alone has knowledge, and thereby power, of Jane (Emma 243). Mrs. Elton clearly works in classical episteme where reality is represented by surface and visible. This power to represent is oblivious to truth and secret resistance as such.
Mrs. Elton's language increases her self-importance: as she uses "I" repeatedly and subordinates Jane as an object of her actions. Mrs. Elton's narrative is imposing in posing herself the doer and Jane as the receiver. Instead of turning her to subject, she continually objectifies her through language and discourse. She declares her intentions publicly to appear gentle and helpful. In reality, she is concerned only in using her the way she is suited-Jane is not asked the least. This objectification is validated in Mrs. Elton's discussions that do not reflect agency and interiority of others, but rather discipline and hegemonize. Upon learning that Jane goes to post office she cries, "You sad girl, how could you do such a thing?-It is a sign I was not there to take care of you" (Emma 238). The language used empowers Mrs. Elton and reduces Jane, altering her from woman into child. When Mrs. Elton says "Oh! She shall not do such a thing again," it is with a power and conviction to which "Jane looked as if she did not mean to be conquered" (Emma 238-39). Here again Mrs. Elton objectifies her under surveillance as she wants to argue but cannot under polite panopticon. While in Foucault's surveillance, the subjects cannot resist openly, they cannot be expected to comply as well. The above lines indicate Jane is not unmindful and may resist Mrs. Elton's empowering stunts in private. This scene hints at the letters which indicate that there is an expressive being to Jane Fairfax than appears to Mrs. Elton.
The secret letters exchanged between Jane and Frank prevent Jane from reacting orally to Mrs. Elton's abusive behavior. Thinking herself above discipline, Mrs. Elton disregards the power of refinement and utterly affirms her judgment. This she does to appear more powerful and controlling. As Mr. Knightly points out: "Mrs. Elton does not talk to Miss Fairfax as she speaks of her" (Emma 232). The post office episode is a key illustration of Mrs. Elton's discourse of Jane, as Mrs. Elton always uses "she," rather than "you," in speaking to Jane. While the two share the same room, Mrs. Elton does not directly refer to Jane but instead makes a show of her power through tactical speech. Mrs. Elton would not engage in dialogue as she takes her an object for deploying knowledge and power. McMaster emphasizes the significance of Mrs. Suckling was always rather a friend to the abolition" (Emma 242). Nevertheless, the comparison of governesses and slavery is fairly disgusting, given the social position in which it is spoken, a picnic. Being out of context, this is a sign of pushback by Jane against Mrs. Elton's assertion of authority. While Mrs. Elton always refers to her sister and Mr. Suckling, the link between Mrs.
Elton and the slave trade gets closer. Jane Fairfax's allusion to the "sale of human flesh" is a clever insult of Mrs. Elton. It also uncovers Jane's knowledge of poetry, slavery, as well as of Mrs. Elton's undue claims to social influences and contributions. She critiques Mrs. Elton's claims of charity by challenging the value of her actions. Jane's comment may also be referring to how Mrs. Elton is, herself, commodifying and trading Jane in ways that are not friendly, but commercial (McMaster 79).
As illustrated already, Mrs. Elton's speech objectifies Jane as an object signifying Mrs.
Elton's power rather than actualizing with her own thoughts and desires. While to Jane, Mrs.
Elton is an oppressive authoritarian exerting undesirable force claiming to be a friend that must Elton exists as an epitome of the power in regulating movements as done by Foucault's surveillance model. Mrs. Elton literally tries to stop Jane from going to the post office. However, discipline is maintained by almost the whole community as is exerted on Jane in controlling her movement. While her society is pretty disciplinary, Jane misses no chance to redraft her identity in following social prospects only when required. Foucault states, "To resist, it must be like power. As inventive, as mobile and as productive as power. Like power, it must organize itself, coagulate and cement itself. Like power, it must come from below and distribute itself strategically (267). Mrs. Elton's endeavors to write her identity by making Jane Fairfax as the "other" are mocked and satirized. By the end of the novel, Mrs. Elton is portrayed as egotistical, ineffective, and twofaced. Nevertheless, Mrs. Elton is not a single case within the novel; her approach symbolizes an infinite social practice of misrepresentation and control which, as Said reveals, is a part of the colonial project. The same cultural practices have been prevalent in almost all literary texts as a product of power/knowledge. In Emma the readers are left to assume that Mrs. Elton is not incorporated into community, as she gets the details of Emma and Knightley from her husband-she, herself, does not actually attend the wedding (Emma 381).
But Austen is not at ease simply to pen down the repercussions of such hegemonic behavior; instead, she goes beyond that to chart the avenues where individuals can resist, rewrite, and remake their identities in opposition to power---be that patriarchal or otherwise.

Conclusion
The difference identified in the characters of Emma Woodhouse, Mr. Knightley, Mrs.
Elton, Jane Fairfax, and Frank Churchill appears to be implicitly incorporated by the relational power dynamics in the flow of the plot. It is pertinent to clarify that this difference is basically the poststructuralist form of resistance, advocated by Michel Foucault as, "We can never be ensnared by power: we can always modify its grip in determinate conditions and according to a precise strategy" (Politics 123). As analyzed in this paper, the strategy as difference---the refusal and passivity on the part of characters---is what the theory of surveillance implicitly propagates.
The same strategy of resistance as Pickett sees it, "Something always eludes the diffusion of power and expresses itself as indocility and resistance" (Foucault 458). From a poststructuralist feminist perspective, this work analyzed how the proposed characters stand up to the norms established by the historical flow of tradition. The classical norm of worshiping the obvious---the empirical objectivity of things observed---is beautifully contested by the characters' implicit defiance to conformity. In the concept of panopticism, it has always been challenging to trace the reverse impact of subjects upon the source of surveillance---the center of discourse; yet, the characters' rigidity to actively engage in traditional obligations, such as marriage, demonstrates that their worldview exercises a counter influence on the center of meaning. In this regard, it can aptly be connected with Foucault's view that "where there is power, there is resistance" (History, 95).