I don’t know if this is exactly in the spirit of the Manga Moveable Feast, which I suspect is more to introduce people to great manga than to discuss it among the converted, but I feel like exploring the tenth and final volume of Kaoru Mori’s Emma (CMX) in depth, so this will require a bit of a spoiler warning. So click for more if you’re in a place where discussing how things end won’t have deleterious influence! If not, just enjoy this little bit of adorable nonsense from Mori.
Emma concludes with the wedding of upper-class William and former maid Emma, and in many ways it captures all of the essential ingredients of a wedding.
Familial awkwardness…
Competitive finery…
Impulsive hook-ups…
First-time tippling…
And bad dancing…
In other words, it feels true to the nuptial experience, at least as I know it. More importantly, it feels true to the kind of wedding Emma and William would have. Because while it is a happy ending, Mori is not so blinded by romanticism that she portrays it as an unblemished happy ending.
There are lots of little grace notes that let you know that the union of Emma and William has been accepted as an inevitability rather than viewed as a cause for celebration. Someone notes that the event wasn’t announced in the papers, and William’s acquaintances aren’t even sure who it is that he’s marrying. (They’re more keenly aware of who the girl is that William isn’t marrying, the pretty aristocrat who got her heart stomped. It’s generous of Mori to give Eleanor Campbell a less complicated happy ending than her titular heroine receives.)
William’s sister barely manages civility to Emma. William’s brother bluntly states that he’s only at the wedding out of family obligation. I can’t even quite bring myself to mention what William’s father does, and it doesn’t escape Emma’s notice. But, then, very little about her new, privileged world does.
Of course, it’s not a new world for Emma. Her place in it has just changed, and would that she could adapt to the new point of view without difficulty. But her nature doesn’t allow her to slip comfortably into the posture of an aristocrat. She seems at times petrified of the prospect of navigating the social world of William’s family, and nobody is callous enough to suggest that love will see them through. (You only have to look at William’s mother, wounded by her own brushes with society, to know that it’s an unforgiving milieu.) The people with whom Emma was once most at ease are now in a class below her, though nothing about Emma has changed. She still wants to be useful, to be busy, and these aren’t qualities that distinguish a woman of the upper classes.
Of course, William and Emma do love each other, and it’s difficult to imagine their fate being similar to that of William’s parents. And prim, disapproving Queen Victoria is dead, and the world is changing bit by bit. Maybe Mori is suggesting that the union of William and Emma is symbolic of that change. It’s maybe a little naïve, but it’s sweet, and when you consider the hard time she’s given her protagonists, a little sweetness isn’t a bad thing.
And overall, it’s the bittersweet quality that elevates Emma. The knowledge that the maid and the rich boy have traded one set of challenges for another helps readers savor their milestone. Their future happiness may not be assured, but they’ve overcome all obstacles so far. They also seem aware of the obstacles ahead, Emma maybe more than William, and perhaps that awareness will protect what happiness they can afford in a disapproving world.