Short-Answer Quizzes: Chapters 30-31
Study Questions
1. Why is Emma certain that Mr. Knightley doesn’t love Jane Fairfax?
2. Why does Frank say his mother is ill?
3. What does Emma learn about Frank’s visit to the Bates’ house?
4. What statement of Frank’s almost cuts through the layers of politeness he normally displays?
5. What does Emma think Frank is about to reveal before Mr. Weston and Mr. Woodhouse come into the room?
6. How does Emma interpret Frank’s remarks about her?
7. What does Emma tell Harriet to do?
8. How does Emma justify her friendship with Harriet?
9. How does Emma justify her father’s behavior?
10. What is Emma plotting as her next move to match up Harriet?
Answers
1. Mr. Knightley expresses his total lack of interest for the ball. Then Emma learns that Jane Fairfax is looking forward to it. She takes small consolation that if Mr. Knightley won’t show up there for Emma, neither will he for Jane. She thinks this proves Mrs. Weston is wrong about them.
2. Though Frank returns to Enscombe promptly, he suspects his mother’s needing him is calculated. He relates that she is never ill “but for her own convenience.”
3. Emma takes time to make a cutting remark about Miss Bates and learns that she wasn’t home when Frank paid his call. That left only deaf elderly Mrs. Bates and her niece, Jane Fairfax.
4. In discussing the propriety of his visiting Miss Bates, Frank directs himself to Emma, saying that she can “hardly be without suspicion—” and breaks off. He probes Emma for some sign that she comprehends, but finding none, reverts to his polite chatter about his high regard for Hartfield.
5. Frank tries twice to confide the truth to Emma, and both times he interrupts himself. When the men come in shortly afterwards, Emma convinces herself that Frank was about to speak a declaration of love to her and would have had he not been interrupted.
6. She feels they pay proper tribute to her influence on him. She is sure he is paying her a great compliment, yet the letter leaves her strangely unmoved.
7. She urges Harriet to think and talk less of the Eltons. Emma can’t stand much more of Harriet’s rejection blues. Nor can she stand much more responsibility for it. Harriet is so submissive, she’ll do whatever Emma tells her.
8. Clearly Harriet is Emma’s intellectual inferior. She asks only to be led by Emma to be happy. Emma convinces herself that Harriet’s good-heartedness outweighs any lack of intellect.
9. Mr. Woodhouse is a caricature. His faults are comically excessive, but Emma cuts through them all by declaring simply that he has “tenderness of heart” and that is what makes him so beloved.
10. After extolling her virtues, clear-headedness not among them, Emma fixes on Frank Churchill as the perfect new match for her charming pretty friend.
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