People Have Always Been People
In praise of Emma and the enduring quirks and habits of human beings.
In my last newsletter, I wrote about how the current state of the world feels particularly grim thanks to our unprecedented access to the terrible things going on in it. My conclusion was that, in reality, things have always been bad—perhaps even worse than they are today. We need not convince ourselves that our moment in history is especially chaotic or dire.1 Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective), we are simply not that special.
After reflecting on it further, I realized that this is even more true than I initially thought. Just as the people and circumstances of the present are not uniquely bad, perhaps they are not uniquely complex or good, either. It’s no secret that humans have always had a shocking capacity for violence; they’ve played political games and continuously thrown the world into disarray. But what if they’ve also always been funny, ridiculous, bizarre, and emotional—in short, just like we are today?
It seems obvious, but somehow this didn’t truly register with me until I read Emma by Jane Austen a couple of weeks ago. I was struck by how enjoyable it was, despite its publication in 1815. I was surprised, I suppose, to find humor and relatability in a book over two centuries old. Its characters felt rich and familiar, even with all of the time and traditions that supposedly separated us. Maybe I expected them to be so dull and archaic that they felt alien, but instead I found them to be as vibrant and alive as myself and the people I share my life with. It made me realize that in all of my pondering of the past, I seemed to have forgotten that the people who lived in it were just that: people. They suffered similar miseries and shared similar merits.
While combing through the internet trying to give shape to this feeling, I stumbled upon a short article by Tania Lombrozo titled “The Curse of the Inability to Imagine.” In it, she contemplates our tendency to oversimplify our past counterparts due to our reliance on modern technology, specifically identifying our difficulty in separating the meaning and depth of our lives from the technology we use to live them. Oftentimes, this bias leads us to imagine the people who came before us as primitive and fundamentally lacking in anything we can relate to. Lombrozo warns that this subconscious practice strips people of “their layers and complexity alongside their cellphones and modern medicine.” Not only that, but we picture them as longing for what they lack and what we have in abundance. We imagine them desperately missing smartphones, food delivery, and the internet. How horrible it must have been to do without those things! How could they have possibly gotten by?
I’ll tell you: they got by just as we are now. How can you miss something you cannot even conceive of? No one from the year 1815 was vexed by the absence of cell service or fast food. They might have dreamed of a distant future where such fantastical inventions would become a reality, but they did not feel a void without them as we might in their place. The characters of Jane Austen’s novels did not think twice about writing letters and waiting weeks for a reply. They did not balk at the long walk into town, the heatless winter nights. It was simply the way of the world they inhabited.
As Lombrozo surmised, before reading Emma, I had wrongly assumed that the differences in tools used to navigate everyday life in the 1800s signified a fundamental divide in the human experience. I had essentially conflated the ability to use and understand modern technology with the ability to feel and experience complex thought and emotion. Instead, I found Emma to be abound with colorful descriptions of a life that seemed astonishingly similar to my own. So similar, in fact, that I often had to put the book down just to marvel at my own ignorance for ever believing otherwise. “Huh,” I would think, “I guess people have always felt this way.”
This is perhaps my favorite thing about Emma: it conveys the full spectrum of human emotions, not just the stuffy, romanticized ones we often attribute to people from past eras. Austen famously said she aimed to write “a heroine whom no one but [herself] will much like.” She almost accomplished this—the character of Emma is undeniably flawed, yet she remains likable in spite of (or perhaps because of) those flaws. That is certainly why I like her—I deeply identify with her multidimensionality. She is funny yet self-important, smart yet negligent, passionate yet practical. She feels like a real person, one who could exist in almost any context. To me, she provides a portal to past worlds, reminding me of the aspects of humanity that span time and space.
One such timeless aspect of humanity that is gloriously on display in Emma is humor. Emma’s father is a ridiculous hypochondriac, her neighbor is an incessant chatterbox, her friend is a hopeless romantic, and Emma herself is an overly judgmental and condescending meddler. Their antics lead to awkward run-ins with exes, anticipated parties with romantic prospects, and mortifying instances of miscommunication. Much of what she and the other characters experience throughout the novel feels strikingly similar to the plot of a modern rom-com (or modern life, for that matter). I imagine this is why the creators of Clueless, the 1995 movie adaptation of Emma, were able to translate the original story to the screen so effortlessly: they simply swapped out 19th-century elements for contemporary outfits, speech, and conventions, and the rest fell into place.2
I think the humor in Emma surprised me the most, not just because of the curse of the inability to imagine, but because of the concept of uniqueness I mentioned earlier. My generation in particular is rather attached to the idea of being different from our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. This manifests in many ways, but one of the most common is our self-identification as especially ‘unserious.’ We often describe ourselves this way, and in some sense, I suppose it’s true. Changes in communication technology have made us so cynical that everything feels frivolous—when you know everything, how can you possibly decide what is truly important? However, whether true or not, I believe this characterization and others like it have contributed to our forgetting that people have always experienced the full range of human emotions, amusement included. There were many passages in Emma that I could easily envision coming straight from the mouths (or keyboards) of Gen Z, albeit worded a bit less elegantly. I can picture a tweet about a failed situationship using one of Emma’s witty lines: “I do suspect that he is not really necessary to my happiness.” Emma, like my generation (and perhaps every generation before it), is decidedly unserious in its own way.3
My point is that what makes a book like Emma great is its ability to speak to something enduring about the human spirit. It highlights our species-wide idiosyncrasies, our hopes, hurts, fears, and habits. Though it does act a bit as a time capsule, accurately capturing a specific era in history, I think the most important parts are untethered to any specific time or setting. They remind us of who we are, who we were, and perhaps who we’ll always be.
I think the time-traveling capabilities of any form of writing or artistic expression are part of what makes them so important: they allow us to get to know ourselves—past versions included. In my experience, few forms of this exploration are as charming as the stories of Jane Austen (though I’m open to recommendations!). So if you’re in need of a new read, I highly recommend any of her books.4 I think you will find them surprisingly relevant and a welcome reminder that people have always been people.
We also should not delude ourselves into thinking that everything is fine and inaction is justified. My point is simply that history repeats itself, and we are not unique in our present sufferings.
I’m sure it was a bit more complicated than that, but you know what I mean.
I also recommend watching the 2020 movie adaptation of Emma for a period-accurate take on the novel that expertly maintains this playful tone.
Let it be known that the irony of promoting the works of one of the most acclaimed authors of all time on a platform devoted to reading and writing is not lost on me. I know I’m embarrassingly late and uninventive with this take.
Love this one🩷 So inspiring and thank you for reminding me to pick up Emma!