Emma (1996 theatrical film) Jane Austen's most endearing character, the disastrously self-assured matchmaker Emma Woodhouse. A fine cast, speedy pacing and playful direction make this a solid contender for the Austen sweepstakes." Emma (1996 theatrical film) Emma is a 1996 period film based on the 1815 novel of the same name by Jane Austen. Written and directed by Douglas McGrath, the film stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Alan Cumming, Toni Collette, Ewan McGregor, and Jeremy Northam. The film describes a year in the life of Emma Woodhouse, a congenial but naïve young woman who thinks of herself as a romantic matchmaker in her small community in
Reception history of Jane Austen of writing in a manner expected of a woman writer in her age while, at the same time, undercutting such expectations . Devoney Looser in the 1995 book "Jane Austen and the Discourses of Feminism" argued in her introduction that there were a number of ways in which Austen could be placed, not merely within a feminist tradition, but as herself a feminist. Using the theories of Michel Foucault as their guide, Casey Finch and Peter Bowen in their 1990 essay, "'The Tittle-Tattle of Highbury': Gossip and the Free Indirect Style in "Emma"", argued that the free indirect discourse in