Explore Austen's use of third person narration focussing on the opening of Emma

Austen establishes her omniscient narrator from the very first paragraph as an informative yet ironic voice that is going to take us through the rest of the novel. The first description of our protagonist, Emma Woodhouse, is through an informative triptych, "handsome, clever, and rich", as with the rule of three, the focus here is on the final description "rich". The ironic tone of the narrator is made apparent when Austen writes "[Emma] seemed to unite some of the best blessing of existence", where the use of the questioning "seemed to" suggests that Emma falls short of "unit[ing]", all the blessings she has in her life in a positive way. The final phrase of the opening paragraph introduces us to free indirect discourse, as the narrator seems to slip into Emma's consciousness revealing that she had lived "nearly twenty-one years with very little to distress or vex her". The narrator keeps an informative distance but Austen's satirical tone cannot help but find it's way into the third-person narration here through proleptic irony. The phrase seems to correctly suggest that this novel will explore Emma being "distress[ed]" and "vex[ed]".

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