Emma And Clueless Analysis

How has your perception of transformations been illuminated by your comparative study of the prescribed texts?

Amy Heckerling’s modification of Jane Austen’s 19th Century novel ‘Emma’ allows the audience to explore, reflect and challenge the traditions and values explored within the respective texts, and discuss the concept of social status, women and marriage to allow the reader to discover and perceive the similarities between Heckerling’s character Cher, and Austen’s character Emma and how their respective texts manifest each heroine’s transformation.

Austen and Heckerling use their respective texts to explore, reflect and challenge the concept of hierarchical social structure based on wealth, property and reputation. Austen channels …show more content…
‘Emma’ emphasises on the aspect of marriage, whereas ‘Clueless’ explores the contemporary subject matter referring to sexuality and typical teenage relationships. Marriage is mentioned throughout ‘Emma’, however it is exhibited through her self-realisation by the use of a metaphor when she concludes “It darted through her, with the speed or an arrow, that Mr Knightley must marry no one other than herself!”. This not only exhibits Emma’s morals and values when it comes to being romantically involved with someone, but contrasts with the morals seen in “Clueless”, where Cher and her friends blatantly speak about sex and refer to it constantly throughout the film. Cher’s voice-over in a scene where she is trying to capture Christian’s attention states “Sometimes you have to show a little skin! This reminds boys of being naked, and then they think of sex!” shows a strong juxtaposition of that of the conservative, forbidden nature of sex before marriage, demonstrating that the explicitness of traditional values in terms of marriage & sex has transformed immensely from the Regency period to the modern 90s

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