Matchmaking in Jane Austen’s Emma: A Psychological approach viewed from Skinner’s theory

ABSTRACT

Novel Emma that was published in 1815 is written by Jane Austen. Generally, this novel talked about a beautiful, smart, rich and independent woman, named Emma. Her hobby is being a matchmaker. To know why Emma likes to do it, a researcher tries to analyze the psychological condition of Emma. The objectives of the study are to describe Emma’s matchmaking portrayed in novel and to describe Emma’s motivation in doing matchmaking in Jane Austen’s Emma.

In answering those, the theory that is used is in Skinner’s Theory. Many data will be analyzed of this study in many steps. Start from underlining the sentence that is related to the research, then identify the data whether it is right or not, next is analyzing the data that has close relation with the research problem, and the last is simplify the data. Emma has such belief in matchmaking. Emma believes in her ability to match make. It has been applied to her sister, governess, best friend, etc. After Emma’s succession, named Miss Taylor, Emma gets brave and believes that she can be a matchmaker for others and do matchmaking again.

Emma’s motivation in doing matchmaking are Emma had successes to be a matchmaker before, so that she wants to apply it again to her close friend and Emma also had some background why she does it. They are the quest for marriage and financial security. The condition that made Emma does it. At that time, women are allowed to have friends from the same genre. Women’s friend was woman and man’s friend is man. The purpose of marriage was for economic and social status. Skinner discovered two basic reinforcement strategies for increasing the frequency of behavior. First is positive reinforcement the behavior increases because it is followed by reward. It is such Emma does. Because she had success doing matchmaking, she doing it again and again. Then, second is the frequency of a behavior can increase with the negative reinforcement or with the removal or lessening of an unpleasant stimulus. It is done when she fail to match make Harriet and Mr. Elton. She felt she had fail and not do it anymore.