Ah, the perils of being a precocious child. At the tender age of seven, armed with what I clearly believed was an air of intellectual maturity (or maybe just a growth spurt?), I tackled Jane Austen’s Emma. Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly a happily ever after.
The helpful librarian, bless her heart, must have thought I was ready for the classics. Imagine her horror when I returned the book half-finished, muttering about boredom and a distinct lack of, well, action. “But Emma,” she might have pleaded, “it’s a masterpiece!”
Newsflash, Librarian Lady: all I saw was a snoozefest about people getting hitched.
However, I did manage to stumble upon a scene that left me more bewildered than a pug in a tutu. A few chapters in, there’s Emma, snuggled up in a carriage with Mr. Elton, who proceeds to make “violent love” to her (apparently, carriages were the hot tubs of the 1800s). Now, in my seven-year-old brain, “making love” meant one thing: babies. So here I was, picturing a full-blown carriage procreation scene, complete with a very confused Emma and a slightly panicked Mr. Elton.
But what truly threw me was Emma’s reaction. She just politely told him off! No screams, no fainting couches, just a playful “there, there, Mr. Elton, that’s quite enough.” This, coming from a girl who deemed the entire novel a drag, was the real shocker.
Fast forward a few decades (and several history lessons), and the penny finally dropped. Turns out, “making love” in Austen’s world meant wooing, not woo-hooing. The meaning had completely shifted, leaving my childhood interpretation as dusty as a horse-drawn carriage.
This little episode is a reminder of how language can evolve into a mischievous beast. Words we take for granted today can have wildly different meanings depending on when they were written. So next time you pick up a classic, remember, a carriage ride might not always be what it seems !