Does Emma Woodhouse's Father Suffer from “Dementia”?

Abstract

Jane Austen's Emma is not usually read as a novel about two generations facing a troubling old age. But Emma spends an unusual amount of time, once left alone with her father, in soothing his anxieties and depressions, helping others to treat him appropriately, and judging them on their success. The most plausible reason why Mr. Woodhouse cannot be satirized, that squares with Austen's linguistic and moral values, is because he is cognitively unable to reform. His condition of impairment might now be called “dementia,” in an era of growing terror of Alzheimer's and alarmist demography. There are lessons to be learned from an earlier period before biogerontology that was not so afflicted. Our dread of forgetfulness has contributed to making American ageism more panicky and cruel.