For the New Yorker, David Denby listens to Jane Austen’s Emma and reflects on how listening to the book highlights the insincerity of the its characters:
Austen was one of the first modern writers, one of the first thoroughly to understand the unconscious and such things as insincerity and false candor. She understood that we are almost invariably subjective and self-interested. Hearing the book read aloud makes it easier to recognize when people are fooling themselves… The reading aloud brings out the character’s intention to be believed, which is so revealing of the desire to predominate beneath it.
