“A young farmer, whether on horseback or on foot, is the very last sort of person to raise my curiosity. The yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to do. A degree or two lower, and a creditable appearance might interest me; I might hope to be useful to their families in some way or other. But a farmer can need none of my help, and is therefore in one sense as much above my notice as in every other he is below it.”
– Jane Austen
Emma, Chapter 4. Emma’s shocking level of snobbery and vanity is laid bare in her comments to her protégée Harriet Smith about Robert Martin. Harriet has developed an interest in the yeoman farmer, who rents land from George Knightley. But in Emma’s eyes the tenant farmer has no social standing whatsoever and she is endeavoring to turn Harriet’s attentions away from him. Emma looks down on those beneath her on the social ladder, while at the same time offering charity to those at the bottom of that ladder. She shows the petty prejudices of some of the upper class who are blind to the good qualities of people from the lower class. In this quote Austen is satirizing the snobbish nature of Emma and rich privileged people like her.
