在《愛瑪》(Emma) 一書中，次要/邊緣化的人物揭示了珍•奧斯汀 (Jane Austen) 對於階級制度，女性困境，和追尋個人自由的批判。如傅科 (Michel Foucault) 的權力理論所示，破裂、不連續性和縫隙的概念，是闡述統治地位的意識型態和被壓制的意識形態之間如何交互運作的重要依據。我的研究重心不僅集中於主要文本 (main text)，亦著墨於隱而不顯的次要文本(subtexts)。若將珍•奧斯汀身為女性作家的處境列入考量，便不難理解十九世紀的女性作家在寫作時，不得不將弦外之音加以掩飾。在表面的故事之下，這些被隱匿的次要文本隱含著不被社會所接受的深義。
然而，在《愛瑪》的結局裡，次要文本所隱藏的衝突與分歧皆被排除，並融入主要文本當中。珍•奧斯汀運用妥協的藝術解決小說中呈現的問題。這些被壓迫的意識形態並非自然而和平地消弭，卻是受到壓制而被迫隱遁。因為珍•奧斯汀並非激進的小說家或者改革者。《愛瑪》傳達了她對當代社會的觀感:個人必須有智慧的選擇與協商，以便融入社會。妥協，是珍•奧斯汀為了在維多利亞時代生存下去的寫作技巧。畢竟，她在意的不是怎麼去改造社會，而是如何與之共存。

This thesis proposes that Emma exposes Jane Austen's critique of the class hierarchy, female predicaments, and the forbidden quest for individual freedom. In terms of Michel Foucault's power theory, the idea of break, discontinuity and gap is essential to reveal the interplay of the dominant ideology and the suppressed. My study focuses on the strategies of solving conflicts of the main text and the submerged subtexts. To take Jane Austen's anxiety of female authorship into consideration, female authors in the nineteenth century have to narrate their stories in disguise. The submerged subtexts conceal its socially unacceptable implication beneath the surface presentation.
However, in the end of Emma, all discords of the subtext are all eliminated to fuse into the main text. Jane Austen employs the art of compromise to resolve all problems, in which those repressed ideologies are not peacefully eliminated but oppressed. For Jane Austen is not a radical novelist or reformer. Emma expresses Jane Austen’s view of her contemporary crises: people have to give up some of individual desires, in order to integrate within the social system. My study analyzes that the art of compromise is Jane Austen's narrative technique to survive peacefully with the dominant ideology in the Victorian Age. Jane Austen's concern lies in how to work within the society rather than change it.

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