I Am Sure They Were Talking of Me
While "I Am Sure They Were Talking of Me" might be my most straightforward use of media, being nothing more than gesso and pencil, I really spent a lot of time thinking about the meaning behind my color and media choice as well as figure placement. I started with the blue paper, which one obvious interpretation is I chose it because of the rain that forced this meeting between Harriet Smith and Robert Martin and his sister Elizabeth in Ford's, but the secondary reason is because of the depressed spirits of all involved. Harriet and Robert and Elizabeth are all seeing each other for the first time since Harriet rejected Robert's marriage proposal, so you can imagine their barely concealed feelings. Which brings me to the fact that you can patently see that Harriet isn't even in this piece. I have completely removed her. The reasoning behind this is twofold, one, Elizabeth at first ignores her, but more importantly can you imagine how much Harriet just wanted to disappear? We have all had instances when we dread running into someone after a fight or a split, where we see them for the first time from a distance and just hope and pray fervently that they won't see us. This is the first time I really felt the humanity of Harriet, she is a real person versus Emma's plaything. This moment, more than any other in Emma, shows Harriet's humanity and insecurity. By eliminating her as the object of the two figure's focus I have given her her heartfelt desire to just disappear into the background. I have removed her from the situation entirely while her presence is still so obviously felt. But more than that, by having Robert looking not at a figure but into the distance I can feel hope that he has an inkling of his and Harriet's happily ever after, even if he's currently a little spiky, hence his angular lines.
While Edmund implores Fanny to justify her rejection of the suitable offer of marriage from Henry Crawford of which he knows only the facts, the irony is that Edmund is basically asking Fanny to explain love and the workings of the heart, to which he has been a recent victim. Love is never about facts or how someone works on paper, it's all about the irrationality of our feelings. We just know. While Edmund speaks "Not of Facts, Perhaps, But of Feelings" it could just as easily be Fanny's reason as to why she rejected Henry. This scene is perhaps one of the most emotional for Fanny. She has spent days lost in a fug of her own thoughts and when Edmund approaches her it is at once exactly what she needs, yet from exactly the wrong quarter. How can she fully argue her case without showing Edmund that her heart belongs to him and can never belong to Henry. Of all the people she can confide in and they are talking at cross purposes! The irony of this scene is underscored by the irony of this piece ending up my favorite in the entire series. I say ironic because for a short while it actually had a new home in the trash. I was working with bulky oil pastels on a textured sepia paper and it wasn't turning out anything like I imagined. This piece was clumsy and frustrating and therefore I threw it in the trash. But thankfully, a sentiment issued by all in my class including my teacher, I took it out of the trash I just decided to throw everything at it. I used gesso to obscure what I didn't like, then I went in and actually used varnish on the oil pastels, pulling the color away from the forms and bleeding it into the background. After I was done my emotional frustration merged with Fanny's and I think this piece perfectly captures not just the characters frustrations but the fact that their minds are obscured to each other. They might walk side by side but they are so far apart. 
