Emma
(Book)

Emma, by Jane Austen, is about youthful hubris and romantic misunderstandings. It is set in the fictional country village of Highbury and the surrounding estates, and involves the relationships among people from a small number of families. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England. Emma is a comedy of manners, and depicts issues of marriage, sex, age, and social status. Before she began the novel, Austen wrote, “I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.” In the first sentence, she introduces the title character as “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition... and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” Emma is spoiled, headstrong, and self-satisfied; she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities; she is blind to the dangers of meddling in other people’s lives; and her imagination and perceptions often lead her astray. The novel concerns Emma’s attempts to be a matchmaker among her acquaintances and her own romantic misadventures. She professes that she does not ever wish to marry (unless she falls very much in love), as she has no financial need to, because she has a large inheritance and does not wish to leave her father alone.