Emma
Emma Woodhouse
The heroine
The clever, confident young woman at the center of Highbury society, who loves arranging other people's lives. It takes a few painful mistakes before she learns to see clearly.
Emma Woodhouse is the younger daughter of Mr. Woodhouse and the lady of Hartfield, the best house in the village of Highbury. She is clever, high-spirited, imaginative and warm-hearted, and since her governess married and her sister moved to London, she has had no one at home but her anxious father. She is used to being admired and used to being right.
Her great pastime is matchmaking. After one lucky success, she believes she has a talent for it, and she sets out to improve the lives of those around her, starting with a new young friend, Harriet Smith. Emma means well, but she tends to see what she wants to see, and she does not always notice that other people have their own hearts and wishes.
“I made the match myself, papa; you know how much I wished for it.”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Emma persuades Harriet to turn down a proposal from the farmer Robert Martin and tries to match her with the vicar, Mr. Elton. The scheme collapses when Elton declares his love for Emma instead and sneers at the idea of marrying Harriet. Emma is mortified. Later she flirts with Frank Churchill, misreads the secret between him and Jane Fairfax, and at Box Hill she makes a cruel joke at the expense of Miss Bates.
Mr. Knightley's rebuke at Box Hill hits hard, and she visits Miss Bates the next morning to apologize. When Harriet says it is Knightley she admires, Emma realizes that Knightley must marry no one but herself. He returns from London, proposes, and she accepts. They agree to live at Hartfield for her father's sake, and Emma, cured of matchmaking, sees Harriet happily married to Robert Martin.
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