I love Jane Austen and everything she's written, but out of all her books this one is my least favorite. Emma differs from other Austen heroines in that she doesn't really have to overcome any barrier of class or fortune, and she is the primary cause of all her problems, as she realizes near the end of the novel. This does not make her an unlikable character - just one I had a harder time relating to and sympathizing with. I also never really fell in love with Mr. Knightley, who seemed more like a disapproving father than a love interest. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed this book and like the characters - but the fact that I had a harder time relating to the main characters and the frustration I felt with Emma kept me from getting into it as much as I did her other novels. ( )

EMMA has even less story than either of the preceeding novels. (Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice). Miss E. W., from whom the book takes its name, is the daughter of a gentleman of wealth and consequence residing at his seat in the immediate vicinage of a country village called Highbury. The father, a good-natured, silly valetudinary, abandons the management of his household to Emma, he himself being only occupied by his summer and winter walk, his apothecary, his gruel, and his whist table. The latter is supplied from the neighboring village of Highbury with precisely the sort of persons who occupy the vacant corner of a regular whist table, when a village is in the neighborhood and better cannot be found within the family. We have the smiling and courteous vicar, who nourishes the ambitious hope of obtaining Miss W's hand. We have Mrs. Bates, the wife of a former rector past eveything but tea and whist; her daughter, Miss Bates, a good-natured, vulgar, and foolish old maid; Mr. Weston, a gentleman of a frank disposition and moderate fortune, in the vicinity, and his wife, an amiable and accomplished person, who had been Emma's governess and is devotedly attached to her. Amongst all these personages E. W. walks forth, the princess paramount, superior to all her companions in wit, beauty, anf fortune, and accomplishments, doted on by her father and the Westons, admired, and almost worshiped by the more humble companions of the whist table. The object of most young ladies is, or at least is usually supposed to be, a desirable connection in Marriage. But Emma W., either anticipating the taste of a later period of life, or, like a good sovereign, preferring the weal of her subjects of Highbury to her own private interest, sets generally about making matches for her friends, without thinking of matrimony on her own account. We are informed that she had been eminently successful in the case of Mr. and Mrs.Weston; and when the novel commences she is exerting her influence in favor of Miss Harriet Smith, a boarding-school girl without family or fortune, very good-humoured, very pretty, very silly, and, what suited Miss Woodhouse's purpose best of all. very much disposed to be married. In these conjugal machinations Emma is frequently interrupted, not only by the cautions of her father, who had a particular objection to anybody committing the rash act of matrimony, but also by the sturdy reproof and remonstrances of Mr. Knightly, the elder brother of her sister's husband, a sensible country-gentleman of thirty-five, who had known Emma from her cradle, and was the only person who ventured to find fault with her. In spite, however, of his censure and warning, Emma lays a plan of marrying Harriet Smith to the vicar; and though she succeeds perfectly in diverting her simple friend's thoughts from an honest farmer who had made her a very suitable offer, and in flattering her into a passion for Mr. Elton, yet on the other hand that co nceited divine totally mistakes the nature of the encouragement held out to him, and attributes the favor which he found in Miss W's eyes to a lurking affection on his own part. This at length encourages him to a presumptuous declaration of his sentiments; upon receiving a repulse, he looks abroad elsewhere, and enriches the Highbury society by uniting himself to a dashing young w oman with as many thousands as are usually called ten, and a corresponding quantity of presumption and ill-breeding. While Emma is vainly engaged in forging wedlock fetters for others, her friends have views of the same kind upon her, in favor of a son of Mr. Weston by a former marriage, who bears the name, lives under the patronage, and is to inherit the fortune, of a rich uncle. Unfortunately Mr. Frank Churchill had already settled his affections on Miss Jane Fairfax, a young lady of reduced fortune, but as this was a concealed affair, Emma, when Mr. C. first appears on the stage, has thoughts of being in love with him herself; speedily, however, recovering from that dangerous propensity, she is disposed to confer upon him her deserted friend Harriet Smith. Hariet has, in the interim, fallen desperately in love with Mr. Knightly, the sturdy advice-giving bachelor; and, as all the village supposes Frank Churchill and Emma to be attached to each other, there are cross-purposes enough (were the novel of more romantic cast) for cutting half the men's throats and breaking all the women's hearts. But at Highbury Cupid walks decorously, and with good discretion, bearing his torch under a lantern instead of flourishing it around to set the house on fire. Alln these entanglements bring on only a train of mistakes and embarrassing situations, and dialogues at balls and parties of pleasure, in which the author displays her peculiar powers of humor and knowledge of human life. The plot is extricated with great simplicity. The aunt of Frank Churchill dies; his uncle, no longer under her baneful influence, consents to his mariage with Jane Fairfax. Mr. Knightly and Emma are led, by this unexpected incident, to discover that they had been in love with each other all along. Mr. Woodhouse's objections to the marriage of his daughter are overpowered by the fears of house-breakers, and the comfort which he hopes to derive from having a stout son-in-law resident in the family; and the facile affections of Harriet Smith are transferred, like a bank bill by endorsation, to her former suitor, the honest farmer, who had obtained a favorable oppurtunity of renewing his addresses. Such is the simple plan of a story which we peruse with pleasure, if not with deep interest, and which perhaps we might more willingly resume than one of those narratives where the attention is strongly riveted during the first perusal, by the powerful excitement of curiosity.
The author's knowledge of the world, and the peculiar fact with which she presents characters that the reader cannot fail to recognize, reminds us something of the merits of the Flemish School of painting, The subjects are not often elegant, and certainly never grand; but they are finished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader. . . 4

4 In the paragraphs that follow, Scott quotes a specimen of Miss Austen's dialogue, praising its fidelity to real life, but querying whether, in the case of tedious characters, such fidelity may not itself become tedious.

This review is from the pen of Sir Walter Scott ( )

A barbed wire fence would have been easier to digest.

Long and short of things, Emma Woodhouse more or less grew up the Miss Woodhouse of her father’s home, meaning she was the society keeper. The golden daughter, beautiful and clever, she has never been denied anything by her father, who’s a bit of a hypochondriac, nor by her governess Miss Taylor, who has just married Mr. Weston in the beginning of the novel. Emma believes she is responsible for making this match and decides to aim her powers at the single vicar, Mr. Elton. Her brother-in-law’s brother, Mr. Knightly, however, admonishes her to leave match-making be, to let love take its course, but she doesn’t listen (OF COURSE!) and this sets a series of events into motion that forces Emma to grow up and re-evaluate her own position and judgments and that of those around her.

What Austen does in Emma is to recreate the sense of isolation and near-claustrophobic sensations of the life and choices living as an early 19thcentury English woman. She equates the life of a governess as a polite form of slavery. She also conveys the sense of captivity and inertial force of the class stratification of the era. Everyone had a place, and everyone had acceptable and unacceptable pools of “friends” within the system to choose from: Either their equal or many levels beneaththem so as to help improve them, but no one only a little below them.. lest they degrade themselves. Those who tried to improve their social standing by latching onto those above them and trying the seem their equal were treated with civil incivility: Invitations “forgotten,” stories told to remind them where they belong, arguments about things immaterial that vented hostilities and prejudices.

Emma by Jane Austen presents the parlor life of emotional constipation and gilded-cage existence without choices beyond who to invite for dinner that ran on and on until death was begged for. In this day and age, when I can tell my neighbor flat-out, he’s an ass, and go on. He and I live a life of pretending the other doesn’t exist, which works well.

The book also conveys the sense of the inescapable lot assigned to a person because of who one’s family is and what they’ve done. Harriet is a persona somewhat non grata because her parentage is unknown. She could never expect to marry a gentleman, because no respectable man would take in the chance of social disaster if her father ever turned out to be a criminal or worse. You are who your grandparents were, and if you screw up your life, you ruin your grandchildren’s chances for a future, destroy your siblings’ reputation and shame your parents.

It amounted to a suffocating life where the most seemingly trivial choices could destroy one’s life and reputation. While Emma by Jane Austen is not one of my favorites, it’s a worthwhile book to read. I’m glad to have read it, as much as I am glad I’m DONE reading it.

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When commenting about the brilliant Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice is the most commonly discussed. Though I must admit that Pride and Prejudice is my undisputed favorite from among those novels I have read by Ms. Austen, she does have many other great works. Emma is yet another example of her unparalleled skills as a writer. Most people find Austen’s themes of romance most interesting but her novels, Emma in particular, are peppered with a great deal of satire. Austen manages to not only create an engaging story but also to criticize the ridged society in which she lived. In all of the Jane Austen novels that I have read she has created a humorous character who seems to talk far too much and make herself ridiculous to everybody; that character in this story is Mrs. Bates. Though Mrs. Bates long speeches did often get annoying they were not without humor and it seems obvious that Austen was poking fun at many of the women in her society. Though it took me a while to get through this book I did thoroughly enjoy it and was further convinced of Jane Austen being one of the greatest writers to ever live. This novel rather contrasted both Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility in the fact that the heroin was not an underprivileged young woman who was lifted up from inferior circumstance. Instead, Emma was born into a high circle of society and a great deal of money. It was not her who was looked down on but she who looked down on others and while she was generally well meaning she was not without her pride and sense of superiority. I had a bit of a difficult time relating to Emma’s character as opposed to those of Elizabeth Bennett or Elinor Dashwood who were both more level headed and loveable. I always enjoy Jane Austen’s novels and I am very glad that I read Emma. I would most certainly suggest it! ( )