First published in 1816 and generally considered Jane Austen's finest work, Emma is a comic portrayal of a heroine whose insensible interferences in the life of a young live-in servant in a nearby village often lead to misunderstanding and embarrassment.
Emma was written and published in less than two years, while Jane Austen was living at Chawton in Hampshire. Although it lacks the narrative scope of her other novels, many have hailed it as one of her most perfect and accomplished.
Emma Woodhouse is Jane Austen's most unusual heroine being arrogant, self-willed and egotistical. Her interfering ways and habitual matchmaking are at both shocking and comic. She is 'handsome, clever and rich' and has 'a disposition to think too well of herself.
Austen also brings to life a myriad of engaging characters as she presents a mixture of social classes as she did in Pride and Prejudice. Her two greatest comic characters are part of Emma's machinations - the eccentric Mr. Woodhouse and the quintessential bore, Miss Bates.
Emma is a funny and heartwarming story of a young lady whose zeal, snobbishness and self-satisfaction lead to several errors in judgment. Emma takes Harriet Smith, a live-in servant and unknown, under her wing and schemes for advancement through a good marriage. (Jane Austen considered a happy marriage to be the symbol of social and moral adjustment and harmony).
At the beginning of the book Emma is introduced as a wealthy over-indulged young woman, who feels she has every right to trifle with the destiny of others simply as a result of the social position she was born into. She is therefore only adopting the accepted social hierarchy when she explains to Harriet Smith, that were Harriet to have married the humble Robert Martin, she could not possibly have visited them, given her own elevated social position.
This is a social value which readers at the time would have recognised, but Jane Austen leaves us in no doubt as to what she feels is the morality of such a statement. Thus, throughout the novel, characters reveal themselves not only according to the position they occupy in society, but also in terms of the way they behave towards one another.
The attempts at finding Harriet a suitor occupy all of Emma's time. However, in the midst of the search she settles on a most unlikely union with her own constant critic: Mr. Knightly.
In Emma Jane Austen displays the shrewd wit and delicate irony which made her a master of the English novel. Although Austen thought that only she would like her witty, fanciful, self-deluded heroine, Emma has gained the affection of generations of book lovers.
