Emma
Jane Austen (1815)
“A novel about a woman who is wrong about everything — and the masterpiece is that you agree with her the whole time.”
Short Summary
Emma Woodhouse — handsome, clever, and rich — decides to play matchmaker in the village of Highbury, Surrey. She steers her protégée Harriet Smith away from eligible farmer Robert Martin and toward ineligible vicar Mr. Elton, fails disastrously, and then convinces herself that Harriet and the dashing Frank Churchill are destined. Meanwhile she dismisses sensible Mr. Knightley's friendship as mere neighbourly concern and misreads every actual romantic situation around her. After the humiliating Box Hill picnic — where she insults the poor, harmless Miss Bates — Emma begins to see clearly. The novel ends with two unexpected engagements and one long-awaited one: Emma to Knightley.
Detailed Summary
Emma Woodhouse, twenty-one years old, lives with her valetudinarian father at Hartfield, the finest house in Highbury. Her governess Miss Taylor has just married the widower Mr. Weston, leaving Emma briefly at a loss — and dangerously at leisure. She fixes on Harriet Smith, a pretty, dim, illegitima...