Emma by Jane Austen: A Full Summary and Guide
What Emma is about
Emma was first published in December 1815, though the title page is dated 1816. It was the last of Jane Austen's novels to appear in her lifetime, written after her move to Chawton. Persuasion, the last complete novel she wrote, came out after her death.
The setting is the fictional Surrey village of Highbury and the estates around it: Hartfield, Randalls and Donwell Abbey. The cast is small, a handful of families whose visits, dinners, balls and gossip make up the whole world of the book. Austen called it a comedy of manners, and the comedy comes from watching a clever young woman read that world badly.
Emma Woodhouse is rich, handsome and not quite twenty-one. Her governess and friend, Miss Taylor, has just married Mr Weston, and Emma takes the credit for arranging it. Convinced she has a gift for matchmaking, she takes up a new project: Harriet Smith, a sweet young woman of uncertain parentage, whom Emma decides is destined for better than the respectable farmer Robert Martin. She persuades Harriet to refuse his proposal and steers her towards Mr Elton, the vicar. Mr Knightley, Emma's old friend and brother-in-law, tells her she is making a mistake. He is right, and the error is only the first of several.
Two new arrivals complicate matters. Frank Churchill, Mr Weston's son, has been raised by a wealthy and domineering aunt and rarely visits his father. Jane Fairfax, elegant, beautifully educated and entirely without money, comes to stay with her aunt Miss Bates and her grandmother. Jane is Emma's age and intends to take work as a governess. Emma envies her, invents a secret romance for her, and shares the theory with Frank. The misreadings pile up.
The main characters
Austen wrote before starting the book, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." The opening sentence introduces Emma as someone who "seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." That word "seemed" does a lot of work. Emma is spoiled, headstrong and self-satisfied. She overestimates her own judgement and is blind to the harm that meddling in other lives can do.
Mr Knightley is the one person who tells her the truth. He criticises her handling of Harriet and, later, her cruelty at Box Hill. Harriet Smith is pliable and warm, and suffers most from Emma's schemes. Mr Elton is a social climber who proposes to Emma herself, is refused, and returns from Bath with a pretentious, newly moneyed wife. Mrs Elton then adopts Jane Fairfax as a cause and sets about finding her a governess post.
Miss Bates talks too much and matters more than she seems to. Frank Churchill is charming and evasive. Mr Woodhouse, Emma's anxious father, keeps her tied to Hartfield. Jane Fairfax is the quiet counterweight to Emma: the same age, better educated, and facing a working life because she has no fortune.
The themes
Class runs through every page. The gap between Emma and Harriet, between Jane's accomplishments and her lack of money, between Robert Martin's farm and Mr Elton's ambitions, decides who may marry whom and who must earn a living. Austen is writing about the concerns and difficulties of genteel women in Georgian and Regency England, where marriage is the main route to security.
Underneath the matchmaking plot sits a story about self-knowledge. Emma's imagination and perceptions keep leading her astray. The turning point is social rather than romantic: at a picnic on Box Hill she mocks Miss Bates for talking too much, Mr Knightley rebukes her, and she is ashamed. The next day she goes to make amends. That visit, not any proposal, is where the heroine changes.
Friendship is treated as seriously as love. Emma's bond with Mr Knightley rests on his willingness to correct her, and her eventual willingness to hear it.
How it ends
Skip this section if you want the plot kept intact. When Frank's aunt dies, he and Jane reveal that they have been secretly engaged since the autumn, a secret that strained Jane badly and nearly broke the match. Emma, mortified at how wrong she has been, expects Harriet to be crushed. Instead Harriet announces that she loves Mr Knightley. At that moment Emma realises she loves him herself. He proposes, she accepts. Harriet accepts Robert Martin's second proposal and marries first. Emma and Mr Knightley marry before the end of November and live at Hartfield with Mr Woodhouse.
Why it still matters
Emma gave Austen her hardest technical task: a heroine who is wrong for most of the book, told largely through her own mistaken eyes. The reader works out the truth slightly before she does, which is the engine of the comedy. It has been adapted many times for film, television and the stage, and the central idea of a confident young woman rearranging other people's love lives has proved endlessly portable.
It suits readers who like social comedy with teeth, anyone coming to Austen after Pride and Prejudice, and anyone who enjoys a novel that rewards a second reading once you know what Frank and Jane have been hiding.
