"Emma (1815) is Jane Austen's fourth novel about a young woman called Emma Woodhouse who
lives with an elderly father and a governess called Miss Taylor. Emma is portrayed as a young, beautiful,
highspirited,
sociable girl who has a strong sense of class and who likes to interfere into private lives of
her loved ones such as a young woman called Harriet Smith, an illegitimate daughter of unknown
parents. After the wedding of Miss Taylor Emma starts to feel lonely and this is the main reason why she
befriends Harriet. Emma sees in Harriet a girl that would deserve a better social position, and therefore
she decides to organise a match between Harriet and a young vicar Mr.Elton. The project of matchmaking
turns out to be a sheer disaster since Harriet is already interested in somebody else, a farmer called Robert
Martin, and Mr. Elton seems rather to be more fond of Emma than Harriet which he finds not suitable
enough to marry because of her undesirable low social status and courts her only because of the fact that
she is Emma's close friend.
Emma is a Bildungsroman because the reader observes the psychological maturation of a young
woman who needs to go through several misunderstandings in order to realise the true wantings of her
heart. We learn that Emma commits several blunders linked to her social misconduct and for each of them
she is scolded by her future partner Mr. Knightley, a respectable gentleman who is also a member of the
Woodhouse family because Emma's sister Isabela is married to his brother. Emma's first blunder happens
when she attempts wrongly to manipulate Harriet into becoming Mr. Elton's wife. She advises her to
reject her first suitor Robert Martin in order to redirect her affection towards Mr.Elton who talks to
Harriet only with the intent to become closer to Emma. Emma is shocked when Mr.Elton reveals his true
feelings towards her hoping to marry her and get her dowry. Second, Emma offends unjustly Miss Bates,
an old spinster, at a picnic party, when she implies that she speaks foolishly in public, and third when
Emma flirts lightheartedly
with Frank Churchill even though he is secretly engaged to Jane Fairfax, the
beautiful and reserved niece of Miss Bates."

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