Arrogant, self-willed and egotistical, Emma is Jane Austen's most unusual heroine. Her interfering ways and inveterate matchmaking are at once shocking and comic. She is 'handsome, clever and rich' and has 'a disposition to think too well of herself. When she decides to introduce the humble Harriet Smith to the delights of genteel society and to find her a suitable husband, she precipitates herself and her immediate circle into a web of misunderstanding and intrigue, from which no one emerges unchanged.

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 works in that she concentrates predominantly on the examination of a small society in the grip of a complex pattern of social and moral values.

The character of Emma was a brave intention. Indeed Jane Austen wrote; "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." Thus, at the beginning of the book we meet 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 occupies. She is therefore only subscribing to the accepted social hierarchy when she explains to Harriet Smith that were she to have married the humble Robert Martin, she could not possibly have visited them, given her elevated social position. This is a social value which contemporary readers 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 Coles are an upwardly mobile family whom Emma at first despises for their presumption, but their generosity of spirit is contrasted with her small-minded arrogance.

For Jane Austen, a happy marriage was the symbol of social and moral adjustment and harmony and it is not until Emma repents of her lack of sensitivity to others and her reckless interference in their lives, that she herself can become eligible. It is then that she discovers that she is in love, and by marrying the morally virtuous Mr Knightley equilibrium and harmony are restored.