Emma

Jane Austen's Emma is a novel of courtship. Like all of Austen's novels, it centers around the marriage
plot: who will marry whom? For what reasons will they marry? Love, practicality, or necessity? At the
center of the story is the title character, Emma Woodhouse, a heiress who lives with her widowed father
at their estate, Hartfield. At the beginning of the novel, she is a self-satisfied young woman who feels no
particular need to marry, for she is in the rather unique condition of not needing a husband to supply
her fortune. At the beginning of the novel, Emma's governess, Miss Taylor, has just married Mr.
Weston, a wealthy man who owns Randalls, a nearby estate. The Westons, the Woodhouses, and Mr.
Knightly (who owns the estate Donwell Abbey) are at the top of Highbury society. Mr. Weston had
been married earlier. When his p...