Judgement and irony: Emma

Abstract

The main focus of Emma (1815), as the title suggests, is the heroine herself. Like Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, and like so many of Jane Austen’s heroines, she undergoes a process of moral education in the course of the novel, learning by the end both to acknowledge her faults and to understand herself better. Because Emma is the dominant character, the reader’s position is very close to hers, and so the reader shares Emma’s process of self-discovery. But, at the same time, readers usually feel that they see things more clearly than Emma does and so are able to judge her better than she can judge herself.