Austen’s Emma Betsy Kern

for several generations [there], the younger branch of a very ancient family.” When the novel starts, Emma, twenty years old, has stepped into the role of town matchmaker. In the absence of her late mother, Emma is the principal female. But beyond her cachet as a young woman of nobility, Emma’s authority rests on her uniquely self-assured vision of herself. She will be the one to arrange marriages by virtue of just being… Emma. She believes she has enjoyed “the best blessings of existence” simply because she crafts that ideal for herself. It does not occur to Emma that others might perceive her any other way.

When readers meet Emma, she lacks any inkling of the discomfort that is central to the human condition. Emma Woodhouse never ponders that private but familiar question: “Do they like me?” Emma believes that she is received the way she would like to be received. But in Austen’s world, this cannot hold.

As the novel unfolds, Austen shows us what happens when a carefully crafted version of one’s self is at