Picking up Austen’s work always indulges us in the pleasure of enjoying a delicate and elegant take on 18th-century society. The heroine possesses a charming intellect along with a high resolution of character, whose story majorly revolves around a love affair or those of the society.
Emma’s character stands distinct from the major Austen’s protagonists and represents her as a popularly repeated example of a ‘flawed heroine’. She is however one of the most original characters I may have encountered in her works.
The assertion which renders us human is partly based on the fact that people commit subtle mistakes, erasing them from an unblemished pedestal of utopian appearance. Here, the elements practised by Emma in the name of habit could have glorified an erroneous perception but they were as natural and impulsive as an engaged and observant mind can arise.
She is civil but not exceedingly genteel and selflessly engages in the pursuit of atoning the ones she takes under her mentorship or engages as a friend. Her wishes rest in her heart till another individual tries to take possession of them and gets wrongly influenced by her misinterpretations. The guilt she sinks in after the disclosure of her false conception of Mr Elton’s romantic ideas explicitly brings forward the errors and repentance a benevolent human can go through.
All the simultaneous love affairs are expressed implicitly, barring the reader to have a fair idea of the romantic possibility. It is the culmination of pages, the end alone, which serves us the practised ideas, mingling a sense of shock with surprise.