Volume One (Chapters 1–18)

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

She was the younger of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father; and had, in consequence of her sister's marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses; and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as governess, Miss Taylor, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection, and had become more friend than governess. The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.

Sorrow came — a gentle sorrow. Miss Taylor married. It was Mr. Weston, a man of good character and easy fortune, who lived half a mile away at Randalls; and Emma, who had seen him much at Hartfield over the past four years, took the whole credit of the match. But it left her alone with her father, Mr. Woodhouse, a kind, nervous, valetudinarian old gentleman, who hated change of every kind, could not bear that anyone should marry, and spoke of "poor Miss Taylor" as if she had been carried off to misery. He would have had everyone eat thin gruel, as he did, and was persuaded that wedding-cake was dangerous to every digestion; he tried to dissuade people from eating it, and the apothecary, Mr. Perry, was consulted on the matter.

Their evening was saved by Mr. Knightley, a sensible man of about seven or eight and thirty, owner of the great estate of Donwell Abbey a mile away, an old and intimate friend of the family, and brother of the husband of Emma's sister Isabella. He was one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them.

"I made the match myself," said Emma. "And I have a great mind to make another. Mr. Elton — the vicar — he has been here a whole year, and has fitted up his house so comfortably, it would be a shame to have him single any longer."

"Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish and the chicken," said Mr. Knightley, "but leave him to choose his own wife. Depend upon it, a man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself."

Mr. Weston had been married before, to a Miss Churchill of a great Yorkshire family, who had died, leaving a son, Frank; and the boy had been brought up by her rich and childless brother and his wife at Enscombe, had taken the name of Churchill, and would inherit their fortune. He was now a young man of three-and-twenty, much talked of in Highbury, and had written a very handsome letter to his new stepmother; but he had never yet visited his father. Mrs. Churchill was a capricious, imperious woman, and could not spare him.

Highbury was a large and populous village, almost amounting to a town. Its society was small. There were the Westons and the Knightleys; there was Mr. Elton; there was Mrs. Goddard, the mistress of a school; there was old Mrs. Bates, the widow of a former vicar, and her daughter, Miss Bates, a woman neither young, handsome, rich, nor married, who stood in the very worst predicament in the world for having much of the public favour — and yet was universally liked. She was a great talker upon little matters, full of trivial communications and harmless gossip, and grateful to everyone for everything.

Among Mrs. Goddard's pupils was a girl of seventeen, Harriet Smith, the natural daughter of somebody, placed at the school some years before. She was very pretty: short, plump and fair, with blue eyes, light hair, regular features and a look of great sweetness. Emma was charmed with her, decided at once to take her up, to improve her, and to introduce her into good society; it would be an interesting, and certainly a very kind, undertaking.

Harriet had spent two happy months that summer with the Martins of Abbey-Mill Farm, a respectable farming family who rented land from Mr. Knightley, and she talked a great deal about the young Mr. Robert Martin — his good nature, his sheep, the walnuts he had gone three miles to fetch for her because she said she was fond of them. Emma soon taught her that a young farmer was quite beneath her, that she must be guided by Emma's judgement in such matters, and that Mr. Elton was a much more suitable object.

Mr. Knightley talked the matter over with Mrs. Weston. "I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma," he said. "She has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through — and very good lists they were. But she will never submit to anything requiring industry and patience. And Harriet Smith — I think her the very worst sort of companion that Emma could possibly have. She knows nothing herself, and looks upon Emma as knowing everything. Her ignorance is hourly flattery."

Emma began a portrait of Harriet. Mr. Elton watched every stroke with raptures, and begged to carry it to London himself to have it framed. Emma was delighted; it was all going perfectly.

Emma had always had a talent for drawing, and a great many portraits begun — of her father, of Mrs. Weston, of Isabella and the children — and hardly one finished; for she had more taste than perseverance. Harriet's was to be a whole-length, in water-colours. Mr. Elton could not sit still while it was painted; he hovered behind her, gazing, sighing, praising; he declared it a perfect likeness, though Emma knew very well that she had given her friend a little more height and a great deal more elegance than nature had. "You have made her too tall, Emma," said Mr. Knightley, who knew it was true; and Mr. Woodhouse's only complaint was that Harriet seemed to be sitting out of doors with only a little shawl over her shoulders, and must surely catch cold.

Then Robert Martin wrote to Harriet and asked her to marry him. It was a good letter, plain and sincere and well expressed. Harriet, confused and flattered, did not know what to do. Emma did not tell her to refuse, oh no — she would not influence her — but she made it very clear that if Harriet married him, Emma could never visit her at Abbey-Mill Farm; and she drew a pretty picture of Mr. Elton's admiration. Harriet wrote a refusal, Emma helping her with the words.

Mr. Knightley was furious when he heard. "Robert Martin's manners have sense, sincerity and good-humour to recommend them; and his mind has more true gentility than Harriet Smith could understand. She is the natural daughter of nobody knows whom, with probably no settled provision at all, and certainly no respectable relations. She is known only as parlour-boarder at a common school. She is not a sensible girl, nor a girl of any information. You have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma." And Elton, he warned her, would never marry imprudently; he knew the value of a good income. "Elton may talk sentimentally, but he will act rationally." He went away very much displeased. Emma was a little shaken, but persuaded herself she was right.

Mr. Elton was always at Hartfield now. Harriet was collecting riddles and charades in a pretty book, and Mr. Elton was asked to contribute. He brought a charade — on the word courtship — "for a friend," which ended in a compliment to "ready wit" and "soft eye," and Emma was quite sure it was for Harriet. She copied it into the book, explaining every line to Harriet, who was in raptures.

It ran thus:

My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings, Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease. Another view of man, my second brings, Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!

But ah! united, what reverse we have! Man's boasted power and freedom, all are flown; Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave, And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.

Thy ready wit the word will soon supply, May its approval beam in that soft eye!

Court — ship — courtship. "Ready wit," thought Emma, did not seem very like Harriet; but a man in love could not be expected to see clearly. Harriet could not make it out at all until Emma explained it, and then she was in a flutter of happiness for the rest of the day.

On a walk to visit a poor sick family in a cottage near Vicarage Lane, Emma told Harriet that she did not mean to marry at all.

"I must see somebody very superior to any one I have seen yet, to be tempted. I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband's house as I am of Hartfield."

"But then, to be an old maid at last, like Miss Bates!"

"That is as formidable an image as you could present, Harriet; and if I thought I should ever be like Miss Bates! so silly — so satisfied — so smiling — so prosing — so undistinguishing and unfastidious — and so apt to tell every thing relative to every body about me, I would marry to-morrow. But it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid; but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable."

Miss Bates had a niece, too, Jane Fairfax — the orphan daughter of her younger sister — the same age as Emma, very accomplished, very elegant, brought up by a Colonel Campbell, her father's friend, with his own daughter; and Highbury was always hearing about her from her aunt, whose letters from Jane were read aloud to every visitor. Emma, who had never liked Jane, could not bear the subject.

At Christmas Emma's sister Isabella came to stay at Hartfield with her husband, John Knightley, a London lawyer, and their five children. Isabella was as anxious about health as her father, and the two of them had long, happy disagreements over their respective apothecaries and over which seaside town was healthiest. Emma and Mr. Knightley, meeting over her little niece in her arms, made up their quarrel without discussing it: they agreed that as to men and women they might differ, but as to children they never would; and he forgave her, as he always did.

The talk at dinner turned on health. Isabella, who had been with the children to the sea at South End, was assured by her father that the sea air was very rarely of use to anybody, and had nearly killed him once; and when she spoke well of her London apothecary, Mr. Wingfield, Mr. Woodhouse was shocked that she should prefer him to Mr. Perry. Emma, in terror of a quarrel, steered them back to gruel, on which they could agree. John Knightley, who had a very good understanding but not much patience, bore all this better than might have been expected; he was only a little short with his father-in-law, and only rather sarcastic about the folly of going out to dinner on a winter's evening.

On Christmas Eve they all dined at Randalls. Harriet was to have come, but she had a sore throat. Mr. Elton was there and attentive to Emma in a way she thought odd; John Knightley teased her that Elton seemed to be in love with her; Emma laughed. During the evening it began to snow, and Mr. Woodhouse was frightened into going home at once. In the confusion Emma found herself alone in a carriage with Mr. Elton, who had been taking a good deal of Mr. Weston's wine.

Scarcely had they passed the sweep-gate when she found her hand seized and her attention demanded. He was making violent love to her: declaring his ardent attachment, hoping, fearing, adoring, ready to die if she refused him. She tried to stop him; she said he must be thinking of her friend, Miss Smith.

"Miss Smith! — Message to Miss Smith! What could she possibly mean! Everybody has their level: but as for myself, I am not, I think, quite so much at a loss. I need not so totally despair of an equal alliance, as to be addressing myself to Miss Smith! No, madam, my visits to Hartfield have been for yourself only."

It would be impossible to say which was the more angry. They sat in dreadful silence till the carriage stopped at the vicarage, and he got out without a word.

That night Emma sat up long, wretched. It was all wrong. Everything she had thought was a mistake. And she was the cause of it all. Poor Harriet! The first error and the worst lay at her door. "It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple." She was ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more.

The next morning she had to tell Harriet; and Harriet cried, but bore it simply, blaming no one, and thinking it natural that Mr. Elton should not stoop to her; and Emma felt herself much the inferior of the two. Mr. Elton went off to Bath. Emma knew that she had kept Harriet from a good man and a comfortable home; and she could not quite admit it.

Frank Churchill was to have come in January, and did not come; Mrs. Churchill could not spare him. Mr. Knightley was impatient with him. "He might have come, if he would. It is not to be believed that a young man of three or four and twenty cannot find time to visit his father. There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chuses, and that is, his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution." Emma, perversely, defended him. "You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones." But Mr. Knightley had decided that Frank Churchill was "a very weak young man." And Emma wondered why he should be so cross on the subject.