Emma tries to reconcile her father to the unaccountable tastes of his nearest and dearest.
Mild Mr Woodhouse cannot quite forgive Mr John Knightley for carrying off his daughter Isabella as bride, even though he dotes on his little grandchildren Henry and John. It is left to Isabella’s sister Emma to calm his fear that the boys’ father is altogether too rough-and-tumble with them.
Harriet Smith’s school gave her a grounding in good sense that even Emma Woodhouse could not quite overthrow.
‘Emma’, like Jane Austen’s other novels, is essentially about the effects of bad education, that is, an upbringing from which good role-models have been absent, and in which theory is an accepted substitute for results. Here, she describes Harriet Smith’s school - the one she attended before ‘handsome, clever, and rich’ Emma Woodhouse tried to improve her.