Significance of Emma

The book Emma by Jane Austen was a very uniquely styled book because it did not seem to have a lot of action in it, and it seemed to be only about everyday life. This unique style of plot seemed to bring up a lot of questions about what the literary significance of a book that simply talked about the love life a rich girl and a bunch of her local friends. When you analyze the book further however it is a lot more than just a chick novel about girl gossip. In reality the novel actually uses the interactions between all the characters to reveal human fallibility and how all humans are wrong and often in considerate. To show how these traits are present in all the characters Austen creates a special character that is kind, considerate, thoughtful, and usually right as a comparison to reveal their flaws. This character is Mr. Knightley. Mr. Knightley is often seen correcting Emma on all her assumptions to show how she is way to overconfident and wrong most of the time. This trait of overconfidence can be attributed to the majority of the human population. Her over confidence gets her into a lot of trouble and we often see Mr. Knightley there to warn her before it begins and in the end to say I told you so. Despite the countless fights and arguments that Mr. Knightley and Emma have he always forgives her and tries to make it right. Forgiveness is another ideal quality that humans often lack. We saw many times Emma hold pointless grudges against people that never really did anything to her and yet she hated them anyways. Jane is a great example of this, and so is Mr. Elton. Another poor quality of man kind is that we find our selves much too often doing things that are most beneficial to us and disregard how it will affect other people. At the ball that Frank and Emma planned Mr. Elton and Harriet are the only ones left with out dance partners and Mr. Elton refuses to dance with her because he doesn’t want people to think that he has feelings for someone of the lower class. When Harriet is left embarrassed it is know surprise that Mr. Knightley is the one to sweep by save the day. Mr. Knightley doesn’t even like dancing and yet he disregards his own feelings so that Harriet wont feel left out or embarrassed. This again shows how he is used as a comparison to show the flaws of Mr. Elton, who exemplified that social standards and guidelines are more important to us than what we think is morally right. Another example of this is when Emma makes Harriet decline Mr. Martin even though she is obviously happy with him and wants to be with him. She insist she go for Mr. Elton because then she would be right and could rub it in to Mr. Knightley. From interactions like these it is clear that all of the characters besides Mr. Knightley exemplify traits of human fallibility, which makes the significance of the book a lot more easy to find and understand.