Emma Woodhouse because Jane is 'cold'. Unbeknown to Emma, Jane is secretly engaged to Frank, and therefore Emma's flirtation with Frank causes Jane great pain. Emma Woodhouse Emma Woodhouse is the 21-year-old protagonist of Jane Austen's novel "Emma". She is described in the novel's opening sentence as "handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition." Jane Austen, while writing the novel, called Emma, "a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like." Emma is an independent, wealthy woman who lives with her father in their home Hartfield in the English countryside near the village of Highbury. The novel
Reception history of Jane Austen who viewed Austen as a subversive writer. Several important early works—glimmers of brilliant Austen scholarship—paved the way for Austen to become solidly entrenched within the academy. The first was Oxford Shakespearean scholar A. C. Bradley's 1911 essay, "generally regarded as the starting-point for the serious academic approach to Jane Austen". Bradley emphasised Austen's ties to 18th-century critic and writer Samuel Johnson, arguing that she was a moralist as well as humourist; in this he was "totally original", according to Southam. Bradley divided Austen's works into "early" and "late" novels, categories still used by scholars. The second path-breaking early-20th-century critic of