Emma (1996 theatrical film) Jane Austen's most endearing character, the disastrously self-assured matchmaker Emma Woodhouse. A fine cast, speedy pacing and playful direction make this a solid contender for the Austen sweepstakes." Emma (1996 theatrical film) Emma is a 1996 period film based on the 1815 novel of the same name by Jane Austen. Written and directed by Douglas McGrath, the film stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Alan Cumming, Toni Collette, Ewan McGregor, and Jeremy Northam. The film describes a year in the life of Emma Woodhouse, a congenial but naïve young woman who thinks of herself as a romantic matchmaker in her small community in
Reception history of Jane Austen the "engaging manner by which she masks society's crude coercive power", and uses irony in a "generosity of spirit". In his 1957 essay ""Emma" and the Legend of Jane Austen", Trilling argued that Austen was the first novelist to handle the very modern problem of the "deep psychological change which accompanied the establishment of democratic society" which imposed a "psychological burden" on an individual which the "new necessity of conscious self-definition and self-criticism", as "there is no reality about which the modern person is more uncertain and more anxious than the reality of himself". Trilling argued that in modern society,