Emma Woodhouse 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 concerns her attempts to be a matchmaker among her acquaintances and her own romantic misadventures. Emma professes that she does not ever wish
Styles and themes of Jane Austen such as Duckworth, contend that Austen's heroines "support and maintain an inherited structure of values and behavior", displaying a version of Christian stoicism. He emphasizes that Austen's novels highlight the dangers of individualism; her heroines emerge from isolation and despair to be reinstated into society. In "Mansfield Park", in particular, the morally suspect characters—the Crawfords, Rushworth and the Bertram daughters—represent individualism. The heroine of "Emma" embodies the dangers of individualism as her position of power allows her to affect everyone in Highbury. In "Sense and Sensibility", Austen juxtaposes Elinor, who regulates the expression of her feelings according to social conventions,