Emma Woodhouse

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Emma Woodhouse is the 20-year-old titular protagonist of Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma. She is described in the novel's opening sentence as "handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition... and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." 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 Surrey village of Highbury. Her elder sister Isabella has married and moved away. The novel concerns her attempts to be a matchmaker among her acquaintances, and her own romantic misadventures. Although Emma will inherit a settled dowry of £30,000 when she comes of age, she professes that she does not ever wish to marry (unless she falls very much in love); and she has no financial need to because she can expect a further substantial future inheritance (which...

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