Emma And Northanger Abbey Essay

Love, Marriage, and for Better One of Jane Austen’s main characters, Mr. Darcy, once said “A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment” (Pride and Prejudice). While this quote was used in Pride and Prejudice, it has truth in it for all of Austen’s stories. Two of her books, Emma and Northanger Abbey, demonstrate this in the captivating way of using characterization, setting, theme, conflict, symbol, and syntax. Austen’s two main characters of Emma and Northanger Abbey contrast each other in personalities. Emma Woodhouse is a very self centered girl born into the upper class. She is the youngest daughter and spoiled by her father because of her mother’s death when she was young. This leads to her “disposition to think a little too well of herself” (Emma) which causes horrible misjudgements on her part. Austen’s irony is in Emma thinking that she is never wrong about judgement calls when it is obvious to the reader that she is oblivious to social standings and the rules. On the other hand, Catherine Morland is naïve which is shown by the story Henry tells-“How fearfully will you examine the furniture...with fainting spirits, you attempt to fasten your door, you discover, …show more content…
69). The man in question actually likes Emma (the poem was for her) and is too ingrained in social status to even consider Harriet as a partner. Emma also talks Harriet into refusing Mr. Robert Martin’s proposal because he is a farmer and Emma feels Harriet is far above him, despite it actually being the opposite. Robert Martin is above Harriet because nobody knows who Harriet’s parents were-and when it can’t be proven that someone is from a gentry family like Harriet, they are lower than low. Emma does not understand this though, and ends up nearly ruining Harriet’s whole life. Social status mattered in Austen’s time period and she used Harriet in Northanger Abbey to prove to her readers that