->"''With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of every body's feelings; with unpardonable arrogance [[FanPreferredCouple proposed to arrange every body's destiny]]. She was proved to have been [[ShipSinking universally mistaken]]; and she had not quite done nothing — for she had done [[{{Shipping}} mischief]].''"

Written in 1815, ''Emma'' is a novel that takes a slightly different take on JaneAusten's typical romantic novel, particularly in the fact that the heroine herself is a RichBitch.

[[Characters/{{Emma}} Emma Woodhouse]], who has been spoiled ever since she was a small child, had always had a penchant for ordering the world as she sees fit. So when she meets the [[GoodIsDumb sweet and pretty but slightly slow]] young Harriet, she decides that she will set her up with a husband worthy of her feminine charms. HilarityEnsues, with {{zany scheme}}s, terrible misunderstandings, gossip gone awry and, of course, since this is a Jane Austen novel, Emma needs to sort out her love life before it's too late.

Notably adapted as the film ''Film/{{Clueless}}'' and, in the current trend of LiteraryMashUps, as ''[[http://www.amazon.com/Emma-Werewolves-Austens-Blood-curdling-Lycanthropy/dp/1926712099 Emma and the Werewolves]]''. There are also several straight [[Film/{{Emma}} adaptations]] worth watching. A musical with songs by Paul Gordon was also produced in the last 2000s. Marvel Illustrated produced a ComicBookAdaptation in 2011, script by Nancy Butler, art and covers by Janet Lee (Return of the Dapper Men).

Not to be confused with the manga ''VictorianRomanceEmma''.
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!!These tropes find their match in the novel:

* AnAesop: {{Shipping}} is evil; [[SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped don't do it]].
* AlliterativeName: Mrs Elton's sister, Selina Suckling.
* BelligerentSexualTension: [[spoiler:Mr Knightley and Emma.]]
* BreakTheHaughty: Happens to Emma. She is a very endearing character -- open, sweet, generous, witty, energetic, a loyal friend and a devoted daughter; she is also what by modern standards might fairly be called a snob.
* BreakupBonfire: After showing them to Emma, Harriet Smith throws her (pretty pathetic) mementos of Mr Elton into a fire.
* BumblingDad: Emma's father.
* CassandraTruth: Miss Bates has a tendency to provide valuable insight into what characters in the story are thinking, but most people don't care or notice because she [[MotorMouth rambles on and on and on]]. [[WallsOfText Even the readers usually ignore what she says]].
* ChildhoodFriendRomance: [[spoiler:Emma and Mr. Knightley.]]
* TheComicallySerious: Mr Knightley, practically the only one to point out any of Emma's faults.
* DeadpanSnarker: Mr Knightley, his brother John and Emma.
* DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife: And this purpose becomes shipping, among other things.
* [[spoiler:DoubleInLawMarriage: Sisters Isabella and Emma Woodhouse to brothers John and George Knightley.]]
* DotingParent: Mr Woodhouse adores his daughters, and is vastly troubled by the idea that anyone would think Emma less than perfect. Isabella is also shown to be this to her five children, and Miss Bates is a doting aunt to Jane Fairfax. Also, Mrs Weston (formerly Miss Taylor) is Emma's childhood governess, and not much less inclined than Mr Woodhouse to think her anything but flawless.
* ElegantClassicalMusician: Both Emma and Jane Fairfax play the piano and people find it attractive. It helps that they are also great beauties.
** Emma is very talented, but she never bothered to practice regularly as a child. She's still more than just a decent pianist and she plays and sings very well, but whenever Jane visits her relatives in Highbury, Emma is vexed that she's no longer the best musician.
** Jane Fairfax was brought up in London and had lessons with the best masters, reaching her top performance. Everybody admires her dedication to music and everybody urges her to play for them.
* EmpathicEnvironment: The weather sometimes matches Emma's moods. It's especially obvious near the climax of the novel when the storm corresponds to Emma's emotional crisis.
* GenerationXerox: In personality, at least, the narrative indicates that Isabella is exactly like the girls' father and Emma is just like their mother. (No hint is given as to how much of a physical resemblance there is.)
* TheGhost: We read a lot about a few characters we never get to meet, most particularly Frank's aunt and uncle and Mrs Elton's sister and brother-in-law.
* GoldDigger: Mr Elton.
* GratuitousForeignLanguage: Mrs Elton, who uses what was then a tired old Italian catchphrase to refer to her husband. She even gets the phrase wrong, showing her to be not just small-minded and behind the times but also badly educated.
** Though the mispronunciation of the Italian phrase may be a mistake on the publisher's part rather than the character's. The argument is that Mr Elton would have corrected his wife at the first opportunity after her misusing the phrase and that she would have been too embarrassed to use the correct pronunciation.
* GreenEyedEpiphany: Spurs Emma's LoveEpiphany.
* GreenEyedMonster: When Emma actually attempts to be friendly to Jane Fairfax, she finds herself soundly rebuffed, and honestly doesn't know why. It turns out that [[spoiler:Jane, who was secretly engaged to Frank Churchill all along, was deeply jealous of the attention he was paying to Emma as part of the cover-up. Jane later acknowledges that she was unreasonable about it, given that Emma had no idea. Meanwhile, Mr Knightley takes a severe dislike to Frank Churchill for similar reasons.]]
** [[spoiler:When Harriet confides to Emma that she is in love with Mr Knightley, it causes Emma to realise her own feelings for him.]]
* HaveAGayOldTime:
** Sure, every JaneAusten novel has characters engaging in "intercourse" but the scene everyone remembers is Mr Elton "making violent love" to Emma in a carriage.
** Emma is impressed with the Knightley brothers: "Those brothers had penetration". She means they are extremely perceptive, but...
* HypocriticalHumor: Mrs Elton says she much prefers old-fashioned politeness to "modern ease", even though her own manners go far beyond ease and well into over-familiarity.
* IHaveThisFriend: Mr Elton shows Emma a poem that he claims a friend of his wrote for a girl ''he'' was in love with. Emma isn't fooled (at least not about who really wrote it, although she is wrong about who it was written ''for'').
* IllGirl: Jane Fairfax's health is not robust. WordOfGod says [[spoiler:that she died of [[IncurableCoughOfDeath tuberculosis]] a few years after the end of the book.]]
* ILoveYouBecauseICantControlYou: [[spoiler:Emma towards Mr Knightley]]
* IronicName: ''Frank'' Churchill. This guy is nothing but frank, honest and sincere with everybody, honestly!
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold:
** For all her faults, Emma has more than once shown kindness and sympathy to people under her on the social tree, as well as feeling guilty for her mistreatment of Miss Bates.
** The biggest proof is her routine visits with the poor, giving not just food/money but time and attention to them, trying to entertain the children, etc.
** She also deserves credit for being so patient and considerate to her father. He's a good person, but he can, inadvertently, be very trying.
** John Knightley can be snarky and short-tempered with Mr Woodhouse, but, well, Mr Woodhouse IS annoying and John's very obvious love for his family (and his big-brotherly care of Emma) makes up for a lot.
* LastNameBasis: Everyone, pretty much, but particularly Mr Knightley to Emma [[spoiler:she even says that after they get married, she won't ever be able to call him anything but Mr Knightley.]]
* [[spoiler:LikeBrotherAndSister: You can actually ''hear'' Mr Knightley's heart break when Emma says this as they're about to dance.]]
** [[spoiler:More accurately, what she says is that they're ''not'' close enough to being brother and sister to make it improper for them to dance, and he agrees wholeheartedly. The heartache is still easy to catch, though, if you look for it.]]
* LoveDodecahedron: Emma ships Harriet and Mr Elton, even though Mr Elton wants her and there is mutual attraction between Harriet and Robert Martin. Mr Elton ends up marrying Augusta Hawkins. Emma finds herself attracted to Frank Churchill, [[spoiler: even though he is secretly engaged to Jane Fairfax]], and she is [[spoiler:totally [[ObliviousToLove oblivious of the fact that Mr. Knightley is in love with her]] but painfully aware that Harriet is in love with Mr Knightley, despite earlier thinking Harriet was in love with Frank Churchill.]] Mrs Weston, Mr Cole and others also suspect something between Mr Knightley and Jane Fairfax, while Emma suspects something between Jane Fairfax and her foster sister's current husband, Mr Dixon. Nothing gets a Love Dodecahedron going like the out-of-control imaginations of [[strike:shippers]] matchmakers.
* LoveEpiphany: Emma has one as the trigger of her quest to become a better person.
* LoveLetterLunacy: Love ''riddle'' lunacy.
* LoveYouAndEverybody: Not romantically, but Mr Weston has so many "close friends" that being his "close friend" doesn't seem to mean much, as Emma realises with some annoyance.
* [[ManipulativeBastard Manipulative Bitch]]: Emma. Seriously, derailing a relationship by filling the poor girl's head with distractions because ''Emma'' doesn't like the man?
* MassiveNumberedSiblings: John and Isabella's five children.
* TheMatchmaker: Emma, obviously, though her only known success story is the Westons. Mrs Weston also tries her hand with no more success.
* MatchmakerCrush: The result of Emma's matchmaking of Mr Elton and Harriet is Mr Elton falling for Emma.
* [[spoiler:MayDecemberRomance: Mr Knightley is 16 years older than Emma.]]
* MeaningfulName:
** Well, he's not called Mr. [[KnightInShiningArmor Knight]]ley for nothing.
** The name Woodhouse suggests that the family is very wealthy.
** Everything is done well in Donwell Abbey.
** Heartfield is a place where affairs of the heart are being formed.
** Jane Fairfax is a Jane with a fair face.
* TheMinnesotaFats: Jane, to Emma.
* MissingMom: Mrs Woodhouse died when Emma was very little. Luckily, Emma and Isabella had a wonderful mother figure in their governess, Miss Taylor.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Emma, close to the end of the book, realises she was basically wrong about everything and other people had paid for it (see page quote). Moreover, her GreenEyedEpiphany is stimulated by a girl whom ''she'' has encouraged in the first place, making this a [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone "Oh God! that I had never seen her"]] case.
* MysteryLiterature: Several readers, including BBC producer Sue Birtwistle and mystery novelist P D James, have argued that ''Emma'' is one of the first of these to exist, given the way Austen plants clues about relationships and plot resolution all throughout.
* NoAntagonist
* NoHuggingNoKissing: [[spoiler:The hottest scene in the book occurs when Mr Knightley ''almost'' kisses Emma's hand.]]
* NonIdleRich: Surprisingly, Emma. We are not three chapters into the story until we are told that she assists the poor, has managed her BigFancyHouse ([[ChildProdigy since she was twelve]]), supports her hypochondriac father and sends provisions / pays visits to her less well-off neighbours. Mr Knightley fits the trope as well.
* ObliviousToLove: [[spoiler:Emma is oblivious to Mr Knightley's feelings for her and her own feelings for him until (she believes) it might be too late.]]
* OddFriendship: Emma and Harriet.
* OnlySaneMan: Mr Knightley.
* PersonAsVerb: Jane Fairfax-ing. Mrs Elton thinks she's the only person who can judge Miss Fairfax's talents properly, and protect her and assist her. Mrs Elton's constantly repeating her name and the vulgarity of the situation disgust Emma so that she imagines this to be person-ing:
--> '''Emma:''': 'Jane Fairfax and Jane Fairfax.' Heavens! Let me not suppose that she dares go about, Emma Woodhouse-ing me!
* PlayingCyrano:
** Emma.
** It's also implied that Mr Knightley is trying to do the same for Robert Martin.
* PlayingSick: Many characters presume that Frank's aunt is doing this to keep him at home as much as possible. Of course, then [[spoiler:she dies...]]
** Also Emma's father. It's hinted that the majority of the neighbourhood thinks he's a hypochondriac, but he's so kind-hearted and generous that they humour him. WordOfGod says that [[spoiler:he died two years after Emma married Mr Knightley]].
* PoorCommunicationKills: Especially in the riddle poem fiasco. Also, Emma misunderstands Harriet's feelings when she talks about the man she is in love with (see RescueRomance).
* {{Recycled IN SPACE}}: ''Emma and the Werewolves''--The [[Literature/PrideAndPrejudiceAndZombies madness]] knows [[Literature/SenseAndSensibilityAndSeaMonsters no end!]]
* RescueRomance: Emma believes Harriet has fallen for Frank Churchill after he had rescued her from the gypsies, but instead she falls for [[spoiler:''Mr Knightley'' after ''he'' "rescues" her by asking her to dance when she is snubbed by Mr Elton.]]
* RichBitch: The main character, sort of; some actresses play her as being as much, or more, of a SpoiledSweet type (see the JerkWithAHeartOfGold entry above). And then there's Mrs Elton, who ratchets the trope right UpToEleven.
* RichIdiotWithNoDayJob
* SecretRelationship: [[spoiler:Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax are engaged the entire time, and nobody knows about it until his aunt dies.]]
* SeriousBusiness: Matchmaking is serious business. [[DieForOurShip But you should know this already.]]
* ShipperOnDeck: Emma -- first for Captain Weston and Miss Taylor, then for Harriet and Mr Elton, then for Harriet and Frank. Only the first one works out.
* TrademarkFavouriteFood: Mr Woodhouse is really fond of gruel. His daughter Isabella as well.
* WallsOfText: A lot of Miss Bates' dialogue.
* WhatBeautifulEyes: Harriet's blue ones
* WhatTheHellHero: Mr Knightley to Emma, especially after her manipulation of Harriet and her rudeness to Miss Bates.
* WrongGenreSavvy: Subtly done with Emma. She encourages Harriet in her reading of ''The Romance of the Forest'', a Gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe which stars a girl of obscure origins who is ultimately revealed to be Nobly Born. Emma clearly thinks Harriet belongs in a similar story, when in actuality [[spoiler:Harriet is the bastard of a tradesman, who leaves her quite comfortably off economically but does nothing to raise her social status]].
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