Emma Woodhouse amuses herself with matchmaking all her friends, but she does it very badly for Harriet Smith. Poor Harriet is influenced to think of Mr. Elton as a possible suitor, with disastrous results. Emma must discover the secrets of her own heart before she can accurately understand the hearts of others.

So witty and fun!
I love Emma because she is naive and inexperienced and foolish. She has no worldly wisdom; she doesn't understand much about other people's motivations. She completely misunderstands Mr. Elton. She completely misinterprets Frank. She says the wrong thing. She makes a fool of herself because she is caught up in her imaginary version of the society around her.

And then SHE GROWS! She learns not to be foolish. She comes to understand the wide world and the people who live in it as they truly are, and not as she imagines them. She truly regrets her mistakes, and does what she can to rectify them. She apologizes. She makes better decisions. She learns to be a responsible adult person, who acts instead of reacting.

And that is why Emma is my favorite character and my favorite book.

I also really love the character of Mr. Knightley. He is my favorite Jane Austen hero because he is so steady and wise. He's very patient with Emma and thoughtful of her feelings.

I love the hilarious writing style in this book! Emma is probably the funniest of Austen's books. The character of Miss Bates brings a lot of funny scenes into the story. I always laugh and giggle through most of this book!


2023 Update: This year I reread Emma in the form of an audiobook in Spanish! It was wonderful to revisit this story in another language and it was an excellent translation. The narrator, Ximena Sarinana, did a fantastic job with all the different voices of the characters. She has a really clear voice so that it was easy to follow every word even though Spanish is my second language.

Esther Summerson goes to live with her guardian, Mr. Jarndyce, and two other young wards, who are his cousins. The Jarndyce family are involved in a lengthy court case disputing a will that has lagged on for generations, bringing nothing but debt and heartache to all involved. Mr. Jarndyce hopes to repair some of the emotional damage in his family by bringing his young cousins, Ada and Richard, into his own home and providing for them.
Esther herself is completely ignorant of her biological family, and is thrown into the mystery of her parentage, when a certain lawyer begins investigating the death of a man who may have been connected to the secretive Lady Dedlock. Esther must discover the truth about her mother and father before the lawyer can publicly humiliate them all.

This has always been one of my favorite Dickens books, and re-reading it several times just confirms this book as a forever favorite!

Dickens has such a powerful writing style that every scene transports you to another time and place. Each character has such an emotional pull that it is impossible to read with dry eyes. The writing is so funny that I actually laughed out loud in some scenes! There are clever puns and witty little lines that are a complete delight, and make me forgive Dickens for being so long-winded at times. Even his lengthy descriptions are so vibrant and full of fun that it is well worth taking the time to read, even if it does slow down the plot.

One of the things that is interesting about this particular book is that it is told partly in first-person from Esther's POV, and partly in third-person with an omniscient narrator. This jumping back and forth between writing styles in different chapters could be jarring and unnatural, but Dickens makes it work really well.

Esther is perfect and sweet and eternally good. She is in danger of being too perfect for anyone to like her, but she does struggle and suffer like a regular human being so that the reader is able to relate to her strongly. She cries and grieves. She has to push herself to rise above her disappointments and difficult circumstances. I think it's very telling that she is perpetually singing the praises of other people, but she won't acknowledge her own good qualities. She is an illegitimate child, and her early upbringing has taught her to belittle herself and have low self-esteem. I really admire Esther's patient endurance and the complexity of her personality. Through the story, she has strong character development and eventually begins to find some contentment in recognizing that she is worthy of love.

Mr. Jarndyce is an eccentric character. He is exceedingly generous and kind, but he hates to be thanked and will literally run out of the room if someone tries to thank him. When he doesn't like a situation, he will say that "the wind is in the east" and retire to his private study called the Growlery, where he presumably "growls" though no one has ever heard an unpleasant word fall from his lips.

Ada and Richard are the perfect romantic young couple. They are both of them beautiful/handsome and intelligent and elegant. But of course there are obstacles in their path, and sorrow must come to blight their beloved hopes. On the surface, they both appear to be sort of shallow and simple characters, but as the story unfolds, we get to see hidden depths of strengths and weaknesses in them. Their relationship is complex and always changing.

As Esther and the Jarndyce family navigate the terrible court case that entangles their destinies, they meet a whole cast of memorable characters. Every single supporting character is beautifully written and incredibly complex and varied.

Lady Dedlock is so very secretive and dignified, but underneath she is a seething volcano of emotional damage. She keeps it all locked inside, hidden under her calm exterior.

Mrs. Jellyby's daugher, Caddy, is sick and tired of the messy Jellyby household. Her mother is so busy campaigning to help poor people in Africa that she has no time to manage her own children or make sure they have a decent dinner. Caddy meets Esther and wishes she could be more capable and educated like Esther is.

Mr. George becomes the linchpin of the mystery of the dead man, when it becomes known that he has some letters in his possession written by the deceased. But he has his own troubles trying to keep his business afloat and pay his debts. His gruff manner hides a gentle heart, and he looks to his friends to support him in choosing the right road.

Poor Jo, the street sweeper, is a sad pathetic figure. Totally uneducated, living on the streets and half-starved, Jo is oddly enough the central figure that brings the plot into focus. He comes into contact with the different groups of characters as they try to help him, reform him, or ignore him. He becomes a connecting thread that each group must cope with in some way.

Mr. Bucket is the detective, hired by different people throughout the story, who uncovers the truth and brings light into the mystery. Mr. Bucket has a very high sense of integrity and he will do his duty to the utmost, but he'll try to be pleasant about it and not irritate good people more than he can help. I love how intelligent and imaginative he is! He really thinks things through, and figures out the clues in a most spectacular way.

What's truly incredible is the way that a massive list of supporting characters are all connected in some way, and they all have their part to play in Esther's story. No one can write a whirling story with dozens of groups of people all linked and combined in different ways and bring those threads all together for a satisfactory ending like Dickens can. It's this whole tapestry of characters and connections, and they all have some secret to hide.

This book is all about secrets and the consequences that come when the truth is revealed or hidden. Through the entire plot, each person is trying to find out a secret or hide a secret. Sometimes they are guessing at someone else's secret and they completely misunderstand and come to the wrong conclusion. Sometimes they guess right and find the proof. Sometimes the secrets they hide fester and come between people and make them bitter. But in the end, the truth is always known.

Dickens covers so many different themes in this book. He is well-known for his constant commentary on social justice, painting deeply pathetic pictures of the poor in need of help. In this book, he attacks the injustices and foolishness of the courts of Chancery, and the lawyers and judges who made their money in hopeless lawsuits, bleeding their clients dry.

I love the deep themes of family loyalty and generosity in this book. There are so many great storylines that follow broken families being reunited, happy families going through tough times together, found family, and biological family, and adopted family.

This entire book is complete genius from start to finish, and I adore every word of it!

Elinor and Marianne are two sisters with very different personalities. Elinor is practical and reserved. Marianne is emotional and vivacious. They struggle to understand each other, but ultimately they learn from one another. Although the sisters find romance in unexpected places, it is their sisterly relationship that defines them.

I have always loved stories about siblings, that this book is full of comparisons and contrasts between various groups of siblings. Austen is a genius at weaving an interesting story with really intense character development and explorations of different personalities. You can just tell that she must have observed these behaviors and characteristics in real life, since they ring so true.

2024 reread: Reading in Spanish made me read slower and really think carefully about each sentence in a new way. It was very refreshing to see this story from a bit of a different perspective, but the translation that I had was a free ebook, and it was full of errors.

We see a lot of siblings who react in the opposite direction from their sibling- Marianne does music and Elinor does drawing. Marianne seems to react even more emotionally because Elinor is so reserved with her emotions.

Marianne doesn’t even try to control her emotions. It’s not healthy to be so overwhelmed with your emotions, good or bad emotions, that you don’t even make an effort to control them, and your emotions end up upsetting everyone around you. Marianne is rude to people quite often because she follows this ideal of "being true to herself", to the point where she won’t even be polite to people that she doesn’t like. Because she feels like that would be a "betrayal" of her true feelings.

Eleanor is so in control of her emotions, that when something bad happens to her, she ends up consoling her mother and her sisters, instead of being true to her own feelings and expressing her own grief. It’s not healthy to bottle everything up inside. She is untrue to herself because she is obsessed with being polite and doing what she perceives to be her duty.

They are two extremes of emotional intelligence, but emotional maturity is finding a balance. And through the story and their difficult experiences, both sisters eventually find that maturity.

Marianne is somehow cleansed by her illness. That brush with death has given her a perspective and serenity to replace her excessive grief over Willoughby. She finally makes an effort to control her emotions to the great relief of everyone involved.

Elinor is cleansed when she hears that Edward is not married, because it’s after she finds out he is not married, that she finally breaks down and cries, and shows her true feelings. This extreme shock of happiness is what unlocks her emotions.

For happy-go-lucky Marianne, it is her serious illness that changes her heart. For serious Elinor, it is happiness that changes her heart.

Just like all of Jane Austen's novels, we have characters who represent two extremes of some character trait, and quite often these pairs are siblings.
Sibling pairs-
Marianne and Elinor and Margaret and John Dashwood
Lucy and Anne Steele
Fanny, Robert, and Edward Ferrars
Colonel Brandon and his elder brother
Lady Middleton and Mrs. Palmer

The Dashwood sisters are all that is good and generous, while their brother John is greedy and selfish.
Lucy Steele is scheming and sharp-minded, while her sister Anne is silly and foolish.
Fanny and Robert Ferrars are selfish and greedy, while their brother Edward is honorable and compassionate.
Mrs. Palmer is always cheerful, while her sister Lady Middleton is always solemn.

But often it is other characters who are reacting to someone's exuberant behavior by doing the opposite. Mrs. Jennings and her daughter Charlotte are extremely happy for no reason, so Mr. Palmer reacts by being very somber and critical.
Sir John Middleton is outgoing and friendly, and Lady Middleton reacts by being cold and aloof.

But the biggest reaction is how Elinor reacts to Marianne’s emotional outbursts by doing the opposite. She never allows herself to have an emotional outburst, but must always keep her emotions hidden inside. This means that she has cut herself off from true connection with even her own family. She is hidden behind her walls of decorum.

There are also a lot of contrasts and parallels between Willoughby and Edward Ferrars- they are in similar situations, but they react in completely different ways.
Both are involved with other women before they meet the Dashwood girls. Edward does the honorable thing, while Willoughby abandons Eliza pregnant and alone.
They are both poor, dependent on their rich relations. Edward doesn’t care about riches as long as he has a clear conscience, while Willoughby, in debt, is willing to do any kind of atrocity if it means gaining riches.
Edward is constrained by his conscience to not act on his feelings for Eleanor. Willoughby acts on his feelings for Marianne because he has no conscience.

Where does Lucy Steele fit into this? Who is her opposite? The obvious answer is her sister Anne Stelle. Anne is comparable to Marianne, but she has those strong emotions with no education or sense to guide them, leaving her on the point of idiocy. Lucy takes Elinor’s trait of being practical and reserved to the point of being false and lying and scheming. Two groups of sisters taking their traits to extremes.

But there is someone else that I notice has some things in common and the opposite to Lucy Steele, and that, oddly enough, is Colonel Brandon.
They are both involved in love triangles with the Dashwoods. They both make Elinor their confidante. Brandon befriends Elinor in order to support and encourage both the Dashwood sisters, stemming from his love for Marianne and a wish to serve her family. He is reliable and kind and generous in every way. A true brother to Elinor even when he has no hope of gaining Marianne’s love.
Lucy "befriends" Elinor in order to tear down Elinor’s hopes, and triumph over her, stemming from her love of herself. Her own selfish desires guide everything she does. She has to tear others down to feel good about herself and raise herself above them, gain control over them in some way. She loved to watch Elinor squirm under the little barbs of her words.

Or is Brandon’s opposite actually John Dashwood? The indifferent brother and the supportive new brother to Elinor? We see John's greed vs. Brandon's generosity.
Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon both have affectionate relationships with their future sister-in-laws before any romance is settled with the lady they love. Maybe there is more to explore in these brotherly relationships as well.

There are also a lot of doubles in the book. Marianne and her mother are said to have very similar stormy emotional personalities. Marianne and Willoughby have a similar foolishness in expressing themselves intensely, thoughtlessly. Lucy Steele and Fanny Dashwood have very similar greedy personalities. Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Palmer have the same inane laughter. Brandon and Edward are both quiet and reserved, although in different ways. Brandon is reserved because his life has been hard. Edward is reserved more from social awkwardness. Elinor and Brandon are similar in their practical ways and their selfless wish to care for everyone.

Overall, this book has many layers to explore. Every time I read it, I see something new, some new aspect of the characters and how they interact. I never get tired of rereading Jane Austen!