Emma by Jane Austen

Published 1815 · 442 pages · 157,436 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Romance, Satire & Humor

How hard is Emma to read?

Emma scores 56 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
Regency-era vocabulary but Austen prose is famously lucid. Some period social terminology.
Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
Balanced periodic sentences with ironic qualifications. Elegant but accessible syntax.
Abstraction: 52 out of 100
Social and psychological observation grounded in concrete domestic detail. Philosophy embedded in manners.
Information density: 55 out of 100
Dense social information conveyed through dialogue and observation. Requires attention to nuance.
Narrative indirection: 68 out of 100
Free indirect discourse keeps readers close to Emma flawed perception, requiring independent judgment.
Symbolic density: 45 out of 100
Realistic novel with minimal overt symbolism. Meaning emerges through social interaction.
Ironic distance: 82 out of 100
Austen signature irony pervades every page. The gap between Emma self-perception and reality drives the comedy.
Resolution withholding: 42 out of 100
Marriage plot resolves clearly. Austen provides definitive happy ending.
Structural complexity: 48 out of 100
Unified time and place. Linear narrative following single social season in Highbury.

How Emma is regarded

Emma holds a literary regard score of 88 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where Emma sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (308 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Emma scores 60 out of 100. A second mythos, irony, pulls at it with a weight of 0.15. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
Symbol: Formal
It was a sweet view—sweet to the eye and the mind. English verdure, English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive.
Mythos: Normal Comedy iii (comedy iii)
The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; ... the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.
Genre: Novel
It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple.

Where the story of Emma takes place

  • Highbury, Surrey, c. 1813-1815 (1813 to 1815), the main setting

5 things that are true of Emma, with the passage for each

  1. Emma is described as having lived nearly twenty-one years with very little to distress or vex her.

    had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

  2. Mr. Elton declares his love to Emma, not Harriet, in a carriage on the way home from a dinner at Randalls.

    Without scruple—without apology—without much apparent diffidence, Mr. Elton, the lover of Harriet, was professing himself her lover.

  3. At Box Hill Emma mocks Miss Bates by telling her she may say only three dull things.

    Ah! ma’am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me—but you will be limited as to number—only three at once.

  4. Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax have been secretly engaged since October at Weymouth.

    There has been a solemn engagement between them ever since October—formed at Weymouth, and kept a secret from every body.

  5. Robert Martin and Harriet Smith are married before the end of September, the first of the three couples.

    Robert Martin and Harriet Smith, the latest couple engaged of the three, were the first to be married.

Scenes in Emma that Frye would name

30 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, untitled
It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself! Emma suddenly recognises her own heart and her love for Knightley.
Hamartia, untitled
The real evils, indeed, of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself The narrator names the flaw that drives the whole plot.
Hamartia, untitled
She would notice her; she would improve her; she would detach her from her bad acquaintance, and introduce her into good society; she would form her opinions and her manners. Emma's fatal misstep is her patronising scheme to remake Harriet.
Alazon, untitled
“No, I fancy not,” replied Mrs. Elton, with a most satisfied smile. “I never heard any county but Surry called so.” Mrs. Elton is the braggart of borrowed gentility and Maple Grove.
Hamartia, untitled
Ah! ma’am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me—but you will be limited as to number—only three at once. Emma's witty cruelty to Miss Bates at Box Hill is her lowest point.
Agon, untitled
How could you be so unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation? Knightley's rebuke is the decisive contest between the heroine's vanity and her better self.

Books that share these scenes with Emma

About the author

Jane Austen