ABSTRACT
DespiteJane Austen's suggestion that in writing Emma she was creating a heroine whom no one but herself would 'much like', 1 'there is', to adapt Mr Knightley's words, 'an anxiety, a curiosity in what one feels for Emma' (40). While such a remark indicates Knightley's interest in her as a person, an interest he comes later to realise as love, our interest as readers is captured by a vitality so immediate that even in its waywardness it compels our fascinated participation. John Bayley has aptly described 'the whole tendency of the novel' in terms of its 'enveloping intimacy', 2 and this proceeds from a quality of imagination evident in the very first sentence:
Emma is so positive about having 'made the match' (11) between Miss Taylor and Mr Weston that the reader naturally inclines to Knightley's bluff scepticism: 'A straight-forward, open-hearted man, like Weston, and a rational unaffected woman, like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their own concerns' (13). We soon learn that Weston had, over a long period, intended to secure a 'little estate adjoining Highbury' (16). Apparently he had also for some considerable period intended marrying Miss Taylor:
It was now some time since Miss Taylor had begun to influence his schemes .... He had made his fortune, bought his house, and obtained his wife; and was beginning a new period of existence with every probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through (16-17).
