ABSTRACT
Emma is, like Mansfield Park, a controversial novel. The chief issues are the genuineness of Emma's reformation and the felicity of her marriage to Knightley. Most critics feel that Jane Austen means for her readers to see Emma's self-knowledge as profound, her education as permanent, and her marriage as perfectly happy, and that the author's interpretation is correct. Emma is full of humors characters who are wittily portrayed and who repeat their obsessions with delightful regularity. It abounds in ironies and misunderstandings and gives the readers all the fun of a comedy of errors. Mansfield Park specializes in the creation and removal of anxiety. Its satisfactions are those which accompany the gradual lifting of a nightmare and its eventual transformation into a wish fulfillment fantasy. From a psychological point of view, Emma is the story of a young woman with both narcissistic and perfectionistic trends which have been induced by her early environment.
