"Fffftt!" Cupid's arrow, once again, pierces the hearts of two unsuspecting people. Causing two people to fall in love, Cupid is known for his matchmaking. Similarly, Cupid is portrayed through Jane Austen's Emma. The protagonist, Emma, tries to find her best friend, Harriet, a husband. Emma is a well thought out, insightful novel. Despite the time gap between the time that Austen composed this novel and present day, the reader can still relate with characters. By developing a setting for Emma, Austen uses a realistic setting. For example, in the village of Highbury, class rank, reputation, and family background are major factors in marriage arrangements, which was a harsh reality during those times. Austen also develops Emma really well through her actions and decisions. Because Emma is a life-like character, she too makes mistakes. In addition, Emma also chooses to make decisions that make readers love and despise her. Creating unique love triangles, they contribute to the interesting and complex plot. For instance, Harriet has affections for Mr. Elton, however Mr. Elton has feelings for Emma, and Emma is trying to set up Harriet and Mr. Elton together. Using symbols, Austen is able to help readers recognize affections between characters. Showing his love for Emma, Mr. Elton keeps Emma's portrait of Harriet and makes a riddle for Emma and Harriet. However, Emma interprets Mr. Elton keeping the portrait and the riddle as his love for Harriet, but in fact symbolizes feelings for Emma. Also, Austen's themes are well carried out in arrogance and self-deception, and marriage. Thinking she's a perfect matchmaker, Emma is constantly proud of herself and her setups. However, she is unable to realize that marriage can't be playing around with. Ultimately, Emma was a very good book because of its great setting, characters, plot, symbols, and themes.

The divison of opinion on this page is interesting but probably not surprising. Emma is a book for serious readers and if you go in expecting an easy-to-read page turner, then stick to Danielle Steele. (It is beyond depressing that two people who wrote reviews were somehow of the amazingly ignorant opinion that Jane Austen ripped off Alicia Silverstone's Clueless.....Rather difficult seeing as she was alive in the early 1800's .....hmmm.) Emma takes patience but it's a rewarding read, with all the complications, misunderstandings andbanality of your average soap opera yet shining with Austen's trademark subtle wit and mordant intelligence which has made this novel a classic.Books do require a little more time, effort and thinking than sitting mindlessly in front of Alicia Silverstone, but what you take away from the experience is a much wider understanding.

Jane Austen said of Emma Woodhouse (in a letter) that she had written a novel with a heroine "whom no one would like but myself". Indeed the first sentence (another sterling first sentence by Austen. How does she do it?) paints a picture that is easily understood as a spoilt little rich girl:

"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable house 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."

At the same time we have to disagree with Miss Austen. Readers have fallen in love with Emma (both novel and heroine) since the novel was published, and with good reason

Ronald Blythe states in his introduction to the 1966 Penguin Classics edition of "Emma" that it is "the climax of Jane Austen's genius and the Parthenon of fiction." I do not dispute it for a second. This novel is my favourite work from my favourite author.

The book has a plot so timeless than even translating it to modern day Hollywood and casting Alicia Silverstone in the lead still gets you a hit movie, Clueless. OK, it's obvious from the first chapter who is destined to marry Emma but our dashing hero, Mr Knightley, is still the only person who ever criticises Emma, indeed he spends a large part of his time in the novel telling either Emma or her friends about her flaws.

Austen wrote to her niece Anna (writing a novel at the time) that "Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on" and stayed close to this for most of her own works. Yet at the same time, in a letter to her brother Edward (another incipient novelist) she played down her concerns as "the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as to produce little effect, after much labour." 'Emma' is certainly the novel on the smallest piece of ivory with the finest brush, yet it pokes as much fun and wields as savage a knife on the social conventions of Austen's England as any other novelist of the time.

Austen was capable of writing novels with genuine popular appeal at the same time as she flouted the conventions of fiction. 'Emma' is a marvellous example, an easily read, enjoyable novel with a heroine who is in charge of her own destiny and who marries for no other reason than she loves a good, strong man.

Everyone deserves to read a novel this good. Just because teenage girls will adore this novel and swoon over Mr Knightley doesn't mean the rest of us should be stopped from this marvellous read. I enjoy Austen immensely and this is my favourite. I probably read it once or twice a year.

When you come to choosing the edition I once again find myself recommending the Penguin Classics edition for its Introduction. This time it is Fiona Stafford who does such a good job (though I think the '66 edition Introduction by Ronald Blythe was a fraction better.)