Emma (Collector's Library)

Emma  is the typical rich and clever girl whose overconfidence in her own understanding of people and well-meaning desire to manipulate the lives of her social inferiors as well as some of her equals involve her in a number of  delusions. The shocks and later disappointments she receives help her to achieve a greater degree of self-knowledge than she possessed before she started on her self-appointed career of reform. The novel sets little traps for Emma's vanity and self-importance and she falls into every one of them. She takes under her protection Harriet Smith, "the natural daughter of somebody", and decides to arrange a suitable marriage for her with a foolish young man who proposes to Emma herself to her disgust and annoyance!