May I assume that by “pictures” you mean something like (character) sketches in relation to the social issues you mention? One of the things Emma (and Emma) uncovers is that the idea of a “woman” is always complicated by other categories and considerations: Emma is a young heiress of the Hartfield property with a good fortune who explains to her particular friend, the naïve Harriet, that she will never be old, poor and laughed at like old Miss Bates, the daughter of the widow of a deceased [dead] local clergyman: she is, though an unmarried woman, a different order of being, or so she thinks. Her wealth and consequence (local importance) make her situation an enviable one even if she does not marry, and becomes ‘an old maid like Miss Bates’, as Harriet frighteningly puts it.

She thinks this is Miss Bates’s problem but the problem becomes her own inability to respect Miss Bates, as the local landowner Mr Knightley points out during the unhappy picnic at Box Hill. In failing in respect of this ability to respect Emma has failed to understand the role of the traditional gentry (male or female) like herself and Knightley, which is to succour [look after] the unprotected, the frail, and the powerless folk like Miss Bates and her old mother (‘almost past everything but tea and quadrille’) in the local community (Highbury). In pointing out how different she as a woman is from Miss Bates Emma merely underlines that she herself has a duty towards her. Socially in between the two female extremes here is Miss Bates’s own niece Jane Fairfax, now visiting Highbury, nicely brought up and well educated, especially in music, with the genteel family of Colonel Campbell, but no longer required now his daughter has married a Mr. Dixon and settled in Ireland. Jane is cultivated but poor. Unlike Emma, she must marry if her life is to be at all a comfortable one, but she is secretly engaged to the unreliable Frank Churchill, who follows his own whims and those of his powerful step-mother. Emma herself thinks society is a fixed and unalterable hierarchy, and does not see how social fluctuations affect people like Jane Fairfax, although she herself is insecure: her femininity isolates her -- and her father, Mr. Woodhouse, is old, frail, and imperceptive (stupid, if you will).

Also, unfortunately, not everyone knows his or her (social) place quite as predictably as Emma assume they will: the local clergyman Mr Elton, for example, was supposed by Emma to be aspiring to her simple friend Harriet. Unfortunately he was aspiring to marry Emma herself, as she is horrifiedly forced to note on the journey home from Christmas entertainments at Mr and Mrs Weston’s ‘place’(Randall’s). Emma rejects Mr Elton who marries a Miss Augusta Hawkins, of a trade-enriched family from Bristol who thinks she can patronise the country folk who aren’t quite at her level of sophistication. This outrages Emma, and this time my book seems to support her, seeing the deficiency of respect in Mrs Elton for the traditional order upheld by the Woodhouses of Hartfield and the Knightleys of Donwell Abbey as a simple deficiency in Mrs Elton herself.

Emma is thus “half right”. She also changes for the better in accepting Mr Knightley’s rebuke, but for some readers she is just too snobbish and arrogant. And I anticipated this. I described Emma as ‘a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like’. But in saying this I was of course committing myself to ‘liking’ Emma. Do you, my dear?

With best wishes.

Jane Austen.

With best wishes.
Jane Austen.

Well, I would be difficult to understand without a copy of the book itself, I suppose, though my compositions were originally to be read aloud in the family, indeed in my own family. Pride and Prejudice concerns the fortunes of a family living at the end of the eighteenth century (c. 1800), like me: THE BENNETS. Unfortunately, silly Mrs. Bennet and ironic Mr. Bennet have had five daughters (Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia – in that order), which is bad only because, not having had a son, they will ultimately -- on the death of Mr. Bennet -- lose their estate (their house and grounds) – it’s entailed away, and to Mr. Collins, a laughably stupid and pompous clergyman! The point is that the girls – the daughters – will therefore have to be careful whom they marry (I’m afraid marriage was a sort of career for young women in my day). But the two eldest daughters, with whom the book is mainly concerned, Jane and Elizabeth, are intelligent and mature people who hate the idea of marrying for money alone.

To cut a fairly long story fairly short, my dear, two rich men settle in the neighbourhood. One, the amiable but self-mistrusting Charles Bingley, falls in love with the lovely Jane. After a slow start, the other one, the disdainful Mr Darcy, falls in love with the lively Elizabeth. Snobbish sisters and Mr Darcy persuade Bingley to run away to London, and the sisters hope Bingley will marry rich Mr Darcy’s musical younger sister Georgiana instead of Jane.

Mr Collins hopes to make amends to the Bennet family by marrying a Bennet daughter, assuming they’re bound to accept as he has the prospect of wealth and property and they have none. So he proposes to Elizabeth and is rejected. He can hardly believe his ears! But he then goes on to propose to, and be accepted by, Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth’s best friend. When she tells Elizabeth, she can hardly believe her ears! To marry entirely for “a prudent settlement” without regard to feelings in this area of life where feelings are everything! (Well, nearly!) Oddly, when Elizabeth is persuaded to visit Mr. Collins and Charlotte in Kent, where Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Collins’ wealthy patroness lives, Darcy arrives (Lady Catherine is his Aunt), and proposes to Lizzie (Elizabeth). He is rejected, as Elizabeth believes Darcy has destroyed her beloved sister Jane’s happiness -- by persuading Bingley that her family is too poor and unworthy for Bingley to ally himself with. Now it’s Darcy’s turn not to believe his ears when turned down -- as, rich, handsome, noble by birth, and with a great estate (house and grounds) in Derbyshire, he didn’t allow for Elizabeth’s feelings for her sister and her personal pride and integrity. But Elizabeth then comes to appreciate Darcy a bit, to understand that her first suitor Wickham has been telling lies about Darcy, arrives at Darcy’s estate of Pemberley with her sensible Aunt and Uncle Gardiner and encounters Darcy by accident, likes him much better, enjoys meeting his shy sister. Suddenly everything turns against her, though: her silly but very young sister Lydia elopes with the scamp George Wickham and the family are plunged into what seems like irreversible social disgrace. Collins sends a letter of condolence (pity) -- which makes things that much harder to bear. Wickham seems even worse than everyone had known of.

But suddenly things are resolved. The Gardiners apparently pay Wickham’s gambling debts and enable Lydia to marry Wickham. (Later we learn that Darcy did all the leg-work involved and provided the cash. We had also learned earlier that Wickham had almost eloped successfully with Georgiana when the latter was also only fifteen, so Darcy particularly hates having to deal with Wickh0am.) By accident Elizabeth hears of Darcy’s secret good deeds, is ready to be proposed to again, and after a few bad moments, including the arrival of an angry Lady Catherine in an attempt to call the whole thing off (she wanted Darcy to marry her own sickly daughter), Elizabeth accepts Darcy at the second time of asking, is carried off to beautiful Pemberley, and we see the Bennet family improving and thriving as a result. Also Bingley was finally allowed (by Darcy!) to marry Jane and they “settle in the neighbouring county”. Hurrah!

I hope this short summary helps. I’ve left out a good deal. Also a lot of the fun is in my use of language, especially in the frequent dialogue(s) (the actual words used when people are talking to each other), and I didn’t have space for any of that here. So I hope you can obtain a copy of the book somehow or other.
With best wishes.

Jane Austen.