Jane Fairfax is a skillfully employed foil for Emma, but we do not get to know her in dramatic detail because she is involved in a mystery and much about her must remain unknown until it is revealed in summary. On the other hand, Frank Churchill, though he too is involved in the mystery, comes through with better delineation. He has admirable abilities but is too frivolous to be truly admirable; his mainstay is social charm and wit. He is important partly because in many respects he is the male counterpart of Emma: Both get a certain enjoyment out of seeing others labor under misapprehensions, and it is significant that Emma recognizes this lively similarity near the end of the story.
George Knightley is one of the most important figures in the book, though during much of the time he is rather in the background of events. He is a man of benevolence. He is the only one strong enough to impress Emma with critical good sense, and he is thus the only logical one that she can marry. He is particularly significant to the novel, however, because he is the raisonneur, the spokesman character for Miss Austen. His reasoning and comment upon events are pretty much those of the author, and he constitutes a rational thread of cohesiveness running through the novel.
Emma Woodhouse is the main character and hers is the most fully rounded, three-dimensional characterization. Her dominant trait is willful imagination, but she also has the elements of goodwill, rationality, and proportion when her willfulness does not lead her into self-deception. She is the fundamental changing character in the book, for she goes through a slow and bumpy growth from self-deception to self-knowledge. She is the book's aberration from the static social norm, and at the end she has developed to the point of fitting properly into her social milieu. Her characterization has been so well done that one cannot be absolutely sure that she will never scheme again, but one can feel that she has a good chance of remaining on terms with herself and her environment because of her growth and because she now has George Knightley beside her.
In considering the characters of the book, one should remind himself that, no matter how well they are developed for their individuality, they also serve for purposes of satirical contrast and comparison. The distancing that Austen achieves through point of view (see above) effects a kind of balance between the individual as such and his place in a satirically social context.
