The good-natured satire on marriage is obvious here, containing, as it does, the irony of how unequal events are related. It is noteworthy, however, that before the "happy ending" the standing social order is fully reasserted: The intimacy between Harriet and Emma "must sink; their friendship must change into a calmer sort of good-will; and, fortunately, what ought to be, and must be, seemed already beginning, and in the most gradual, natural manner." The degree to which Emma now accepts this social order is given rather tongue-in-cheek when she learns of Harriet's parentage and reflects upon her possibly being matched with George or Frank or even Mr. Elton: "The stain of illegitimacy, unbleached by nobility or wealth, would have been a stain indeed."
Emma has come a long way to self-recognition and self-knowledge; the social aberration that resulted from her willful imagination, having failed to mature, is safely past; and the social order of the provincial community settles back to normal. Actually, the reader can see, when he looks back at Miss Austen's characterizations and plot structuring, that neither of the three men would have married Harriet any more than Emma would have had Mr. Elton. Consequently, the supreme irony of the story may be that, though a few characters were for a while upset or in doubt about events, there was never any danger at all of the community social order being subverted. Each couple is paired off in the novel in terms of being of similar social rank and in terms of natural equality—even the Eltons. The ending, then, is "happy" as an ideal union of the social and the natural.
