Emma

Miss Austen is neatly building toward the climax of Volume One. In a quite natural way she removes Harriet from the upcoming scene, a social gathering equally natural to human beings, though the irony of man's thorough commitment to socializing is indicated in John Knightley's grumbling (as the carriage proceeds through the cold and snow) about their "setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of the voice of nature." Emma is given what seems to be plenty of warning about Mr. Elton both by John's cautioning her and by Mr. Elton's blithe and solicitous conversation in the carriage and his ready forgetfulness of Harriet. But Emma is blinded by her willful scheming. Ironically, her reaction to John is to think confidently "of the blunders which often arise from a partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgment are for ever falling into," never for a moment applying these thoughts to herself. As for Mr. Elton, she is at the moment merely astonished at him — and critical.