Plotting is well developed in these two chapters. Emma is no longer worried about herself and Frank, but she is curious about his present restless behavior yet fails to observe the little attentions that he pays to Jane. The Eltons show their true colors, and it is to Frank's credit that he does not like Augusta. But George is the hero of the hour in reacting so gallantly after Mr. Elton's obvious rudeness to Harriet. Slowly and quietly Miss Austen is showing him to be by far the most admirable man in Highbury, just as Emma, in spite of her willful imagination, is the most interesting and admirable woman there. The reader, aware of Emma's past attitudes and inclinations, should be able to detect the modulated beginning of story conflict when, at the very end of Chapter II, George emphatically agrees with Emma that they are indeed not brother and sister.
The satire of caricature is continued here with Augusta and Miss Bates. But the broader and more subtle satire of a community and its fluttery emphasis on giving a ball is localized in the comic scene in which, after Emma has come early to give her asked opinion, others arrive for the same reason. The scene is one that also has its share in Emma's slowly maturing into self-knowledge: In reference to Mr. Weston she now feels "that to be the favourite and intimate of a man who had so many intimates and confidantes, was not the very first distinction in the scale of vanity." This is conscious realization. An unconscious sort, treated without satire, comes in the concluding scene with George, for at the moment Emma relates her happy feelings toward George only to his rescue of Harriet and to his agreeing with her about Harriet and the Eltons.
