In these chapters the self-deception of Emma takes positive shape and unfortunately involves others. She, like others around her, obviously believes in the propriety of social stratification and exemplifies it when she leads the believing Harriet to compare Robert Martin with the other gentlemen. However, it is worth remembering that when Emma says, "The yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to do," she is not being snobbish in the modern sense. Though it may not be admirable by today's standards, her social conscience is that of the eighteenth century; and it is significant that her very next remarks, coming without pause, are these: "A degree or two lower and a creditable appearance might interest me; I might hope to be useful to their families in some way or other. But a farmer can need none of my help, and is therefore in one sense as much above my notice as in every other he is below it." In light of the world around her, Emma's only serious mistake, socially and humanly speaking, is in letting her willful wish and imagination convince her that Harriet, who is so pretty and amiable, must come from gentility.
In the first of these two chapters, Miss Austen introduces the reader to two important new characters, Harriet and Miss Bates. Harriet will be a mere pretty counter to be maneuvered by Emma and the plot of the novel, but Miss Bates is to be the object of ruthlessly gentle satire and, through her relation to Jane Fairfax (introduced later), an important sideline element in the total plot of the novel. Mr. Elton's future use for satire is indicated in the present description of him as "a young man living alone without liking it."
