Perhaps better than any other section of the novel, these chapters demonstrate the domestic atmosphere of the book: the family and its interrelated contact with the rest of society as the foundation for the provincial community which Miss Austen is delineating and satirizing. It is important to note that Emma too accepts this governing concept, for this underlies the constant concern with the process and propriety of courtship and marriage. Even Mr. Woodhouse's trivially perpetual anxiety about health is part of it. And such a foundation is as natural as Emma's reaction, which George observes, toward children.
It is nonetheless worth noting that Emma uses this natural reaction in order to mollify George and gain her way. Emma is as much Emma as ever, but the authorial presentation of the opposite, conservative side of the contrast is doubled by the introduction of Isabella as being much like her father and of John as being much like George. The conflictive variety within the domestic setting is intensified.
