nd opportunity to expose the world to her self-will.
Before long, Emma sets out to try to make others as happy as she herself had been in her protected and spoiled years. Psychologically, she is trying to recover her own lost happiness by bringing happiness to others. It is a situation which could have been turned into tragedy, but, again, Austen is writing a comic novel, and the situation is just as ripe for laughs as it is for tears. Austen has created in Emma woman as meddling as Lucy Ricardo, and just as unaware of the likely chaotic (if comic) consequences of her actions. She means well, but all does not turn out well---at least not until the very end of the book when Emma finds the happiness she has been so generously trying to bring to others.
To be fair, Emma is not a stupid character. She is simply cursed with the tunnel vision of selfishness a
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