and social advantage. Within that failure is a blindness to the fact that actions have consequences; only after she witnesses Harriet's fatuously romantic infatuation with Mr. Knightley does it occur to her, "with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself" (Austen 263). Having in her own obtuseness toward others conceived it "her duty to set the world to rights" (Allen 124), but repeatedly and programmatically, as she finds out, she gets it wrong. Emma gradually comes to full knowledge of her own foibles, a full appreciation of the fact that, however young and foolish she may be, as Mr. Knightley tells her when scolding her for insulting Miss Bates, she is extraordinarily privileged and on that account has enormous social advantage: "You . . . laugh at her . . . before others, many of whom, certainly some,) should be entirely guided by your treatment of her" (Austen 242). Such insight confers notice of "otherness" and appreciation of the worth and dignity of others per se, as opposed to their status as instruments ripe for her manipulation.
To say that Mr. Knightley is the grown-up of the novel is in some sense to define the process of maturation that his love object, Emma, undergoes. In significant part, it is Mr. Knightley who points out and in certain instances heroically intervenes against Emma's errors in discernment. He is Emma's good angel, countering her schemes and fancies with common sense. Thus when she determines to make a match for Mr. Elton, he warns her against it for the best of reasons, that "a man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself" (Austen 7). This turns out to be prophetic, inasmuch as Mr. Elton misr
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