On Emma’s Psychological And Social Developments From A Bildungsroman Perspective

Among Jane Austen’s six novels, Emma is the only one to name after the heroine. The work Emma reaches the peak of Jane Austen’s artistic creation. The novel describes how Emma-the heroine grows in redemption and into maturity in the end. After experiencing series of mistakes, she discards fantasy and renews herself. Especially after she has fallen in love with Mr. Nightly-the hero, Emma turns out to be a woman of reason, fairness, and maturity.Beginning with introducing Bildungsroman, this thesis aims at analyzing Emma’s redemption during her growth, and thus to discuss how the three pathfinders, i.e. Mr. Nightly, Frank and Harriet help Emma during the process of her psychological and social development. At the end of the paper, I will discuss the meaning of Emma’s growing into maturity.The novel can reflect real life. We can also learn something from the growth of Emma, that is, the growth of people accompanies with the loss of innocence. With the consideration to the growth of Emma, Jane Austen reveals the common mistakes during a person’s growth and then guides us the reasonable way. The morality that Jane Austen provokes is a general truth:it is how to live and make a reasonable choice in life to achieve the self-realization. The redemption during Emma’s growth inspires us to learn from experience and then get real maturity from truly describing ourselves. Thus, Emma proves to be a novel of typical Bildungsroman.