The Short Answer
Full spoilers, of course.
Here is the short answer. Emma Woodhouse marries Mr. Knightley. Harriet Smith marries Robert Martin, the farmer Emma once talked her out of. And Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax, who were secretly engaged all along, are only waiting for November. Harriet’s wedding is first, before the end of September. Emma’s follows within a month.
Mr. Elton is still the vicar, and he marries them both. Now let me show you how everybody gets there.
The Secret
By my count, the secret comes out in chapter forty-six of fifty-five, the realization in forty-seven and the proposal in forty-nine. So the real ending is the last ten chapters.
Start with the surprise. Mrs. Churchill dies, and ten days later Mr. Weston asks Emma to come to Randalls. Mrs. Weston tells her that Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax have been engaged since October, a promise made at Weymouth.
Here is how it went, from Frank’s own letter. He had a secret to keep at all hazards, he says, because of the state of things at Enscombe, his aunt’s home. And Emma, in his words, was his ostensible object. His cover. He thought she was too indifferent to be hurt.
Then came Box Hill. Frank flirted with Emma in front of Jane, and Jane had had enough. She accepted Mrs. Elton’s offer of a governess post near Bristol, and she wrote to say they should never meet again. His reply sat locked in his writing desk on the morning his aunt died, and it never went out. She sent back his letters. Frank told his uncle, who gave in, and Frank went straight to Highbury to make it up.
The Clues
Looking back, the book dropped hints. When Emma asks whether he saw Jane often at Weymouth, Frank hastily changes the subject to a shop. A pianoforte arrives for Jane from nowhere. Frank’s letter says he ordered it, and that Jane would never have allowed it. Emma decided it came from Mr. Dixon, and Frank went along with her theory.
Mr. Knightley, meanwhile, suspected Frank of some double dealing, and Emma later remembers he once tried to caution her. And Jane’s coldness towards Emma, Emma realizes afterwards, was probably jealousy.
The Moment Emma Knows
Emma’s first worry is Harriet. She dreads telling her that Frank loves someone else, because she let Harriet hope. But Mr. Weston has already told Harriet, and Harriet is calm. She was never thinking of Frank. She means Mr. Knightley, who danced with her. She tells Emma that stranger matches have happened, and the words are Emma’s own.
Emma sits still for a few minutes and learns her own heart. It darts through her that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself. She sees how badly she has treated Harriet, and what blindness led her on. Then she tells herself she will never marry anyway, because of her father. And Mr. Knightley is in London.
The Proposal
He comes back through the rain and finds Emma in the garden at Hartfield. He has heard about Frank and Jane from Mr. Weston, and he thinks she is heartbroken. He says time will heal the wound, and he calls Frank an abominable scoundrel.
Emma has to correct him. She was never attached to Frank. She admits her vanity was flattered, and that is all. He is quiet, and then says he envies Frank. Then he begins to say something, and she stops him, because she thinks he is about to confess he loves Harriet.
When she relents and offers to hear him as a friend, he asks her outright. Have I no chance? She can say nothing. In a moment she understands everything: Harriet was a delusion, and she herself was the one he meant. The book says the half hour gave each of them the same certainty of being loved.
His side, the narrator tells us, is a long jealousy of Frank. Box Hill decided him to go away. He went to London to learn to be indifferent, and he failed.
The Letter
The next morning, Frank’s long letter arrives, forwarded by Mrs. Weston. Emma shows it to Mr. Knightley, and he reads it aloud with a running commentary. He agrees that Frank behaved shamefully. He calls the pianoforte a boyish scheme. On what Frank says about Emma, his verdict is very bad, though it might have been worse.
By the end, he is willing to hope Frank improves, with a wife of Jane’s steadiness. And he has more important business. How can he ask Emma to marry him without hurting her father?
The Father Problem
Emma tells him that while her father lives, she cannot leave him. Mr. Knightley has already thought it through. Moving Mr. Woodhouse from Hartfield could risk his health. So he proposes to live at Hartfield himself, and give up his own independence. The narrator adds that Emma, once so protective of her nephew Henry’s claim to Donwell, only gives a saucy smile.
He is certain no reflection will change his mind. Emma promises to think about it, and finds she likes the idea more each time. But there is one person who has not been asked.
Harriet’s Ending
Emma knew Harriet needed to be elsewhere. She arranges for her to visit Isabella in Brunswick Square, on the excuse of a bad tooth. Harriet goes.
Then one day Mr. Knightley comes in with news. Harriet Smith marries Robert Martin. Martin had gone to London on business, John took him along to Astley’s with Harriet, he dined with them the next day, and he proposed. She said yes.
Emma pretends to doubt it, so she can hide how happy she is. She jokes that perhaps he mistook Harriet’s hand for the dimensions of an ox. When Harriet returns, Emma is satisfied that Martin has replaced Mr. Knightley. And Harriet’s parentage becomes known. She is the daughter of a tradesman, rich enough to give her a comfortable maintenance. It shows how wrong Emma was to vouch for her gentle birth.
George
Mrs. Weston has a baby girl, and Emma and Mr. Knightley talk about how she will be spoiled. He says nature gave Emma understanding and Miss Taylor gave her principles. He says he has been in love with her since she was thirteen, at least.
Then he asks her to call him something other than Mr. Knightley. She remembers calling him George once, ten years ago, to offend him, and since he did not object, she never did it again. She says she cannot. But she promises to say his Christian name once: in the building where N. takes M. for better, for worse.
Forgiven
Before the weddings, Emma and Frank meet at Randalls. Frank thanks her for a forgiving message. Emma says she is glad to shake hands. He jokes about the name Dixon, and she says she cannot think of it without shame. Emma tells him there is a likeness between them, in their destiny, which connects them to two people superior to themselves. She leaves feeling, as never before, the high superiority of Mr. Knightley’s character.
The Weddings
Harriet and Robert Martin marry first, before the end of September.
The last obstacle is Emma’s father. Mr. Woodhouse is miserable at first. At the second mention, he is merely resigned. And then, he is saved by a poultry thief. Mrs. Weston’s poultry house is robbed of all her turkeys, and other yards suffer too. Mr. Woodhouse is terrified, and leans on the strength of the two Mr. Knightleys. But John must be back in London by the first week of November, and so Mr. Woodhouse gives a cheerful consent. The book is careful to say there was no sudden change in his mind. His nerves simply worked in another direction.
Within a month of Harriet’s wedding, Mr. Elton joins the hands of Mr. Knightley and Miss Woodhouse. The wedding is quiet. Mrs. Elton, hearing the details from her husband, thinks it extremely shabby, with very little white satin and very few lace veils.
The last line says the small band of friends who witnessed it saw their hopes fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union. And then the word FINIS.
What It Means
Here is my reading, and it is an opinion. Emma’s matchmaking never works, and the ending is not a prize for it. The weddings that happen are ones she did not arrange. And her own comes from the one person who tells her the truth.
I also think the compromise matters. She does not leave her father, and he does not take her away. He moves in. So the book gives her a husband without taking her home from her.
And notice what the ending does with the word match. The weddings happen after Emma stops planning them. Harriet and Martin are decided in London, at Astley’s, while Emma is in Surrey. Frank and Jane were decided at Weymouth, before Frank ever appears. Emma’s own is decided in a garden, in half an hour, because for once she tells the truth first.
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