The Great Class Debate — Emma

Harriet sleeps at Hartfield and is already halfway to a room of her own. Emma judges it safest to keep her there, sends her to Mrs. Goddard's for an hour, and expects a visit of some days when she comes back. While Harriet is gone, Mr. Knightley sits with Emma and Mr. Woodhouse. The old man is coaxed into his winter walk, three turns while the sun is out. Knightley fetches the greatcoat and opens the garden door, then sits down again instead of leaving.

He will not rate Harriet's beauty as Emma does, but he praises her temper and says Emma has cured the school-girl giggle. Then he smiles and tells her Harriet will soon hear of something to her advantage. Emma hopes the hint is Mr. Elton. It is Robert Martin. He came to Donwell two evenings ago, laid out what he could afford, and left happy because Knightley told him to marry. Emma has been smiling through the story. She answers that Martin wrote yesterday and was refused.

Knightley stands up red with surprise and says Emma wrote the answer. Martin, he argues, is Harriet's superior in sense. She is the natural daughter of nobody knows whom, a parlour-boarder at a common school, pretty and good-tempered and nothing more. The advantage of the match is all on her side. Emma calls a farmer a degradation for a girl who now moves among gentlemen's daughters, and she is sure Harriet's father is a gentleman of fortune. Beauty and sweetness, she says, give Harriet the right to choose. Knightley replies that vanity on a weak head will raise her expectations until no one within reach is good enough, and that she may stay a parlour-boarder at Mrs. Goddard's, or catch at the old writing-master's son. Emma will not reopen the question. Only a gentleman in education and manner can win Harriet now. They sit in angry silence. Her attempt to talk of the weather gets no answer.

Knightley then names the plan she will not admit. If Elton is the man, the labour is in vain. Elton may talk sentiment, but he will act rationally, and Knightley has heard him praise a family of young ladies with twenty thousand pounds apiece. Emma laughs, says she only wants to keep Harriet to herself, and claims she is done with matchmaking. Knightley walks off abruptly, more sure of himself than he leaves her. She dreads that Martin might still be at Mrs. Goddard's pleading his own cause. Harriet returns cheerful, with no such story, and talks of Elton instead. Miss Nash has heard from Mr. Perry that Elton rode to London on whist-club night, on business he would not delay, smiling when a lady was guessed, the bearer of something exceedingly precious. Emma takes the gossip as proof that passion is already winning over the prudence Knightley described.