SOURCE: Kohn, Denise. “Reading Emma as a Lesson on ‘Ladyhood’: A Study in the Domestic Bildungsroman.” Essays in Literature 22, no. 1 (spring 1995): 45-58.

In the following essay, Kohn suggests that Emma is an example of a Bildungsroman in which a heroine's education and development as a lady are achieved in a domestic setting rather than through a quest.

Emma can be a problematic novel for the modern reader—especially for the feminist reader. On the one hand, feminist critics have lauded Jane Austen for her critique of the marriage market and exposition of the problems of female independence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Green, Johnson, Kirkham, Poovey). The growing emphasis on creating a canon of women writers has led many feminist readers to latch onto Austen with fervor because she is a woman writer who has long enjoyed a fine critical reputation despite the sentimental and...