Jane Austen depicts a society which, for all its seeming privileges (pleasant houses, endless hours of leisure), closely monitors behaviour. Her heroines in particular discover in the course of the novel that individual happiness cannot exist separately from our responsibilities to others. Emma Woodhouse’s cruel taunting of Miss Bates during the picnic at Box Hill and Mr Knightley’s swift reproof are a case in point: ‘“How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation? – Emma, I had not thought it possible.”’ Emma is mortified: ‘The truth of his representation there was no denying. She felt it at her heart.' Austen never suggests that our choices in life include freedom to act indepe
