Judgment, reason and clarity of perception; these are all qualities that contribute to the blindness in Jane Austen's Emma; a blindness which, according to Austen herself, can be avoided. This form of blindness ultimately causes unhappiness due to inaccurate perception of human situations and feelings. With Emma's inability to perceive the truth and her lack of understanding of herself, she becomes the victim of her own fantasy world of encounters and false happiness induced by Mr. Woodhouse, her father. This incentive is caused by his anxiety over marriage and his constant obsession with keeping his daughter close. Emma Woodhouse is born virtually blind when she encounters one of her parents' negative connotations towards the reality of the world in which she resides, but is freed from this irrational blindness when happiness is found in the form of Mr. Knightley, thus transforming Emma's lack of vision. sight in a need for insight. Mr. Woodhouse “is no companion to [Emma]” (2) and “no friend of marriage” (187). This results in Emma's blindness and subsequently makes her feel that "marriage, in fact, would not suit her" because it is "incompatible with what she owed her father" (280). With this induced morality, Emma lacks true happiness due to misinterpreted thoughts towards marrying only to please her father. Mr. Woodhouse's refusal to lose Emma to marriage as he did to his eldest daughter, Isabella, blinds her to the real world. By negatively characterizing the married female characters as "poor Isabella and poor Miss Taylor" (315), Mr. Woodhouse hopes to keep Emma blind to her future happiness she will find with Mr. Knightley, thus instilling the idea of ​​matchmaking between Emma and Mr. Knightley. allowing him to recognize his own match. The negative...... middle of paper...... his reclusive and selfish father. The removal of Mr. Woodhouse as Emma's primary influence and his replacement with Mr. Knightley results in insight and understanding to replace blindness, which, in turn, results in true happiness for Emma. With Mr. Knightley's acceptance, Emma finally "[understands] the deceptions she had practiced on herself...and the blindness of her head and heart" (277), allowing her to find happiness in a world that she now sees lucidly and understands. . In a sense, Emma's personal dilemma is also that of the human situation as one continues to find oneself and overcome blindness through maturation and humanistic actions to find truth in relationship building. Works Cited Austen, Jane. "Affection." Letter to Fanny Knight. November 30, 1814. MS. 23 Hans Place, London, England.Austen, Jane. Emma. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1999. Print.