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Mr. Weston is a widower and the proprietor of Randalls. When the novel opens, he has just remarried, and Miss Taylor (now Mrs. Weston) has become his wife after Emma helped to facilitate the match. He is a kind-hearted, jovial man who is always good for a laugh and up for a social event. His first marriage was to a woman from the wealthy Churchill family. They had a son, Frank Churchill, but the marriage was overshadowed by the disapproval of Mr. Weston’s brother and sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Churchill. When the original Mrs. Weston died after three years of marriage, Frank was essentially adopted by the Churchills and became their heir. Mr. Weston, left impoverished by the expectations of his first wife, spent the next twenty years rebuilding his fortune. He eventually purchased Randalls, the small estate where he now lives with the second Mrs. Weston.
Mr. Weston is significant to the novel for a few key reasons. He, like his wife, adores Emma and is blind to her many faults. Austen uses characters like the Westons to provide the context for Emma’s inflated sense of self. For example, during the disastrous trip to Box Hill, Mr. Weston’s riddle is “What two letters of the alphabet are there, that express perfection?” The answer is “M. and A.” because when said aloud it sounds like “Em-ma.” The compliment is ironically ill-timed; his assertion that Emma is perfect occurs immediately after Emma is cruel and unthinking towards Miss Bates.
Most importantly, Mr. Weston inadvertently generates much of the novel’s drama because he introduces Frank Churchill to the people of Hartfield. Hartfield is a very insular community, so the introduction of someone new—especially a wealthy, handsome, and unmarried man—is bound to cause a stir. From the moment that Frank is introduced, the rest of the characters (Emma in particular) are absorbed in figuring out his motivations. The ambiguity surrounding Frank fosters a sense of intrigue that permeates the novel as a complicated web of secret relationships and feigned romantic interests are untangled. Mr. Weston plays a key role in the unfolding drama because he clearly wants Emma and Frank to form an attachment. This innocent but misguided wish inadvertently impacts many characters; it generates conflict between the secretly engaged Frank and Jane Fairfax, it confuses Emma and makes her question whether she could ever marry or not, and it likely causes Mr. Knightley to realize that he is in love with Emma himself.
