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Mrs. Weston was Emma’s governess. With Emma’s mother long passed and her sister Isabella married and living in London, Mr. Woodhouse hired Mrs. Weston (formerly Miss Taylor) so that his daughter would still have a feminine presence in the household. Kind-tempered and devoted, she became mother, sister, and friend to Emma. However, when the novel opens, Mrs. Weston has just married a widower, leaving Hartfield and Emma behind. In addition to opening the novel, the Westons’ marriage is an important catalyst that sets two related plot points in motion. To begin with, Emma is happy for her friend, especially because she arranged the match herself, but she is also lonely without her beloved companion. Emma is keen to befriend Harriet in the first place because she is trying to fill the void left by Mrs. Weston. Emma also decides to find a husband for Harriet because her first foray into matchmaking was so successful.
Mrs. Weston is also significant because she helps to provide a context for Emma’s faults. Towards the very beginning of the novel, Austen informs the reader that Emma has such an inflated sense of her own intelligence and “a disposition to think a little too well of herself” because everyone in her life (except for Mr. Knightley) dotes on her, is blind to her flaws, and has rarely told her “no.” Mrs. Weston is not the only culprit, but she is certainly one of them. Austen implies that although Emma’s friendship with Mrs. Weston is clearly a pleasure to them both, a stricter and more authoritative governess might have been better for Emma’s moral education. Austen allows the readers to witness this behavior in action in Chapter 4 when Mrs. Weston earnestly tells Mr. Knightley that “[Emma] has qualities which may be trusted; she will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred times.” Mrs. Weston’s characterization of Emma is loaded with Austen’s famous irony because it is deeply inaccurate. After all, Emma spends the entire novel misinterpreting interactions, leading several characters astray, and making a series of errors. Mrs. Weston’s rose-colored view and lenient treatment of Emma is crucial to our understanding of Emma’s character because it accounts for why she has turned out the way that she has.
