Top Ten Favorite Fictional Characters, #6: Emma Woodhouse, Emma
I identify with Emma. The favored child of British gentry and the queen bee of her social circle, Emma spends her days beneficently improving the lives of everyone around her. Emma is so full of great resolutions about how she’s going to improve herself as a person and make her world better, and she messes it up so many times. Emma is, of course, a spoiled girl in a provincial neighborhood engaging in meaningless, small-minded intrigue, but I think she’s a mirror for a disturbing number of my personality traits. She ends up happy, loved, and wiser than she started, and isn’t that something to aspire to?