Emma

Jane Austen is known for her novels about women in more-or-less straitened circumstance who find and marry men of great wealth.  But Emma is very much the exception to this rule, as the very first line of the novel tells us.

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

Instead, the ostensible plot of this novel is about Emma's learning some humility; she learns that she's not as perceptive or wise as she had thought.  I say "ostensible," because I think that the novel is really about the various class conflicts that are going on at the time of the writing -- the nobility vs nouveau riche, landed gentry vs those in trade, and so on.

Emma herself is quite a snob, and its easy to read her attitudes onto Jane Austen, but I don't think that would be fair.  Rather, Mr. Knightly is the epitome of virtue in the novel, and we see that he eschews the use of a carriage where one could walk (Emma chides him for it -- she says that he should ride in a carriage to show his nobility).  Through his eyes, we see Robert Martin as a solid yeoman, at least the equal of the pretentious Eltons.

It's also, though, a very funny novel.  In the long time since I'd last read it, I'd forgotten how funny it is.  It may be Austen's funniest novel.  (I'm about to go on a bit of an Austen kick, thanks to a nice sale at Audible, but next up is the (as I recall) more melancholy Persuasion).