In Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma, our heroine is Emma Woodhouse, a young woman of twenty that the book describes as handsome, clever, and rich. I personally describe her as a beautiful bimbo, and I also posit that Emma is a lesbian. Winchester’s Jane may not have intentionally written her that way, but I will present to you the events of the novel with a decidedly queer interpretation, and you, dear reader, may see for yourself how well the glove fits.

The main premise of the story is that our heroine is lovely, and lovable, but gives herself the undue duty of matchmaker. That power she assumes to have over others wreaks havoc in the neighbourhood, and is resolved by her marriage to an older, wiser man. This desire to set up her friends for love can be seen as Miss Woodhouse’s coping mechanism: faced with inevitable loss, she fantasizes control over it. She engineers these matches in her head. Her friends are not leaving her for the bonds of matrimony: she is sending them away to assure their happiness.

We meet Emma in a moment of loss—Miss Taylor, her beloved governess, is going to be Mrs. Weston. Having grown up motherless, Mrs. Weston is the closest thing Emma had to a mother; she is also a close confidant that seems quite sisterly. (Emma’s actual older sister, Isabella, has been married nearly for a decade.) Our Emma insists she brings about the nuptials, and no amount of George Knightley scoffing at her idea will dissuade her.

Reader, she is deluded. She is also damaged. That exquisite vulnerability nestled in her bravado stems from comphet: compulsive heterosexuality.

Adrienne Rich first detailed this term in her 1980s essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”. The framework of society enforces mandatory male-female attraction in a way that erases and suppresses, among other things, queer identities and desires. It is why lesbian women may pursue relationships with men: they are simply not allowed to consider women as a romantic and sexual option.

Emma Woodhouse sees no charm in marriage, yet we are meant to believe she capitulates wholeheartedly to the offer from a man. It is not George Knightley’s beauty that Emma notices. It is not his company that hurts her soul to part with. The book insists that she harbours a secret passion for him, that her jealousy is his, that her distress is in the loss of him. But if we do not admit this dormant love that abruptly erupts out of nowhere, we still have a candidate to engage Emma’s affections.

Quite early in the novel, as soon as Mrs. Weston is ensconced in her new home, we meet Harriet Smith. A fat, hot girl from a nearby school, she attracts Emma’s attention with her beauty. Harriet and Emma form an immediate attachment to each other that is more fixation than friendship. They are of a similar age, and Harriet is soon delighted by a standing invitation to Emma’s house. She has a room there. They are in each other’s confidence. Mr. Knightley disapproves, but Mrs. Weston, in what ought to be a sapphic banner, tells him that he has no idea of the comfort a woman can find in a companion of the same sex.

By dint of her parentage, Harriet is an unsuitable friend to the wealthy heiress. Emma quickly begins constructing fantasies to prevent the loss of her new friend. Harriet’s unknown father might be—no, must be a gentleman of high birth. Then Emma can keep her. She must not marry Robert Martin and become a farmer’s wife. Then Emma can keep her. She could marry Elton, the local vicar that would never move to another parish. Emma will then have her forever. The entire novel revolves, for the large part, around our heroine desperately devising ways to protect the real relationship that matters to her, and it is not the one she has with Mr. George Knightley.

Harriet is a sweet and unworldly girl we do not get to know very well except through the lens of Emma’s adoration and ownership. She may requite Emma’s feelings, but ultimately, she is not a co-conspirator in Emma’s plans. She is glad to have rejected Robert Martin, pale at the thought of the match costing her Emma. Harriet will go where Emma leads, even as she is left with heartbreak that she recovers from with suspicious alacrity.

Courting men and flirtations that ensue are a proxy game for the girls. It is merely another excuse to spend time together. In the end, when Harriet confesses her alleged love of Mr. Knightley to Emma, she makes certain to stipulate that she has no aspiration to actually marry him. Emma is in considerable distress nonetheless. The book suggests the confession jolts her into realizing her love of that gentleman; but what if the discovery is that she loves Harriet?

Emma, meeting Mr. Knightley immediately after this interview and being proposed to, accepts. The actual reply she gives him is obscured by the author; though we hear him decry his love in lengthy dialogue, Jane Austen informs us coolly that Emma “said what a lady ought to say”. Harriet, shortly thereafter revealed to be a trader’s daughter, marries Robert Martin in the end.

The book concludes with weddings, and the women remain friends. It may, on the surface, seem to be a bleak ending for young queer lovers. But consider—they have remained in each other’s lives as they set out to do. If I may prophesize: as they grow mature and develop a better understanding of their own selves, compulsive heterosexuality will not always have them in so suffocating a grip.

Love, after all, has no deadline. Love is a living thing, and it lives in Emma and Harriet.