Gypsy incident

The Gypsy incident is a carefully constructed set-piece that transforms a chance rescue into a catalyst for romantic misapprehension, revealing both Emma Woodhouse's incorrigible habit of reading events through the lens of her own matchmaking fantasies and the genuine vulnerability of Harriet Smith, whose social and emotional dependence leaves her prey to every passing danger and every hopeful interpretation.

Causes and Background

The incident occurs during a period of heightened romantic confusion in Highbury. Harriet Smith, still recovering from her disappointment over Mr. Elton's marriage, has been spending much of her time at Hartfield under Emma's protection. On the morning in question, Harriet and Miss Bickerton, another parlour boarder at Mrs. Goddard's school, set out for a walk along the Richmond road. This road, though apparently public enough for safety, becomes deeply shaded by elms after a sudden turn and stretches for a considerable distance in a very retired manner. The young ladies have advanced some way into this secluded stretch when they perceive at a small distance before them, on a broader patch of greensward by the side, a party of gypsies. A child on the watch comes towards them to beg, and Miss Bickerton, excessively frightened, gives a great scream and, calling on Harriet to follow her, runs up a steep bank, clears a slight hedge at the top, and makes the best of her way by a short cut back to Highbury. Poor Harriet cannot follow; she has suffered very much from cramp after dancing, and her first attempt to mount the bank brings on such a return of it as makes her absolutely powerless.

What Happens

Left alone and exceedingly terrified, Harriet is soon assailed by half a dozen children, headed by a stout woman and a great boy, all clamorous and impertinent in look though not absolutely in word. More and more frightened, she immediately promises them money, takes out her purse, gives them a shilling, and begs them not to want more or to use her ill. She is then able to walk, though but slowly, and is moving away—but her terror and her purse are too tempting, and she is followed, or rather surrounded, by the whole gang, demanding more. In this state Frank Churchill finds her, she trembling and conditioning, they loud and insolent. By a most fortunate chance his leaving Highbury has been delayed so as to bring him to her assistance at this critical moment. The pleasantness of the morning had induced him to walk forward and leave his horses to meet him by another road a mile or two beyond Highbury, and happening to have borrowed a pair of scissors the night before of Miss Bates and to have forgotten to restore them, he had been obliged to stop at her door and go in for a few minutes; he is therefore later than he had intended, and being on foot, is unseen by the whole party till almost close to them. The terror which the woman and boy had been creating in Harriet is then their own portion; he leaves them completely frightened, and Harriet, eagerly clinging to him and hardly able to speak, has just strength enough to reach Hartfield before her spirits are quite overcome. It is his idea to bring her to Hartfield; he has thought of no other place.

Consequences and Aftermath

Emma's response to the event is immediate and characteristic. She finds it a very extraordinary thing—nothing of the sort has ever occurred before to any young ladies in the place within her memory, no rencontre, no alarm of the kind—and now it has happened to the very person, and at the very hour, when the other very person was chancing to pass by to rescue her. Knowing, as she does, the favourable state of mind of each at this period—Frank Churchill wishing to get the better of his attachment to herself, Harriet just recovering from her mania for Mr. Elton—it seems as if everything unites to promise the most interesting consequences. Emma resolves not to stir a step nor drop a hint, having had enough of interference, but her passive scheme is already formed. The incident becomes the talk of Highbury within half an hour, engaging the young and the low, and the last night's ball seems lost in the gypsies. Mr. Woodhouse trembles as he sits and will scarcely be satisfied without their promising never to go beyond the shrubbery again. The gypsies themselves do not wait for the operations of justice but take themselves off in a hurry, and the whole history soon dwindles into a matter of little importance to anyone but Emma and her nephews, Henry and John, who still ask every day for the story of Harriet and the gypsies and tenaciously set her right if she varies in the slightest particular from the original recital. For Emma, however, the incident maintains its ground in her imagination as the seed of what she believes will be a growing attachment between Frank Churchill and Harriet—an attachment that, unknown to her, has already been redirected toward Mr. Knightley in Harriet's secret heart.