This thesis took dividing of Austen’s heroines into the two categories of wrong and right heroines into a consideration and focused on the category of the wrong (fallible) heroines Emma Woodhouse from Emma and Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. Its aim was to analyse the actions of these fallible heroines with the main focus on the development of their characters and feelings.
The first part of the thesis introduced Jane Austen as a significant author in literary history who contributed many novelties to literature. Jane Austen proved her great writing skills mainly in the way she described the development of her heroines’ feelings. Emma and Elizabeth are special among other heroines as Emma is able to examine her own state of thinking of being in love to the realization she is not, and Elizabeth shows her own introspection in the process of thinking and re-thinking. Another important feature of Austen’s novels is heroine’s learning experience as a centre of the novel. From the studied literature, it follows that the learning experience leads to the problematic of ‘self’ which Austen’s fallible heroines deal throughout the novels. Jane Austen tried to explore mainly the fields of self-realization and self-knowledge, which means Emma and Elizabeth must overcome their mistakes to find what is right and only then they can reach the ‘self’ development. The first part of the thesis also showed the critical view on the heroines. For readers of the 19th century, the