"For her the alliance between reason and feeling needs to be in energetic, sustained operation, maturing through the experience of error...She would endorse [Adam Smith's] sense of the need for the assured authority of inner guidance, closely bound up, if not synonymous with, the activity of reason...for her, the inherent force of reason is spiritual and incorruptible, experience is crucial for its adequate development."
KEARNEY, J. A. “JANE AUSTEN AND THE REASON-FEELING DEBATE.” Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, no. 75, 1990, pp. 107–22. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41802618. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Emma's journey is about feeling sure of herself and the way she leads her life as an "excellent" matchmaker. She becomes caught up in her theories, unlikely observations, and well-fed imagination. Through these missteps, Emma begins to notice the consequences of her conspiracies and what lead to each failure. By the end of the novel, Emma has begun to understand that there is a time for logic, a time for reason, and times when they can live in harmony.