The vision of love outlined here emanates directly from what nineteenth-century men and women called “character.” In contradistinction to a long Western tradition that presents love as an emotion that overtakes one’s capacity to judge and that idealizes the object of love to the point of blindness, love is here solidly anchored in Knightley’s capacity for discernment. This is why Emma’s faults are no less emphasized than her virtues. The only person who loves Emma is also the only one to see her faults. To love someone is to look at them with wide-opened and knowing eyes. And, contrary to what we would expect today, such capacity for discernment (and awareness of another’s fl aws) does not entail any ambivalent feeling toward Emma. On the contrary, Knightley’s own excellence of character makes him forgive her faults, discern (what will later prove to be) her own “excellence of mind,”10 and strive to improve her character with fervor and even passion. Understanding Emma’s faults is not incompatible with being thoroughly committed to her because both emanate from the same moral source. Knightley’s love itself is supremely moral not only because he makes the object of his love accountable to a moral code, but also because to love Emma is intertwined with the moral project of shaping her mind. When he looks at her anxiously, it is not lust that burns in him, but rather his desire to see her do the right thing. In this particular conception of love, it is not the unique originality of the person that we love, but rather the person’s capacity to stand for those values we – and others –