could never be a positive trait - where would we all be without Jane Austen's imagination? I can't, however, completely detach Emma's fancy from what it leads her into doing, and might even paraphrase Mr Knightley and say that it might be better to have no imagination at all than misapply it as she does. Though I admit that would make for a pretty dull book, which we probably would not be discussing at all because we would have been so bored with her we would have given up readig it twenty chapters ago, so perhaps it is as well that she is as she is.