A Tale of Two Cities

In both the novel Emma by Jane Austen and the movie Clueless written and directed by Amy Heckerling, the main characters deceive themselves through their own arrogance. In Emma, the title character Emma Woodhouse foolishly thinks that she can manage the life of other characters but ultimately learns the reality of her self-delusion. Similarly, in Clueless, the main character Cher Horowitz sets out to also manage the lives of others, and she too is not …

…that she does not like type of person that she is herself. Through her self-reflection, Cher comes to realize her true love—her stepbrother Josh. She also comes to see how selfish she has been all along. She becomes a school `do-gooder' and organizes a food drive for victims of a local disaster, and it is here that she becomes friends with Travis and sees that he is an actually nice person with good intentions.