In Jane Austen's novel, the heroine receives an unwelcome marriage proposal from the spruce and smiling local vicar, Mr Elton. He plainly doesn't deserve her. But told from another point of view, the story might seem rather different . .

The Rev Philip Elton, almost handsome, by no means stupid, and nicely situated in the vicarage at Highbury, has no reason to fear any obstacles to his social ascent. He is a capable, popular cleric, a zealot in parish matters, a reliable visitor of the poor - and quite the gentleman in the company of ladies.

He is even making a ripple, if not a wave, in polite circles. The Woodhouse family takes him up keenly as a regular dinner guest and sought-after partner at cards. He is delighted by their handsome house and, soon enough, by the equally handsome daughter. Emma is every bit as quick-witted, confident, spoiled, innocent and bewitching as a well-born 20-year-old with her advantages might expect to be.

Mr Elton can't help himself. Emma's capricious behaviour - now hot, now cold, now giggling, now haughty - captivates him entirely. Of course, love is gilded by the prospect of advancement: Emma is worth £30,000, so fondness really needn't come into it. But Elton is a serious man: he suffers pangs, even though his nightly prayers for guidance go unanswered.

Emma pursues him ardently (or so he thinks). She finds thin excuses to waylay him, sometimes disguising her interest in gossip about her friend Harriet, a pudgy dimwit she keeps like a village pet. Elton grows bolder. He is thrilled when she welcomes his clumsy poem with a warm, knowing smile. And one swooning night, after dinner, in a carriage butting through a snowstorm, he declares his love.

Emma is outraged. Elton is shattered. His life slips its moorings.

In a fit of wounded pique he tumbles - or is tumbled - into wedlock with a bustling Bath lady, Augusta Hawkins. He tries to congratulate himself on his good fortune, but back at Highbury the trap is closing. Emma, who still haunts his dreams, has poisoned the world against him. The Eltons find themselves rebuffed at every turn. Augusta's musical evenings are met with stony indifference, and the vicar is humiliated at a dance by Mr Knightley, the "friend of the family" who, though almost two decades her senior, has had his eye on Emma for years.

There is no escape. Elton is trapped in a parish he cannot leave, with a wife he does not care for, among people who despise him - harsh reward for a brief if foolhardy surge of romantic optimism. As the months pass, he suffers gloomy fits of clarity. Too late, he sees that his adored Emma, for all her scheming and flirting, was all along being groomed as a bride for Mr ("Twice") Knightley. He is the main man; he gets the pick of the herd; Emma is Best of Breed. It is as simple as that. Elton pays a bitter price for intruding on this ancient arrangement.

In a cruel finale, he is obliged (private anguish being no match for public duty) to officiate at the wedding. He of all people has to join the lands of the two great local estates in unholy matrimony. As the lucky couple gallop off to their "perfect happiness", Elton is left impaled on a life which, for all its refined manners, is as cold and sharp as an ice pick.

It is a sad story: almost a tragedy. Emma, it is clear, will never forgive Elton for imagining himself her equal. And the fiercely knit society through which she moves will, like a careless ocean closing over a doomed hull, continue to toss aside those who lift their eyes and aspire to stations above their own.

This is the first in a series of monthly columns retelling the stories of classics from the perspective of minor characters

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