In Jane Austen's novel Emma, to what extent do the characters uphold a static social class system? To what extent is this system disrupted?

deals with a fairly narrow slice of the
English class system, from the upper ranks of the yeomanry and professional classes to the
landed gentry and the lower reaches of the aristocracy. In , there is a
series of minor disruptions to the system, ultimately caused by Emma herself. This is ironic
because she, along with Mr. Knightley, represent the unchanging order of the static class
system.

Emma takes on Harriet Smith, a girl of no particular family or
fortune, as a prot©g©. She persuades Harriet not to marry Robert Martin,
a yeoman farmer who would have been an eminently suitable match from a social point of view, and
instead to set her sights on Mr. Elton, a clergyman who is Harriet's social superior but Emma's
inferior. Mr. Elton intends to marry Emma and, when he is snubbed, marries the nouveau
riche Miss Hawkins, whose snobbery and social gaffes are the major source of comedy
in the novel. The Eltons are upstarts who attempt and pretend to be on the same level as the
Woodhouse and Knightley families but constantly show that they are not.

The
Eltons are the principal socially disruptive force within the novel, though Frank Churchill also
marries out of his class. The social order is to some extent reconfirmed in the eminently
suitable match of Emma and Mr. Knightley.