Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte shared a century, a homeland, and even some of the same characters, and both authors attempted manuscripts, both titled Emma, concerned with female education (though Bronte`s death prevented her from writing more than two chapters). In this paper, however, I suggest that far more divides the books than joins them. I discuss what Thomas Piketty`s categories of “r” (return on capital) and “g” (growth from earned income) mean for female education. For Austen, female education is mostly a luxury consumer good known as “accomplishments”; for Bronte, it is a future source of income. Such economic differences condition the novelistic worlds that they can realistically create. The two Emmas turn out to represent two different moments of development. The first Emma presents a realism of externally determined types and diminutive and often comic details. The second Emma presents a realism of isolated and frequently damned individuals, in which a social phenomenon is isolated and contrasted with all others of its type. Like marriages, these novels are made by women, but not just as they choose.