Miss Harriet Smith is a major character in Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma. Harriet is a seventeen-year-old parlour-boarder at Mrs. Goddard's school for girls in Highbury village; in which she was enrolled several years prior by her parents, who remain anonymous for most of the novel. Harriet's beauty and sweetness of character bring her to the attention of Emma Woodhouse. As such, Harriet becomes a close friend of the protagonist, but is also subjected to her meddlesome matchmaking efforts. At the novel's end, despite Emma initially being against it, Harriet marries local farmer Robert Martin.