“Harriet Smith has some first-rate qualities, which Mrs. Elton is totally without. An unpretending, single-minded, artless girl – infinitely to be preferred by any man of sense and taste to such a woman as Mrs. Elton.”
– Jane Austen
Emma, Chapter 38. In Mr. Knightley’s praise of Harriet to Emma, he strongly favors her genuineness and lack of deceptiveness and guile over Mrs. Elton’s superficiality and pretentiousness.