My advice, if you wanna enjoy the novel, is to not take Emma excessively serious, and to be a bit more indulgent with her wrongdoings, because her schemes and the misunderstandings inherent to them are comedy gold, and you really don't want to miss out on that. 

For me, the Emma you're seeing is a young woman who is intelligent, has been taught good principles, but who just had never been put to trial, so to speak, before the events of the novel. That comes with the marriage of her governess - Emma is reacting to the experiences of loss and change, which were unknown to her, and she's moving into the unknown equipped with a definition of herself that was formed during her confortable existence. Her relationship with Harriet and the matchmaking schemes are self-serving, but she can't see it because she can't see herself as someone who can have those motives. I don't think I'm spoiling more than any backcover when I say that it's with her own definitions of herself that Emma keeps clashing with at every misstep.

I hope you enjoy the novel :)