THE WIFE
In the French text, the subtitle for this section of Book V is "Sophie, ou la femme." Most if not all previous translators of Emile have translated la femme here as "woman," or "the woman." But as many Rousseau scholars have noted, Sophie is not the only archtypical woman who appears in Rousseau's prose: a very different version of female personhood is embodied in the character of Julie in Rousseau's New Héloise; and in the Confessions the portrait of Rousseau's beloved Mme. de Warens has little in common with the description of Sophie here in Emile.
In para1272 below Rousseau states that "after having tried to form the natural man, . . . let us see how to also to form the woman who suits this man." Since Sophie is not necessarily meant to be "everywoman" but specifically a woman designed to become Emile's (or everyman's) wife, I have chosen to use "wife" as the alternative translation for "femme" to make this distinction clear.
Sophie should be seen to represent those characteristics that one particularly insightful writer (Rousseau) believed man in general (Emile) to desire in a wife.