The tense relationship between Emily, "a wealthy mother of a certain generation and class," and Lorelai is one of the series' primary components. Although much of Emily's storyline is directly related to her relationship with Lorelai, the character has endured complex situations on her own during the show's run, particularly in regards to the fact that she is "a woman of a certain generation who had long tethered her future to little other than her husband." The character sometimes struggles to determine "How a woman of her age and position should fill her days", sometimes "play[ing] Emily’s devotion to her husband for ridicule," according to Rogers. As one of the show's higher class characters, Emily and Paris Gellar, Rory's schoolmate and friend, share "similarly ridiculous lines of dialogue." Much like Lorelai and Rory, Emily speaks "in machine-gun like bursts of dialogue".
