Nothing has happened for a year, so we now chat on the phone about fictional characters. And somehow we are on to minor characters in Jane Austen.
I have never identified with Miss Bates, the babbling spinster in Jane Austen’s superb Emma. In fact, nobody relates to Miss Bates.
“I talk a lot about personal stuff, but not THAT much,” I said to my good friend Janet on a landline. We are on landline phones because if we did Zoom or a video chat, we’d (a) have to clean the house and arrange the bookshelves, and (b) groom our post-apocalyptic hair, which at this point resembles the hairdo of the neighbor’s sheltie.
“I feel sorry for Miss Bates, but we’re too young to be her,”Janet said. “Emma is the one we’d hang out with.”
“We’ll never be older than Emma.”
And that did make us giggle, because we’ve identified with Emma for so long the relationship begins to feel rather vampiric.
“Emma is always 21, and we are forever thirty-nine,” Janet said.
“That’s true.”
But how old is Miss Bates? The first time I had an inkling that Miss Bates might be youngish was when Tamsin Grieg played her in the 2009 Masterpiece series of Emma. Grieg, 42 then, looked to be in her thirties, and interpreted Miss Bates less as a caricature than her predecessors did. I liked her interpretation of plain Miss Bates: she is rather sweet, not too bright, wears unbecoming caps and bonnets, and her prattle comes across as a gentle literary Tourette’s. All of the dramatic interpretations of Miss Bates seem very good to me, but Miss Bates seems different here, because she is younger.
I am perhaps fondest of the 1996 TV movie (starring Kate Beckinsale as Emma). The wonderful character actress Prunella Scales was 64 when she played Miss Bates, but had the forty- or fiftysomething energy that expresses my idea of Miss Bates. I’ve always thought Miss Bates should be middle-aged.
In the 1996 theatrical movie of Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma, Sophie Thompson played Miss Bates. This ebullient actress, then 32, hides behind goggly glasses, plain dresses, and bonnets. I saw this film so long ago that I do not remember Thompson’s performance, but she looks as though she is throwing herself into the part. Is this the scene where Emma mocks her?
It would be easier for us to become Miss Bates. if we knew her age. On the surface, I am completely unlike her: I don’t brag about my nieces, and I am married. But we have all had a Miss Bates moment: we misspeak, accidentally wear a sweater backwards, knock over a pile of books at a bookstore, and someone is there to mock. It is so much easier to be handsome, clever, rich Emma than poor, babbling, dull Miss Bates.
As far as I know, Jane does not reveal Miss Bates’s age. Any guesses?