What Miss Bates Knew: A Batesian View of Emma

IN A DEPARTURE FROM the common view of Miss Bates's monologues in Emma as "big blocks of babble" (Wolfson 5), Kathleen Steele has recently argued that close attention to Miss Bates's language can show her to be more of a realist character than an amusing caricature. Miss Bates's good nature is offered as her central feature in the initial précis of her character, seemingly presented by an omniscient narrator: we are told that Miss Bates's "simplicity and cheerfulness" have made her "a woman whom no one named without good-will," despite the absence of a fortune and a lack of the "intellectual superiority" that would have enabled her to "frighten those who might hate her, into outward respect" (20). The Box Hill episode is the most significant encounter between Emma and Miss Bates, and the importance of this event in Emma's bildungsroman has commanded virtually all of the critical attention to the scene. The first sentence confirms her understanding of Emma's jab, and the second seems to accept that the blame for this awkward situation must belong entirely to herself. Miss Woodhouse, who is invoked not as a subject of the indiscretion but as a character witness for the second transgression.