Miss Bates: Emma Revisited by Catherine Cliff – A witty and ambitious debut

Miss Bates: Emma Revisited

Author: Catherine Cliff

ISBN-13: 979-8897101313

Publisher: Pegasus

Guideline Price: £22.99; 336pp

Is one author’s literary excursion into another writer’s work an act of competition? A picking-over of ideas? Whether it’s to conjure up a prequel or sequel, fill in a mysterious gap in the story, or reimagine a classic in a contemporary setting – such as Barbara Kingsolver’s spinning David Copperfield into modern-day Appalachia in Demon Copperhead – using an author’s existing characters as a springboard can create a fresh and fascinating take on a classic novel.

Choosing Jane Austen, a writer with a devoted fan base, as the starting point is brave. It’s also smart, as Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister proved, for Austen’s characters come with so much personality to work from. In Miss Bates Catherine Cliff gives a complex, spirited inner life to a classic Austen secondary character: Emma’s Henrietta Bates. Also known as Henrie, Hetty and Henny (I hear you, sister), she is a plain, impecunious and talkative spinster whose very existence is treated as a spectator sport.

Miss Bates adores her beautiful younger sister so much that Jeannette’s wedding was “the second worst day in Henrie’s life”. When Jeanette and her husband die suddenly, their little daughter Jane Fairfax, the same age as Emma Wodehouse, is sent to live with Henrie and her mother.

Since she was a child, Henrie has, “used a spray of words as a stand-in for the other powers she did not have.” In Emma, Miss Bates is mocked by Emma for talking too much. Only when Mr Knightley calls her out on her cruel behaviour does Emma begin to see her own arrogance. Henrie, however, has been long aware of Emma’s selfishness, describing herself as “immune” to Emma’s “contagious sky-high self-regard”.

Early chapters, when Henrie is a child, take a while to find their feet, for her powerful inner voice has yet to develop. When Henrie fully understands the hand she has been dealt, she plays her cards with style and has an ability to get even (and then some!) with those who wrong her.

Miss Bates is a novel about knowing oneself, and understanding that not speaking the truth is not the same as ignorance of what is right or fair. Catherine Cliff has written a witty and ambitious debut. I hope Jane Austen would approve.

Henrietta McKervey’s latest novel, The Woman in the Water, is inspired by a ‘lost’ character in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.