Miss Bates

Emma Revisited: A Novel

Catherine Cliff

A daring re-imagining of an Austen classic from the unflinching viewpoint of the misunderstood Miss Bates.

Henrietta Bates, the iconic bore of Austen's Emma, is the opposite of handsome, clever, and rich Emma: she is plain, ill-educated, and impoverished. An unmarried woman of quite a different order from that novel's proudly single heroine, she is an object of scorn and pity, whose survival depends upon the generosity of her neighbors which she barters for with an unrelenting shower of banal and grateful chatter.

But what if the woman we see in Emma were actually deliberately assuming a role, donning a mask, as a means of managing an untenable situation? What if there was a world of difference between her inward and outward voice? What would the Woodhouses’s Highbury look like from her perspective?

Miss Bates by Catherine Cliff imagines answers to these questions as it chronicles Henrietta Bates's unexpected and, at times, violent life, navigating a world with no ready-made opportunities, where the stakes are of the highest order. In a debut that is by turns comedic, tragic, startling, and altogether brilliant, Miss Bates turns Austen’s poignant and ridiculous side character into a feminist force who understands innately the life she has been dealt and how to slyly play it to her advantage.

This is no marriage plot; it is a spinster plot. Or maybe, the spinster’s plot.

Catherine Cliff is an academic by training and lives in western Massachusetts.  This is her first novel.

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Endorsements & Reviews

"I read Miss Bates in a single, enraptured sitting. Cliff's prose is a joy — precise and rich and wickedly observant — and her Miss Bates, long underestimated, is one of the most fully realized characters I've encountered in fiction. It is a love letter to Austen, a propulsive sequel to Emma, and a brilliant, moving work in its own right." Belle Burden, New York Times bestselling author of Strangers 

“In this bold and beguiling debut, Catherine Cliff performs a feat that would make even the great Jane Austen raise an eyebrow: she rescues Miss Bates from the margins of Emma and restores to her a rich, secret interior life. Long dismissed as the garrulous bore of Highbury, Henrietta Bates emerges here as a woman of fierce intelligence and quiet strategy, whose endless chatter is not foolishness but armor; a performance honed for survival in a society that has no place for the poor, the plain, or the unmarried.” Paula Byrne, author of The Real Jane Austen and Six Weeks by the

“Henrie Bates is a brilliant character and the contrast between her inner and outer world heightens the humor—and tragedy—in this superb exploration of a character who is so often a source of ridicule. Impressively, Catherine Cliff has struck a tone that feels beautifully similar to Austen's wry satire. Miss Bates is a wonderful portrayal of the rich inner world and inspiring inner fury of a powerless woman." Caroline Lea, author of Love, Sex, and Frankenstein