Jane Austen Refuses to Punch Down
And as we read and write and "make sport for our neighbors," so should we.
When my best friend Melody and I met in person for the first time (we became friends over the internet; thirteen years later neither of us has yet been revealed to be an axe murderer) our visit was fueled by late-night takeout noodles, chocolate, strawberries, a plethora of inside jokes, and Bigelow's Constant Comment tea (a delicious blend of orange peel, spices, and black tea leaves; Bigelow, if by some miracle you're reading this, please consider sponsoring this blog). Those last two coalesced when we referred to the tea as "Miss Bates tea," because if you know anything about Miss Bates, you know she is constantly commenting.
Miss Hetty Bates is a secondary character in Jane Austen’s fourth novel, Emma, the last book to be published while Austen was still alive. Once the daughter of a relatively prosperous clergyman in the town of Highbury, Miss Bates is, as the book opens, a middle-aged spinster caring for her elderly mother on a meager income. She is cheerfully resigned to her lot in life, deriving her small pleasures from frequent visits to her neighbors and friends, sharing goodhearted gossip, and singing the praises of her niece Jane Fairfax. Miss Bates is kind to everyone, appreciative of everything, and her stream of consciousness never ever shuts up; a sampling of her remarks at the Crown Inn Ball (chapter 38) may illustrate—
“So very obliging of you! No rain at all. Nothing to signify. I do not care for myself. Quite thick shoes. And Jane declares—Well! (as soon as she was within the door) Well! This is brilliant indeed! This is admirable!—Excellently contrived, upon my word. Nothing wanting. Could not have imagined it. So well lighted up. Jane, Jane, look—did you ever see any thing? Oh! Mr. Weston, you must really have had Aladdin’s lamp. Good Mrs. Stokes would not know her own room again. I saw her as I came in; she was standing in the entrance. ‘Oh! Mrs. Stokes,’ said I—but I had not time for more.”—She was now met by Mrs. Weston. “Very well, I thank you, ma’am. I hope you are quite well. Very happy to hear it. So afraid you might have a headache! seeing you pass by so often, and knowing how much trouble you must have. Delighted to hear it indeed. Ah! dear Mrs. Elton, so obliged to you for the carriage! excellent time. Jane and I quite ready. Did not keep the horses a moment. Most comfortable carriage. Oh! and I am sure our thanks are due to you, Mrs. Weston, on that score. Mrs. Elton had most kindly sent Jane a note, or we should have been. But two such offers in one day! Never were such neighbours. I said to my mother, ‘Upon my word, ma’am— .’ Thank you, my mother is remarkably well. Gone to Mr. Woodhouse’s. I made her take her shawl—for the evenings are not warm—her large new shawl—Mrs. Dixon’s wedding present. So kind of her to think of my mother! Bought at Weymouth, you know—Mr. Dixon’s choice. There were three others, Jane says, which they hesitated about some time.”
Emma, the “heroine whom no one but myself will much like,” (as Austen wrote at the time of publication) finds Miss Bates grindingly insufferable. As the lady of the village, heiress to the estate of Hartfield, Emma is “first in consequence… all looked up to [her].” (chapter 1) Noblesse oblige bids her treat Miss Bates with charity and condescension, and through most of the novel Emma listens to Miss Bates’ muddled ramblings with only inward seething. But, under the flirtatious influence of the rapscallion Frank Churchill at the picnic on Box Hill, Emma thoughtlessly insults Miss Bates in front of many friends.
It is a scenario painfully relatable; Emma and Frank come up with an inane game in which each participant must share “one thing very clever… two things moderately clever, or three things very dull indeed.” (chapter 43) Miss Bates, ever self-deprecating, merrily says that she will have no difficulty in coming up with three things very dull indeed, and Emma, too eager to be a wit and to break the uncomfortable silence of the boring party, claps back with, “ah, ma’am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me, but you will be limited as to number—only three at once.”
Ouch.
Emma immediately regrets her foolish words; Miss Bates is hurt and humiliated; the party soon falls apart. As they prepare to leave the picnic grounds, Emma’s longtime friend (and—spoilers—future husband) Mr. Knightley chastises her for her thoughtless zinger. When Emma attempts to defend herself (citing, in Miss Bates, the blending of “the good and the ridiculous”) Mr. Knightley does not disagree. For Miss Bates is ridiculous, but she is not Emma’s equal.
“Were she a woman of fortune, I would leave every harmless absurdity to take its chance, I would not quarrel with you for any liberties of manner. Were she your equal in situation -- but, Emma, consider how far this is from being the case. She is poor; she has sunk from the comforts she was born to; and, if she live to old age, must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion. It was badly done, indeed!” (chapter 43)
As we watch Emma reel from this tough-love moment, and resolve to do better in the future and make amends to poor Miss Bates, the message of Austen’s narrative is quietly clear: wit has its place, but that place must point upward.
One criticism people often make about Jane Austen’s novels is that their depictions of a bygone era, of a strict class system and a social structure very foreign to modern life, are no longer relevant to the modern reader. Emma is perhaps the novel that speaks most overtly about class differences— Harriet Smith and Mr. Elton, Miss Bates and everyone else in Highbury, Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston, Robert Martin and Harriet Smith all participate in a complicated dance of high and low, greater and lesser, connected by a common thread of human feeling and capacity for great hurt and great love.
Yet Emma’s hasty speech to Miss Bates, calculated for humor but falling devastatingly far from its mark, is one to which I can relate all too well. Perhaps you can, too. Whomst among us has not tossed off a comment intended to spark laughter but which has instead given offense? Whomst among us has not, at some point, let our true feelings of scorn or impatience slip out from under the veneer of politeness?
Austen’s works are filled with wit and charm; her humor sparkles and glitters through her prose 200 years later. Emma is no exception to her typical sardonic narrative. The sly, subtle sarcasm with which she peppers her descriptions of comings and goings in Highbury, Emma’s snobbery, Mr. Knightley’s self-righteousness, and Frank Churchill’s general useless dirtbagginess is consistent and on the mark. But Austen treats Miss Bates with nothing but unfailing gentle affection. The narrative laughs with Miss Bates, but not at her. The fun Austen pokes is at the society in which Miss Bates moves, and the circumstances that have made her what she is, but not her humanity.
As Emma Woodhouse “feels at her heart” (chapter 43) the brutality and cruelty of what she has done to Miss Bates, she resolves to change her ways. Slowly, her actions shift from attention-seeking smuggery (is that a word? I guess it is) to “gratitude and common kindness.” Seeking Miss Bates’ forgiveness is the turning point in Emma’s heroine’s journey, the catalyst that allows her to begin thinking of others rather than herself. Eventually, it paves the way—spoilers again—for her to find love with Mr. Knightley.
In a way, we are all Miss Bates. (I for one identify strongly with her run-on sentences, parenthetical statements, and whimsical changes of subject.) We have all been the butt of the joke at one time or another. In a way, we are all Emma (though we may not wish to admit it). We have all picked the low-hanging fruit, and at one time or other have chosen to tease or belittle someone with less power and agency than ourselves. It is not genteel behavior. It is not commonly kind behavior. And yet, with the anonymity of the Internet—something the anonymously writing Austen could not have dreamed of—the opportunity for each of us to punch down has increased a hundredfold. We can snipe and snicker and “dunk on” anyone we choose, and feel a quick rush of dopamine when someone likes our quote tweet or YouTube comment at another’s expense.
Handled wisely, humor through satire can of course be a positive force. When we use it to speak truth to power, to point out evil and hypocrisy, or even just to complain with an eye to fixing what’s wrong, it can be used for good. But just as many Christians argue that angry words are fine because, after all, Jesus overturned tables and chased moneychangers out of the temple with a whip (Matthew 21), it is easy to hide behind a weak veneer of comedy and point to a mind as brilliant as Jane Austen when we attempt to justify mockery of anyone who cannot fight back.
The difference between Austen’s satire of the wealthy/arrogant/selfish and Emma’s unkindness to Miss Bates is, of course, that Austen was punching up and Emma was punching down. Miss Bates and her ilk are never the subject of the narrative’s scorn: that punishment is reserved for people like the overbearing Mr. Collins (who chooses to be pompous and ignore others’ feelings), the vain Sir Walter Elliot (whose obsession with his own good looks is greater than his regard for his own daughter), and the blackguard John Willoughby (whose rakish ways get their comeuppance in the end with his unhappy marriage).
Indeed, even these infuriating people do not generally meet Gothic deaths or Romantic ruin—even as Austen writes caustically of their follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, she does so with a merciful hand.
Melody from
wrote this, which I love:“[In reading Austen] I began to see an author's love for her characters. Her writing reminds me that it's not perfect people who deserve love, it's all of us. I'm not even thinking of the happy-ending romantic love, but of love that embraces even with our foibles, mistakes large and small, and our funny little ways. Austen hates none of her characters. She hardly even punishes the worst ones. When the world feels deficient in love to me, Austen reminds me that I can choose to love rather than mock those I don’t like or understand.”
Even in her most biting satire, Austen’s love of people shines through. It would be easy to read in her “quick succession of busy nothings” a cynical view of humanity, but I think that surface-level assumption misses the thread of goodness running through it all. As she skillfully skewers the worst of us— and the worst in us— she is consistently pointing upward to virtue, honor, unselfishness, affection, and generosity. In pointing out the foibles of human nature, she is encouraging us to take note of what we should not emulate, to see ourselves in fiction and to be better.
As I think about my own writing, and my own voice in a world clanging with resentment and division and defensive mudslinging, I want to emulate Jane Austen. A well-placed word to the unwise can certainly be more devastating than the most moody, melodramatic death on a windswept and wuthering English moor (yes, that was a jibe at Emily Bronte, and she’s more of a bestseller than I’ll ever be so it’s fine). A cutting epitaph for a person of more arrogance than intelligence may endure longer than his own legacy of pomposity. But I want to reserve that sort of thing for those whose consequence in life is higher than mine, who have chosen to be the way they are, not those who could be harmed by my words because their circumstances are not their own fault. My quips are for the Elon Musks and Donald Trumps of the world— the John Thorpes and Prince Regents— not the Eliza Williamses and Miss Bateses.
But the Constant Comment tea? I’ll keep the nickname. I relish the memories it evokes in its fragrant steam. And I think Jane Austen would have smiled.
This post is a part of The Summer of Jane Austen, a literary-inspired endeavor to fuel both a journey of the mind and my own journey to the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting. More here.
This is really good. Whether I'm reading Emma or watching a screen adaptation, I always admire Mr. Knightley's insightful admonition of Emma, and I respect how she receives it humbly and allows the sting of it to make her a better person.
You are spot-on with your comments on how Austen gently portrays Miss Bates. I have just finished reading “Emma “ and agree that Austen has quite a knack for revealing the intricacies of human nature.