The Unknown Story of Highbury’s Poor and Ridiculous Spinster

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Source: Review Copy from Publisher

TYPE OF NOVEL: Alternative POV, Secondary Character

THE PREMISE: Henrietta Bates – one of Jane Austen’s most voluble and delightfully absurd characters is being fully revealed. Miss Bates is a character who is often ridiculed, dismissed, and treated with forbearance, and yet at the same time, a very important part of the fabric of Highbury and Emma. In Miss Bates’ backstory and through her observations and experiences, readers can better understand the hardships of genteel poverty, the evils of being a “contemptible celibate”, and the pain behind her good natured chatter…

MY THOUGHTS:

📕 Yes! A novel all about Miss Bates. I love it! I love that we not only witness the events of Emma from Miss Bates’s POV, on the sidelines, but we also uncover the story of what her life was like before and after the events of Emma. Readers learn the true Henrietta Bates. Not just her perceived character.

😮 I love the liberties Ms. Cliff took with Henrietta Bates and all the characters of Highbury. There are some past developments and character deviations that are uncovered (and yet make sense) and also some alterations that lead to some new paths. It can be a bit dark, and there is a little bit more “guilt and misery” than we typically see. But at the same time, it felt completely plausible to lift the curtain of Highbury life and see that everything isn’t always “light and bright and sparkling.”

🧹 “A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid!” This story delivers a very unvarnished look at what it means to have a “narrow income.” And how the Bates’s situation in their lifetime was always sinking further and further still. An unmarried woman had so few options, such limited power over her life, and most likely could only become the somebody’s (or society’s) burden.

🤨  On the outside, Miss Bate is a voluble dependent full of mindless chatter and excessive gratitude. But this story reveals the true cause of her garrulous nature – the anxiety, the compulsion, the fear. In addition, we learn that Miss Bates is extremely observant, and often can be cunning and shrewd. There are quite a few instances where Miss Bates took surprising and calculating action.

🦸🏻‍♀️ This is a tale of an unconventional heroine – she isn’t beautiful, she doesn’t have grace or charm, she doesn’t win a happily ever after with a man she loves. It is instead a tale of survival, of overcoming neglect, of brief moments of sunshine, and of building a life through grief, hardship, and limitations. Love and triumph look different in this story, and that made it all the more interesting.

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