nineveh_uk

Mr Woodhouse is an absolute horror - he and Miss Bates are the main reasons why for years I always emerged from Emma with a sense of profound relief that I had escaped this ghastly, claustrophobic world and could breathe again. Last summer was the first time I actually managed to enjoy reading it, and that was only by saying to myself "I'm going to believe the narrator when she says that Mr Woodhouse's determination to ruin everybody's fun arises from a genuine misconception that it's good for them." That got me through it, although secretly I still felt that he was a monster of selfishness and idleness. It did strike me, though, that he was the kind of character you would call "an old woman" - in a way, a kind of Mrs Churchill, forcing everyone to dance attendance on him through ill health of doubtful veracity and doing his level best to rule everyone's lives, not by overt bossiness but by the martyrdom he goes through when they flout his wishes. Intellectually and conversationally, he and Miss Bates are perfectly matched, but she's a poor woman and he's a rich man, so everyone dances attendance on him while she has to be grateful to be invited to babysit him.

You would like the Miss Bates in the Romula Garai Emma, I think. She's played by Fran from Black Books, not just as a blithering bore but as someone trying desperately to cope with an intolerable situation. There's a sort of blank look that comes into her eyes every so often when she's on the verge of recognising the horror of her existence, and then she'll start gabbling again. But it has to be said that it's not a very funny portrayal and in that sense not very Austenesque.