The Bates family's poverty

Mrs. Bates, the widow of a former vicar of Highbury, and her unmarried daughter Miss Bates live in a very small way, occupying only the drawing-room floor of a house belonging to people in business. Their income is scanty, and they must make it go as far as possible, a task that falls largely to Miss Bates, who devotes her middle years to the care of her failing mother and the constant endeavour to stretch their limited means. The family's reduced circumstances are a matter of common knowledge in Highbury, and they are regarded with the respect and compassion that a harmless old lady and her devoted daughter, under such untoward conditions, can excite. Yet their poverty is not a source of bitterness; Miss Bates, in particular, is a happy woman, and a woman whom no one names without goodwill, her universal good-will and contented temper working such wonders that she thinks herself a most fortunate creature, surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother and so many good neighbours and friends.

Social Position and Daily Life

The Bateses' poverty places them in a distinct social category within Highbury. They are not of the same rank as the Woodhouses, the Knightleys, or the Westons, but they are treated with a kind of patronising kindness by the village's leading families. Emma Woodhouse, though she finds Miss Bates tiresome and a waste of time, acknowledges that she is considered by the very few who presume ever to see imperfection in her as rather negligent in not contributing what she ought to the stock of their scanty comforts. Mr. Woodhouse, with his gentle selfishness, sends them small presents—a hind-quarter of pork, some of his own apples—and frets over whether the meat will be properly boiled or the apples baked enough, his concern a mixture of genuine benevolence and a nervous man's need to control the details of others' lives. The Bateses are grateful for every such attention, and Miss Bates's effusive thanks, her detailed accounts of how the pork was received or how the apples were enjoyed, become a familiar part of Highbury's social fabric. Their home, a modest apartment, is always open to visitors, and they are among the most come-at-able of the set that Emma can collect for her father's card-table, fetched and carried home so often that Mr. Woodhouse thinks it no hardship for his horses.

Jane Fairfax and the Burden of Poverty

The most poignant consequence of the Bates family's poverty is its effect on Jane Fairfax, the orphaned granddaughter of Mrs. Bates. Jane, who has been raised and educated by the generous Colonel Campbell, is destined to earn her own bread as a governess, a fate she faces with the fortitude of a devoted novitiate, resolving at one-and-twenty to complete the sacrifice and retire from all the pleasures of life to penance and mortification for ever. Her situation is a direct result of her family's lack of fortune; the very few hundred pounds she inherited from her father make independence impossible, and she must work. The contrast between her elegant accomplishments and her impending servitude is a source of constant, unspoken tension. When Mrs. Elton, with her vulgar officiousness, takes up Jane's cause, she speaks of finding her a situation as if it were a favour, and Jane's quiet dignity in the face of such patronage is a measure of her character. Emma, reflecting on Jane's fate, feels a rare moment of genuine sympathy, acknowledging that if a woman can ever be excused for thinking only of herself, it is in a situation like Jane Fairfax's, of whom one may almost say that 'the world is not their's, nor the world's law.'

Thematic Significance: Poverty as a Moral Lens

The Bates family's poverty functions as a moral and thematic touchstone throughout the novel. It exposes the limits of Emma's benevolence and the true nature of her character. Her casual cruelty to Miss Bates at Box Hill—the remark about her being limited to only three dull things at once—is the moment of her deepest moral failure, and Mr. Knightley's subsequent reproach is the most severe and necessary correction she receives. He reminds her that Miss Bates is poor, that she has sunk from the comforts she was born to, and that her situation should secure Emma's compassion. The poverty of the Bateses also throws into relief the economic realities that govern the lives of women in Emma's world. Emma herself, with her thirty thousand pounds and her comfortable home at Hartfield, can afford to declare that she will never marry, that she has none of the usual inducements of women to marry. She can be a single woman of good fortune, always respectable. But for a woman like Jane Fairfax, or even for Miss Bates, who is single and poor, the path is very different. Miss Bates, Emma admits, is only too good-natured and too silly to suit her, but in general she is very much to the taste of everybody, though single and though poor. Poverty, Emma reflects, has not contracted her mind; she would be very likely to give away sixpence of her only shilling. The Bateses, in their cheerful endurance of their reduced state, embody a kind of grace that Emma, for all her wealth and cleverness, must learn to recognise and honour.