Question: The character of Miss Bates in the Jane Austen novel "Emma" can be described as?

Context articles: Miss Austen Regrets
A Memoir of Jane Austen
Miss Bates
Emma (novel)
Emma Woodhouse
Tamsin Greig
Marianne Dashwood
Becoming Jane Austen
Deborah Yaffe
Timeline of Jane Austen

Miss Austen Regrets is a 2007 BBC drama film directed by Jeremy Lovering and written by Gwyneth Hughes.
 It stars Olivia Williams as Jane Austen, with Imogen Poots, Greta Scacchi, Hugh Bonneville, Adrian Edmondson and Jack Huston.
 It was first aired on 21 August 2007 in the U.K. and on 3 February 2008 in the U.S. by PBS Masterpiece drama anthology television series as part of "The Complete Jane Austen", the United States version of The Jane Austen Season.
A Memoir of Jane Austen is a biography of the novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817) published in 1869 by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh.
 A second edition was published in 1871 which included previously unpublished Jane Austen writings.
 A family project, the biography was written by James Edward Austen-Leigh but owed much to the recollections of Jane Austen's many relatives.
 However, it was the decisions of her close friend and sister, Cassandra Austen, to destroy many of Jane's letters after her death that shaped the material available for the biography.
Miss Bates is a supporting character in Jane Austen's novel "Emma".
 Shabby genteel, and a compulsive talker, she is memorably insulted on one occasion by the book's heroine, to the latter's almost immediate remorse.
Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance.
 The novel was first published in December 1815.
 As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian–Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters.
Emma Woodhouse is the 21-year-old protagonist of Jane Austen's novel "Emma".
 She is described in the novel's opening sentence as "handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition."
 Jane Austen, while writing the novel, called Emma, "a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like."
Tamsin Margaret Mary Greig ( ; born 12 July 1966) is an English actress.
 She played Fran Katzenjammer in "Black Books" and Dr. Caroline Todd in "Green Wing".
 She currently stars in as Beverly Lincoln in the transatlantic sitcom "Episodes", and as Jackie in the Channel 4 sitcom "Friday Night Dinner".
 Other roles include Alice Chenery in BBC One's comedy drama "Love Soup", Debbie Aldridge in BBC Radio 4's soap opera "The Archers", Miss Bates in the 2009 BBC version of Jane Austen's "Emma", and Beth Hardiment in the 2010 film version of "Tamara Drewe".
 Greig is also an acclaimed stage actress; she won a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in 2007 for "Much Ado About Nothing", and was nominated again in 2011 and 2015 for her roles in "The Little Dog Laughed" and "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown".
Marianne Dashwood is a fictional character in the Jane Austen novel "Sense and Sensibility".
 The 16-year-old second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood, she embodies the "sensibility" of the title, as opposed to her elder sister Elinor's "sense".
Becoming Jane Austen was researched and written by the Jane Austen scholar Jon Hunter Spence.
 It chronicles a demi-biographical version of Austen's early biography based on Spence's interpretation of the novel "Pride and Prejudice" as possibly being modeled on Austen's real life, although Austen herself does not make this claim for her novel.
Deborah Yaffe (born 1965) is the author of two books, most recently and prominently the book "Among the Janeites: A Journey through the World of Jane Austen Fandom " (Houghton Mifflin Mariner, 2013).
 The book describes Yaffe's lifelong love of Jane Austen, as well as the lives and ideas of many other Jane Austen fans or "Janeites." Yaffe's book has been featured in the "New York Times", the "New York Post", the "Christian Science Monitor", and "O!
 Magazine", among others.
 Yaffe has been a reporter in New York and California and is also the author of "Other People's Children: The Battle for Justice and Equality in New Jersey Schools."
Jane Austen lived her entire life as part of a family located socially and economically on the lower fringes of the English gentry.
 The Rev. George Austen and Cassandra Leigh, Jane Austen's parents, lived in Steventon, Hampshire, where Rev. Austen was the rector of the Anglican parish from 1765 until 1801.
 Jane Austen's immediate family was large and close-knit.
 She had six brothers—James, George, Charles, Francis, Henry, and Edward—and a beloved older sister, Cassandra.
 Austen's brother Edward was adopted by Thomas and Elizabeth Knight and eventually inherited their estates at Godmersham, Kent, and Chawton, Hampshire.
 In 1801, Rev. Austen retired from the ministry and moved his family to Bath, Somerset.
 He died in 1805 and for the next four years, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother lived first in rented quarters and then in Southampton where they shared a house with Frank Austen's family.
 During these unsettled years, they spent much time visiting various branches of the family.
 In 1809, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother moved permanently into a large "cottage" in Chawton village that was part of Edward's nearby estate.
 Austen lived at Chawton until she moved to Winchester for medical treatment shortly before her death in 1817.