Northanger Abbey 28-31: “Anxiety Awaits”
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It’s our final reading episode of Northanger Abbey! Not even Catherine’s wild imagination could have predicted these anxiety-inducing events…
Transcript
Emily Davis-Hale 0:05
This is Reclaiming Jane, an Austen podcast for fans on the margins.
Lauren Wethers 0:09
I'm Lauren Wethers.
Emily Davis-Hale 0:10
And I'm Emily Davis Hale.
Lauren Wethers 0:11
And today, we're reading chapters 28 through 31 of Northanger Abbey through the theme of anxiety.
Lauren Wethers 0:43
I feel like for this episode for me, it's been very perfectly encapsulated in a text I got from one of my friends who is hopefully listening to this episode. So if you are Hello, you know who you are. Because I just got a random unsolicited text that was just, "okay, I just finished Northanger and... what?
Lauren Wethers 1:03
She really just finished it like she didn't get her contract renewed for the next season." Hmm. Like we just we just wrapped it up. We're just done. Let me hurry up and finish this thing because they're going to cancel this TV show.
Emily Davis-Hale 1:13
Amazing. Yeah, anxiety was such an incredibly prescient topic for this episode in ways that I could not have foreseen.
Lauren Wethers 1:24
And the number of times that it was specifically mentioned on the pages was just chef's kiss, perfection. Like not only did we have, you know, the vibes of anxiety permeating throughout the entire thing, it is written on the page multiple times throughout because Catherine is anxious.
Emily Davis-Hale 1:42
She has never been more relatable.
Lauren Wethers 1:43
No. And you know, frankly, she's not having a good time right now.
Emily Davis-Hale 1:47
She's really not.
Lauren Wethers 1:49
But shall we recap and explain to our listeners about the trials and tribulations of Catherine Moreland and these final chapters?
Emily Davis-Hale 1:55
Yeah, let's fill everybody in. At least people who aren't reading along with us, which everyone should be of course.
Lauren Wethers 2:01
right.
Emily Davis-Hale 2:02
You are up first on recap today.
Lauren Wethers 2:05
Oh, goody.
Emily Davis-Hale 2:07
All right, Lauren, are you ready to sum up the final section of Northanger Abbey?
Lauren Wethers 2:11
I am ready.
Emily Davis-Hale 2:12
Excellent. On your mark, get set. Go.
Lauren Wethers 2:15
Catherine is settling into Northanger Abbey. She offers to go home. They will not hear of such a thing. Henry has to leave for a little bit and he's been gone for all of like a few hours until a communication comes to Catherine is to be unceremoniously thrown from Northanger. She goes home all by herself post. It's horrendous. She's never gonna see the Tilneys ever again. But then Henry comes and like unbeknownst to his father to propose to Catherine and ask her to marry him, and they all live happily ever after. Eventually.
Emily Davis-Hale 2:44
You had a full two seconds left.
Lauren Wethers 2:45
Let's go.
Lauren Wethers 2:48
Okay, Emily, are you ready for your thirty second recap of the final section of Northanger Abbey?
Emily Davis-Hale 2:53
I sure hope I am.
Lauren Wethers 2:54
okay. On your mark, get set. Go.
Emily Davis-Hale 2:58
Catherine is starting to worry about overstaying her welcome --welcome at Northanger Abbey. But the Tilneys are insistent that she stay as long as possible until out of the blue. She's asked to leave and Eleanor is devastated about this. She has to take a post coach 70 miles back to Fullerton, but her family are happy to see her even if she's like seriously depressed. Henry appears. He's infuriated with his father who spent too much time talking to John Thorpe. But then it all works out in the end and they end up married.
Lauren Wethers 3:27
The end!
Emily Davis-Hale 3:31
that was close.
Lauren Wethers 3:32
You made it!
Emily Davis-Hale 3:32
I had more to say!
Lauren Wethers 3:34
No, cut it off. Oh my gosh. But yes, the anxiety is high because we start off with her being anxious about 'am I overstaying my welcome? Should I you know, offer to go home?' because the last thing she wants us to be a burden on the Tilneys and she's very much enjoying her time there. But she doesn't want to be enjoying herself to the point that she's no longer mindful of the people who are hosting her. So she kind of tries to broach the topic with Eleanor in a very Catherine way, she interrupts Eleanor in the middle of a sentence.
Emily Davis-Hale 4:06
My little baby Catherine. Oh.
Lauren Wethers 4:09
But of course Eleanor will hear nothing of the sort.
Emily Davis-Hale 4:11
No, she is so happy to have Catherine with her. And judging from what we've seen of the Tilney home life, I don't blame her. She likes having a friend around and someone who's maybe sort of a buffer between the general and his children.
Lauren Wethers 4:31
So it seems as though she's going to be able to continue on at Northanger for you know, at least a couple of weeks more, there's not really a determined amount of time that she's going to spend there. It's as long as she'd like and as long as the Tilneys will have her it because to their knowledge, they have no prior engagements that would mean that Catherine has to go home. And it's under this knowledge that Henry has to leave on, you know, another brief jaunt to Woodston so he's gone. General Tilney has left and so it's just Eleanor and Catherine in the home for just a little bit, they linger over the dinner table, they're having a good time, she barely even has time to miss Henry until a note is delivered to the door, in a very dramatic fashion.
Emily Davis-Hale 5:14
It's so dramatic. They're going up to bed and there's a pounding at the door knocker. And so Eleanor assumes that maybe it's her older brother. But then it turns out that it's word from General Tilney that Catherine has to be cast out, immediately. He's fabricated some engagement that they have to go to some Lord's house, I don't know. And poor Eleanor, devastated, has to deliver this news to Catherine.
Lauren Wethers 5:45
And it's so funny the way that the news is delivered as well, because we have the return of the dramatic gothic novel Catherine, because she hears footsteps in the passageway. And then it seems like the doorknob is very slowly turning and she doesn't know who it is or who it could be. But she steels herself and she opens it and then goes, 'Oh, it's just Eleanor. What's going on?' But she actually is coming with dramatic news. So for once Catherine's proclivities for dramatics do not really fail her, because Eleanor really is coming with some, with some terrible news. Catherine doesn't even get to choose when she leaves. She doesn't even get to say okay, I'll take a carriage on Monday to have time to write home. The hour's already been decided upon, she's being thrown out of the house 7am the next day.
Emily Davis-Hale 6:33
With not even a servant to accompany her.
Lauren Wethers 6:35
Nothing. She's just going to be a 17 year old girl alone, traveling by post and she doesn't even have enough money. Eleanor has to be the one to like, kind of gently say, 'I know this is really last minute, so you probably don't, but do you have enough money to get home?' and she doesn't and had Eleanor not said anything she would have been left out in the cold.
Emily Davis-Hale 6:53
It is so dramatic. And so out of the blue. Eleanor was clearly very broken up about it. She, like Catherine, sees that this is a very intentional and personal kind of slight. And for once Catherine's absolutely right about this. She's pretty well got General Tilney's number at this point. She knows that he's been pushing her and Henry together, as we saw during their visit to Woodston. And she can also say now that he's offended at her for something but she cannot for the life of her work out what it could be. The only thing she can think of was her unfounded suspicions about his treatment of his wife. But she is confident that Henry would not have let anything slip to his father.
Emily Davis-Hale 6:59
The only two people who know are herself and Henry and she's equally confident that neither one of them would have said anything about that to General Tilney.
Emily Davis-Hale 7:55
So this is just a mystery even as she is loaded, sobbing, into the post coach to be transported away from Northanger. She's looking longingly towards the exit to Woodston knowing that Henry is so near and that he has no idea because he was away doing his literal job when the word came that she was to leave.
Lauren Wethers 8:22
And it is for once an adventure worthy of a gothic heroine. But she can't even enjoy or appreciate it because she's just so devastated.
Emily Davis-Hale 8:32
Poor thing. She spends 12 hours going from coach to coach having to rely on the goodness of the postmasters to tell her which line she needs to get on next, essentially to make it to Salisbury.
Lauren Wethers 8:46
And mind you she's 17!
Emily Davis-Hale 8:48
She's 17, has never been out in the world on her own. This is her first time out in the world ever was going to Bath with the Allens.
Lauren Wethers 8:55
Even in present day. If I were to drive 70 miles by myself, my mom would be worried about me driving 70 miles at 17. Like one way? 70 miles? That's far. Yeah, but it's just so much more involved during this time period, having to take multiple carriages, transfer at different stations, all this, because we've talked about this before that she's traveling post. It's not as though she just gets to hang out in one carriage and kind of sit in the back without a care in the world until she gets to her next stop. This is a very involved mode of transportation.
Emily Davis-Hale 9:05
Yeah, but when she finally pulls up to the parsonage at Fullerton, her youngest siblings are very cute, it says they're convinced that every carriage is going to be carrying a brother or sister and so they're delighted that it's finally happening.
Lauren Wethers 9:41
This time it worked!
Emily Davis-Hale 9:43
George and Harriet are so happy to have her back. And so is her sister Sarah and her mother and father.
Lauren Wethers 9:49
You know, they're, they're very happy to have her back, to the point where they're not really taking note of the fact that Catherine is depressed.
Emily Davis-Hale 9:57
So depressed.
Lauren Wethers 9:58
Honestly, this is one of the moments where you meet someone's family and they make so much more sense to you as a person.
Emily Davis-Hale 10:05
Yeah, definitely.
Lauren Wethers 10:07
Meeting Catherine's family in a metaphorical fictional sense, makes Catherine make so much more sense.
Emily Davis-Hale 10:14
Absolutely.
Lauren Wethers 10:15
Just, no one seems to be overly bothered, overly emotional. I think when you go to those different extremes, it's one thing to have, let's say like a mother who is overly excitable and then you have an Elizabeth Bennet, who is very even-keeled because she has to be the opposite of her mother. I can see how Catherine would resist the kind of like, emotional monotone of her parents and instead indulge in all of the private emotions and fancies with her books because she doesn't get to express that with her family because they don't really seem to care.
Emily Davis-Hale 10:47
Definitely. But yeah, it's not that they don't care in like a neglectful way. They're just not concerned about it, their daughter seems to be fine. That's all right. And when they finally get out of her some of what's happened, or at least as far as she understands it, they can't see that she's done anything wrong either. So they're ready to just kind of put it behind them, move on, Catherine's home now.
Lauren Wethers 11:13
There, there could have been a enraged response to General Tilney, like how dare you cast our daughter out like that, you exposed her to God knows what danger traveling post, 70 miles by herself. But there's none of that, like you said, it's not like they're not concerned for her wellbeing. But the passage says that her mom would have been concerned if she had known about it before Catherine left, but it's already done. So there's no reason for her to be concerned now, because Catherine made it and she's fine. So there's no point in worrying. It's not pragmatic.
Emily Davis-Hale 11:42
The Allens pick up some of that outrage for them.
Lauren Wethers 11:45
Yes.
Emily Davis-Hale 11:46
Mrs. Allen says, what is it, four or five times that she has not patience with the General, she is so ticked off on Catherine's behalf.
Lauren Wethers 11:53
She just keeps repeating it.
Emily Davis-Hale 11:54
And then she, you know, runs off with the silk gloves that she's wearing or remembers the first time that they went to the pump room. And then just you know, does her usual ADHD, Mrs. Allen kind of thing.
Lauren Wethers 12:07
It's all filtered through her own view of herself, because she can't remember who Catherine danced with. But she does remember what dress she wore. On day one, like hour two of the outing.
Emily Davis-Hale 12:22
Almost three months ago.
Lauren Wethers 12:24
What a woman. They do start to take note when Catherine's still depressed, after you know, a couple of days, and her mother then begins to kind of take personal affront to this, because she's wondering if maybe Catherine spent too much time with wealthier peers. And now she's not really appreciating what she has at home.
Emily Davis-Hale 12:44
Yeah, she threatens to pull out this preachy essay, because she thinks it would be good for Catherine.
Lauren Wethers 12:51
Yeah, you're just sitting there moping around, I don't really understand why you're still upset about this. You didn't do anything wrong, so there's nothing that you can really do about it. And also, you're home and you're fine. So let's take note of the blessings that you do have, and maybe stop worrying so much about the fact that you don't have nice breakfast bread, like you did in Northanger Abbey.
Emily Davis-Hale 13:11
And Catherine is like, this is not the issue at all, but whatever, okay?
Lauren Wethers 13:15
It'll get you to shut up. But before she can pull out the preachy essay, who should arrive...
Emily Davis-Hale 13:21
But Henry Tilney, who apparently had a whole confrontation with his father?
Lauren Wethers 13:28
I'm always so mad that Jane Austen puts these dramatic scenes off page. Ma'am!
Emily Davis-Hale 13:32
I know. I want to see it.
Lauren Wethers 13:34
She does this every time. I want to see Henry Tilney yelling at his father. Why?
Emily Davis-Hale 13:41
Wow. Yeah. The little bit of intuition does come through with Mrs. Morland, when Henry expresses his interest in going to call upon the Allens and asks if Catherine would show him the way and she kind of just points out the window and is like, well, that's right down there. And Mrs. Morland is like, 'honey, he wants to have a word with you alone.' Like she can tell that he wants to explain something that he has some information that he doesn't want to share in front of the entire family. So she shoos them off and the story comes out.
Lauren Wethers 14:12
And mind you, they don't have a lot of time to tell the story because the Allens literally live a quarter mile away, so they have to just like, stop so Henry can continue telling the story because they don't have that far to walk. But it turns out that General Tilney had been led astray by none other than our favorite antagonist John Thorpe.
Emily Davis-Hale 14:30
John frickin Thorpe.
Lauren Wethers 14:31
The man we all love to hate. If you remember, back when they were still in Bath, we talked about a scene where John Thorpe is talking about Catherine to General Tilney and kind of intimating that he might have some kind of a claim on Catherine. And because he wants to boast about the people who he's connected with, he has greatly inflated Catherine's wealth to the general.
Emily Davis-Hale 14:55
To an absurd degree. He has intimated that like, she could potentially be in line as the heiress for some estate or other and General Tilney is like, oh, okay, tell me more.
Lauren Wethers 15:08
Like, the Allens don't have children and she's here with them and they seem to be treating her like their child, maybe she's going to be getting some of the Allens' money?
Emily Davis-Hale 15:15
So that is why he was so warm to her every time and why he was so eager to have her marry Henry, he thought that she was filthy rich. He thought that she was going to have like 15,000 pounds on her marriage, not the case.
Lauren Wethers 15:33
Not the case, not at all.
Emily Davis-Hale 15:35
And then when he has gone back to town, he runs into John Thorpe again, who at this point is ticked off. Catherine has refused his marriage. Isabella is not going to be marrying James. He's mad. And so when he runs into General Tilney, he tells him all about how Catherine's basically destitute, she's not going to have any money. Her parents have so many children, it's absurd.
Lauren Wethers 16:03
He just goes in the complete opposite direction. Yeah, because she's not as wealthy as he had originally said but she's also not as poor and out in the cold as he's, as he's making her out to be.
Emily Davis-Hale 16:14
Just the absolute worst, man.
Lauren Wethers 16:16
The gall, the gumption.
Emily Davis-Hale 16:18
The audacity. And so this is apparently, what triggered General Tilney's quick about face, because he feels personally deceived by Catherine, who never gave him any information about her financial state.
Lauren Wethers 16:34
And she never claimed to be anything other than who she was.
Emily Davis-Hale 16:37
Never. The only thing that he knows about her from her is what a nice young lady she is.
Lauren Wethers 16:44
She was just thrilled to be included. She's the epitome of just happy to be here.
Emily Davis-Hale 16:48
I was about to say the same thing. She really is just happy to be here. But he had gotten this misinformation, never attempted to follow up on it, constructed this whole fantasy of marrying his son to a rich woman, and then got mad when it was wrong, which is so perfectly in line with everything that we know about his character.
Lauren Wethers 17:13
And Catherine does say, 'I may have been wrong that he did not murder his wife or lock her up in a room of Northanger Abbey. But I was right that his character seriously sucks.'
Emily Davis-Hale 17:23
And she is correct in this. And so when Henry hears about this, he has this horrible falling out with his father, rides off to Fullerton almost immediately, and decides, 'screw what Dad says, I want to marry Catherine.'
Lauren Wethers 17:44
And he does have to admit that he does clearly not have his father's consent. And so he withholds this fact until after Catherine gives her yes and so she's not pressured to be proper in saying no, because he doesn't have his father's consent, but to be honest, and say, Oh, my God, this is the one thing I've ever wanted, please, I would love to marry you.
Emily Davis-Hale 18:04
So of course, they have to ask the Morlands, and the Morlands say that they would happily give their permission, but they can't in good conscience say yes without the General's assent as well. He doesn't have to offer it of his own volition. He doesn't have to be excited about it. They just want basic consent from him. Because you know, social norms of the day, et cetera, et cetera.
Lauren Wethers 18:28
He doesn't have to give his blessing. But he does have to say yes.
Emily Davis-Hale 18:31
Essentially, yes.
Lauren Wethers 18:33
Like you can't be going behind your father's back to marry our daughter.
Emily Davis-Hale 18:36
And so Henry slinks back to Woodston for a while, and they may or may not exchange some clandestine letters. But Catherine's certainly getting a lot of mail these days.
Lauren Wethers 18:49
I love it. That's told from her mother's point of view where she's like, you know, 'I'm not going to ask Catherine about the letters, I'm going to just practice a Don't Ask Don't Tell policy and just not pay attention to the number of letters she receives on a regular basis.'
Emily Davis-Hale 19:02
It's very funny. I mean, I think she's probably also corresponding pretty fervently with Eleanor.
Lauren Wethers 19:07
Oh, totally.
Emily Davis-Hale 19:08
And in the end, it's Eleanor who makes things happen because she gets married to a lovely viscount who's a charming young man on top of all of his financial qualities.
Lauren Wethers 19:20
I was like, and he's also filthy rich.
Emily Davis-Hale 19:22
Also filthy rich. The General is, of course, in raptures about this and at Eleanor's urging, since he's so pleased with her, he decides that yeah, he'll make up with Henry just enough to give him permission to marry Catherine, whatever, that's fine. He can go be a fool if he wants, he says.
Lauren Wethers 19:42
It's like, you know what, one child at least married well, so if you can't marry well, then at least I have a daughter who I can address with a title. This is great.
Emily Davis-Hale 19:51
And so still less than a year after meeting, Catherine and Henry are married, so it all ends up happy in the end, but it definitely felt like we're racing towards the end of a season that hasn't been renewed.
Lauren Wethers 20:03
100%. That was the writers room got the the news that they weren't getting renewed and they said oh shit. How do we wrap this up in the next four episodes?
Emily Davis-Hale 20:11
Jane Austen's like, I'm done writing this. We're just, we're going to wrap it up quick.
Lauren Wethers 20:16
I'm over it. Yeah, the end. But those were the events of our final four chapters of Northanger Abbey.
Emily Davis-Hale 20:22
And events there were.
Lauren Wethers 20:24
And events they were, which means that Emily, you have now officially read all six of Jane Austen's novels published.
Emily Davis-Hale 20:31
I'm officially done with the Austen novel canon.
Lauren Wethers 20:33
You did it!
Emily Davis-Hale 20:34
Yay.
Lauren Wethers 20:35
How does it feel?
Emily Davis-Hale 20:36
It feels good. It feels weird. It doesn't feel correct that that should be a fact about me.
Lauren Wethers 20:41
Now, you have no more spoilers to avoid.
Emily Davis-Hale 20:43
I have no more spoilers to avoid. I can watch all of the movie.
Lauren Wethers 20:46
You can watch all the movies, you could look at all the memes. I'm no longer worried about the tarot card spoiling you because that was a worry of mine. I was worried that Emily was going to read a plot point on the tarot card that we hadn't gotten to yet.
Emily Davis-Hale 20:58
I think there was only once, maybe, that we were in danger of that. But I think you were reading what the meaning was.
Lauren Wethers 21:06
I was, yeah.
Emily Davis-Hale 21:07
So you just kind of obfuscated that a little bit.
Lauren Wethers 21:09
Yeah, it worked out.
Emily Davis-Hale 21:10
But yeah, everybody can talk to me about all of the spoilers for all the Austen novels now. I know what happens.
Lauren Wethers 21:16
And this has been so much fun.
Emily Davis-Hale 21:18
It really has been, like talk about the most fun way to read your way through Jane Austen.
Lauren Wethers 21:23
100%. We can save more of a retrospective for our wrap up episode, but I just wanted to name that now. It is official. You've read all six books.
Emily Davis-Hale 21:32
Yay.
Lauren Wethers 21:34
So we mentioned that anxiety was pervasive in the entire section. But let's pull out specifically where we saw anxiety.
Emily Davis-Hale 21:42
Oh, well, we see anxiety right off the bat with Catherine thinking that surely after four weeks she has outstayed her welcome at Northanger Abbey. She's anxious about bringing it up because she's worried that they're just being too polite to say anything. But she doesn't want to leave. She wants to stay with her dear friends Eleanor and Henry, despite the general.
Lauren Wethers 22:04
Despite, yes. Which is again, so relatable because you want to be able to continue enjoying yourself, but you also don't want to make your friends uncomfortable with your presence and no one wants to feel as though they've overstayed their welcome. That's just not nice.
Emily Davis-Hale 22:17
Definitely. So she's she's anxious about that, which is immediately assuaged when she brings up to Eleanor who was like, 'oh, no, do you want to leave?' And Catherine's like, 'no, no, no, I thought you might want me to leave!' Eleanor says, 'no, I want you to stay as long as you want to stay.'
Lauren Wethers 22:33
Like please don't go.
Emily Davis-Hale 22:35
Yeah.
Lauren Wethers 22:35
Please stay here with me.
Emily Davis-Hale 22:37
So they both have a little spike of anxiety in that moment, thinking that the other person wants to be out of their company. But it turns out that they are dear bosom friends, and they're perfectly happy to spend all their time together, which I'm so glad that Catherine ended up with a lovely close friend and confidant in Eleanor, given what she went through with Isabella.
Lauren Wethers 22:58
And then eventually sister in law as well.
Emily Davis-Hale 23:00
Yes!
Lauren Wethers 23:01
She actually has a sister who she can love and trust and confide in. I mean, she has biological sisters, but a sister in law who respects her versus Isabella as a sister in law.
Emily Davis-Hale 23:10
A peer as a sister in law.
Lauren Wethers 23:11
Exactly.
Emily Davis-Hale 23:13
So there's plenty of anxiety there. And then there's the little frisson of kind of Gothic anxiety when the pounding on the door comes. And she thinks, oh, what's it going to be, but that's still a little, it's still a little indulgent. It's a little bit fun. Giving herself one more taste of the Gothic heroine until Eleanor comes in with her horrible anxiety about having to break this terrible news to her friend.
Lauren Wethers 23:40
It's like the anxiety or the scare you get from watching a horror movie when you know it's not real, but you're enjoying being scared. Versus then somebody's actually knocking on your door in real life. And now you have to deal with the fact that you don't know what's happening. Fake fear and fear that you can indulge in versus real, "Oh, no."
Emily Davis-Hale 24:01
Definitely, definitely. And then following her being asked to leave Northanger, there's the anxiety of not knowing what she's done wrong. There's no way to find out. She's anxious about the idea of even being able to write to Eleanor because when Eleanor says please write to me, she asked her to direct it to a false name.
Lauren Wethers 24:22
I think it's either a false or to a servant, I think is what's supposed to be.
Emily Davis-Hale 24:25
Possibly.
Lauren Wethers 24:25
Like under care of Alice, who would be whoever she's, you know, has in her employment in London. Catherine's like, well, if I'm not supposed to be writing to you, then maybe I just shouldn't write at all.
Emily Davis-Hale 24:35
Because Eleanor knows how her father would react, which is terrible. General Tilney, you suck.
Lauren Wethers 24:41
And, and Catherine is also anxious about what her relationship with Eleanor will look like as well, because she wants to be able to remain in correspondence with Eleanor, she knows that it's not Eleanor's fault, but she can't help but feel a little bit of resentment which she then regrets because she knows it's directed at the wrong person. But her emotions are all mixed up because so much of this has happened at once. So she doesn't know where she stands with Eleanor. She doesn't know how much affection she should allow herself to feel towards her, especially if their relationship's going to have to come to a necessary close. All of what she thought she knew mere hours before has now been kind of thrown into question.
Emily Davis-Hale 25:21
And Eleanor feels those same kind of anxieties that she's going to have to end a friendship that she truly cares about. And the anxiety that Catherine is going to hate her for what her father has done, which, like you said, Catherine feels a little stab of resentment, but knows that it's not Eleanor's fault, knows that it's not Henry's fault. And so in the end, you know, as she is being sent away still feels very kindly towards them, and feels kind of resentful that they have to be associated with their father's behavior, too.
Lauren Wethers 25:59
right.
Emily Davis-Hale 25:59
And then of course, there's the anxiety of getting back to Fullerton, which passes so quickly. And Catherine is so like, almost in a fugue state that it just barely even registered.
Lauren Wethers 26:10
She doesn't even really like register being worried because she's so upset. She was anxious before she left but then it seems on the journey itself, she's just so despondent, that she doesn't even have the energy to be anxious.
Emily Davis-Hale 26:22
Yeah, it seems like she kind of gets home and then realizes like, 'oh, I kind of did that. That all happened,' which, definitely been there. You just -- it's not quite blacking out, but then you're like, wait a minute. I've been through steps to get to the point that I'm at. Wh-- how did I do that?
Lauren Wethers 26:40
She just hasn't fully processed it yet.
Emily Davis-Hale 26:42
Exactly.
Lauren Wethers 26:42
Yeah. And then finally, of course, the anxiety of not knowing if she'll speak to the Tilneys, having Henry come and actually propose to her, but not being able to fully accept because they don't have the consent of all parties involved. And that just lingers for months. Granted, it is resolved relatively very quickly. Because Eleanor's engagement kind of comes out of nowhere and then helps them come back to be able to be to be engaged to be wed, but for Catherine, it must have seemed like it stretched on for eons.
Emily Davis-Hale 27:14
Just a section absolutely suffused with anxiety.
Lauren Wethers 27:18
The entire thing.
Emily Davis-Hale 27:19
the whole thing.
Lauren Wethers 27:21
But she got her happy ending.
Emily Davis-Hale 27:22
She did.
Lauren Wethers 27:23
I think those are all of our events. That is our theme. What was your historical connection?
Emily Davis-Hale 27:30
So I was thinking about this essay that Mrs. Morland pulls out, and how we've seen a couple of times both in Northanger Abbey and in some other Austen texts, the appearance of these sort of instructive or didactic writings. So what Mrs. Morland goes to find is a copy of The Mirror, which was published between 1779 and 1780, as a series of letters from fictional people, delivering lessons on propriety to its audience. So the entry that she's looking for is from a gentleman farmer by the name of John Homespun, whose daughters have gone to stay with a very noble lady, and returned home to their humble farm with behaviors and beliefs that are just entirely inappropriate to their actual life.
Lauren Wethers 28:30
I would just like to say how on the nose of a name John Homespun is.
Emily Davis-Hale 28:35
Yes.
Lauren Wethers 28:35
Could they have tried a little harder?
Emily Davis-Hale 28:37
No, absolutely not. But this was not the only essay collection on these kinds of moral topics. Some others included The Rambler and The Spectator. They were actively recommended by moralists like James Fordyce, who was the author of Fordyce's Sermons to Young Women, which we should all be familiar with from Pride and Prejudice. They were particularly placed as being an alternative to these dreadful novels that young ladies are reading. And it is an interesting counterpoint to Gothic and Romantic literature, because readers are very explicitly warned away from unwise behavior. And it's often framed against very sensible English lifestyles.
Emily Davis-Hale 29:26
Whereas in the kind of novels that Catherine is reading, terrible things still happen, and you're still being implicitly warned away from these things. But no one's sitting you down and saying, 'Now now, young lady, you shouldn't enjoy your french bread with breakfast too much because when you go home, you'll be disappointed and that's not how good English people act.' But from other parts of Northanger Abbey and from her other writings as well, it seems like Austen is pretty roundly mocking this genre of literature as being ridiculous. In my opinion, it seems like she's, especially in Northanger Abbey, kind of treating it as being unrealistic, but not in the fun way.
Emily Davis-Hale 30:12
But it's it's also kind of interesting to me personally, the proliferation of these texts given the state of literacy at the time, because like, mass public education was not a thing. So there were still a good number of people who were not able to read. But religious groups like the Methodists were promoting reading, education and literature in general was becoming more accessible just from improvements in printing technology. So it's neat to see how these things kind of play off of one another and change in relation to one another throughout, you know, these shifting social tides.
Lauren Wethers 30:53
Cool. Thank you.
Emily Davis-Hale 30:54
Yeah, I hope that was interesting.
Lauren Wethers 30:56
I had never done a deep dive into that essay before. So that was interesting.
Emily Davis-Hale 31:00
I have to begrudgingly give credit to the editor who I still have beef with, for--
Lauren Wethers 31:08
why?
Emily Davis-Hale 31:09
For actually calling out what the essay was in the footnote or the end note.
Lauren Wethers 31:14
Why do you have beef with the editor?
Emily Davis-Hale 31:16
Because he spoiled the book for me chapters and chapters ago!
Lauren Wethers 31:19
Right, right, right, I was like, what was wrong with giving you the name of the essay? I'm confused.
Emily Davis-Hale 31:23
No, that's the one good thing.
Lauren Wethers 31:25
Got it. Okay, gotcha. Gotcha. What was the footnote? Because I think you hadn't read it aloud because you didn't want to spoil it on the air.
Emily Davis-Hale 31:32
They spoiled that Catherine got kicked out of Northanger Abbey.
Lauren Wethers 31:35
Oh, they did?
Emily Davis-Hale 31:36
Yeah.
Lauren Wethers 31:36
Oh, no.
Emily Davis-Hale 31:37
Yeah. Like, what? Come on. So, so rude. I'm still mad about that. And I hope no one else had the same edition as me and got spoiled for that. Because, yeah. Anyway. What do you have for pop culture in this final installment?
Lauren Wethers 31:57
So I haven't done a current events pop culture connection in a hot minute. So I wanted to do one of those. And I was thinking about how Catherine and Henry are kind of forced apart for what seems like a long time to them, but it's really it's like a blink of an eye, they're fine. Catherine's 17 when the story begins and she's 18 when she gets married, like, it's -- you guys will survive. But it made me think about rekindled relationships and people who break up for a time and then find their way back to one another because you know, people who are meant to be are meant to be. Emily's looking at me like, 'who on earth are you about to talk about?'
Emily Davis-Hale 32:34
Yeah, cuz you said current events and now I'm trawling through the meager pop culture knowledge in my brain trying to see who this is going to be.
Lauren Wethers 32:41
I guarantee you, you don't have a guess.
Emily Davis-Hale 32:43
Okay, that makes me feel better.
Lauren Wethers 32:45
So I wanted to talk about Nelly and Ashanti because they're back together.
Emily Davis-Hale 32:49
Yes, I never would have guessed that, you're correct.
Lauren Wethers 32:51
So sometimes, love is delayed for longer than six months, and it still works out. And so as my exhibit a I would like to present Nelly and Ashanti. So, if you will, travel with me back in time through the years to the year 2003. Ben Affleck is People's Sexiest Man of the Year, Christina Aguilera is entering her Dirrty era. Spider-Man is one of the biggest movies in the theater. That's still true, but the original Spider-Man trilogy.
Emily Davis-Hale 33:21
The setting of the scene is everything to me.
Lauren Wethers 33:25
Thank you. Thank you. And more importantly to today's discussion, Nelly and Ashanti meet for the first time, at least in public, they met at like a behind the scenes Grammy show or something like that. But they play it coy and they never actually admit that they're together. This is like the very beginning of 2003. Two years later, you know, they're spotted celebrating each other's birthdays. By 2006, they're appearing as dates to movie premieres. Ashanti's movie premier is actually a movie that we discussed on this podcast before, she was in John Tucker Must Die. Also, if you've not heard of Nelly and Ashanti, which I'm just realizing I should maybe define who these people are for folks who do not have my same pop culture background, fluency, touchpoints, choose your vocabulary word here. Nelly is a rapper from my hometown of St. Louis. So we are very happy that we get to claim someone in the current music scene. We don't have that many people. And you probably know him for hot in here.
Emily Davis-Hale 34:26
Even I know hot in here.
Lauren Wethers 34:29
That's, that's the song that everyone knows, he has a lot of other hits but that's the one that like, everyone knows. Ashanti is also a singer. She was very big in pop r&b, especially in the early 2000s, and from 2000 to 2003, I think she had like four top 10 hits in a row or something like that. She was featured on a couple hits. One of her solo hits that is really big was Foolish. If you weren't big into pop r&b, you probably know the song by listening to it, but not by name. But those are the two people who were discussing today and Ashanti was in John Tucker Must Die. That's in 2006. They appear at the red carpet together. They're still quote unquote, not together. But let's be real. It's been three years at this point, and you're showing up to red carpets as each other's dates. But come on, How stupid do you think we are? Let's be serious. And they also released their first song together that year, which was a Switch. So that was Ashanti featuring Nelly.
Lauren Wethers 35:26
And then you fast forward to 2009. They're on another song together. This one is Nelly featuring Ashanti. And also, there's some rumors swirling around that maybe they split up. But in 2010, they attended T-I's wedding together, who was another rapper, and they still insist that they've just been friends. It has now been seven years at this point in time, they're still saying that they're just friends. But in 2013, they're now done for good, according to their representatives. And since then, they started to actually like hint about the fact that okay, maybe we were together the entire time. Yeah, we knew. But I'm glad you're now putting that on the public record.
Lauren Wethers 36:06
But in those interviews, it is heavily intimated that it was not a amicable split. So Ashanti says in 2015, "When people have their own insecurities, it allows them to act out of character," and said that she had been betrayed on a talk show. Oh, so who knows, I don't know what bad blood went down there, but she was not happy with Nelly. So God only knows what went down in this time period. You know, they're both dating other people. They're separated for like a good amount of time. And they don't see each other again publicly until 2021.
Emily Davis-Hale 36:41
Wow.
Lauren Wethers 36:42
And even they said, they were surprised to see that the other person was there. And then in 2022, they see each other again, at like an award show or something like that. And Ashanti says, 'Yeah, you know, we've seen it. We've seen each other a couple of times, we're no longer going at each other's throats anymore. It's cool,' is how she puts it. But then in April of this year, reconciliation rumors begin to swirl. And older millennials, especially, are living. So I was a little bit too young to really know about Nelly and Ashanti in 2000 to 2003, I was nine, ten years old. I didn't know or care. But people who were more involved in pop culture at that point in time, when these rumors started to hit the internet in April this year, they're like, Wait a second. Wait a second, is this iconic relationship in 2003, about to come back in 2023?
Lauren Wethers 37:34
And it becomes more obvious in the fall. So they are making public appearances together again, they write birthday messages to each other on Instagram, Ashanti buys Nelly a vintage like 1962 car for his birthday, which was some apparently like a very sentimental gift because it was his dream car. And she like went out and got it for him. Whatever. Fast forward to December 2023. They're now expecting a child together.
Emily Davis-Hale 37:57
Wow.
Lauren Wethers 37:58
And happier than ever. And I would just like to say that if it's meant to be it will be.
Emily Davis-Hale 38:04
Yeah.
Lauren Wethers 38:04
Because you could have started a relationship 20 years ago, broken up for good 10 years ago, apparently under very terrible circumstances. Well, not terrible. But it was not an amicable split. And now in 2023, every picture I've seen of the two of them together, they are glowing. Oh, they look so happy. And so my pop culture connection for today is a celebrity couple who was separated by circumstances unbeknownst to us. Because while I do find it hilarious that they decided to deny that they were ever together until they got back together and said, Oh yeah, we were together that entire time. I do respect the fact that they were keeping their personal lives as private as possible. I respect it. I get it. You were playing in our faces because you were clearly together but like, I respect the fact that it was not our business to know. And you were keeping it to yourself.
Emily Davis-Hale 38:52
I do love a celebrity whose private life I know nothing about like when Lee Pace had that like magazine feature and he was like, Oh yeah, I love raising chickens with my husband and everyone was like your husband?! Excuse me?
Emily Davis-Hale 39:10
Bisexual icon, we love him.
Lauren Wethers 39:13
And I love that they have found their way back to one another and seem to be very happy because especially for women in your 40s, you're like, likely not having a child on accident, like Ashanti knows what she's doing. And she's choosing to say like, Yes, this is my person, I hope. And I'm going to, you know, see this through.
Emily Davis-Hale 39:31
Love that.
Lauren Wethers 39:33
So take heart, Catherine, in your six month break when you have been parted with such sweet sorrow.
Emily Davis-Hale 39:40
People have made it through worse odds.
Lauren Wethers 39:42
People have made it through worse odds. And they've been separated for a whole decade, and then found their way back together. And it seems to work. So.
Emily Davis-Hale 39:50
Wild.
Lauren Wethers 39:51
Yep. That's my connection for today. Ashanti and Nelly.
Emily Davis-Hale 39:55
Thank you so much.
Lauren Wethers 39:56
You're so welcome. I think we have come to final takeaways.
Emily Davis-Hale 40:01
I think we have indeed.
Lauren Wethers 40:02
Just for this section, not the whole book.
Emily Davis-Hale 40:04
Yes. I think my final takeaway is that the people who really care about you will stick by you.
Lauren Wethers 40:14
I like it.
Emily Davis-Hale 40:16
Both Eleanor and Henry do that for Catherine.
Lauren Wethers 40:20
And I love that for her.
Emily Davis-Hale 40:21
I know, I'm so happy for her.
Lauren Wethers 40:23
She deserves it.
Emily Davis-Hale 40:24
I might be more happy about her friendship with Eleanor than I am about her marriage with Henry. Girls support girls.
Lauren Wethers 40:31
We also got to see so much of her friendship with Eleanor on the page. And we never see her actually married to Henry. So yeah.
Emily Davis-Hale 40:38
Who cares about them?
Lauren Wethers 40:39
Eh, whatever.
Emily Davis-Hale 40:40
Jane Austen knows what, what's important. What is your final takeaway from this section?
Lauren Wethers 40:45
Honestly, I don't know that this would have been my final takeaway until what we just said. But I think my final takeaway is about the power of female friendship in particular.
Emily Davis-Hale 40:53
Hell, yeah.
Lauren Wethers 40:53
Especially because her marriage to Henry isn't even possible without Eleanor. And granted, did Eleanor marry a viscount out of friendship for Catherine? No, she did not. But she did not have to leverage that marriage to get the happiness of Catherine and of Henry. There are so many different takeaways that I could grab from these four chapters. But I think that one is the one that's most prescient to me right now.
Emily Davis-Hale 41:17
Yeah. And we also have that beautiful contrast with how the friendship with Isabella turned out versus how it turned out with Eleanor. So yeah, I think Jane Austen has things to say about female friendship for sure.
Lauren Wethers 41:30
Just a few.
Emily Davis-Hale 41:31
Well, that that wraps up our reading sections of Northanger Abbey, we have no Tarot to pull this time.
Lauren Wethers 41:40
I know, I went to go take the tarot card deck out of -- I have like a little podcasting box where I keep all of our materials, and I realized I didn't have to pull the tarot card. No, because we don't have one to pull.
Emily Davis-Hale 41:51
That's -- anxiety was our last tarot card!
Lauren Wethers 41:54
And anxiety inducing this is.
Emily Davis-Hale 41:57
It truly is. So our next episode will be our Northanger Abbey wrap up, followed by Six Degrees of Jane Austen. So prepare your wildest topic suggestions.
Lauren Wethers 42:11
We are listening.
Emily Davis-Hale 42:13
And at some point, we will be making announcements about what our future plans are. But we haven't figured them out yet. So stay tuned.
Lauren Wethers 42:22
I would just -- I would rest assured that we have future plans.
Emily Davis-Hale 42:26
Yes.
Lauren Wethers 42:26
And the one thing that we can say definitively is this is not the end. We just are still figuring out what form our next steps will take.
Emily Davis-Hale 42:34
So yes, Northanger Abbey is not the end of Reclaiming Jane. We just have to get some things in order and make some decisions. But we'll be back.
Lauren Wethers 42:44
But that's the scoop is that we are -- this is anxiety inducing because we don't like being done, but it is not anxiety inducing because we're never coming back. So never fear, we will be here. At the very least as a rerun in your headphones.
Emily Davis-Hale 42:58
Absolutely.
Lauren Wethers 43:39
Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be wrapping up our discussion of Northanger Abby and giving some questionable advice to the characters.
Emily Davis-Hale 43:47
To read our show notes and a transcript of this episode, check out our website, reclaimingjanepod.com, where you can also find the full back catalogue and links to our social media.
Lauren Wethers 43:55
If you'd like to support us and get access to exclusive content, you can join our Patreon @ReclaimingJanePod.
Emily Davis-Hale 44:00
Reclaiming Jane is produced and co hosted by Lauren Wethers and Emily Davis Hale. Our music is by LaTasha Bundy and our show art is by Emily Davis Hale.
Lauren Wethers 44:06
We'll see you next time, nerds.
Emily Davis-Hale 44:15
I'm tired of my multi chapter fanfic. So you get the world's fastest resolution.
Lauren Wethers 44:22
That was like any, any draft of something that you write on a deadline and you only have 24 hours left to finish it. It's like that picture of the horse. Half of it looks like it was drawn by like an anatomy professor and then the by the time you get to the bottom it looks like a five year old drew it. Just like, I give up.