Catharine, or The Bower (Part 1): “No Thoughts, Head Empty”

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Not a bad text to bring to an internet culture that's currently a little obsessed with girlhood...

Discover Kitty's joys and sorrows with us in the first part of this story, where we'll also dive into the fates and fancies of her friends.

Transcript

Emily: This is Reclaiming Jane, an Austen podcast for fans on the margins.

Lauren: I'm Lauren Wethers.

Emily: And I'm Emily Davis-Hale.

Lauren: And today, we're reading "Catharine, or The Bower."

[intro music]

Emily: Alright, et's get into it. So, first off, we do want to make clear that we are doing this story in two parts, because it's like 40 pages long, and it would just be an absurdly long episode, which is not ideal for many reasons.

Lauren: No, we figured that it would be best to just divide it into two parts. We can divide and conquer, get into some more detail, not give you a two hour long episode to get through, and that also means you get double the pop culture and the history connections from us.

Emily: Aww, yeah.

Lauren: That's what it's all about.

Emily: Well, Lauren, you have the - fortune? misfortune? TBD - of recapping part one of Catharine or the Bower.

Lauren: I am leaning towards misfortune to be honest with you, but we're gonna - we're gonna see how it goes.

Emily: It might be worse for me next time. TBD.

Lauren: Point. This is - this might be the other benefit of splitting it up into two because I know, had this been a situation where I was having to recap all 40 pages, it would have been another hot ass mess, so.

Emily: Yeah. All right. Uh, let me get out my timer and set that for 30 seconds. Hey, it's already set.

Lauren: Amazing.

Emily: Lauren, are you ready to give us the first 20 ish pages of Catharine or The Bower?

Lauren: Yeah!

Emily: All right. On your mark, get set, go.

Lauren: All right, so there's a teenage girl named Catharine and she has two friends who she loves very much and they've created this outdoor space called the Bower that she loves, but those two friends fall into destitution and they have to leave and so she's without her friends and she lives with her aunt who is an old maid and she doesn't let her go anywhere.

And then there's this new girl who moves in who's terrible. She has zero conversation or intellect whatsoever, but she's a girl and she's there and so Catharine talks to her. Her name is Camilla. She wants to go to a ball. Kitty gets a terrible toothache and she can't go, but then there's a man that appears and it's mysterious.

Emily: All right, just in time.

Lauren: Let's go!

Emily: Right under the wire.

Lauren: [laughing] That was a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

Emily: Yeah, honestly, that was pretty good!

Lauren: Thank you! I had, I've had some, um, making up to do from earlier recaps this season, so I had to reclaim some of my own dignity there. Yeah.

Emily: I feel like, I feel like it is easier to do just, like, partial recaps. Trying to do an entire story at once is really, really hard.

But before we get into the text itself, I just want to - I loved so much the dedication that Austen leaves at the beginning of this story, so I'd like to read it if you don't mind.

Lauren: Please go ahead. Be my guest.

Emily: So this story begins, "To Miss Austen," which is Cassandra, her older sister.

"Madam, encouraged by your warm patronage of 'The beautiful Cassandra' and 'The History of England,'" which is another juvenile story that we have not read, "Which through your generous support have obtained a place in every library in the kingdom and run through three score editions, I take the liberty of begging the same exertions in favor of the following novel, which I humbly flatter myself possesses merit beyond any already published, or any that will ever in future appear, except such as may proceed from the pen of your most grateful humble servant, the author."

Lauren: I love it.

Emily: It's such a little sisterly note. There's in jokes there. Oh, it's wonderful.

Lauren: I also love, uh, the joke about, um, the three score editions of her previous works. Like 60 different editions, it's just that popular.

Emily: [laughing] Yes, amazing. So much Austen humor that, you know, gets tempered in her later published novels, but I have to imagine that she keeps, she must keep that in her personal life.

Lauren: I would think so. I wonder - we've mentioned before that we're not as familiar with her personal letters, but I'm curious to see how much of that humor still comes through as an adult in her personal correspondence to people.

Emily: Definitely. So one final piece of context is that this was written in August 1792. So she would have been 16 at this time? If my math is correct.

Lauren: I do believe it is.

Emily: Okay, good. Well, we begin in a classic place for a novel featuring a heroine, because "Catharine had the misfortune, as many heroines have had before her, of losing her parents when she was very young."

Lauren: We're following the Disney playbook here. You can't be the heroine of a story or the heroine of a gothic novel, let's not say it's the Disney playbook, without some misfortunes falling upon you very, very early in your story. And in Catharine's case, she has to have the tragedy of not having any parents.

Emily: Mm hmm. She's raised by a maiden aunt who is so protective of her, "as to make it very doubtful to many people, and to Catharine amongst the rest, whether she loved her or not."

Lauren: A bit of a suffocating love.

Emily: Yeah, a little bit. She doesn't want Catharine to go anywhere. She certainly does not want Catharine to ever, ever interact with something so horrible as a man.

Lauren: I mean, relatable, but also, [laughing] it's like the, the horrible, um, conundrum of very strict parents saying, Oh, you're not allowed to date. Don't date. And then why haven't you been married? Where's your husband? Like, but you wouldn't allow me to date. You didn't let me speak to any men. How was I supposed to find a husband? They just immediately switch at some point between don't talk to boys, no boys. And okay, find a husband and start giving me grandchildren.

Emily: [laughs] So Catharine is never allowed to go to any balls or anything because her aunt's afraid that she'll dance with someone that she doesn't like. But she's a vivacious young woman, she has good spirits, and she has two dear friends with whom she has built this bower.

Lauren: The two girls are - have been her friends since childhood. They've been her constant companions for all of these years, and they're the daughters of the clergymen of the parish. But they also have misfortune fall upon them quite early in the story, because as we soon find out, after those days of happy childhood have passed away, in which they create the bower that Catharine holds so very dear to her heart, and they're able to have those days of childish and girlish fancy, their father passes away, and it kind of sends the family scattered to the four winds, and the only consolation, as Jane Austen tells us, is that the mother was spared the knowledge of this because she had died a few months before her husband did, so. The two girls who are Catharine's very best friends lose their mom and their dad in very quick succession and then have to move away from their home because they don't have a place to live anymore. And they're thrust upon the mercy of other people.

Emily: Yeah, they are dependent on the charity of some of their other relatives who have a little more fortune to spare. The eldest daughter, Cecilia, "had been obliged to accept the offer of one of her cousins to equip her for the East Indies, and though infinitely against her inclinations, had been necessitated to embrace the only possibility that was offered to her of a maintenance. Yet it was one so opposite to all her ideas of propriety, so contrary to her wishes, so repugnant to her feelings that she would almost have preferred servitude to it, had choice been allowed her.

"Her personal attractions had gained her a husband as soon as she had arrived at Bengal, and now she had been married nearly a twelvemonth. Splendidly, yet unhappily married."

Lauren: I highlighted that last sentence. And I think throughout this, we'll come back to it again, but we've seen inklings of Jane Austen's feminism before, but in most of the Juvenilia that we've read, she's been quite young. But in this one in particular, I really think we start to see her hone her opinion on what is right and what's fair for women and really start to get a sense of what a woman's lot in life is. And this "splendidly yet unhappily married" sentence is the first hint of what's going to come.

Emily: Getting a little bit of proto-feminism in there.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: So Cecilia has been shipped off to India on the dime of a cousin and was immediately snapped up and married to a man twice her age, who she's not happy with, but he's got a fortune, so.

Lauren: He's not nice. Um, he has a terrible disposition, but to everyone else from the outside looking in, she should have nothing to complain about because you didn't have to wait long for a husband. You were snatched up by some rich man as soon as you stepped off the boat and all should be well. But according to her letters to Catharine or Kitty - the naming switches back and forth between her given name and her nickname - she's not happy at all.

Emily: And poor Mary, the younger sister left behind with their relative, the Dowager Lady Halifax, as a companion to her daughters, but seems to be treated as kind of a second class citizen in the house. She definitely doesn't get all of the privileges that the other daughters do, and presumably is feeling the loss of her sister and her dear friend Catharine.

Lauren: It feels like a Fanny Price situation.

Emily: Definitely. We'll take you in from the goodness of our hearts, but you're, you're not as good as us, just so you know.

Lauren: Exactly. You're living with this family of status, but you don't actually have the status.

Emily: Exactly. Which we will learn more about later, too.

Lauren: We will come back to that.

Emily: But at least in the absence of her friends, Catharine still has the consolations of the bower that they constructed together.

Lauren: Which is even more important because a family who's moved in is terrible.

Emily: Yeah, she does not like the family of the new clergyman, the Dudleys. Uh, Mr. Dudley "was the younger son of a very noble family, of a family more famed for their pride than their opulence, tenacious of his dignity, and jealous of his rights."

And then, his wife is "an ill educated, untaught woman of ancient family, proud of that family almost without knowing why, and like him, too, was haughty and quarrelsome without considering for what. Their only daughter, who inherited the ignorance, the insolence, and pride of her parents, was from that beauty of which she was unreasonably vain, considered by them as an irresistible creature and looked up to as a future restorer by a splendid marriage of the dignity which their reduced situation and Mr. Dudley's being obliged to take orders for a country living had so much lessened."

Lauren: A very poor replacement.

Emily: They're not pleasant company. They're full of themselves. They are from family names, but don't have the money to back it up. They encourage their daughter in being unpleasantly self absorbed. It's just, it's not, not a good time.

Lauren: No, they're a very poor replacement for the Wynne family. And just poor company and society in general. It sounds like even to people other than Kitty, they would be terrible to be around.

Emily: Mhm. They are both condescending towards people whose names aren't as esteemed as their own, but also jealous of the fortune that other people have, which is part of why they get along very badly with Catharine's Aunt Percival.

Lauren: Who does not want to speak to anyone. She's worried about Catharine potentially falling in with the wrong people. She's worried about Catharine's wellbeing and she wants her to find society and speak to people and she laments that there aren't enough people in the neighborhood for her to get to know. But then also the people in the neighborhood aren't people who she should be socializing with anyway. And she just goes around and around and the end result of course, is that Catharine remains with no one to speak to and only her aunt for company.

Emily: So she's unhappy with the departure of her friends, the Wynnes. She is unhappy with the arrival of these nasty Dudleys. But, fortunately? Mrs. Percival finally gives in to, um, extending an invitation to come and stay to some of their relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, and their own daughter, Camilla.

Lauren: And Catharine is really, really, really hoping that Camilla will be somebody who can replace the Wynne sisters for her. She's hoping that this will finally be somebody interesting to speak to. She'll have another girl her age who's around. But unfortunately, Miss Stanley, Miss Camilla was "elegant in her appearance, rather handsome and not naturally deficient in abilities, but those years which ought to have been spent in the attainment of useful knowledge and mental improvement had been all bestowed in learning drawing, Italian, and music, more especially the latter. And she now united to these accomplishments an understanding unimproved by reading and a mind totally devoid either of taste or judgment."

Emily: We're definitely seeing more of these explicit preferences and judgments of Jane Austen's that come out more thoroughly, like, especially in, you know, the one scene in Pride and Prejudice, when they're describing what makes an accomplished woman. Um, and her personal feeling that you have to supplement these things with your own, you know, investigations of the world. You should have a good understanding of what happens around you and the context you live in.

Lauren: And unfortunately for Catharine, Camilla has none of this. But Catharine is really hopeful. She's a little bit prejudiced by Camilla's appearance and thinks the best of her at first glance. And almost feels convinced that she's going to be the companion that she wants. But that is quickly disavowed by a single conversation with her, through which Catharine realizes that she's not the wit or the companion that she would like her to be.

Emily: She tries so hard to have a conversation with Miss Stanley about the novels of Charlotte Smith, but Camilla almost immediately moves on to talking about her social life. The only reason she gives for disliking one particular novel is that it's really long, which just gave me shades of BookTok.

Lauren: Oh, 100%. And Kitty is also saying, you know, but a lot of people say that. What do YOU think? Because she's picking up on the fact that Camilla is just parroting opinions that she's heard other people give before, and she doesn't actually have an opinion on these books, but Camilla very much comes across as the kid in class who didn't do the reading and just read the Wikipedia summary and knows how to regurgitate that, but has no actual opinions of her own to form about the books or the author. Catharine tries to engage her in, well, what do you think of the writing? What do you think of this? And she cannot answer a single question.

Emily: Yeah. Catharine says at one point, "If a book is well written, I always find it too short." Which, so relatable, oh my god. And Camilla responds, "So do I, only I get tired of it before it is finished."

"But did you not find the story of Ethelinde very interesting? And the descriptions of Grasmere, are not they beautiful?" "Oh, I missed them all because I was in such a hurry to know the end of it."

Lauren: Missed the point.

Emily: Painful. So painful.

Lauren: To add insult to injury, Kitty even thinks that she's throwing her a softball here because the narration says, you know, she was well read in modern history, but "she chose to rather to speak first of books of a lighter kind of books universally read and admired." So she pretty much said, Okay, I know that I really love these more intellectually engaging books, but let me go with like a more popular beach read type of novel first and see if we can find some common ground here. And even there, she gets nothing.

Emily: I, this might be an unkind comparison, I don't know, but it feels like trying to find some common ground with somebody now who's like, Oh, I love to read, being like, [uncertainly] Have you read A Court of Thorns and Roses?

Lauren: It does kind of feel like that.

Emily: Which is a series that I admittedly have not read.

Lauren: That. Yep. But that does feel like a similar comparison where - I think there are the books that are very popular that everyone has read and that gets people back into reading and maybe sparks an enjoyment of reading. But then sometimes they never progress past that.

And if that's your cup of tea, that's your cup of tea. But then for people who like to read like a variety of genres and engage with different types of books, Um, trying to ask, Oh, okay, great, what are your favorite books? And then only being stuck in one genre or one author feels limiting when like, but there's a world of 10, 000 other books! These are, these are fine books, but there are other books.

Emily: So many other books and so many really, really good books. So many really well written books. Anyway, that was a little bit of a tangent, but one that we are wont to indulge.

Lauren: Oh, yes.

Emily: But Kitty, unfortunately, has to give in to Camilla's propensity for just talking about her social life, the people she likes, the people she doesn't like, but she has such contradictory opinions on so many of them. She'll say one thing, Kitty will ask a follow up question, and then Camilla's like, oh, no, no, I can't stand them.

Lauren: See, but I thought, okay, never mind. She also has no concept of English geography.

Emily: [laughing] None at all!

Lauren: She's trying to explain where they're going to go on their next trip. She says that they're going to go to Matlock and Scarborough. And so then Kitty follows up and says, Oh, so you intend then to go to Yorkshire. Uh, which would make sense, because [laughs] Scarborough is in Yorkshire, and Camilla says, "Well, I believe not," and then admittedly says, "Indeed, I know nothing of the route, for I never trouble myself about such things. I only know that we are to go from Derbyshire to Matlock and Scarborough, but to which of them first I neither know nor care."

Emily: Matlock is IN Derbyshire.

Lauren: Yep. Mm hmm. Yeah, the "neither know nor care" is quite obvious, babe.

Emily: Absolutely. Absolutely. She just has not a thought in her pretty little head.

Lauren: Nope. And Kitty, in turn, can "scarcely resolve what to think of her new acquaintance. She appeared to be shamefully ignorant as to the geography of England, if she'd understood her right, and equally devoid of taste and information," which, of course, as we know by Jane Austen standards, is about the worst thing that you can be.

Emily: Unforgivable, truly.

Lauren: Unforgivable.

Emily: But Kitty is still so desperate to just have another good friend. She misses her friends so much that she doesn't want to jump to conclusions about Miss Stanley. She just keeps giving her more and more chances to prove herself a worthy companion.

Lauren: But it's not, it's not happening and eventually, she has to come to the conclusion that "these sparklings of wit happened so seldom and were so ill supported that she was at last convinced of their being merely accidental." Camilla has nothing to offer. And Kitty eventually comes to accept that.

Emily: At one point, Kitty even asks Camilla what she thinks about Queen Elizabeth, who's been dead for almost 200 years at this point. And Camilla says, "Oh dear, I know nothing of politics and cannot bear to hear them mentioned." Girl!

Lauren: It's not politics!

Emily: I don't think that falls in the realm of politics anymore! That's history!

Lauren: It's like, also, you don't even have a, it's the king right now. You're - why would you think? Queen Elizabeth is not on the throne! Oh, have mercy.

But eventually Kitty realizes, okay, we can't have a conversation about books or geography or really anything of substance, but what you do like to talk about is people. So let me see if I can get any intelligence on what's been going on with my friends from an outside perspective, because I've been receiving their letters, at least from the eldest sister, but she wants to find out in particular about the youngest sister who's in the service of the Dowager Lady Halifax.

Emily: So she asks Camilla whether they ever see Lady Halifax because Mr. Stanley is in the House of Commons, and so they spend half of their year in London. And Camilla says, "oh, thank you for reminding of her. She is the sweetest woman in the world, and one of our most intimate acquaintance." And says that she corresponds with all of the Halifax daughters, too. So, Kitty asks, "they are then a very pleasant family? They ought to be so indeed, to allow such frequent meetings, or all conversation must be at an end." "Oh, dear, not at all," said Miss Stanley, "for sometimes we do not speak to each other for a month together." They're not actually friends, she just sees them, and her first instinct when asked about a person is to say, Oh, I love them!

Lauren: You don't talk to them! It's the equivalent of being on a college campus and seeing somebody walk past you at the same time every day because you're both going to the same campus building. And then when somebody asks, you're like, Oh my God, yeah, I love her. We hang out all the time. And when pressed, it's literally just, we enter the same hall at the same time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Emily: And literally when Kitty asks after Miss Wynne, Camilla says, "I know who you mean perfectly. She wears a blue hat." That definitely has shades of like, Oh yeah, I know that guy. He always has like a maroon sweatshirt. It's like, no, I don't know his name. We've never interacted before, but yeah, I know him.

Lauren: I know of him.

Emily: The only things that Camilla knows about Miss Wynne's situation are that she is a very distant relation of the Halifaxes and so poor that Lady Halifax "was obliged to find her in clothes. Is not it shameful?" And Kitty's like, that's. That's a little judgmental.

Lauren: And she agrees that it is shameful, given how wealthy the family is, that she should be so poor, but she tries to kind of throw Camilla a bone here to rein in the judgmental nature a bit, which, of course, Camilla completely misses.

Emily: It goes right over her head.

Lauren: Straight over that pretty little head of hers. [laughs] And she in turn says, "Oh no, it was shameful in Mr. Wynne to leave his children so distressed when he actually had the living of Chetwynd and two or three curacies and only four children to provide for. What would he have done if he had had 10 as many people have?" And Kitty's like, well, "he would have given them all a good education and left them equally poor."

Emily: But Miss Stanley continues on with how lucky they actually are to have such generous relations, with Sir George Fitzgibbon being the one who paid for Cecilia to go off to India, where Camilla is convinced that "she is most nobly married and the happiest creature in the world," so clearly has never met Cecilia, has no idea about her actual situation.

Lauren: It's based off of absolutely nothing, and has no good judgment of the situation of the younger Miss Wynne either, because she says, "Lady Halifax, you see, has taken care of the youngest, and treats her as if she were her daughter." And immediately contradicts herself by saying, "She does not go out in public with her to be sure, but then she is always present when her ladyship gives her balls, and nothing can be kinder to her than Lady Halifax is. She would have taken her to Cheltenham last year, if there had been room enough at the lodgings, and therefore I don't think that she can have anything to complain of." That is objectively not the same as treating her as her daughter. But okay.

Emily: All of this just cements in Kitty's mind that Camilla has no idea of the real situation and also doesn't have good judgement.

Lauren: At all. I also noted at this page, we don't usually get such long conversations between anyone unsummarized in Jane Austen novels, let alone between young ladies. And I thought it was really great to see, I mean, it's a good insight into both of the characters' personalities, but also into what conversations might have been like, however dull, between two ladies of this era. Because I think for me, it is interesting to see what that art of conversation looked like, since that was so often what they had to rely upon, because there's not that much to do. Like being a good conversationalist is even more important when you have nothing to occupy your time because the downside of being a lady of leisure is that you have a lot of leisure time and eventually leisure gets boring.

Emily: It really does.

Lauren: And so it was really interesting to see such an extended conversation and back and forth because in Jane Austen novels especially we get dialogue but oftentimes we get some dialogue and then it becomes a summary and we don't often get such a lengthy back and forth between characters.

Emily: Yeah, it's a fun insight. And even though we don't see the kind of conversation that Catharine would clearly prefer to be having, it does tell you a lot about the expectations of young ladies, I think.

Lauren: Mm hmm. And towards the tail end of this conversation, we get another quote that I highlighted that I feel like really starts to get at those burgeonings of like Jane Austen feminism that she's starting to develop, because they're going back and forth about the Halifaxes again, and Camilla says that "Miss Halifax and Caroline and Maria all say that they," meaning the Wynn sisters, "are the luckiest creatures in the world. So does Sir George Fitzgibbon, and so do everybody."

And this is just about too much for Kitty, who then responds, "That is, everybody who had themselves conferred an obligation on them. But do you call it lucky for a girl of genius and feeling to be sent in quest of a husband to Bengal, to be married there to a man of whose disposition she has no opportunity of judging, till her judgment is of no use to her, who may be a tyrant, or a fool, or both for what she knows to the contrary? Do you call that fortunate?"

Emily: Go Kitty! Get her!

Lauren: Mic, drop.

Emily: But of course, Miss Stanley says, "I know nothing of all that."

Lauren: Yeah, we know.

Emily: "I only know that it was extremely good in Sir George to fit her out and pay for her passage." Because she only has one perspective on the situation.

Lauren: And the funny thing is, is that in a weird way where, um, Camilla is saying, well, you know, it can't have been that hard. You know, she had an all expenses paid trip to Bengal. She was married right after she got there, I see no hardship in all of that. She's also kind of not wrong, like, especially when compared - Kitty makes a point that you have no idea how the voyage was on her. That could have been a very difficult voyage. You have no idea if she's actually having a good time. Kitty has a point in that okay, sure, from the outside looking in everything is gravy, but she's miserable, and this isn't actually something that's making her happy. But also, in the grand scheme of things, given that she was destitute, this could have turned out much worse for her. And she did actually kind of get a better hand in life than she may have, even if considering just the people who are the scullery maids in that voyage. Because she's still doing a lot better than they are.

Emily: Yeah, I mean, we've talked previously about, like, the lives of governesses, which would presumably have been, um, a likely outcome for her had she stayed in England, and still might be the fate of her younger sister, who knows? So yeah, it could have turned out much, much worse. But that's not to say that she's in a good place anyway.

Lauren: She's not thriving.

Emily: Yeah. It could be better, but it could be worse.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: But Kitty, at a certain point, is just so fed up with this conversation that she just leaves the room, runs out of the house, and heads down to her bower for the comfort of sweet childhood memories with her friends.

Lauren: Relatable.

Emily: "Where she could indulge in peace all her affectionate anger against the relations of the Wynnes, which was greatly heightened by finding from Camilla that they were in general considered as having acted particularly well by them." So she gives in to all of her anger and her hatred and eventually settles out and pulls out the book that she carries with her.

Lauren: Honestly, what a relatable character.

Emily: So relatable.

Lauren: But of course, her peace is interrupted once again by Camilla, but this time with some news that is actually somewhat welcome to Catharine, because Camilla has just found out that the Dudleys are having a ball at their house. These terrible people are good for something. They're creating some kind of entertainment. And of course, now they're the best people that Camilla has ever heard of. And they are so charming, and she quite dotes upon them.

Emily: Despite having said like two pages ago that, oh, she would just abuse them all the time if she had to put up with these people. But whatever.

Lauren: Now they're throwing a ball and all is forgiven.

Emily: Kitty is thrilled because she loves to dance and doesn't get the opportunity very often. "Camilla's delight, however, was by no means inferior to Kitty's, and she rather expressed the most of the two." She has a fancy new cap on the way, so she's very excited to show it off.

Lauren: She can't wait for everybody to be jealous of her. Kitty is actually going to be allowed to go to this ball. She's in high spirits. She's super excited. But of course, the morning of the ball, she wakes up with just a terrible toothache and there's nothing that she can do that will make it go away. They try every home remedy in the book and nothing is working. And she eventually just decides, I don't think I can make it. I'm going to have to stay home.

Emily: She's so terribly disappointed and, you know, there's chatter among the rest of the household that people should stay home with her, and eventually she's like, I would rather go in misery than have other people stay home with me right now. So that's eventually decided that everyone else will go along without her and she'll tend to her own toothache in peace at home and be disappointed.

Lauren: And she does at least have the wherewithal to realize, you know, maybe in the future I'll look back and realize how lucky I was for this to be the biggest misfortune of my life and she's sad for a little bit on her own and she sits and she writes to her friends and consoles herself by writing to the Wynnes and that actually does help her feel a little bit better. And by the time she's finished kicking Camilla out of the house that she stops freaking bothering her. She's written to her friend, she's had some time to herself. She feels better, and amazingly, her toothache also feels better. So maybe she can go.

Emily: Yeah, she, after a little contemplation, decides that yeah, actually, she does feel good enough. That, you know, she'll be late to the ball, she might have missed her chance to dance with anyone, but at least she could go out and socialize. So she calls the maid, she gets dressed, she sends for the carriage, and then there comes [dramatically] a knock upon the door.

Lauren: And it's not just any knock upon the door. It's a gentleman in a chaise and four.

Emily: With some caveats, because the maid has not gotten this gentleman's name. He comes with no servants and is driving a carriage with hired horses, which are points against him being, um, of a good family or fortune or anything.

Lauren: The social status is questionable.

Emily: Definitely, but he is waiting in the parlor and appears to have come to speak with Catharine.

Lauren: And there, dear listeners, is where we leave you. And you'll have to find out what happens next in the second part of this episode.

Emily: Oh, no, we've become part two people. Like and subscribe, follow along for part two. [laughs]

Lauren: [laughs] You could make the argument that every book we did was a part two. Like, oh, what happens next? I don't know. Come back in episode nine!

Emily: This one is very much a cliffhanger, though, because we didn't even have like chapters or scene breaks to determine a stopping point. So we did just have to make a decision.

Lauren: We did. And I will admit that it was my decision to make it a cliffhanger. And I'm not sorry.

Emily: Nor should you be. I can't wait to find out what happens next.

Lauren: I really want to know who this mysterious gentleman is.

Emily: I know! Why is he here? Why does he want to talk to Catharine? Why does he have no servants or horses of his own?

Lauren: I don't know... The plot thickens.

Emily: I want to note too that it's apparently a very trendy carriage, um, but with hired horses. So it's like you ride up in a Lamborghini, but you've rented it.

Lauren: And there's a rental sticker on the trunk.

Emily: [laughing] Yes.

Lauren: It's like, oh, this is, oh, that's not yours. Okay, never mind.

Emily: Very funny all around.

Lauren: Well, we'll find out who this, um, class shifting gentleman is when we return.

Emily: Tune in next time...

Lauren: But until then, um, before we start your historical connection, were there any other things that you noted that you wanted to kind of chat about in this first half of Catharine's story?

Emily: I don't think there was anything like thematic that I wanted to go over, um, I just, I really like this insight into the interactions of young ladies with different tastes and the clash that we see there, because there's definitely also clashes of this type in Austen's later novels. Um, but this one feels almost candid because of how detailed the dialogue is and how extended their conversations are.

Lauren: 100%. I had the same thought. And like I mentioned earlier, I really just enjoyed that glimpse into what life could have been like for young ladies of that status when you're stuck with nobody else to have a conversation with and you're forced to make dull conversation with someone, what that dull conversation even looks like. I appreciate that very much. Um, and I also think for modern readers, the language of Austen can seem very elevated, and so to our ears, everything that they say might sound intelligent, and so it's fun reading conversations and dialogue from somebody who's very clearly unintelligent, despite using vocabulary that we would consider to be, like, educated and well read and things of that sort.

Emily: I also have to give a shout out to the eternal little girl activity of building weird stuff in your yard.

Lauren: It springs eternal. And refusing to let anybody tear it down, as her aunt threatens to do at one point because she thinks it's terrible for Catharine's constitution. And she's like, don't you dare.

Emily: Mm hmm.

Lauren: Well, if that's everything, what's your historical connection for today?

Emily: Uh, so I was curious about the fact that there doesn't seem to be any commentary on Cecilia just getting randomly shipped off to India to find herself a husband with no existing connections there, anything like that. Um, so I tried to find some information on the wives of East India Company employees, and there was surprisingly little. Although, to be fair, I do minimal research for this. It's not a big deep dive every time. I give, like, an hour or so to these. But I did find a little bit of information about the sort of attitude of the company towards its employees' marital status.

Terms of service in the East India Company were fairly long and kind of isolated, and you couldn't return home during that period, so a lot of men took local wives or mistresses, and several contemporaries noted that "concubinage was a widespread practice because it was much more practical and economical to cohabit with a native companion than it would have been to marry a European woman."

Lauren: Of course it was.

Emily: Yes, of course. Obviously. Yeah. The East India Company itself, like the management, often regarded wives as being a barrier to the employee's total dedication to his work. The company should be his spouse, not a woman. Julia Schleck describes the very matrimonial language of the company charter between the masters, being the board of directors, and servants, the employees, which are the actual terms that they used in the charter, saying that they must be, quote, "one body corporate and politic in deed and in name."

Lauren: I don't like that...

Emily: Um, yeah, they were expecting total devotion to the work from their employees. And earlier English trading companies really explicitly discouraged their employees from taking their wives along on these journeys. Um, it was, for one, sort of an economical problem with limited ship space and having to make unexpected accommodations for a woman who clearly has different needs from all of these sailors, and who also was assumed to be unfit for independent travel, but there was also the consideration that a man might compromise himself or his professional relationships in defense of a wife should she face any kind of danger or insults, anything like that, so that could create fractures in his, um, working relationships.

Lauren: This is just, oh my god, sorry. Capitalism run amok.

Emily: Truly, truly. Um, the company did take some very limited financial responsibility for their employees' dependents, so if they had wives or children left back in England, they were able to collect some of the employee's wages directly, so they didn't have to, like, wait for him to send it back to England.

In its early years of the East India Company, actually, it was forbidden to employees to either take their wives along or to marry during their service, but in the mid 17th century, some challenges arose and new precedents were being set. And also new priorities were shifting in India toward establishing more English society, whether through Indian or English wives.

And there was also the fact that having English women present there allowed another avenue for the company into Indian politics because they would have access to female-only spaces. So they could build relationships with the wives and daughters of local officials, although this was very often used to advance their own personal interests and those of their husbands, rather than going along with the company's priorities.

So I think it's very, very interesting that there is this explicit sponsorship of Cecilia to go to England and find a husband. I really wish that I'd been able to find more detail about that. Like, is this a practice that just happens? Because neither Catharine nor Camilla seemed to be shocked by the fact that this occurred. I want to know how widespread it was. What was, what was the expectation there?

Lauren: Yeah, it's fascinating. We haven't really gotten a chance to talk in detail about the East India Trading Company very often. And I also thought that it was a great opportunity for us to chat about it this episode, because it was mentioned so explicitly, but I would also be curious to know that and curious to know how much of it is like young Jane Austen's exaggeration, because obviously this was something that happened, but is the lack of reaction, like 16 year old Jane Austen just saying, and then this happened and we're going to go with it, but I would be so curious to find out, like how common it was. Were the families of the daughters who were shipped off to become wives, do they mourn the loss of those daughters? If it's something where, you know, it's not a case like for the Wynnes, where you have no mother and father there anymore, were there people where they had two living parents and they said, okay, bye, go find your husband across the world and board a ship? What did that look like? I would be so curious to find out.

Emily: Yeah, and I mean, it's not like that was the only context where young women would be sent off to find a husband or sent off with their new husbands, especially, you know, in this age of mass colonization. If your husband goes and there's a reasonable expectation that you can be settled in society there, you know, with people moving to America, things like that, or the West Indies, yeah, then you're just, you're gone. You may or may not ever make it back to England.

Lauren: That's so wild. It's hard to think about that in this present day and age that you would leave home and truly never come back. But thank you! You found out an incredible amount of information in the period of time that you gave yourself for your research, and I learned a lot, so I appreciate it.

Emily: Oh, good. I can't wait to hear how you're connecting us to pop culture today.

Lauren: You actually almost hinted at it in something you said earlier, and I had to stop myself from repeating the meme, because you had said that Camilla has something like, oh, she has no thoughts in that head of hers, and I had to stop myself from replying, "no thoughts, head empty," because that is our pop culture connection for today. [laughing] It is the no thoughts, head empty meme.

Emily: [laughing] Oh my god. I refer to that constantly.

Lauren: It is a popular catchphrase. And the thing that's funny is that I think it actually originated if I know my meme properly, and also I will shout out to the website, Know Your Meme, for doing a lot of like this internet archiving and history, because it's what I used to find some of this information for today.

It is for, once again, my disclaimer for those of you who are not chronically online, as Emily and I are in different ways. "No thoughts, head empty" is an internet catchphrase that's used to express exactly what it sounds like, um, either speechlessness or just incredible personal stupidity. There's not a thought behind those beautiful eyes, no thoughts, head empty, both variations of the same thing where the lights are on, but nobody's home to use another thing.

Emily: It's, at least in my experience, very often applied to beautiful, stupid pets.

Lauren: Yes, yeah, that is a big one.

Emily: Orange cats, the epitome of no thoughts, head empty.

Lauren: Mm hmm. Usually it's used as a caption on numerous images that feature a character or a person or a cat with a blank expression, just vacantly staring into the void. The first image was over Cosmo from the Nickelodeon cartoon The Fairly Odd Parents, which was popular like in the 2000s, who is an objectively no thoughts head empty character. He's written to be the stupid husband as a foil to the smart wife in the cartoon. So he is no thoughts head empty.

And then of course it was popularized by none other than the K pop fandom, first by the NCT fandom with the singer Jungwoo. And no surprise in particular was popularized by the BTS Army, because of course it was! They are always at the scene of the crime.

But what I find interesting is that when you look on Google Trends, the search for the phrase, "no thoughts, head empty," peaks at a certain time. And I want to know if you have a guess, given that this started as a meme in 2018, when the search volume peak was.

Emily: It started in 2018... Is it, is it related to a pop culture event?

Lauren: It is related to a global event.

Emily: I, the only thing I can think of is COVID.

Lauren: You're correct!

Emily: Uhh, what's the connection there??

Lauren: The search for this peaks in April 2020. I think - my hypothesis is that, um, that was an urge for us to be no thoughts head empty. We wanted to disconnect from the world, from intelligent discourse, from the fact that this disease that we knew nothing about was running rampant from country to country to country with seemingly nothing that we could really do to stop it.

And I think when things feel really bleak, then we have this urge to disconnect from intelligent discourse or from politics, because there's an urge to want to put our heads in the sand to completely disengage. I see it happening a lot now with the results of the US election as well, where people are really just saying, I wish to, um, not. I don't want to think actually, um, "I do not think therefore I do not am" is actually a phrase that I saw on a t shirt today.

Emily: Another phrase I love.

Lauren: But just a desire to completely check out because engaging with the world and all of the horrors that it contains is just too hard, or it's too intellectually stressful, or we have other things to do in our personal lives without also contending with the 50 million other things that are happening in the world.

However, where we run into an issue is that that doesn't make us better people. It makes us silly, unintelligent, uninformed people like Camilla, who have no idea what's going on in the world or in the country or in very important political discussions that will affect us personally because we've put our heads in the sand because we don't want to because it's hard and it's an understandable impulse. I am not knocking it because Lord knows there are multiple times where I just want to completely check out and say, You know what? Y'all got it. I wash my hands of this. I don't want to talk about anymore. I don't want to think of it. I don't even want to be presented with the information because I am tired.

But me not looking at it doesn't make it go away, unfortunately, and I do not want to be like Camilla, who doesn't have an intelligent opinion to form about anything because I've decided that it doesn't matter if it affects me or not. I don't want to listen to or read about it or challenge myself to learn more because I could very easily go from somebody who is like Catharine, who wants to engage in conversation to somebody like Camilla, who can only regurgitate things that other people have told her. And that's not where I personally want to be, and not, I would imagine, is a place that anybody who listens to a podcast like this wants to be either.

So that is my pop culture connection. It is the no thoughts, head empty meme and a general call to maybe limit your no thoughts, head empty time to whatever interval of time feels right to you. But it should be an interval of time and not permanent. There are times where that type of mindset is necessary just for like your own mental well being. Exactly, for survival, for well being. Not saying never do it ever because I would certainly not take that advice. But just find ways to check back in periodically and continue to find ways to engage with the world again in whatever way makes sense.

Emily: That was a very fun pop culture connection. Thank you.

Lauren: You are welcome.

Emily: There's just so many relatable things to find in this story, apparently.

Lauren: There are! And I'm really excited to see what the second half of this is, because we were able to pull so much out of Part 1 that we created ourselves. I'm interested to see what the second half has to offer. I hope it's just as fun.

Emily: I hope it's not impossible to recap.

Lauren: Well, good luck to you, my friend.

Emily: [laughing] Thoughts and prayers.

Lauren: Thoughts and prayers. Do you want to kick us off with our very first takeaway, given that you were spared from recapping this time?

Emily: My takeaway is that wishful thinking cannot make a person into the thing you want them to be.

Lauren: Mmm. That's a great final takeaway.

Emily: What's yours?

Lauren: I think my final takeaway is that even the most privileged situations can sometimes just be very gilded cages, which is not an original takeaway, but it is the takeaway that I got from this section in particular.

Emily: We never said these had to be original!

Lauren: This is very true.

Emily: For the number of times we have stolen each other's takeaways on air, absolutely doesn't have to be original.

Lauren: Valid point, valid point. And that's, that's what I'm taking away from this section today.

Emily: I think it's a very salient takeaway.

Lauren: Thank you. Thank you.

Emily: Well, that's part one of Catharine or the Bower, so tune in next time to see how things turn out for Kitty and this mystery man.

Lauren: Like and subscribe for more! Or you can actually just leave us a comment if you're listening to us on Spotify, and make use of Spotify's new comment feature, which is quite fun.

Emily: I do have to remember not to turn that off, because I think I turned it off one time, but I'll leave it on.

[outro music]

Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time, we'll finish "Catharine, or the Bower."

Emily: 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 catalog and links to our social media.

Lauren: If you'd like to support us and you get access to exclusive content, you can join our Patreon at Reclaiming Jane Pod.

Emily:: 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: We'll see you next time, nerds.

[music ends]

Emily: There were definitely multiple ramshackle treehouses in my neighborhood. Um, I mean, my family built Middle Earth in the backyard because we were those kind of nerds, but. [laughs]

Lauren: Because why not?

Emily: Yeah, I mean, I can just imagine these three girls out there brewing up potions and having their little fantasy escapes.

Lauren: I don't think we ever built anything, at least anything that lasted in my backyard, but we did - My childhood house backed up to woods, and I definitely remember going with my friends and seeing how far we could walk in the woods until we found Narnia. Um, spoiler alert, I unfortunately never did find Narnia. We did also try and follow a cat to see if it would lead us to any kind of magical realm. Uh, the cat just led us to my neighbor's house. It was very disappointing.

[both laugh]

Emily: I'm so sorry.

Lauren: I really thought that was going to be my moment. And I was going to find like the bridge to Terabithia or like, Mr. Tumnus or something, but no. Just more woods.

Emily: Tragic.

Lauren: Truly.