Love and Freindship: “Panic! in the Stagecoach”

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(sic)

Every teen's favorite pastime is getting questionable advice from their parents' childhood friends, right? Of course! Join us and poor Marianne as Laura's captive audience for the woeful tale of her youthful adventures, and then become our captives to hear about the Scottish highlands and female coming-of-age stories.

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 Love and Freindship.

[intro music]

Emily: Every time I try to take notes about this story, all of my autocorrect loses its mind.

Lauren: Yeah, autocorrect does not like the way that friendship is spelled.

Emily: Jane Austen apparently never got the I before E rule instilled in her - every single time, even when she's spelling like adieu in the sign off here, it's E I. That's not how any of this is spelled.

Lauren: Just for the record, when you're looking at this episode title, we did do that on purpose. That was not a typo. That is, adhering to the original style of Jane Austen.

Emily: Should we put a little "sic" in the title? [laughing]

Lauren: Only the real ones know. But I also, as I was reading this, I was, I had to look at the end to see which one of us was supposed to be recapping. And let me tell you the relief when I saw that it was not me. So godspeed friend, because I don't know, this is only 30 pages, but the number of events that happen in these 30 pages is ridiculous. So I'm glad it's you and not me. I'm not gonna lie.

Emily: Yeah, honestly, it's gonna be less of a full chronology and more of a... synopsis, I guess.

Lauren: We can have another, another vibes recap. I don't think that's a bad thing.

Emily: Okay, yeah. Because, god, I mean, I read this this morning and already, like, there are... I don't think I could tell you, beat for beat, how this story happens.

Lauren: Everything's a mess. And, uh, that's all you need to know. But of course we're going to tell you more information.

Emily: Obviously.

Lauren: Obvi. Okay, Emily, are you ready to do your best slightly chronological slightly vibey recap of Love and Freindship?

Emily: With those caveats? Yes.

Lauren: Fantastic. 30 seconds on the clock. Three, two, one, go.

Emily: So this is epistolary, and Laura is writing to Marianne, who is the daughter of her best friend, and she's describing all of the misfortunes of her life, which start with, like, a really hasty marriage, um, running around England with her bad decision husband, offending her both his family members and her own family members.

Multiple people get arrested and killed, and then in the end she settles down in Scotland to be miserable for the rest of her life about this, like, misadventure that only lasted -

Lauren: The end!

Emily: - a few weeks. I did it!

Lauren: [laughing] Right on the end. Well done.

Emily: Thank you. Wow, Laura sure did live a life in those mere weeks that this story lasted.

Lauren: Weeks that felt like years.

Emily: Truly. And she spent half of it traveling!

Lauren: Listen, she was determined to see the world, and see the world she did. Shall we tell our dear listeners how we're introduced to Laura in the first place?

Emily: Yes. So this - man, I was so excited when I saw that this was epistolary. And then it just kind of devolves into like regular narrative with the framing of being epistolary, which an epistolary novel is one that's told through the medium of letters. And I'm a huge fan of this style.

Lauren: Yeah, we had that for maybe two letters, and then it was gone.

Emily: But it begins with Isabel writing to her dear friend, Laura, to beg Laura to tell Isabel's daughter, Marianne, all of the misfortunes and adventures of her life.

Lauren: And as we will see throughout Laura recounting her adventures, there may be other motives for Isabel reaching out to Laura to say, tell my daughter about everything that you did. Laura takes this as, oh, she wants to hear my adventures. This is a huge undertaking for me, but sure, I will do so, but I don't - We'll see, based off of the description of Isabel, what her goal really is for getting Laura to tell her story to her daughter.

Emily: And Laura does say in her reply to Isabel, "May the fortitude with which I have suffered the many afflictions of my past life prove to her a useful lesson for the support of those which may befall her in her own." Yeah, I don't think that's - I don't think that was Isabel's aim. I think she intends Laura to be a cautionary tale.

Lauren: 100%. Uh, Laura is now 55 years old. She is far removed from her youthful days of misfortune, and now can serve as a lesson as to what not to do as you are reaching your teen years.

Emily: We begin with a little bit of a background on Laura. We learn that her father was a native of Ireland and an inhabitant of Wales. Her mother was the natural daughter of a Scotch peer by an Italian opera girl. Laura was born in Spain and received her education at a convent in France.

Lauren: And this is really like, highlighting that she had a nonstandard start in life, but also sets her up for why she really believes that it's her rightful place to be in the upper class. That's not where she started, but in her head, that's where she feels like she belongs.

Emily: And she goes on to describe just how accomplished and mature she was in school, but her only failing was that she had "a sensibility too tremblingly alive to every affliction of my friends, my acquaintance, and particularly to every affliction of my own."

Lauren: I will probably say this multiple times throughout this recording, but she reminds me so much of like early Marianne, and like an undeveloped Marianne. And it's so fun to see, like, especially since Marianne is the daughter in this story, but see how much of Laura of Love and Freindship probably eventually became Marianne's character in Sense and Sensibility, because, oh my goodness.

Emily: There is an excess of sensibility in Laura, absolutely.

Lauren: 100%. But Laura goes on to tell Marianne that her only friend when she was growing up was Marianne's mother, Isabel. Uh, there weren't too many people in the town, and they both were on hard times, as Laura makes sure to point out. She's being a little snide in this fourth letter to Marianne.

She says, "She may probably have told you that being left by her parents in indigent circumstances, she had retired into Wales on economical motives." It's like, just to let you know, in case your mom's been lying to you, your mama was broke too. So I was broke and she was broke. Let's just get that straight.

Emily: She also drops a little commentary on Isabel, "though pleasing both in her person and manners, between ourselves, she never possessed the hundredth part of my beauty or accomplishments." But she does allow that Isabel had seen the world, which consists of London, Bath, and Southampton.

Lauren: The world is just three cities in England.

Emily: Meanwhile, Laura literally spent most of her childhood at a French convent.

Lauren: And was born in Spain.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: But that doesn't matter.

Emily: It does not.

Lauren: And in the fifth letter, we learn that she was disrupted from her quiet, idyllic life in rural Wales by a knock at the door. And who could it be? After several knocks at their door, literally this whole letter is someone knocking at the door and Laura's whole family saying, "Who is it? Should we go see who it is? I don't know." And then they knock again. "Who is it? [laughing] Do we go see who it is?" And who could it be but a man?

Emily: "A noble youth who informed us that his name was Lindsay. For particular reasons, however, I shall conceal it under that of Talbot." Which never comes up again, ever.

Lauren: Poorly concealed.

Emily: Very poorly concealed.

Lauren; She wrote that and then immediately forgot. And Lindsay, or Talbot, we're going to go with Lindsay, "told us that he was the son of an English baronet, that his mother had been many years no more and that he had a sister of the middle size.

Emily: His father in villainous fashion has set up a marriage between this noble youth and a Lady Dorothea. And the the noble youth does very much like the company of the Lady Dorothea, but he is determined to never satisfy his father by giving in to his plans for him.

Lauren: And according to Laura, "the entire house admired the noble manliness of his reply," because it's just, it's so punk rock to rebel against your father.

Emily: Absolutely. "Never shall it be said that I obliged my father."

Lauren: [laughs] And it is just. Another typical paragraph courtship that happens towards the end of this letter, we've seen that in some of Jane Austen's earlier Juvenilia that we've read on this podcast where all of a sudden people just decide that they're in love and they go run off and they start their lives together.

Because in this case, towards the end of this letter, as he is, he's related his tales of his father and this horrible arranged marriage to a woman of his status with wealth and beauty and all that could recommend a woman, but because his dad wants it, he doesn't want to. He then says, "'and now my adorable Laura,' continued he, taking my hand, 'when may I hope to receive that reward of-'" quote unquote, "'all the painful sufferings I have undergone during the course of my attachment to you, to which I have ever aspired. Oh, when will you reward me with yourself?'" You just met.

Emily: Literally just met. You talked for three paragraphs, and now you've decided that you're going to get married. But, Laura says, "This instant, dear and amiable Edward!" And so her father, who is not ordained, has taken no orders, and is apparently Roman Catholic, marries them immediately. Because young Jane Austen just really loves a hasty and illegal marriage.

Lauren: Which just cracks me up so much. And the fact that they all know that her father is not ordained and has not taken orders... And so they know that this is yet another illegitimate marriage, but they're just going to roll with it, I guess?

Emily: Yeah, at least last time in Henry and Eliza, it was actually a priest, you know, it still wasn't legal, but...

Lauren: Wasn't legal. But you know, poor Lindsay has been suffering for the entire three paragraphs that he's narrated with just this unrequited love for Laura, and he really needed to see it through immediately. And Laura, of course, who is the sensible heroine, is just so overtaken with this sudden, violent declaration of love that she's like, let's go to the church right now. Let's get hitched.

Oh, I also loved the note that our footnote made about his terrible sense of direction as well. So he... [laughs] his father's house is in Bedfordshire and his aunt's estate is in Middlesex, and Lindsay says himself, "though I flatter myself with being a tolerable proficient in geography, I know not how it happened, but I found myself entering this beautiful vale, which I find is in south Wales when I had expected to have reached my aunt's."

Okay, so Bedfordshire is a county to the northwest of London. For those of you like me who do not have a map of England just constantly on hand in your brain. And it's only 30 miles north of Middlesex. And so instead of traveling this distance south to his aunt's house, Edward has traveled instead 100 miles west to this vale in Wales.

Emily: Incredible. What a man.

Lauren: You are not proficient in geography, sir. I don't have a sense of direction, and I know when I'm traveling 100 miles in the wrong direction. That takes a long time!

Emily: Yeah. Also, he had a servant with him. Was the servant just like, I'm gonna let him do it. Whatever. Not worth it.

Lauren: Honestly, he seems like the kind of guy to not listen to you when you tell him that he's not making sense. So I wouldn't be shocked if the servant was just like, you know what, I'm gonna pick my battles here. I don't really think it's worth it.

Emily: Honestly, I agree with him. But once they're successfully married, you know, upon that very night, um, they only stay in the Vale of Usk for a few days and then remove back to England to the estate of Edward's aunt, Philippa, in Middlesex.

Lauren: And Philippa, at least, is thrilled to see them. She receives them well. It seems like that's at least, uh, one person who holds her in high regard. However, his sister is not amused and not impressed.

Emily: Very much not. She's visiting the aunt when they arrive. And, Laura says, "She received me with equal surprise, though not with equal cordiality, as Philippa. There was a disagreeable coldness and forbidding reserve in her reception of me, which was equally distressing and unexpected. None of that interesting sensibility, or amiable sympathy in her manners and address to me, when we first met, which should have distinguished our introduction to each other. Her language was neither warm nor affectionate. Her expressions of regard were neither animated nor cordial. Her arms were not opened to receive me to her heart, though my own were extended to press her to mine." Can you... can you maybe, maybe come up with a single reason that your new sister in law might not be 100 percent thrilled with this?

Lauren: And even Philippa is - we're led to understand she's not exactly greeting her with like effusions of love, she's just not as cold as Augusta is. Because Laura says herself, you know, "she received us both with every expression of affectionate love. My arrival was indeed a most agreeable surprise to her." I mean, agreeable is Laura's editorialization of what the surprise was. "As she had not only been totally ignorant of my marriage with her nephew, but had never even had the slightest idea of there being such a person in the world."

Well, I mean, of course not. He met you three days ago and then married you the same day, but Philippa at least seems to be masking that a bit more. Augusta, on the other hand, is just giving her the stink eye, like, I don't know who you are, I don't know what you think you're doing with your brother, or with my brother, rather, and I don't like this, and I will make that opinion known.

Emily: This man got lost, ended up in Wales, came back with a wife, and the wife is like, why doesn't everyone love me so much?

Lauren: Can't you see how wonderful and sensible I am?

Emily: Oh, Laura.

Lauren: And Laura overhears a conversation between Augusta and her brother, in which Augusta pretty much tells him exactly what's on her mind, that their father is not going to stand for this, that this is an imprudent connection, that none of this makes any sense, and Edward, to his credit, is, you know, resolute in his desire to defy his father. Does he really care about Laura that much? Not really. But he really does care about defying his father. But this is not enough for poor Laura. Because why isn't Augusta instantly swooning over her?

Emily: And Augusta even has the audacity to suggest that they're going to need money from their father to support Laura, to support the both of them. And Edward replies, "Dost thou then imagine that there is no other support for an exalted mind, such as is my Laura's, than the mean and indelicate employment of eating and drinking?" Augusta says, "None that I know of so efficacious."

Lauren: Edward really thinks that they can just eat love and everything will be fine, whereas Augusta is like, you do realize that our dad is about to cut you off. You will have no money. You can be with this new bride if you want to, but you're going to be with this new bride and have nowhere to live. You're going to have nothing to eat. And then what are you going to do? He's like, We will eat love! We need nothing else.

Emily: Like, okay, but you'd need like protein and carbs and vegetables too. You know that, right?

Lauren: No, love only. Just, just love. Love conquers all.

Emily: And then who should appear? But THE Lady Dorothea, whom Edward was supposed to have married.

Lauren: She is ushered into the room, and Laura immediately follows her because she realizes exactly who it is. And she says, "Although Lady Dorothea's visit was nominally to Philippa and Augusta, yet I have some reason to imagine that, acquainted with the marriage and arrival of Edward, to see me was a principal motive to it."

I mean, yeah, I too, if somebody ran down the road and said, by the way, your betrothed has just come back with this random girl from Wales and he's declaring that he's not going to marry you, I would make haste across the lane.

Emily: I would be halfway down there already.

Lauren: Immediately. Immediately!

Emily: "Unfortunately, I soon perceived that though lovely and elegant in her person, and though easy and polite in her address, she was of that inferior order of beings with regard to delicate feeling, tender sentiments, and refined sensibility, of which Augusta was one."

Lauren: And because the scorned lady in question does not immediately fall upon Laura and ask her to share her most intimate thoughts, nor does she share any of her emotions with Laura, Laura declares that she "could not feel any ardent affection or very sincere attachment for Lady Dorothea." I mean, I don't really know why you expected anything different. You're not about to be besties. You stole her man!

Emily: [laughing] Yeah!

Lauren: That's not how this works!

Emily: Just the level of delusion is incredible.

Lauren: That honestly was, I'll bring this back up later, but you know the TikTok meme that's like, "being delulu is the solulu?"

Emily: Oh God. Yeah, that's what Laura is living her life according to.

Lauren: Mm hmm. 100%. Oh my goodness. But no sooner does Lady Dorothea leave the house than Sir Edward himself arrives. So Sir Edward is the father, Edward is the son. You in trouble now!

Emily: And Edward, of course, maintains his absolute refusal to please his father.

Lauren: And it's so funny seeing Laura's editorializing in all of these letters, because we can so clearly see how unreliable of a narrator she is.

Emily: We don't even need outside perspectives to know that she is not to be trusted.

Lauren: Which is even more incredible when we remember that she's writing this as a 55 year old woman. So she never actually reflected on this and said, Hmm, maybe I was a silly little girl. But after this outburst from Edward the Younger, Laura's description of that is, "so saying, he took my hand and while Sir Edward, Philippa and Augusta were doubtless reflecting with admiration on his undaunted bravery, led me from the parlor to his father's carriage, which yet remained at the door and in which we were instantly conveyed from the pursuit of Sir Edward." I. I don't know that admiration or bravery are words that they would be using.

Emily: He tells off his father. While everyone is standing around in shock, they steal his carriage and leave.

Lauren: Grand Theft Auto!

Emily: [laughing] Yes!

Lauren: [laughing] Tokyo Drift! We out!

Emily: So they steal Sir Edward's carriage and they drive off. They decide to seek the charity of Edward's dearest and greatest friend, Augustus, and his wife, Sophia.

Lauren: We have Augustus and Augusta because we just need to keep reusing names, I suppose.

Emily: Yes, of course. And Sophia, to Laura's delight, does prove to be that kind of person with whom she can form an immediate close friendship.

Lauren: They can share all of their heart's desires. They're instantly connected. And their husbands seem to be the same kind of ridiculously sentimental, because Laura is delighted to see how the two friends are reunited.

Emily: It's, it's interesting. It's interesting.

Lauren: Mm hmm. Um, so the, the dialogue of their, of their reunion is, "'My life, my soul!' exclaimed the former. 'My adorable angel!' replied the latter, as they flew into each other's arms. It was too pathetic for the feelings of Sophia and myself. We fainted alternately on a sofa."

Emily: Just like, I'm sorry, these men are in love.

Lauren: Mm hmm. My adorable angel?

Emily: My life, my soul?

Lauren: That's a lavender marriage. You can't convince me otherwise. No wonder he ran away from Lady Dorothea to go pick up with Laura. Laura is so head over heels, she doesn't even, she does not realize what's going on. Lady Dorothea probably has a little bit more going on up here and is going to clock it immediately. I see what you are. [laughs]

Emily: They receive by the end of the day, a letter from Edward's aunt, who says, "Sir Edward is greatly incensed by your abrupt departure. He has taken back Augusta with him to Bedfordshire. Much as I wish to enjoy again your charming society, I cannot determine to snatch you from that of such dear and deserving friends. When your visit to them is terminated, I trust you will return to the arms of your Philippa." To which they reply that, of course, if they have nowhere else to go, they'll totally come back to see her. And they can't fathom why she's a little offended by that response.

Lauren: Not rude at all.

Emily: Not rude at all.

Lauren: But they don't feel like they have to worry about anything because, of course, Augustus and Sophia have entreated them multiple times to just forever consider their home the home of Edward and Laura as well, and the four of them will just live together happily in harmony for as long as the money allows them to, at least.

Emily: The money, unfortunately, was stolen from Augustus's father, which is what allowed Augustus and Sophia to marry in the first place because they fully also eloped, just ran off. And the money's running out.

Lauren: The phrase that I underlined on this page where I just said, "this is such a teen book, I love it," was that, "after having so nobly disentangled themselves from the shackles of parental authority by a clandestine marriage,[laughs] they were determined never to forfeit the good opinion they had gained in the world, and so doing, by accepting any proposals of reconciliation that might be offered them by their fathers. To this farther trial of their noble independence, however, they never were exposed." Yeah, your parents are not reaching out an olive branch to you. You burned that.

Emily: They said good riddance.

Lauren: No, you burned the whole tree. It's all gone.

Emily: But with the arrival of Edward and Laura, their expenses have been so strained that Augustus is arrested for his debts.

Lauren: They really were just out here spending money like it was never going to go away, which, given this group, is not surprising.

Emily: Not at all. And of course, Laura and Sophia faint again.

Lauren: How else are you supposed to react to that news?

Emily: "What could we do but what we did? We sighed and fainted on the sofa."

Lauren: Oh, my goodness. That just, I just, I love this so much. And so much of that, like, diction and timing just reminds me of the way people tell stories when they're teenagers. And I love that it's showing up in Jane Austen's work as well.

Emily: It's so great. Yes. But after Augustus's arrest, Edward goes off to town to see him and lets the ladies decide what the next step is going to be. And so they make their decision, um, "agreed that the best thing we could do was to leave the house of which we every moment expected the officers of justice to take possession." And they wait for Edward, and they wait for Edward, and they wait for Edward, and they wait for Edward, and he never comes back.

Lauren: Like well, um, don't really know what we're supposed to do with that other than faint again, because that's the only possible reasonable response to this type of situation.

Emily: Mhm. But Laura masters herself and packs up some necessaries for herself and Sophia, and they hop in a carriage and head off to town.

Lauren: And while they are in town, they are trying to ask everyone they meet, or Laura at least, is attempting to ask of every decent looking person that they've passed, if they had seen her Edward. But unfortunately, she's asking these questions while the carriage is moving. So just picture the carriage continue down on the street as she goes by the way, like, have you seen my Edward? but they just keep moving. No one knows who Edward is, honey. You need to be more specific. And maybe ask the question while standing still.

Emily: Laura directs their driver to take them to Newgate, where Augustus has presumably been imprisoned. And Sophia says, Oh, no, no, I couldn't handle it. I could never actually see him there. Um, they must do something else.

And so Laura says, "You may perhaps have been somewhat surprised, my dearest Marianne, that in the distress I then endured, destitute of any support and unprovided with any habitation, I should never once have remembered my mother and father or my paternal cottage in the Vale of Usk. To account for this seeming forgetfulness, I must inform you of a trifling circumstance concerning them which I have as yet never mentioned."

Remember, it's only been like days, maybe weeks, since she left. "The death of my parents a few weeks after my departure is the circumstance I allude to. By their decease, I became the lawful inheritors of their house and fortune. But alas, the house had never been their own, and their fortune had only been an annuity on their own lives. Such is the depravity of the world."

Lauren: The only thing I see wrong with this is that given what we know of Laura as a character, it's hard to believe that she didn't also fall into like a fainting fit when she heard about her parents - heard about their deaths, one, and then would have recovered when she realized like, oh, wait, am I rich? And then gone into another fainting fit when she realized that, oh, no, I'm still broke. But it's like, she's, she's very focused on the story that she's telling Marianne. So I can see how that detail would have slipped in her retelling, but we didn't really need another recounting of her fainting spells.

Emily: Fortunately, Sophia recalls that she has a relation in Scotland, "who I am certain would not hesitate in receiving me." And so they decide, okay, we'll just head up to Scotland. Why not? That's the best option we have, somehow.

Lauren: It's a hop, skip, and a jump away from here. Why not?

Emily: They have just written off their husbands at this point.

Lauren: They have no idea where they are. At this, and like, because they could very well just go to the prison and try and get Augustus out, but because poor Sophia can't even entertain the notion, he's just going to stay there, I guess. That's better.

Emily: And they won't actually stop long enough to get an answer from someone who they've asked if they saw Edward.

Lauren: one of this plan makes sense, but that's okay. We're just going to roll with it.

Emily: But up to Scotland they go, and on stopping in the last inn of their journey, um, they send a note to Sophia's relation, but before any of that can be replied to, a grand carriage with, like, a coat of arms rolls into the inn yard, and this man steps out who Laura immediately realizes, or decides, is her grandfather. It turns out she's correct. This is the Scotch peer who had fathered her mother with an Italian opera girl.

Lauren: She knows because "an instinctive sympathy whispered to her heart." And her grandfather, I guess, is the same kind of foolish, because he's like, oh my god, my long lost grandchild!

Emily: And then his other long lost grandchild, Sophia, who is the daughter of another of his illegitimate daughters, and then two gentlemen roll in who turn out to be the sons of his third and fourth daughters. What a circumstance.

Lauren: Who would have thought that they all four would have showed up at the same inn on the same night? And also, way to find out that Sophia and Laura are cousins.

Emily: I know, which is like never commented on again. So we have Laura, Sophia, Philander, and Gustavus.

Lauren: And once all four of them are gathered, then, um, Deep Pockets Granddaddy is like, Oh, I'm so happy to have all four of my illegitimate grandchildren with me today. How would you like to have four banknotes of 50 pounds each? Um, and he just says, "take them. And remember, I have done the duty of a grandfather." And he leaves.

Emily: Just fucks off.

Lauren: Leaves, leaves the house, leaves the inn, leaves the narrative completely. His only purpose is just giving them each 50 pounds.

Emily: Sophia and Laura immediately declaim this behavior and faint in each other's arms. And by the time they've come round, their two cousins and their own banknotes have also disappeared.

Lauren: Their cousins took that money and ran. It's like, the fact that they actually got the mulligan of, Hey, you have no money and you're destitute, but here's a hundred pounds between the two of you. They could have made that last for so long!

Emily: But no, they had to do a little mutual fainting act.

Lauren: That will come back to bite them in the butt later as well.

Emily: Fortunately, this other relation of Sophia's turns up and allows them to come and stay at his home. And they repay this kindness by convincing his daughter that she does not want to do his bidding and marry a perfectly genial man. Um, she actually wants to run off with this captain, who she barely knows, who has never spoken a word to her, really, who's never expressed any kind of affection. But Sophia and Laura are so insistent. They convince this girl she is violently in love with Captain McKenzie. And they manage to also write to him and convince him of the same thing. And so, Janetta and Captain McKenzie elope. And Sophia and Laura are like, job well done.

Lauren: They're just out here ruining lives. And there's nothing wrong with the man that McDonald, who is Sophia's cousin, has chosen for his daughter. The only fault is that the man was chosen for her by her father. And they say, well, we can't have that. You must simply go with this other man over here. And she's just like, well, I dunno, I've never really, never really thought about him that way. And they're like, oh, nonsense! Surely there's something. But they're only gone a couple hours, and then their scheme is discovered.

Emily: The scheme is discovered because Sophia is casually stealing some money from her cousin who has so kindly put her up. And so he walks in, and in her indignance, she gives away the whole game. It's been mere hours since these two have run away. He doesn't even know yet, and she gives it all up.

Lauren: And she has enough audacity to get mad at him for being mad at her. She's like, well, why are you invading my privacy? He's like, I'm not - this is my room!

Emily: You're in my office taking money from my desk!

Lauren: What do you mean?!

Emily: I want to see the crime movie of Laura and Sophia's rampage through Great Britain.

Lauren: I wish I could see that. And, of course, to no one's surprise, McDonald kicks them out and he says you need to be out of here in half an hour. Pack your things, and go.

Emily: So, off they head, and once again Sophia is in the process of being overcome by thoughts of her Augustus when they are fortunately relieved by an accident truly apropos. A phaeton overturns quite near them, and they go off to discover what has happened, only to find "Two gentlemen, most elegantly attired, but weltering in their blood," and who should it prove to be but Edward and Augustus?

Lauren: And do they do anything to save them? No, no, no, that would, that would require more sense than sensibility. But what they do do is for an hour and a quarter alternate fainting. They faint, they scream, they faint again, they wake up, they scream, they faint, and they do that for 75 minutes.

Emily: Then finally, Laura discovers that Edward is actually still alive, and says, "'Oh, tell me, Edward. Tell me I beseech you before you die. What has befallen you since that unhappy day in which Augustus was arrested and we were separated?' 'I will,' said he, and instantly fetching a deep sigh, expired." So Sophia faints again, and Laura "runs mad for a while," as she puts it.

Lauren: What. Is. Incredible, too, is that Laura says, "Had we indeed before imagined that either of them lived, we should have been more sparing of our grief. But as we had supposed when we first beheld them that they were no more, we knew that nothing could remain to be done but what we were about." All I could do was just run around and completely lose my head and scream and cry.

Emily: What could we do but what we had done?

Lauren: There's nothing else to do. Like, go check on them! Oh my god. And then it's like the the grief endurance - forget about running marathons. For them, it's a marathon of like who can be the most effusive and violent in their grief for longest. So after her husband finally passes away, then they go back into their fits of grief. And she says, "thus, I continued wildly exclaiming on my Edward's death," because she's just been talking nonsense, and then says "for two hours did I rave this madly and should not then have left off as I was not in the least fatigued. Had not Sophia, who has just recovered from her swoon, entreated me to consider that night was now approaching and that the damps began to fall." Like I really would have been able to keep going, nd I was really into my swing of things with grief, but like, it's about to be dark outside. So I guess -

Emily: I really hit that flow. But you know, Sophia wants to go inside.

Lauren: Yeah, I could have gone for like another 10 miles. But.

Emily: Very conveniently, there's a little cottage nearby. So they go and beg the widow and her daughter there for a night's lodging, which they kindly provide.

Lauren: And now we have reached the 14th letter, which Laura opens with "Arm yourself, my amiable young friend, with all the philosophy you are mistress of, summon up all the fortitude you possess, for alas, in the perusal of the following pages, your sensibility will be most severely tried." It's really not that deep.

Emily: In the morning, Sophia starts complaining about aches and pains, and is terribly, terribly indisposed, and grows gradually more and more ill in the house of these random strangers, who are still putting them up, apparently. Um, and Sophia eventually succumbs to consumption and dies.

Lauren: A very fashionable death for a very sensible young woman.

Emily: Oh, very fashionable. Yes, indeed.

Lauren: Must make it as dramatic and pitiful as possible.

Emily: Mm hmm. She makes an excellent speech to Laura in her last moments. "'My beloved Laura, take warning from my unhappy end and avoid the imprudent conduct which has occasioned it. Beware of fainting fits, though at the time they may be refreshing and agreeable, yet believe me, they will in the end, if too often repeated and at improper seasons, prove destructive to your constitution. My fate will teach you this. I die a martyr to my grief for the loss of Augustus. One fatal swoon has cost me my life. Beware of swoons, dear Laura. A frenzy fit is not one quarter so pernicious. It is an exercise to the body, and if not too violent, is, I dare say, conducive to health and its consequences. Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint.' These were the last words she ever addressed to me."

Lauren: I have to say I'm loving the last words of the characters in this book. There's, "I will," and then croaks, and "run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint." And you have to imagine that she just goes, [sigh] and dies.

Emily: One final swoon.

Lauren: Final swoon into death's cold arms.

Emily: And then Laura takes herself off from the melancholy sight of her friend's early death, and in the dark finds herself joining a stagecoach. She can't tell how many fellow travelers there are in the coach, just that there are many of them. And she drifts off to sleep lamenting the absolutely impertinent snoring of another one of these travelers.

Lauren: Honestly, how dare they?

Emily: "What an illiterate villain that man must be!"

Lauren: It turns out that she's actually in a stagecoach with everyone she's ever met. You know, who knew?

Emily: Mmhmm. Isabel is there, as well as Philippa, Edward's aunt, um, his father and sister, and her two cousins, who stole the banknote and absconded, are also on the back.

Lauren: And Lady Dorothea is also there.

Emily: Dorothea, right. I forgot her too. There's just too many people.

Lauren: Everyone's in the stagecoach. Panic in the stagecoach.

Emily: [laughs] Truly. And so, Laura recounts the whole sad affair of what has happened since she left all of them. Isabel is full of pity and surprise. Uh, "but I am sorry to say that to the eternal reproach of her sensibility, the latter infinitely predominated."

Lauren: [sighs] Oh, Laura, Laura, Laura. It's the fact that she also calls her late husband's sister a cold and insensible nymph. After she asks, Augusta says, "What? Is my brother dead then? Tell us, I entreat you, what has become of him?" And Laura says, "Yes, cold and insensible nymph, that luckless swain your brother is no more, and you may now glory in being the heiress of Sir Edward's fortune."

Emily: Like, Augusta never gave any indication that she had an interest in that. She just says, my brother's dead, what the fuck happened?

Lauren: [laughs] It's a normal response! Oh, my goodness. And Laura also describes to Marianne that, you know, she just could not understand why Marianne's mother, Isabel, was not really, not really getting it. It just wasn't clicking. It's like you have one reasonable friend. That's your one reasonable friend, the one person who's going to tell you like it is.

Emily: Mhm. But it turns out that they're all here because Philippa's imprudent marriage to this fortune hunter of a man had ended up with them just being, like, tour guides in the Scottish Highlands, and Augusta and the rest of this family had decided to go up to Scotland and toss a little money in their pockets by using their coach service, which apparently just goes to and from Edinburgh and Stirling like every other day. And so they've just been doing that.

Lauren: Like, you know what, we have to support these poor souls. She made a terrible choice, but that doesn't mean we're gonna leave her destitute. They finally get to the town, and they're able to disembark from the stagecoach to have breakfast, and so Laura is determined to go speak with her two good for nothing cousins who stole a hundred pounds from her.

Emily: And they relate their whole sad sorry tale, which winds up with the fact that they had stolen all of their own mothers' remaining money, left them to starve to death, spent all their money in seven weeks and one day, when they had budgeted it for two full months. So they joined a theater troupe, which consisted of four people, they only ever did Macbeth, and then they quit that too.

Lauren: And they spent 900 pounds. In seven weeks.

Emily: And one day.

Lauren: And one day, I'm sorry, the one day was very important. 900 pounds between the two of them

Emily: The 900 pounds was the remainder of 9,000 that their mothers had used over the last 15 years to raise them, and they killed that last 900 in mere weeks.

Lauren: And left their mothers to starve. On accident, of course.

Emily: Of course. But in the end, "I thanked the amiable youth for his entertaining narration, and after expressing my wishes for their welfare and happiness, left them in their little habitation and returned to my other friends who impatiently expected me." So she just has this little aside, gets their story, and is like, alright, peace!

Lauren: I would try and get my hundred dollars back. I mean, really, it's only 50 for her, but still.

Emily: Seriously.

Lauren: They finally arrive to Edinburgh, and Sir Edward, out of the goodness of his heart, he's truly been so unfairly maligned by Edward and Laura, but says that as the widow of his son, he really wants to give her 400 pounds a year. And Lara accepts this, but not without one last little barb, which is not in her best interest, and I don't know how she is able to keep this 400 pounds, but she "graciously promised that I would, but could not help observing that the unsympathetic baronet offered it more an account of my being the widow of Edward than in being the refined and amiable Laura."

Emily: Yeah, no shit. He had no connection to you other than the fact that you unwisely married his son.

Lauren: An illegitimate marriage, mind you. Like, they were never actually really married. He doesn't owe her anything.

Emily: But, finally, "I took up my residence in a romantic village in the Highlands of Scotland, where I have ever since continued, and where I can, uninterrupted by unmeaning visits, indulge in a melancholy solitude, my unceasing lamentations for the death of my father, my mother, my husband, and my friend."

Lauren: Oh, goodness. And then she gives a couple updates and just where the rest of the cast of characters are now, it's the equivalent of like the, um, end of a movie that you'd watch on TV, where the music is playing, and they have a clip of somebody who's like, in the middle of shooting a basketball, and then it's a freeze frame, and it's like, "Zac Efron really did win with the Wildcats," and then it moves on to the next one, like, just - [laughing]

Emily: [laughing] Yes. Just the little epilogues.

Lauren: Little epilogues. You know, like, Augusta got married to a man who she met when she was in Scotland. Sir Edward married Lady Dorothea, so all of his wishes for an heir could be answered. Her two cousins removed to Covent Garden, where they still exhibit under the assumed names of Lewis and Quick, who were real people. So Jane Austen's like poking some fun at that. And Philippa died, but her husband still drives the stagecoach back and forth.

Emily: And that's it.

Lauren: The end.

Emily: What a wild and harrowing tale that Laura has held onto all this time. And you can just imagine Isabel being like, I'm this woman's only friend. If I abandon her, she has literally nothing. But like, please, for the love of god, at least I can get a cautionary tale for my daughter out of this.

Lauren: It's like, and you have to wonder what's going on with her daughter, too, to where I wonder if she's seeing some, um, worrying traits in her daughter and saying, you know what, we're going to nip that in the bud right now.

Emily: Oh, a little excessive sensibility, perhaps.

Lauren: A little excessive. She is Marianne. So I don't know, in the Jane Austen cinematic universe, maybe. Maybe Marianne is just Marianne from Sense and Sensibility and she's already showing signs of being too sentimental. [laughing]

Emily: Oh god. But an absolutely wild tale, very clearly told through the lens of an unreliable narrator.

Lauren: A hundred thousand percent. But I loved it so, so much. And this is also, like I said, such a teenage piece of writing, which makes sense because Jane Austen would have been about 14 or 15 as she was writing this. And it's just, it's excellent. I'm obsessed with it.

Emily: Once again, we have the wild swings of drama. We do have, uh, in line with her, you know, the trajectory that she's been on chronologically, um, a greater understanding of interiority, and getting more into people's motivations, but still not letting go of the absurdity of the story as well. She's like, okay, I've, I've crafted this story and it's absolutely outrageous. What motivations would this person have for going through with all of this? And it's so beautifully un-self-aware on the narrator's part.

Lauren: And that was one of the other things that I really liked too, is that you can tell that she's learning how to trust her audience more. Whereas in earlier works, she kind of makes sure to spell everything out so you can tell that the main character is ridiculous, but the narrator, like not necessarily the character, the narrator will tell you that the character is ridiculous as well. With this, she knows that she doesn't need to, Laura's unreliable narration is going to speak for itself, and so she's realizing what she can do to be able to get that message across to her audience in a bit more of a subtle way, which is really cool.

Emily: And yeah, I definitely think that it develops into things like, um, letting us read Lady Catherine's dialogue in Pride and Prejudice and not having further explicit commentary on that, but getting lines like, oh, "if I had ever learned I would have been a great proficient," and just letting the audience go, ah, I see what kind of person you are.

Lauren: Draw their own conclusions.

Emily: Absolutely. And that is Love and Freindship. Do you have any further commentary before we move on?

Lauren: I think I provided most of my commentary live as we were re-summarizing, so I'm happy to hear what your historical connection is for the romp that is Love and Freindship.

Emily: Yeah, it's one that I have not touched on before because we haven't really been in Scotland previously. The emergence toward the end of the story of this idea of Highland tourism was like, hmm, what's going on with that?

So obviously, there's a long and complicated political history between England and Scotland, um, with England insisting that Scotland should be subject to the English throne, there's been long struggles for independence. Ultimately they had been unified under a single monarch when James VI of Scotland became James I of England. Those crowns were still separate, but yeah, there's a whole, whole complicated thing, uh, going on with that.

And in the 18th century, there was increasing English tourism to the Scottish Highlands. This area is both physically and culturally distinct from the lowland and coastal areas of Scotland, uh, partly because the geography just makes it difficult to get to. It's a terrain thing. But better cartography during this era was really opening up the region to outsiders. And there was also the prevalence of these romantic ideals of the "noble savage," which led to this increased commodification of perceived primitiveness.

So Highland peoples were being, um, forcibly integrated into both the moral and military affairs of Great Britain as icons of frugality and simplicity and loyalty. Uh, there's a lot of internal imperialism going on in Great Britain. They weren't just conquering the rest of the world. They were also still after the indigenous peoples of their own islands. There was a really strong trend toward romanticization of rural life, uh, and tourism as aesthetic escapism, so leaving these increasingly urbanized and industrializing landscapes of England for the more natural scenes of the Highlands.

We also see a lot of this today with the rise of things like cottagecore and like agritourism. It's all very romanticized. It's all about the aesthetic of it. There's no actual interest in, you know, the day to day challenges of living that kind of life. It's all about the romance.

And I wanted to share an excellent quote from this book, Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination by Silke Stroh. This is on page 116 if anybody wants to go find it. Uh, so it says,

"It is particularly important that subjugation and control function as prerequisites for romanticization, and romantic images of Scots or Celts show many commonalities with other more overtly hostile variants of colonial discourse. Romanticism often values cultural difference for its own sake, professes a desire to preserve it, or at least laments its passing. Frequently, however, sociocultural change was already a fait accompli. Romantic nostalgia only set in after the 'noble savages' were under control, that is, when the Other was no longer dangerous and the civilizing mission had already been partially successful. The same was true for nature. It had to seem reasonably tameable before the last wildernesses could be romanticized."

Lauren: That's a great quote.

Emily: It was delightful. I am absolutely putting that book on my list of things that I want to go read in full. And as with many things that I have discussed in, like, our history section, it's definitely just kind of a background just sort of taken for granted in, the narrative of Austen's work, but there's, there's a lot of, um, complicated and often very dark history there. Uh, and, you know, an entire people who have been subjugated, uh, who ultimately become just sort of the background, like, set dressing almost, for these little whims and travels of middle class English people.

Lauren: And that's such a... I feel like you can draw a direct through line to that same thing still happening today. So it's so important to think of how it originated and what that context is, because I think - I can't speak to what the romanticization is like from people who are in the UK, but like, American people love to romanticize Scotland and England, but like, I think Scotland still occupies a different place in the American imagination.

Emily: Scotland and Ireland, I think, are distinct.

Lauren: Yeah. And I think that because there's still that, like, air of mysticism that people place upon those two countries. And I was thinking about like the Outlander tours. And when you were talking about like the Highlands tours. Like, treating Scotland as, like, a place from a book instead of treating Scotland as a place.

Emily: Yeah. It's a, it's a different level of fetishization.

Lauren: Mmhmm. Yeah. That's a great connection. Thank you.

Emily: Thanks. What do you have for pop culture today?

Lauren: Not as academic.

Emily: I mean, it's pop culture. It's usually not. Although, you've been fairly academic lately.

Lauren: It's a valid point. Um, so I was thinking about, um, the teenage coming of age movie and specifically the like teenage girl coming of age movie, because I feel like Love and Freindship reads to me like you were saying, I want this to be an adventure film. I was like, I want this to be like a really ridiculous, like, summer teen coming of age movie where it's like, uh, Laura is making all these terrible decisions and she and her friends hit the road and get up to hijinks.

Emily: I was gonna say, it's a summer road trip movie.

Lauren: It's a summer road trip movie. And so that made me think of Crossroads. Did you ever watch that movie? And do you know what that is?

Emily: No, I don't think I've ever heard of it.

Lauren: Okay, so Crossroads is - this is not going to be a direct one to one comparison because I also did not remember much of the plot when I was thinking this connection in the first place, but I think there's enough to be able to draw a connection to begin with, but Crossroads came out in 2002. It is a teen road comedy drama film starring Britney Spears, which is the main draw of this movie, and something I went to go see in theaters when I was nine because I was obsessed with Britney Spears.

Other people who you might know recognize as being involved in this movie in some way: Zoe Saldana is in the movie as one of Britney's besties. So is Taryn Manning, who most people know as Pennsatucky from Orange is the New Black. Kim Cattrall is in it from Sex and the City. And the screenplay is by Shonda Rhimes. So.

Emily: What is this movie?!

Lauren: So it's set in Georgia, and it centers on three girls on a cross country road trip as they find themselves and their friendship in the process, which, is this not Love and Freindship?

But this is a little bit - more because it is written for the screen and for a modern audience, and also not just written by a 15 year old for fun, it does have a little bit more of the lessons being learned from drama than Love and Freindship does. So it's not quite the same like floaty light tone throughout. The girls in this movie do get into and discuss some really serious situations that they learned from. And so the tone isn't a direct comparison, but it is a lot of girls leave home and make terrible decisions and get up to hijinks, but they're free and so they can go do whatever they want.

And the premise is that the three girls, so Lucy, Kit, and Mimi, they grew up together in this small town. And when they're kids, they bury a wish box and they say that they're going to dig it up on the night of their high school graduation. But as they get older, they grow apart a little bit, as you do when you become friends when you're really little. One of them, Lucy, becomes like the really shy, smart girl. She's valedictorian at their high school. Um, Kit becomes the most popular girl in school. And then Mimi becomes an outcast from the trailer park because she got pregnant.

To give you a visual, Britney is Lucy. So Lucy is the one who is like the shy valedictorian. Zoe Saldana is Kit, and she is the one who is the most popular girl in school. And then Taryn Manning is Mimi, and she's the one who's like ostracized from the trailer park. And Jamie Lynn Spears, of course, is also in this movie playing a young Lucy, because of course she is. If you can get siblings, why not?

And so on the night of graduation, they reunite despite the fact that they're all in different cliques now, and they dig up their wish box, and they remember what their old wishes were. Um, Kit wanted to get married. You can, okay, you can do that. Um, Lucy wanted to find her mother who abandoned her. And then Mimi wants to go to California. And so Lucy and Kit are trying to convince Mimi, who is five months pregnant, not to go to LA to audition for a record company. But then the next morning, they're like, actually, let's go. Kit is going to go see her fiancé, who's a student at UCLA. So she's like an 18 year old fiancé, I guess, engaged to like a college student, because this makes sense. Again, similar to love and Freindship. It's, it's just two girls who are both equally delusional, looking at each other going, Exactly, exactly.

Emily: Yes, you're not crazy!

Lauren: You're not crazy! This makes so much sense. You should totally call him. And meanwhile, um, Lucy wants to go find her mom in Tucson. So they all decide they're going to go get in this car, and they're going to go achieve their dreams. They're going to fulfill all the wishes in their wish box.

So they leave in the car of one of their dads, um, with Mimi's friend, Ben, and like, so they steal a car. So a little grand theft auto going on here because why not just steal a 1973 Buick from your dad and hit the road? Um, casual. And then of course, like hijinks ensue.

So I won't go into like the entire plot detail of this movie, but like, the car breaks down, they have to go sing karaoke in a bar in New Orleans, actually, for tips. Um, Mimi's supposed to be the one who's a singer, but she gets stage fright, so Lucy, who's Britney Spears, steps in and like, sings for her instead, and of course she's good, and like, everyone is obsessed with her. Um, they hear a rumor about like, a friend going to jail for like, killing someone, like -

Emily: This is Love and Freindship!

Lauren: Yeah! [laughs] And there's just drama at every turn. So like, Lucy finds her mom, but then there's like a twist where Lucy finds out that she wasn't wanted in the first place. And she was an unintended pregnancy and her mom wants nothing to do with her. And so Lucy leaves heartbroken. It's a whole thing.

But the first thing I thought of when I was thinking about what's a good pop culture comparison to draw is Crossroads and Love and Freindship. But then it also just made me think about how there's such a lack of those type of like, coming of age movies that speak specifically to the teenage girl experience.

And I think part of it is because so many of them now go... you know, back in the day it was like straight to VHS or straight to DVD and now it's straight to streaming, but we don't have as many of those like cultural touchstones anymore, where we get a big theatrical release, people go to the theater, it exists in like the collective social consciousness for a while as something that we can make a pop culture connection to because our Netflix algorithms will serve as what they think that we want to watch. And so a lot of these movies either don't get made or if they are made, they're kind of languishing in digital shelves, waiting for somebody to see them and pick them up. And I think we miss so much and like teen girls are missing so much by not having their experiences reflected back at them on screen.

So I think my pop culture connection in theory is just the connections that you can make between like, teenage road trip coming of age films like Crossroads and Love and Freindship. But the big takeaway from my pop culture connection is that we are missing those movies and they're not being made as frequently anymore. And I really wish that we could bring them back because I think people derive them all the time, but they're such a necessary part of like, theatrical canon. And it, yeah, I think we all miss something by not having them.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. I love that connection. That was great.

Lauren: Thanks.

Emily: Well, that wraps up Love and Freindship. Shall we move to final takeaways?

Lauren: I think we should.

Emily: You're up first.

Lauren: I think my final takeaway is that you need balance in your friendships. You cannot just have a friend who's going to constantly enable you and create a feedback loop of fainting and running around and screaming. You need a friend who's going to like pat you gently on the shoulder and say, honey, I think maybe we should, um, we should rethink this. Maybe we should revisit and do something else. Maybe have a seat. Drink some water. Don't run off to Gretna Green. Just stay right there.

Emily: It's so important to have a friend who will call you out.

Lauren: Yes. What's your final takeaway?

Emily: I think mine is more of like a craft thing of, um, the interesting effectiveness of an unreliable narrator. Because it gives you that additional level of understanding of their character as well.

Lauren: Agreed.

Emily: They're just fun, too.

Lauren: Unreliable narrators are so fun.

Emily: Like, Laura, it was pretty clear from early on how unreliable she is, but it's always so delightful to uncover throughout the course of a story just how unreliable a narrator is.

Lauren: And Laura was up there.

Emily: But yeah, I think, I think that's my takeaway.

Lauren: Love it. I love that Laura remained unreliable even at age 55.

Emily: Yes, never once reflected on what happened.

Lauren: Why should she? Her life is perfect. Though honestly it is. I feel like I should have mentioned this earlier, but she hasn't made, she's a widow. She never has to marry again. She gets 400 pounds a year for doing nothing. It's the dream!

Emily: And she lives in the Scottish Highlands.

Lauren: Yeah. Fantastic. I'd be mad if I were Isabel. You made all those poor choices and you still get to just hang out forever for the rest of your life. This is dumb.

Emily: Some people have all the luck.

Lauren: Truly.

[outro music]

Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading Lesley Castle.

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 gain 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: See you next time, nerds.