Emma 21-25: “Get A Move On”
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We're moving and shaking and defending Robert Martin's honor.
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
Social Mobility in Film and Pop Culture
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Season 4 Episode 5 | Emma 21-25: “Get a Move On”
Emily: [00:00:00] 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 chapters 21 through 25 of Emma through the theme of movement.
Emily: I love how for the intro, we always sound very NPR.
Lauren: I feel like that's just kind of what our default is because we are the nerds who grew up listening to NPR.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: So when we think of like, Important professional audio people. That's the default cadence and tone that we go for.
Emily: And then we absolutely wreck it through the rest of the podcast.
Lauren: You know, who needs to continue being NPR when you can just be your usual selves.
Emily: we're delightful.
Lauren: It's personality.
Emily: It is.
Lauren: Lord knows there's lots of personality in these chapters that we had for today.
Emily: Wow. There was so much going on in these.
Lauren: Yeah. Lots of movement, if you will.
Emily: Lots of movement, both literal and metaphorical.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. I remember I ended last episode saying, 'I have no idea how I'm going to talk about movement, and then I was gifted with a section that has nothing but movement.'
Emily: You really were.
Lauren: It was perfect.
Emily: And Lauren had commented before we started recording that she can't wait to see if my history topic accidentally aligns with her pop culture topic. And I also can't wait to see because we don't know what each other's topics are beforehand unless there's a need for a heads up. So we will get to discover this together.
Lauren: I know. See now I'm gonna be upset if it's not the same. And we've like set this [00:02:00] expectation that we will have mind melded and aligned. And if it's totally different, it's gonna be very funny and it'll be entertaining, but I'll be like, Oh darn.
Emily: We'll make the most of it either way.
Lauren: You know, it'll be fun, it'll be entertaining.
Emily: Well, Lauren, you're up first for recaps.
Lauren: I know.
Emily: do you want to attempt to tell us what all happens in these five chapters?
Lauren: There is so much that attempt is a proper verb, so yes, I will attempt to say what's happened in these five chapters.
Emily: All right. Let me get my timer up. Three, two, one. Go.
Lauren: This is a section of much new, many new introductions and a lot of drama. First of all, Mr. Elton is married. We find that out towards the beginning of the section, he has found a new bride in Bath.
Everyone is a flutter. Harriet runs into Mr. Martin and his sister in the shop. It's very awkward. She tries to go pay them a visit to try and repair the situation, but it gets worse because she's only there for 15 minutes and it sucks. Frank Churchill has finally arrived, The man of mystery. He is agreeable, but he may be a little bit of an excessive, arrogant person, and also there's gonna be a dinner party with everyone in Highbury.
Emily: Nice. That was pretty good.
Lauren: Woo. There's so much that I still even left out. There's so much that happened.
Emily: There's so much.
Lauren: Emily, are you prepared? Are you ready?
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: All right. 3, 2, 1. Go.
Emily: Mr. Elton, who's wasting not a minute. He has already found a bride and he is getting married. Harriet runs into Mr. Martin and his sister at the shop in town, and she is all in a tizzy about it, and Emma graciously allows her a 14 minute visit to the Martins.
Which, Okay. Frank Churchill is finally coming. He turns out to be Unfailingly Pleasant, but I think there is something shady going on between him and Jane Fairfax, cuz they can't get their stories straight about Weymouth. And also there's a mild uproar about the propriety of the Cole's dinner party.
Lauren: Beautiful.
Emily: Woo.
Lauren: One second left.
Emily: so much happens.
Lauren: Okay. We have to just start at the beginning because otherwise we're going to get so caught up in all the different--. Mr. Elton, let's talk about that.
Emily: Wow. He's been [00:04:00] gone for less than a month, and the news comes through Mr. Cole, that he's found a bride in Augusta Hawkins.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. with 10,000 pounds to her name, allegedly.
Emily: Allegedly.
Lauren: Somewhere in that number. A number that must always have a 10 in front of it, I think is how it's glibly described. Yeah, you know, off to Bath he went and found himself a wife with no hesitation at all. And he's also very proud of himself because now, you know, he left a man scorned by the woman who he thought was encouraging him and would've been a woman of wonderful social standing.
And then not only was he scorned by her, he was insulted by the implication that the person who he should have been pursuing was someone who was so far beneath Emma, that he took that as a personal affront. So, you know, we're familiar with rebound relationships and then in the Regency you have rebound proposals, where you meet someone and propose in under four weeks.
Emily: You know, I'm sure that's not limited to the Regency.
Lauren: Oh, definitely not.
Emily: I'm sure it happens now too.
Lauren: I feel like there are several celebrities that we can point to who have gone through a rebound proposal.
Emily: Yeah, of course, Emma's primary concern in this is how poor Harriet will react because she turned out to be so much more in love with Mr. Elton than Emma had anticipated. But when Harriet arrives, after Emma has just gotten the news, she is completely obsessed with this awkward encounter she has just had with Mr. Martin and his sister Elizabeth at the shop in town.
Lauren: I mean, that's one of the most relatable things because who amongst us has not run into an ex in a unexpected or weird situation where you don't know, 'Do I make eye contact? Have they seen me? Are we going to act as though we don't see each other? Are we going to try and have this really awkward conversation where we make small talk and then one of us tries to escape?' It's very, it's just [00:06:00] very awkward and it's made worse for Harriet because she didn't actually want to turn him down in the first place, and so she still half in love with this man who thinks that she hates him.
Emily: It's so sad, and he and his sister are both unfailingly polite and the sister invites Harriet to come and visit them, which of course, obviously she wants to do. She spent a lovely time at their home the summer before, has no hard feelings against the Martins, except what Emma has tried to instill in her that, you know, sense that they're beneath her.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Which is absurd.
Lauren: For many reasons.
Emily: So many reasons.
Lauren: Harriet is upset about the news from Mr. Elton, but it pales in comparison to the weird encounter she's had with Robert Martin. And Emma was planning on having to gently and, you know, carefully break the news about Mr. Elton's marriage to Harriet, but she's so frustrated with the fact that Harriet won't stop talking about Robert Martin, that she just throws it into conversation without much elegance at all.
Emily: Just change of topic. I'm sick of talking about this.
Lauren: Anyway. By the way, did you know the man that you're in love with us getting married? Sorry.
Emily: The subtlety of a hammer. Yeah. Emma, again is really uncharitable to the Martins and even to herself accuses them of being ambitious in trying to secure Harriet to the family.
Lauren: Which does not make any sense.
Emily: I'm so offended on the Martins' behalf. Like for one, it's completely unreasonable because Harriet actually does not have any known connection that would raise her above their level.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: but also. That's just what, Why are you treating these people like that? They have never given any indication of trying to further their own station.
Lauren: And every time she comes close to having a charitable thought about them, it's like she specifically and intentionally turns her brain away from any train of positive thought. [00:08:00] So when Harriet is talking about how awkward the encounter was and how everything went down, Emma is listening to Harriet speak and is thinking, "the young man's conduct and his sisters' seemed the result of real feeling, and she could not but pity them. As Harriet described it, there had been an interesting mixture of wounded affection and genuine delicacy in their behavior." Which-- we're getting somewhere. And then the next sentence--
Emily: but!
Lauren: She ruins it. "But she had believed them to be well meaning worthy people before. And what difference did this make in the evils of the connection?"
Emily: It's not evil. They're perfectly respectable farmers. Mr. Knightley thinks extremely well of them.
Lauren: Let her go be a farmer's wife. Let her be happy.
Emily: Damnit Emma.
Lauren: though and after that is where she goes off on her tangent about how she thinks that the Martins are trying to use Harriet to raise themselves in society as though that makes any kind of sense at all.
Emily: None whatsoever.
Lauren: Absolute madness. And then we start in the next chapter, which is just another like brilliant line of narration and humor where we've moved on from the Martins and we are now back on the topic of Mr. Elton and his bride to be. And so the, the next chapter begins, "Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations that a young person who either marries or dies is sure of being kindly spoken of."
Emily: Truly, the world at large does not give Jane Austen enough credit for her humor.
Lauren: At all. At all. And she's still right.
Emily: She's still right.
Lauren: 200 plus years later, she's still correct.
Yeah, the town is a flutter about the news of the soon to be Mrs. Elton. She's not been there yet, but they know everything about her except for her Christian name and what kind of music she likes to play.
Emily: And Mr. Elton in his brief visit back to the village before he returns to Bath, is more than happy to provide both pieces of information.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Her Christian name is Augusta. I don't think we get to know what [00:10:00] music she plays.
Lauren: Mm-mm.
Emily: But I, I have a sneaking suspicion we'll find out eventually.
Lauren: If not through narration, through Mr. Elton speaking incessantly about his new bride. Just to rub it in Emma's face.
Emily: By the end of this chapter though, Emma has rerouted at least her own and Harriet's attention away from Mr. Elton again, and now back to the Martins. Because she has conceded that Harriet may have a short visit with Mrs. Martin and the Martin sisters.
She's decided that nothing above a quarter of an hour,
Lauren: mm-hmm,
Emily: would be proper.
Lauren: You want to be polite, but you also don't want them getting too many ideas, so you can't stay there for too long. You can show up, and then I'll come pick you up in the carriage and we'll leave again. So I'll drop you off. I'll go pay an equally short visit to this other person, and then I'll come pick you up again and we'll leave.
Emily: The social calculus.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: is absurd.
Lauren: That's a lot.
Emily: And after Harriet had apparently spent six weeks with the Martins the year before to only grace them with her presence for 15 minutes or 14, apparently by the time Emma gets back in her carriage.
Lauren: And Emma only figures out this is an insult after Harriet recounts what has happened over the course of the 14 minutes, because first of all, Robert Martin is not there, so she only meets with the mother and the Martin sisters.
And at first things are understandably a little bit awkward because of course, everyone in the room knows what has happened between her and Robert Martin. But you can't really address the elephant in the room without being rude. So they're a little cool, a little standoffish, but eventually Mrs. Martin remarks that Harriet's grown.
It seems like the ice has broken. They're kind of, you know, settling into an, a good conversation again. And then Emma pulls up in the carriage and Harriet leaves.
Emily: It's so sad.
Lauren: I feel bad for all of them. Especially Harriet. [00:12:00]
Emily: Yeah. I mean--
Lauren: by all of them I, I am excluding Emma by the way. I feel bad for the Martins and for Harriet. I do not feel bad for Emma.
Emily: Not an ounce of sympathy for Emma.
Lauren: No.
Emily: She is completely in the wrong here. But she's effectively isolating Harriet from her other friends because she wants her own little pet project all to herself.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: with no one else to interfere.
Lauren: And I hate it. And she's so vehemently opposed as we'll see in like the rest of the section as well to anybody else having any kind of social mobility except Harriet.
Emily: She's picked this one person.
Lauren: Mm.
Emily: That she's going to groom for greatness. But--
Lauren: and I think--
Emily: --only her.
Lauren: Only her, and I wonder if it's because in her brain, she's come up with this backstory for Harriet, where she must have been a gentleman's daughter. And so she's just restoring her to her rightful place instead of elevating her.
But there's, there's no evidence for that. So in practice, she's, you know, selecting this one person to be the chosen one, to be able to leave the social class into which she was born and ascend upward, but. Girl.
Emily: If Emma hadn't made up this mildly tragic backstory where Harriet was actually living beneath her station, I don't think she would care at all about Harriet.
Lauren: Mm-mm.
Emily: Because Harriet would fit into the same class as the Martins, where they're not poor enough to need her help and they're not wealthy enough or with enough social status to be her peers. So Harriet would just be invisible to her, like Harriet has been the entire time, because she's been at Mrs. Goddard's for years.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: It's just recently that she was promoted to parlor border and suddenly she's worthy of Emma's attention.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. Though, speaking of worthy of attention, I feel like that is the perfect way to start talking about the Coles.
Emily: Oh yes.
Lauren: They have recently become kind of like the second most wealthy family in Highbury, really second only to the, to the Woodhouses, but through trade, not through actual generational wealth.
Which means that even though they might be [00:14:00] almost equal to the Woodhouses in like actual wealth, they are not the same when it comes to class. However--
Emily: it's nouveau riche.
Lauren: Exactly. You know, it's just...it's not the same.
Emily: Money from trade.
Lauren: You know, how, gauche.
Emily: They had to dirty their hands for that.
Lauren: And inviting people who are actually members of the upper echelon of the upper class to dine with them. Emma must decline. Because it's an insult. They're not actually the same. Except for all of her friends are going to be there, and then she gets FOMO and maybe she'll actually go.
Emily: It really is FOMO.
Lauren: It really is.
Emily: Because the Westons are going to go. I think Knightley is going.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. I think Harriet's actually even gonna be there.
Emily: Oh yeah. I think Harriet was gonna go too.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: And then Emma's like, 'Wait a minute. I haven't gotten an invitation.' And she's trying to reason in a way that, well, maybe the Coles are cognizant of the difference in our stations.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: and they think it would be an insult for me even to be invited. But then they send a last minute invitation. It turns out they'd been waiting for the delivery of a fire screen so that if Mr. Woodhouse could attend, he would be comfortable. Which is so thoughtful.
Lauren: It really is. And Emma had been determined to refuse already, but by the time their invitation arrived, she's already heard about all the other people who were attending. Had their invitations arrived simultaneously... she was rather put out when she didn't get an invitation because she wanted the option of refusing. But since she knows everyone who's going now, since there's been some time for the gossip to circulate, Well now she couldn't possibly not go. She's gonna miss all the fun. What's she going to do? Stay at home with her dad again?
That's boring.
Emily: It's just all so overthought.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: and overwrought. But it's all in Emma's mind. No one else seems to have a care about, you know, being seen in the house of Merchant Wealth. And it's a very small village.
Lauren: And that the fact that it's a very small village that makes me think about [00:16:00] why these things are so overwrought in Emma's mind because she has literally nothing else to do.
Emily: She has no wider society. She's at the top of the heap.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: There's no one who's real competition with her. So she can pull her puppet strings with Harriet and she can maintain her own reputation among the local society. But that's about it.
Lauren: Her days are going to be making conversation with the same people. Maybe dabbling in the pursuits that she likes to pick up and then drop off again because she doesn't really have any hobbies that she seems to really enjoy. Going to pay charity to the people who she selected to care about for 15 minutes or less or less. There's not really that much variety in her life, which is why she's so excited when like Frank Churchill shows up because, oh my God, a new person.
Emily: Oh my goodness. The uproar over Frank Churchill, especially in Emma's mind, who of course immediately is like, 'Oh, everyone around us must see that I am being given special attention. I am exceptionally worthy of every little tribute that Frank Churchill pays to me.'
Lauren: I'm a special star.
Emily: Special snowflake, Emma Woodhouse.
Lauren: I can't with her.
Emily: I truly cannot. But Frank Churchill is exceptionally pleasing. He is a perfectly deferent and polite young man. He's very excited to be in the company of his father and the new Mrs. Weston. He's delighted by everything in Highbury, wants to prove himself as a, a real man of the village.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: by shopping in, in the local store.
Lauren: It seems a little bit too good to be true.
Emily: A little bit too good to be true. He. He's without flaw. You can't criticize him for anything.
Lauren: You know, I'm reminded of a conversation that Emma had with Mr. [00:18:00] Knightley where she was talking about how he would make himself pleasing to everyone, and Mr. Knightley said, I don't actually think that's a mark of good character. It appears he may have been right.
Emily: Yeah. One thing that sort of pings at the back of the mind is, his account of how well he knows Jane Fairfax.
Lauren: Mm-hmm!
Emily: Because in the previous section, Jane had said basically they met in company once or twice when they were in Weymouth at the same time, and he says they know each other very well.
Lauren: Mm-hmm, after at first, refusing to give any account of how well they know one another because of course, a lady must be the one to determine the acquaintance.
Emily: Which is also very funny.
Lauren: Which is also very funny. And Emma is basically complaining, 'Well, Jane doesn't tell me anything. She's super reserved and don't you think being reserved is just awful so you can pretty much say whatever you want.'
He goes, 'Oh great. We met all the time.' So that previous sentiment of only a lady should determine the acquaintance goes out the window immediately.
Emily: What, what an airhead thing to do.
Lauren: And she doesn't even pick up on the fact that he immediately contradicted himself because she's so eager to learn more about what Jane Fairfax isn't telling her.
Emily: She's just so frustrated by Jane's reticence.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Everyone else in the neighborhood is perfectly happy to bring Emma into their confidence, but Jane doesn't do that for, you know, perfectly valid reasons. they're not that close. Emma clearly doesn't really like her that much. But Emma cannot have that. She can't stand it because she wants to be the one pulling everyone's strings.
Lauren: And she cannot be disliked.
Emily: Absolutely not. But Frank Churchill gives her what she wants.
Lauren: He does, and is even the only one to make a somewhat negative comment about Jane Fairfax because he doesn't like her complexion. He says that she looks sick.
And Emma, even out of politeness, says, 'Oh no, I [00:20:00] think her complexion's very healthy,' blah, blah, blah. And he's basically saying, 'No, I think she's too pale. She looks rather sickly.' I don't believe that for a minute.
Emily: and it was uncalled for.
Lauren: It was uncalled for. But in the vein of knowing how to make himself pleasing to everyone, I think he can sense a little bit of jealousy from Emma's side and knows to endear himself to Emma, to insult this other person. Because even if she won't say it, secretly, she's gonna be like, 'Oh good. Someone else who doesn't fall at the feet of Jane Fairfax,' despite the fact that he went straight from the Woodhouse's home to go see Jane Fairfax. Minor detail.
Emily: Yeah. You don't go out of your way to pay a visit to someone like that if you don't have--
Lauren: That you've seen twice.
Emily: Yeah. If you don't have a connection.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Mm-hmm. There's something going on there.
Lauren: I'm suspicious.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: I have questions. Questions that need answers.
Emily: What is going on with Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax?
Lauren: I know if I keep reading, I'll find out, but I wanna know now. Is that pretty much, are those all the, the events of these, of these chapters?
Emily: Yeah, I think those are all the events.
Lauren: I think so.
Emily: Do you want to speak about where you saw movement in this section?
Lauren: Yes. So first of all, literal movement. People are all over the place. Mr. Elton is going back and forth between Highbury and Bath. Eventually when he comes back, he'll be bringing his Blushing Bride, but until then, he's kind of been, he made an appearance to brag and then he left again.
Frank Churchill has traversed the country to actually come and see them. He also randomly at the very end, goes to London and back just to get his haircut, which Emma does not look upon very favorably. She's--
Emily: his one flaw.
Lauren: Yeah. She sees it as rightfully excessive. It's like, I don't drive 16 miles to get my haircut and I have a vehicle. And he took a carriage 16 miles to London to go get a haircut. But anyway, [00:22:00] so he is also on the move multiple times over the course of the chapter. But the other, like, non-literal interpretation of movement is all the social mobility that is discussed or happening. So the Coles movement up within Highbury society based off of trade.
Mr. Elton's bride, Augusta also has her wealth through trade, through her parents, which Emma also is kind of snide about because when she's learning everything about this new person, that's one of the flaws that she picks out. Like, 'oh, well this person cannot be my equal. She might have 10,000 pounds in fortune, but her family made their money through trade and they're not far enough a move from that trade to be really genteel.'
But that was really the, the two biggest things, like the literal movement of people. Going all over the place in these five chapters, I feel like they just wanna traverse all of like the southern portion of England, and then all of the discussions of social mobility and who is able to take part in that, who is barred from that kind of social mobility. There was lots of that social movement or lack thereof that I felt like was really present.
Emily: Yeah, I noticed sort of like the other axis of that kind of social movement. Cause I was thinking about like the careful choreography that they're all doing around one another.
Lauren: Oh, yeah.
Emily: With what invitations can be given and who can visit whom and what things are appropriate or not.
And it's all like there's, there's clearly some kind of, you know, dance that they're all doing around one another, but we're not necessarily privy to it.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: just by virtue of being out of that period and out of that particular society, but there's, you know, prescribed steps to perform.
Lauren: It's choreographed.
Emily: It's really choreographed.
Lauren: And by whom?
Emily: Emma! So she wants to think.
Lauren: Yeah, if she has her way. [00:24:00] Yeah that's a really great point. I hadn't even thought about all of the careful maneuvering they're doing around each other as another type of movement. It is like a dance.
Emily: It was a fun topic to have for this section.
Lauren: It was!
Emily: As much as we didn't think we'd be able to find anything.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. That's the benefit of the tarot cards, I think, is that there are topics that we wouldn't have ever thought to apply to Austen that we get to use as a thought exercise.
Emily: Mm-hmm. I love a thought exercise.
Lauren: Clearly we both do because this is one giant thought exercise.
Emily: It really is.
Lauren: I didn't necessarily pull out specific passages, but the general idea I felt like permeated the entire five chapters.
Emily: Definitely. I mean, there's just, even with the fact of there being so many happenings, it feels like it's constantly in motion.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, definitely. I think because there's just so much to interpret and that's going on, that it does seem like we're moving forward at a really steady clip and constantly in motion as like readers of the story.
Okay. If those are all the places where we saw movement, what was your historical connection with movement for this section?
Emily: It was a pretty literal one.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: It hit me in a brain wave like halfway through my workday today, which was great because reading this section, I had no idea what I was gonna talk about, but it occurred to me that as much travel happens in Austen novels. I don't really know anything about how travel really happened.
Lauren: Oh.
Emily: So that's what I decided to try and research.
Lauren: Oh, okay. All right. Our topics are different, but I'm very excited.
Emily: Okay. Okay, good. So I was just kind of interested in figuring out like how do people actually physically travel?
What did it involve? How did it differ between [00:26:00] classes? Obviously these are the kinds of things that I'm interested in. And what did it mean for Frank Churchill to go 16 miles to London to get his haircut, which is still absurd. So travel was getting a little bit easier in Austen's time. I mean, throughout history people have always traveled a lot more than we tend to think.
It was just slow, but roads were improving, which was making travel by means other than foot a lot easier during her time. Partly this was due to an increase in toll roads where the fees were actually put back into the infrastructure.
Lauren: What?
Emily: I know what a concept, but the cheapest method of travel obviously was still walking. It would just take you a really long time to get anywhere. If you had a little bit of money, you could get a place on a long wagon that was usually also carrying goods. It was literally just exactly what you would think, sitting in the back of a wagon with however many other people would fit and whatever cargo they were carrying.
Lauren: Glamorous.
Emily: Super glamorous, but presumably better than walking. The next step up and probably the most common method for people who like had the means to use a vehicle of some kind was stage coaches. These kind of large coaching inns that were at frequent stops would sometimes keep up to 400 horses for changing out between--
Lauren: Wow.
Emily: Between stage coaches. The Royal Mail coaches were what really set the standard among travelers for both speed and security because they had to get the mail places on time and they had to not lose the mail on the way. So, you know, the people attending the coach would be carrying weapons to ward off highway men and stuff like that.
Lauren: Oh wow.
Emily: [00:28:00] Yeah. And mail coaches could actually carry sometimes as many as seven passengers. But the priority of a mail coach obviously is efficiency and the cargo safety, not comfort. So a mail coach wasn't really ideal if you wanna like travel in style. The horseback travel also happened, literally just riding a horse.
But it was mainly over pretty moderate distances and almost exclusively undertaken by men that I could tell, because horses were super expensive to own as Marianne Dashwood learned.
Lauren: Bless her heart.
Emily: Yeah. Normally you would rent a horse for that purpose also, because making an entire journey with just one horse would actually be pretty slow because they have to rest quite frequently.
As we move up in passenger comfort, you start getting into things like chaises and other vehicles that vary in size and speed and style for a number of purposes and budgets. So you have the kind of small, lightweight conveyances that people like Ms. Anne de Bourgh might ride in for just a little pleasure ride about. Things that are designed to be best on like smooth roads and not very arduous travel.
But if you're traveling any kind of distance, then going post by, by a coach from Stop to Stop was actually really flexible in terms of taking your time or seeing sites or anything like that. Making any kind of stops that you really need to, because you could just pause your journey at any point, get off the coach, stay as long as you want at whatever stop you want, and then just pick up with the next one.
And it also didn't come with like a financial penalty, as you might today when trying to arrange that kind of travel [00:30:00] by air or even by train, because the conveyance itself, and therefore the people and horses who are required for it, aren't being delayed. So you just, you pay in your chunks for the journey and you have your layover as long as you want it to be, and then you just move on to the next step.
Lauren: That's so convenient.
Emily: I know, right? Like I don't think I would really enjoy traveling post, but that kind of convenience sounds nice.
Lauren: It does.
Emily: So when it comes to actual time spent on the road, that can vary wildly because it's dependent on weather, primarily because you know when you don't have a bunch of nicely paved roads, things get muddy really easily, and then horses are in danger of slipping.
You could have really nasty accidents. It also depends on the kind of money you have to spend on horses and on the quality of your carriage. And presumably like the skill of the Coachman or whatever.
Lauren: Right, yeah.
Emily: But a private, lightweight vehicle, so probably something like the chaise that Mr. Frank Churchill would've taken to London can average about seven to eight miles per hour for a short distance on a good road. But the higher speed you're at, the more frequently you're gonna have to change horses. Up to sometimes like once an hour, you might have to change horses.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: So Frank's commute to London for his haircut 16 miles probably took him multiple hours each way, which I simply do not think is worth it. No matter how good your barber is.
Lauren: Have I waited to get my haircut when I was in college until I flew back home to go to the person who had been cutting my hair. Yes. Did I make the trip specifically to get my haircut? No. No, though I will [00:32:00] say that that comes with a caveat of I feel like black hair should be in its own category.
Emily: I mean, that's fair.
Lauren: However, I cannot condone Frank Churchill going 16 miles. You could have found a barber for your head in Highbury. You do not have to go all the way to London.
Emily: Like, who cuts Mr. Knightleys hair? Go to that guy.
Lauren: There's, there's somebody around. Your hair type is not that different from everybody else in the village. I'm sorry. You don't need special scissors. What are you doing?
Emily: So yeah, that context just makes it feel like even more of an excess.
Lauren: It does.
Emily: That he went all that way, all that trouble just to get his freaking haircut. Like really?
Lauren: He had been suppressing the rich kid in him for too long.
Emily: He's been there like a day!
Lauren: It was too long! Oh my gosh. You know where he belongs? Rich kids of Instagram.
Emily: Oh my god.
Lauren: He would fit right in. I feel like the modern day equivalent is like Kylie Jenner taking her private jet on 40 mile flights.
Emily: Let's not even talk about the private jets. What I would like to talk about is what your pop culture connection is.
Lauren: Oh, goody. Okay, we can do that. So I took the metaphorical definition of movement and so I was thinking about social mobility and when I was thinking about social mobility and pop culture. I was alerted to the fact that there was a book that was published in 2005 that's called Class Passing: Social Mobility in Film and Pop Culture by Gwendolyn Foster.
All of these are buzzwords that mean that this is right up my alley, but it is talking about the idea that class is no longer defined by wealth, birth, or education, but rather socially constructed acts and gestures that are rooted in the cult of celebrity. Which sounded fascinating.
So I have not had a chance to read this book yet because it's one of those academic books that's only available in certain contexts. And also I just learned it existed today. But the abstract got me really thinking about what social mobility looks like in a 21st century context, and specifically like in the 2010s and [00:34:00] 2020s, because it's even changed from 2005 because of the rise of influencer culture specifically.
Emily: Oh yeah.
Lauren: And so I was thinking about how Emma is very adamant about where people fit within the social hierarchy of her world and seems to be against any extreme mobility, which is, as arrogant as she is, not too far outta step with the prevailing views of the time.
Like class in England was and still is very rigid. But that extreme shift in fortune in like current American culture is something to aspire to. You know, it's been the American dream for decades now, from going to rags to riches, that Cinderella esque story. And although we certainly have class rules, they're not nearly as rigid as they are in Britain.
And so both celebrity culture, which Gwendolyn Foster was writing about in her book in 2005, and then influencer culture of today creates this new kind of upper class and a new kind of aspirational wealth that would've been unimaginable and unattainable before. When I say like new kind of upper class, I'm thinking specifically of... You have old money, like we were talking about earlier.
The way the Woodhouses are old money and the Coles are nouveau riche, you know, they have the wealth, but not the perhaps behaviors or the good breeding, metaphorically and literally, that comes from being that old money, blue blood upper class. And we still see that in the US where there are those upper echelons that you really can only enter if you were born into them or if you have the right connections.
But there's also this new kind of class that is being performed on social media for people to consume. Where, you know, like whereas before those really flagrant displays of wealth were, it's seen as something that was very new money and just not something that's done, which I think is still a view that's held by old money people.
Now, that's a way to get ahead. Because if you're [00:36:00] flaunting your wealth on Instagram, whether through showing off like what purchases you've made or what trips you're able to go on, or just being like a lifestyle influencer that just shows what it is like to live that high upper class lifestyle that is impossible for so many people.
Flaunting your wealth is how you get ahead and it creates this new picture of class in people's minds. That might become the prevailing one because it's the one that we see, whereas the old idea of class by definition is something that's unattainable to us and behind closed doors because the exclusivity is the point, and so we don't see it. It's not in front of our faces all the time.
Emily: Yeah. I feel like we've definitely leaned into that kind of conspicuous consumption model of class, I suppose, or of wealth, you know, very pre-revolution France.
Lauren: You know, it does sometimes feel as though people are gonna start hauling out the guillotines again. the guillotines because the level of wealth inequality and also the level of flaunting wealth does not seem like it's sustainable. Something is going to pop.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, especially because that kind of like, flaunting consumer items is like a form of social interaction.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: now, and I'm not trying to say that it never has been or anything like that, but probably in part because of the ubiquity of social media that we're able to show off our things, what we can attain, whether that's physical or experiences like going on trips and stuff like that. We can make it known, 'Hey, I've got these things. I can do these things. I must have the resources to do that.' Yeah. Yeah. And it's also very funny to me that you brought that up, because literally today I was thinking about how as I get older, I feel like I'm seeing more and more of the [00:38:00] nuances between middle class and upper middle class.
Lauren: I feel like there's so much that could be said about that because there are so many different markers of middle class versus upper middle class, and that was similar to one of the questions that I wrote there. Like what are the new markers as someone who is upper class, and then how does that change based on context of what the markers of an upper class person is?
Emily: Man class in the United States is such a thorny issue in so many directions.
Lauren: It really is. And just reading the abstract of that took me straight back to when I was still an English grad student, and it was immediately incumbent upon me to start thinking about, 'Well, how can I complicate this? Or how can I put this in conversation with something else?'
Because that's grad student brain. And I really would love to see someone else, not me. I don't have the brain space to write this. Someone should look at this book and their conception of class and social mobility, and then compare it with Caste by Isabel Wilkerson.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: And how social mobility is complicated by race and can you really be upper class if there's this American conception of caste that's going to follow you wherever you go?
So can Oprah Winfrey still be upper class given the fact that she's very visibly black? How does that work? How does that complicate things? I want to read that analysis. Someone please give it to me. I want to be a nerd about pop culture and class.
Someone help!
Emily: I, I can almost guarantee there's someone out there doing that work.
Lauren: I'm sure there is, and it is buried somewhere because academia doesn't want to actually be accessible. Anyway.
Emily: Anyway.
Lauren: This has been my pop culture connection for today. Talk to me about class and social mobility and influencer culture and you will be my new best friend.
Emily: Hey!
Lauren: Sorry Emily. Okay. I had the unfortunate role of recapping first, which means that you get to do your final takeaway first.
Emily: I think I'm gonna go a little [00:40:00] physics with this one.
Lauren: Physics?
Emily: A little physics.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: Thinking about laws of inertia.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: I'm sorry. I'm such a nerd, you guys, I really apologize. But I think my final takeaway is that as much as you might try to keep, especially a social context static. There's always going to be change. There's always going to be movement, and there's nothing that you can really do to stop that.
Lauren: I love that.
Emily: Thank you.
Lauren: That's so good.
Emily: What is your final takeaway?
Lauren: I think that my final takeaway is that, similar to yours, people shouldn't be made to stay in the same situations for their entire lives. Not that you shouldn't, because if you're in a situation that brings you happiness and joy, then there's no reason to feel as though you have to be striving for something else, but that you shouldn't restrict people to being in the same situation forever.
Emily: I think that's also a very good reminder for the modern age when people are starting to push back a little bit against the idea that you always have to be aiming for the next big thing.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: sometimes it's okay to just stay where you are.
Lauren: And that is really difficult to remember sometimes.
Emily: This is why I wanna be a hobbit.
Lauren: Hobbits don't have to want for more.
Emily: Exactly.
Lauren: Hobbits just exist.
Emily: Shall we pull our tarot?
Lauren: We shall. It's your turn.
Emily: Yay! Our tarot card is the Joker.
Lauren: Oh, the Joker slash The Fool is beginnings. One must sometimes leave the confines of the house and enjoy a walk around the grounds. I don't know what that has to do with beginnings, but that is our theme.
Emily: Hmm. Well, that's the, the art is a young lady clutching her bonnet in the rain.
Lauren: And off she goes.
Emily: Off she goes.
Lauren: Starting a new beginning, I suppose.[00:42:00]
Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading Chapters 26 through 30 of Emma with a focus on beginnings.
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.
This is an aside, but I could not get over at the very beginning of the section where they're talking about Emma sending a whole hind quarter of pork to the Bates, about all the merits of boiled pork. And I just wrote in the margins, this is why the UK has a bad reputation for food. I'm sorry just boi-- no!
Emily: So awful.
Lauren: And not even that they were just talking about the merits of boiled meat, but that Mr. Woodhouse specifically saying, Oh no, no, don't roast it. Why would you ever do that? You should just boil the meat and then also have it with boiled turnips, and that was the least appetizing thing I'd ever heard.
Emily: I think it's safe to say that culinarily, we should discard all [00:44:00] of Mr. Woodhouse's advice just right off the bat. Don't listen to a word this man says when it comes to food.
Lauren: Please, absolutely not because he would try to get me to eat gruel and boiled pork, and my taste buds just cannot support that.
Emily: I think your taste buds would just leave in protest. I know mine would,
Lauren: I'm sorry. They would leave the moment they gave me something that was unseasoned. Because you know he doesn't use salt, let alone any other kind of seasoning. He doesn't even know what they are.