Emma 46-50: “A Thing With Feathers”
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It's the last episode of 2022 and THINGS. ARE. HAPPENING. Dreams destroyed! Wishes fulfilled! New information comes to light! Join our discussions of fancy funerals and secret relationships in this penultimate, hopeful section of Emma.
Reclaiming Jane Season 4 Episode 10 | Emma 46-50: “A Thing With Feathers”
[00:00:00]
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 chapters 46 through 50 of Emma through the theme of hope.
Emily: There was so much of the theme in this section.
Lauren: It was perfect.
Emily: Just like page after page, it was like, yep, marking it off, marking it off, marking it off.
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: So good.
Lauren: At first, I had started circling it every time it came up and I wrote in my notebook like, ah, they said the thing! And then it was said so many times that--
Emily: they kept saying it!
Lauren: I just stopped.
Emily: There's also so much happening in this section that I think we need to just dive into recaps.
Lauren: I think so too. I honestly don't envy either of us the task of trying to put this in 30 seconds.
Emily: This is why I started taking notes.
Lauren: Yeah...
Emily: would you care to time me?
Lauren: I would indeed. Are you ready to start us off with this slightly daunting recap?
Emily: I'm certainly going to make an effort.
Lauren: I have complete faith in you.
Emily: Thank you.
Lauren: Okay. Three, two, one. Go.
Emily: The Westons have received some kind of mysterious news to share with Emma. She immediately catastrophizes this, but it turns out that Frank Churchill has just been engaged to Jane Fairfax for like nine months. Emma is worried about how Harriet's gonna take this because she thinks that Harriet's in love with Frank.
But it turns out Harriet's actually in love with Mr. Knightley, which makes Emma realize that she is also in love with Mr. Knightley, and that she's also done absolutely no good for Harriet, but fortunately for her Knightley is also in love with her, confesses his love and everything is just confused.
Lauren: The end!
Emily: I'm literally waving my arms around in the air like a Muppet right now. There's just so much.
Lauren: There is so many things that happen.
Emily: Would you like to take your stab at it?
Lauren: I will give it a chance.
Emily: All right. Ready? Three, two, one, go.
Lauren: The Westons have ominous news. Emma thinks that Knightleys hurt, but really Frank Churchill's just engaged and she's like, oh, that was all, that's fine.
But what about poor Harriet? Poor Harriet's in love with Knightley? Emma thinks that Knightley actually might be in love with her, and that's tragic because holy [00:02:00] shit, she's also in love with him. They get a letter from Frank Churchill about like all the explaining he has to do about how he really screwed up, but it really doesn't even matter because Emma's on Cloud nine because she realized she's in love with Knightley, Knightley realized he's in love with her and he proposed and everything is like sunshine and roses.
It's great.
Emily: You finished with like a minute and a half left-- or a second!
Lauren: A minute and a half?!
Emily: You finished with a second and a half left.
Lauren: Let's go.
Emily: Oh my gosh. So we open right off the bat. Mr. Weston shows up first thing in the morning and is like, Emma, we have some news to share with you. You have to come to Randall's with me. And she immediately is like, someone's died at Brunswick Square.
Lauren: Like, that's it. That's the only possible explanation.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: he won't tell her anything more. So she's just walking in suspense, waiting to hear what Mrs. Weston has to say because he will not tell her.
Emily: He does at one point confirm that it has nothing to do with anyone of the Knightleys.
Like that's, he puts that worry to rest, but then she has no idea what it could possibly be.
Lauren: Yeah. But that really is what soothes her mind, most of all. She's like, oh, okay, well the Knightleys are fine. So whatever. Anyway, okay, let's go find out what this news is.
Emily: And it turns out, in the aftermath of Mrs. Churchill's death, Frank has found the balls to confess to his uncle, Mr. Churchill, that he's actually been engaged to Jane Fairfax since October of the year before when they were at Weymouth together.
Lauren: This whole time.
Emily: There is so much to unpack here.
Lauren: The fact that they kept that a secret from everyone. I mean, secret engagements are taboo now. Can you imagine just how, especially something that they were hiding from everybody in their shared society, they told no one not a soul.
Emily: Because it, it's implied that it's because of Mrs. Churchill.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: That she had grander aspirations for his marriage and he knew that she would not approve.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: And so asked Jane to keep their engagement secret, which she did [00:04:00] flawlessly.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. you have to wonder what his plan was had she not died.
Emily: She could have lived forever!
Lauren: She-- bruh. It's always the people, you know, let's throw it back to Pride and Prejudice, where--
Emily: please do--
Lauren: --or not even Pride and Prejudice, but we're talking all the way back to Sense and Sensibility.
Emily: Ooh.
Lauren: Where, you know, our, our Dear Hate club member, miss-- Mrs. Fanny Dashwood, is talking about if you give someone money or you give them an annuity, they live forever, and they never die.
Emily: If you count on someone dying so that you can be with your one true love, they will never die.
Lauren: They will outlive you.
Emily: I have to wonder if he thought that he'd be able to talk her around at some point if she just continued on, or maybe he had more faith in her description of her ill health than other people did, but--
Lauren: which is so morbid. Can you imagine saying, Hey, I really love you, but my-- this really important person in my life won't approve of us getting married.
So let's just wait it out until she eventually dies and then we can be together. Can you-- what?
Emily: You know this is because he's 24 and his brain isn't fully formed yet.
Lauren: That frontal lobe's not there.
Emily: That frontal cortex.
Lauren: Oh, have mercy. But some, you know, somehow they've kept it a secret the entire nine months. But news of Jane accepting a governess position really kicked him into gear and now all of a sudden everything has been exposed.
Emily: He has made his confession to his uncle.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Mr. Churchill has mercifully approved of the match. And so now Frank is spilling his guts first to the Westons.
because Mr. Weston is actually his father. But Mrs. Weston is the one that he corresponds with.
Lauren: Yes. And the Westons are particularly concerned about Emma because it's been very clear to everyone around them that Frank and Emma have been flirting.
Emily: There has been a tangible connection there.
Lauren: There's been a tangible connection there.
The [00:06:00] one thing where Emma has kind of been right is that because of their certain situations and their closeness in age, that everybody would kind of put the two of them together. And they have, except for, because of this ostensible connection that the rest of their society sees, the Westons are really concerned that Emma's going to be heartbroken because this person who she thought she was going to receive a proposal from, has actually been engaged to somebody else this entire time, which is why they were devastated and saying, oh, you have to come here right now because we have to deliver this news in person because they're trying to be as gentle as possible.
Emily: It's very thoughtful on their part.
Lauren: It is very thoughtful. It ends up being very unnecessary.
Emily: Yes. It just grants us a little more humor when Emma has to convince them, no, actually I really didn't care about him like that. Like it's been fun flirting, but I had no attachment to him whatsoever.
Lauren: Yeah. And Mrs. Weston is listening, but you can tell she, she wants to believe Emma, but she doesn't fully believe her. Like, are you sure you haven't had any attachment to him at all? And Emma says, you know, at the beginning I think there was some attachment there, but then he left and it kind of faded. And by the time he returned, I was just having fun.
Emily: And it seems like he was too.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Poor Jane having to sit through months of her fiance, flirting with this other woman who from the outside looks like she should be his perfect match.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: on paper, they're perfectly suited in station. Just poor Jane in general.
Lauren: Yeah. She's had to go through a lot. It makes a lot more of her behavior make sense in retrospect.
Emily: Especially in those last scenes at Donwell, when she was so upset.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: and her reactions at Box Hill and how utterly distraught she was about taking this governess position. It makes so much more sense. And I just want to give her a hug. [00:08:00]
Lauren: Poor thing. She was just doing the best she could.
Emily: Jane Fairfax has done nothing wrong.
Lauren: She really hasn't.
Emily: She is a lovely, intelligent, accomplished young woman who has been hiding this thing for months that she, I would hazard a guess, did not want to hide.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. why would you wanna hide something that was going to set you up for life? And something that makes you happy?
Emily: You know, it also explains even more why she was so reluctant to set up a position as a governess, just clinging to the thought that maybe, maybe she could avoid it altogether.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: by having the engagement made public and having her marry Frank before it really became a pressing issue.
Lauren: Yep. That is the, the bombshell news of the day. And then Emma feels like she's tasked with delivering additional bombshell news to Harriet because they never actually mentioned names of the gentleman who Harriet was in love with.
And so Emma has assumed this entire time because it's Frank Churchill, because she thinks that he's had like this gallant knight in shining armor moment of saving Harriet earlier on. And Harriet's been speaking of somebody who's far above her station, who she really shouldn't encourage feelings for.
And in Emma's mind, there's only one person who this could be. So now she feels like she has to go tell Harriet, she has to now be the Mrs. Weston and deliver this terrible news to go break someone's heart.
Emily: And it's a relief, but also a terrible letdown to realize that Harriet was never speaking about Mr. Frank Churchill at all. She could not care less about him. It's really Mr. Knightley who has her heart.
Lauren: Yep. It all started from that fateful dance when Mr. Knightley was the only one who cared to stand up with Harriet and dance with her when Mr. Elton was being very rude about it, every other eligible bachelor was engaged, but Mr. Knightley saw Harriet and made sure to dance with her, and that [00:10:00] was the moment of her, of her deepest need where she really felt like somebody came and and saw her and saved her from something that would've been like very tragic for her, where she had felt just unwanted and unhappy.
Emily: And since then he has been perfectly cordial and accommodating to her.
He made a point of speaking with her when she was also invited to Donwell,
Lauren: mm-hmm.
Emily: when they were walking in the lanes. And so she has had nothing to discourage her poor little fluttering, teenage heart from falling deeply in love with Mr. Knightley.
Lauren: And in their mistaken conversation, Emma even said, matches of greater disparity have happened before.
And so Harriet took that to frame all the rest of her interactions with Knightley where, okay, I now am coming at this with the knowledge that this is a huge disparity in rank and in station and in birth. But if Emma says that like, crazier things have happened, maybe I can look at this with like, some degree of hope and think that I have a chance.
And she really does. When she talks to Emma, she's convinced that he might be returning her affections. And when Emma listens to the way Harriet describes it, Emma's kind of convinced too.
Emily: Yeah. She's also looking back at these things that she has witnessed as well and going, oh, he has been really attentive to her and very nice.
And his opinion of her has greatly changed since they first met. And that's when she realizes that she's jealous because she wants to always be first with Mr. Knightley, which I gotta say is definitely a relatable feeling. I have also not realized until the moment someone starts dating someone else. Hey, wait a minute, that was supposed to be me.
Lauren: Wait, no, no, no, no, no!
Emily: Wrong person! Wrong person!
Lauren: Wait, cue the Justin Bieber song. That should be me!
Emily: We did manage to sing on mic.
Lauren: I mean, who amongst us hasn't had one of those emotional light [00:12:00] bulb moments where you just need that outside push to really take an introspective look and say, oh, oh, all of those emotions make sense now.
Emily: Yep. Everything was perfectly fine. And then someone else popped up and you go, wait, am I jealous?
Lauren: Mm-hmm. wait, why don't I like this? I'm not a fan.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: So do you like my, do you like my new significant other? No, I don't. Why not? Reasons.
Emily: Yeah. Reasons I don't care to elaborate on right now.
Lauren: Yeah, I don't--
Emily: because I've only discovered them myself in this moment when I realized that I was unhappy about you dating someone.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Yep.
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: Oh man. I can still, I still conjure the ghosts of those emotions so clearly.
Lauren: They're not fun.
Emily: They're really not fun.
Lauren: Especially because at that point it's perceived as too late. Like, oh, this other person's entered the picture and I missed the chance I didn't even know I wanted to take, I didn't even know I was trying to shoot my shot until just now.
Emily: Right. Some of us get lucky later on, but...
Lauren: mm-hmm.
Emily: not from personal experience. No.
Lauren: No!
Emily: That's definitely not what happened to make me realize I had a crush on the person I'm married to now.
Lauren: sometimes it all becomes a happy ending.
Emily: Sometimes it turns out.
Lauren: Like in this book, actually.
Emily: Like in this. Yeah, it's it's very lucky that Emma's not left in suspense for too long.
Lauren: She, that honestly works out for her very well, because that could have been months of angst, but luckily for her, Mr. Knightley has returned and he has also heard the news because of course it's spread like wildfire that Frank and Jane have been engaged this entire time.
Emily: It is very funny to me that it's presented by the Westons almost as something that has to be really secret. But the Knightley shows up at Hartfield and he's like, oh yeah, Mr. Weston wrote me about it [00:14:00] this morning. He wrote about some business from Hartfield and mentioned that in passing. These people. I love Mr. Weston so much.
Lauren: It's like, yeah, no, everyone knows.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: it's, that's just gonna be the topic of conversation.
Emily: Oh, for years to come.
Lauren: Absolutely.
Emily: Although now with Mr. Knightley and Emma, they might, they might overshadow a little bit.
Lauren: They might, but yeah. Mr. Knightley has also come thinking that Emma's going to be heartbroken, but is dreading seeing Emma heartbroken because that means that her affections have really been engaged elsewhere and she hasn't just been having fun. And he's not really sure that he can deal with that, but he's going to be gallant and he's going to make sure that she's okay.
Emily: And then it falls apart.
Lauren: Yeah. You know, he was just trying to be a good friend and then they end up confessing their love for one another after the span of like 10 minutes. It doesn't even take that long.
Emily: We do get another very classic Austen confession line where Knightley says to her, "if I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."
Lauren: I love it so much.
Emily: And my heart exploded. It was, it was very sweet.
Lauren: I love that quote.
Emily: But we also had a reiteration of the sort of coyness that we saw at the end of Mansfield Park.
Lauren: Mm.
Emily: Where Austen says that Edmund waited just as long as was appropriate after breaking things off with Mary to ask Fanny to marry him.
After Mr. Knightley has made his confession and Emma's responding, the narration just says, "what did she say? Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does." not having to write dialogue. We love it .
Lauren: It was like, you, you wanna know what happened? You can use your imagination. You're smart.
Emily: Jane Austen was just thinking ahead to the fanfiction writers. She knew what she was about.
Lauren: She said, you know, you can, canon is whatever you want it to be. why would I limit your options?
Oh, but there's so much of both restrained and expressed hope in just the [00:16:00] interaction. I mean, it's all throughout this section, but Emma first saying that she really didn't care that much for Frank Churchill gives Knightley hope and then Knightley's responses to her starts to give Emma hope. And then when they finally are able to have that moment of understanding, then you can just sense this.
New, new beginnings, new possibilities. And the narration is just very clear. The fact that, you know, they're glowing, they're happy. Nothing could possibly go wrong in the rest of the day. It doesn't matter if a hurricane hits Emma and Knightley are going to be perfectly, incandescently happy.
Emily: It also includes a very funny indication of that kind of rose colored veil that descends as the chapter is closing out, and it describes them walking together and how Emma is faultless in spite of all her faults.
Lauren: I mean, isn't that just the way that you look at people that you love? Like, yeah, I can see all the things that are considered flaws, but to me you're still flawless.
Emily: Yes. Yes. That's, it's not pretending that someone is perfect.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: It's seeing them and saying, yeah, I love all that too.
Lauren: Yep. And Lord knows Knightley has spoken to Emma about her flaws multiple times. So.
Emily: He more than anyone is aware of her flaws.
Lauren: Yeah. We're under no illusions here.
Emily: Mm-hmm. But it is, it is very sweet. And another good confession scene from Queen Austen.
Lauren: A plus plus once again.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Yeah. It's just so much I don't know, hope and happiness. And it was lovely.
Emily: Even in the instances of some disappointed hopes because the Westons clearly were kind of hopeful that Frank and Emma might make a connection.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: because then they would be even closer connected family than they were before.
But even that is kind of [00:18:00] subsumed in the relief that Emma has not actually been hurt.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: By what Frank has done.
Lauren: Yeah. And the other underlying thing is that in all of Emma's hopes being fulfilled, she now really does have to break the disappointing news and break Harriet's hopes, which she really hasn't done yet, and she doesn't really wanna think about it because that's going to be a very difficult conversation to have.
Emily: She does more introspection in this section than ever before, though, when she comes to realize that she really has not done any good for Harriet.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: in her attempt to take this little pet project and elevate Harriet beyond her station. She's just given her unfounded hopes that never could be realized in the actual world they live in.
Lauren: Yeah. She has not been a good friend of Harriet. She has thought that she has been, she's --in her brain, she had been the most excellent friend. And then when she's able to sit back and really take a hard look at her action, she realizes that she's been doing far more harm than good.
Emily: She's never really treated Harriet like another human being.
She's just treated her as her own little dress up doll.
Lauren: Yep. A new project, a new thing to take on, somebody without any agency of their own who she can just move around.
Emily: A blank slate.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: And she had fun, but now she's reaping the consequences. She fucked around and now she's finding out.
Lauren: Yeah. She really messed with serious emotions on Harriet's part and now can realize that there was a genuine connection that she could have made that she talked her out of months ago, that she's probably ruined.
Emily: I think that Knightley has kept some things in his back pocket though.
Lauren: You know, perhaps.
Emily: He's looking out for Harriet more than Emma has.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Because Knightley's a good man.
Lauren: He's a good egg.
Emily: Even if the age difference is a little weird. our eyes met and we both knew we were going the same place.
[00:20:00] Yeah. I'm still, I'm not, I'm not over the age difference. It's weird.
Lauren: It is a t ad disconcerting to know that he's watched Emma grow up and has been in love with her for an indeterminate period of time.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: that's a little, I don't know that I love that.
Emily: Yeah. Here, though, it, it seems like he sort of had the same experience as Emma, where it's mentioned that basically the same time Frank Churchill came into their lives was when he realized that he really cared for her in that way.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: So it seems like he also got a little bit of that spark of jealousy and then realizing, oh, I'm jealous.
Lauren: Yep. Yeah. All of his um, critiques of Frank Churchill make a bit more sense now. They were, they were not unfounded.
Emily: Definitely not.
Lauren: But how frequently he critiqued Frank Churchill makes sense now.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: he had a bone to pick.
Emily: But also can we talk about Frank Churchill because I also have some bones to pick with him. He has mistreated poor Jane so badly.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Just outrageously flirting with Emma. I would not have blamed her if she had been like, actually no, I'm really calling this off.
Lauren: He did wrong by both of them.
Emily: Definitely.
Lauren: And obviously hurt Jane far more, but he was playing Emma too. He had no way of actually knowing that she wasn't attached to him. He says in the letter that he writes that he, his understanding was that Emma also saw it as just a bit of fun and that he didn't think that she was really attached to him. But he doesn't actually, he can't know that.
Emily: He is damn lucky that he was right about that guess because he's just been playing with emotions on every side and just trusting it'll turn out for him in the same way that he has been trusting this secret engagement will turn out.
Lauren: Also, just the level of carelessness that he exhibits in this letter, even as he's, you know, writing his confession and his apologies, blah, blah, blah.
So Frank is talking about all of the, the madness that's happened and the way [00:22:00] that Jane finally really expresses just how upset she is with him, and he says that "she felt the engagement to be a source of repentance and misery to each, she dissolved it. This letter reached me on the very morning of my poor aunt's death. I answered it within an hour, but from the confusion of my mind and the multiplicity of business falling on me at once, my answer, instead of being sent with all the other many letters of that day, was locked up in my writing desk. And I trusting that I had written enough, though but a few lines, to satisfy her, remained without any uneasiness."
He literally forgot to send his response to the fact that this person who he's in love with, just broke up with him. And yes, there were many things going on that day. There were extenuating circumstances, but let's be real. He was not really grieving over Mrs. Churchill. This should have been a source of celebration since she was the, the main obstacle in the way.
So you would think that you would kind of make it a priority to respond to the person who's clearly in emotional distress and agony over something that you have caused. And you just forgot about it. And so then Jane takes the governess position because he forgot to send the letter.
Emily: She thinks she's been ghosted.
Lauren: She thinks that he just straight up ghosted her. That she wrote a response saying, 'I can't do this anymore. This has been nothing but pain and suffering from me. Like, I love you, but I can't do it anymore.' And then from her perspective, she got nothing. Not even a line.
Emily: I'm Team Jane.
Lauren: I would've broken up with him just for that.
Emily: Seriously.
Lauren: Ain't no way. Mm-mm.
Emily: Team Jane. 100%.
Lauren: 100%. Also, I am endlessly amused by the fact that so many of the Jane characters in Austen novels are the beautiful accomplished ones. Like, you know, I too would -- actually, no, I wouldn't because I feel like it would be too obvious if I wrote a book and then all of the Lauren characters were like, oh my gosh, yeah, she's gorgeous and everybody really likes her and she's super accomplished. I think that would be a bit obvious, but somehow she gets away with it just because Jane's such a common name.
Emily: Also, she wasn't publishing under her own [00:24:00] name.
Lauren: Also that, that's true.
Emily: It was anonymously published. Yeah, so that probably gave her a little freedom.
Lauren: so you can make all the Jane characters super hot and smart.
Emily: It is hilarious though.
Lauren: Yeah, Frank Churchill writes this massive letter to Mrs. Weston that's then shown to Emma as kind of, you know, an explanation for his behavior that puts everything into perspective, but honestly, in the end, I'm irritated because he's the one who has messed up at every turn and he gets everything he's ever wanted with almost -- you know, like there's the angst of Jane breaking off the engagement, but that doesn't stick, that's not a lasting consequence. Nothing really happens to him. He just gets to toy with all these people's emotions and, and gallivant through life, just saying, oh, whatever. It'll work out eventually. And it does.
And that really irritates me.
Emily: It is extremely irritating. he's been toying with all these people's emotions and he just gets off scot free. No sympathy for Frank Churchill.
Lauren: None.
Emily: All sympathy for Jane Fairfax.
Lauren: At least, you know, at the end of this section, we're filled with hope for new couples and just that underlying dread of totally dashing Harriet's to shreds.
Emily: Poor Harriet. Man, I, I have completely flipped like, emotionally from where I was at the brink of finishing Mansfield Park because then it was like, how can we possibly resolve everything in only one more section? And now I'm like, well this seems wrapped up. They haven't gotten married yet, but we only have, we only have poor sweet Harriet to deal with.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: And of course also the implication that Emma would have to leave her father if she were to marry Mr. Knightley.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: And go to Donwell, which she is extremely distraught about.
Lauren: She really feels a lot of loyalty to her father, and she does not feel like she can leave him in any kind of good conscience.
Emily: It's like a 20 minute walk, honey.
Lauren: It's not that bad. [00:26:00] You can go there every day! Knightley's certainly over with you every day anyway.
Emily: Seriously. And it's not like she wouldn't have a carriage or something. Right.
Lauren: And now the person who Technically can release a carriage at any time, is not someone who is going to have random reasons why you should not take a carriage to go to your desired location. Knightley would just say, yes, dear. Go ahead, use the carriage.
Okay. Where are you taking us for historical context today?
Emily: Well, it's not really hopeful.
Lauren: Oh no!
Emily: But I literally, I could not come up with anything. There wasn't much mention of, you know, context of the world around them in this section that I haven't already addressed before. Because the biggest thing would be, you know, the implications of marriages and things like that.
But I was thinking about sort of inciting incident with Mrs. Churchill's death and wanted to learn more about what funeral practices were like for the Regency.
Lauren: Oh, okay.
Emily: So, yeah. What is happening around Mrs. Churchill's death? So this is definitely focused on practices in the Church of England at the time.
Not trying to talk about other cultures. This is relevant to what would've been done for this one specific upper class lady. So the whole thing would involve the people who make up the so-called death trade, which consists of mainly coffin makers, undertakers, and what were called funeral furnishers. So a coffin maker, exactly what it sounds like.
They build coffins in urban areas. It would probably be someone who was completely dedicated to that trade out in rural areas. They're probably your local carpenter or cabinet maker, whoever has the basic skills necessary.
An undertaker handled burial preparations like [00:28:00] washing the body, dressing them, arranging for attendants, and for transportation. And then once you got into the upper classes, you might hire a funeral furnisher, who would organize an even more elaborate affair for the deceased. In part because a really ostentatious funeral not only honors that person, but also declares the continuing prosperity of the surviving family.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: funerals were, of course, a whole process, a little different from what we know today, especially in the United States, where many of us are really removed from that, you know, post death reality. If anyone's interested in it, go watch Ask A Mortician. I have been obsessed with her channel for years. It's amazing. Anyway.
The whole thing would take place largely at the home of the deceased. That would be sort of the headquarters for what was happening. Women who were often midwives, supplementing their income would be hired to wash and dress and lay out the body while the coffin was being prepared.
There was usually a dedicated room in the house that would be draped in black for the duration of a vigil. That would be sat either by family members or in cases of families with enough money, there might be hired watchers to do that. That vigil would be kept until the day of the funeral. When that happened, there would be, again, this is for upper classes.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: There would be a specialized vehicle hired, all black, procured just for transporting the coffin, usually drawn by black horses, preferably Friesians, who would also be dressed in super expensive black dyed ostrich feathers.
Lauren: What?
Emily: There's this whole industry around the pomp and circumstance of the funerals, people making insane [00:30:00] money off of stuff like dying ostrich feathers and providing them for funeral horses.
Lauren: Wow.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: That is so specific.
Emily: The funeral party might include 14 or more hired attendants.
There are coffin bearers, there are pages, there was mention in a couple sources of mutes, which I'm not sure if those are actually people who are mute or if this is like a ceremonial role. Not entirely sure. And funerals could be pretty expensive depending on where the person died, how much you were doing, because aside from the optional elaborate funeral, you had to pay fees for the bell ringing at the parish church. That would begin immediately upon learning the person was dead.
There were also bells rung during services and after the funeral. You had to pay the clergymen for his service. You had to pay an extra fee for the actual sermon itself. If the clergyman was walking in the procession, he might exact an additional fee for that.
Lauren: For walking?!
Emily: For walking in the procession.
Lauren: Oh no.
Emily: People were making money off of this. And then there were burial fees as well. And in some cases, like it would be with Mrs. Churchill, you had to pay double the fee because you had to pay one to the church, to the parish where they died, and one to the parish where they were actually buried. So Mrs. Churchill died at Windsor and then was transported back to Enscombe for burial. So there was a lot involved there.
Lauren: Dying is expensive.
Emily: Dying is expensive. I mean, it's pretty bad today, but, Yeah. I'm not like into funerals or anything, but I'm extremely interested to learn about what the practices were around this.
Lauren: Yeah. I think those are questions that we don't often ask ourselves, like what were the funeral rites of the [00:32:00] Regency era? That's not something that's usually in the conversation. So that's really cool to be able to actually picture all of the pomp and circumstance that went into that, because I never knew any of that.
Emily: Yeah. And some of that, the pomp and circumstance, included things like mourning dress. Where, you know, you would dress in black or in just somber colors depending on your class. Again, not everyone can just afford to buy a whole new black wardrobe because someone in their family died. If you were lower class, you might just wear a black armband or put a black ribbon on your bonnet, something like that.
but like none of these things were set in stone. And we also have this slightly incorrect vision of like Victorian mourning practice being really strict and everyone does it the same way. These are not hard and fast rules. No matter what class you were in, everyone is gonna do it a little bit differently.
The only thing that was mandated was like official mourning coming down from the court, like when a royal died.
Lauren: That makes sense. We saw a lot of that earlier this year when Queen Elizabeth died.
Emily: Oh my goodness. So much. There's still so much pomp and circumstance. It wasn't exactly a hopeful topic, but I hope that it was at least enjoyable? Interesting?
Lauren: It was a pertinent topic.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: I enjoyed it.
Emily: Oh, good.
Lauren: I had a good time.
Emily: I enjoyed learning new things, especially about the freaking horses and the ostrich feathers. Like what?
Lauren: I can't get over that.
Emily: I will never be over that.
Lauren: I need--
Emily: but also I kind of want horses with ostrich feathers at my own funeral.
Lauren: Thank you. That was great.
Emily: You're so welcome. What do you have for hope and pop culture?
Lauren: It's only kind of hopeful, so I also kind of ignored hope cause I was like, hope and pop culture is too broad. So instead I was looking at that scandalous secret engagement that Frank and Jane were carrying on over the past nine months and thinking about how if this book were written [00:34:00] from either of their points of view, it would be the secret relationship trope.
And this is funny to me because usually, you know, when you're writing books about those secret relationships, or if that trope appears in a TV show or a movie or something like that, you're in quote unquote, that storyline with the characters who are in the secret relationship. And you don't often see it from the outside because the audience is always included in, in The Secret.
We all get what the, what the joke is, or we're all included on the ruse, and it's the other characters who don't know. But this time the audience was not really included in the ruse. We are the ones who were also getting the hints from the outside. And so we have another list pop culture topic today of the notable to me secret relationship tropes.
Emily: I'm so glad you brought this up because I also had the thought while I was reading this that it would be a completely different story if it were told from Jane's perspective.
Lauren: Yeah, 100%. And I think that would be so interesting to see, like what does it look like when you are the person in the secret relationship that you're having to hide from everyone else? Because we see that in like modern media, but I would love to see what Emma, the novel, looks like from Jane's perspective, specifically.
Emily: Fanfic writers get on it.
Lauren: I, once again!
Emily: You know how to send us links.
Lauren: I come to you hat in hand. I am once again asking...
Emily: send us the fan fic!
Lauren: Send us the fic. I hope that exists already.
Emily: All right. But for now, tell us about secret relationships in media.
Lauren: Okay. So we have a variety of genres, I suppose, but they're all like movies or TV shows for this.
I feel like for books more often I have fake dating as a trope, more than secret relationship.
Emily: Also extremely good.
Lauren: Also very good. So one of the ones that comes up that was disastrous, did not end the same way as this one did, was Anakin and Padme from Star Wars.
Emily: Oh yeah.
Lauren: Did not go well, but a very notable secret [00:36:00] relationship given how that all went up in flames.
I also have two from Game of Thrones.
Emily: Okay.
Lauren: One, Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell. Which is secret for a much different reason because it's a queer relationship and given the customs and the beliefs of that universe of Game of Thrones...
Emily: because it's historically accurate to medieval Europe.
Lauren: Quote unquote historically accurate, which why we can't have black people in Game of Thrones, heaven forbid, whatever.
Emily: For some reason homophobia exists in this fantasy world.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: You could just not, but whatever.
Lauren: We could just not have things like homophobia and racism because it's fantasy and it does not exist. This is what happens when we let white men write things.
Emily: It has to, it has to be gritty and real, but--
Lauren: it has to be gritty and real. And the war of the roses. No, it doesn't. It's not real. Anyway, Renly and Loras are another secret relationship. The other one that's just funny and not, not like Renley and Loras is Jamie and Cersei Lannister, who are keeping it secret because it's literal incest.
Emily: Literal incest.
Lauren: It's twincest!
Emily: All right. So aside from Game of Thrones, what else do we have?
Lauren: Aside from Game of Thrones, shifting genres, we have Monica and Chandler in Friends.
Emily: I have never watched friends, so.
Lauren: I've also never watched friends, but most people have.
Emily: Don't think I realized they were ever a secret relationship.
Lauren: They were hiding it from everybody else for like a whole season.
Emily: Oh, wow.
Lauren: And then it finally made its way into the rest of the friend group. But yeah, that was not supposed to be public knowledge to begin with.
Emily: Oh no. I've just had another example pop into my head, but I'm gonna wait to see if it's on your list.
Lauren: Okay. Because it probably is.
Emily: Probably is.
Lauren: Yeah. I also have pretty much everyone in Mad Men.
Emily: another one that I never watched.
Lauren: Oh. Mad Men was so good. 10 out of 10 would recommend. But everyone is keeping secrets in that show.
Emily: I mean, they're all having affairs with each other, right?
Lauren: They're all having affairs. So there's you know, Don Draper who has like 10 on his own. He is forever philandering off with someone. You have Joan and Roger Sterling who are having an affair for like most of the first couple seasons [00:38:00] of Mad Men. Another, they're all having affairs. Just assume that if you see somebody on screen in Mad Men, they're having an affair with someone.
Everyone is in a secret relationship that is a plot point at some point.
Emily: Okay. Good baseline to have.
Lauren: Good baseline to have. And then my final one, which is my favorite one and probably also the one that you were thinking of, is Leslie and Ben on Parks and Recreation.
Emily: Yeah, you got me.
Lauren: Which is why I saved it for last on purpose.
Just such a good, and that one I feel like also because their chemistry is so good, just has such great tension with that secret relationship that it makes it so much more enjoyable to watch.
Emily: Like there were real stakes for the relationship being found out.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: but they also had really good chemistry and there were actual consequences too.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: Because so often it's built up in the story as being this huge secret they can't let anyone know, and then someone finds out and it turns out it's fine actually. But like Ben lost his job over it.
Lauren: Yeah. Like these aren't manufactured stakes, they're actually real, and that was the first one that came to mind when I was comparing it to like Frank and Jane, where it's not as though Frank would lose his job, but Jane has a lot to lose, especially if this were to become public.
And Mrs. Churchill has a reaction that's expected, like that can be a stain on her reputation. She doesn't get the person who she's in love with, and then she is even lower in public opinion than she might have been otherwise. And just the fact that the stakes actually exist for both of those relationships make it a little bit more compelling to me versus other ones where the stakes are a little bit more manufactured or it's secret because of the nature of the relationship itself. Because it's an affair or because it's in a homophobic society or something like that, where they're-- on paper, there's really nothing that would prevent you from being together except for this one thing.
Emily: Not to say that homophobia is a manufactured excuse for secret relationships.
Lauren: No. It's a manufactured excuse in Game of Thrones.
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Not in real life. That is [00:40:00] a very real reason to not have your relationship public. I'm not discounting that at all.
Emily: Yeah, as always, we have found a way to bring this back around to our mutual love of Parks and Rec.
Lauren: It's such a good show.
Emily: So good.
Lauren: Anyway, that is my pop culture connection. It's not really tied to hope in any way other than the hope that your secret relationship will soon become public.
Emily: And in, in the best possible way.
Lauren: In the best possible way, that you are able to control the way in which it becomes public and it's received well, and not that it's dragged into the limelight and to the detriment of the two people within the relationship.
Emily: Now I'm starting to feel like we're on a call in radio advice show, like people are gonna start telling us about their secret relationships and how to resolve it.
Well, that was so much fun. That was a delightful connection. I love getting to talk about those kinds of media tropes.
Lauren: Me too. I find a way to work them in I feel like every three episodes or so.
Emily: It's a good balance.
Lauren: It is, I try.
Emily: For now though, it's your turn to start us off with takeaways.
Lauren: Hope is a thing with feathers.
Emily: That perches on the soul?
Lauren: The end. I came up with that all by myself.
Emily: well done.
Lauren: Thank you.
Emily: I mean, that's a classic, right?
Lauren: I know, right? Oh my gosh, I'm so smart. no, what's my actual final takeaway? I think my final takeaway is that hope and the promise of hope are both very powerful.
Emily: Definitely.
Lauren: What about you? What's your final takeaway?
Emily: I think mine is that hope can give you a lot to like, keep you continuing on. But it can also cause a lot of pain. But that's not the fault of the hope itself.
Lauren: Yeah. That makes sense. It's a double-edged sword.
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Okay, tarot card?
Emily: I believe you are pulling our card this time?
Lauren: Yes!
Emily: What do we have?
Lauren: Six of diamonds.
Emily: [00:42:00] Oh, this should be very good. Six of diamonds is sharing.
Lauren: Oh no.
Emily: Generosity goes both ways.
Lauren: Interesting. And the art on this card, which is why I said Oh no, when you said sharing, is of a man and woman walking together. And I have had too many people text me about sister wives lately and that is immediately where my brain went.
Emily: Oh no. Well, I feel like it's safe to assume we will not have to deal with sister wives in the last section of Emma, because next time is our final five chapters.
Lauren: You don't think we're gonna have Emma and Harriet as sister wives?
Emily: I really don't think so. I like, I feel like Mr. Knightley wouldn't be into that.
Lauren: He doesn't know.
Emily: He doesn't seem like the type.
Lauren: I think he might surprise us.
Emily: That would be a big surprise. Biggest Austen plot twist yet. And there have been some twists.
Lauren: Yeah, they just, they took that out of the movie. It was a little bit too, too out of the, too out of the ordinary.
Emily: Mr. Knightley actually invented Western polygamy 50 years before Mormonism.
Lauren: It was all Emma's idea. She just really didn't wanna disappoint Harriet.
Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading Chapters 51 through 55 of Emma, with a focus on sharing.
Emily: To read our show notes and a transcript of this episode, check out our website, reclaiming jane pod.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.
Horses with ostrich feathers. Why was there not color photography back then? I need a picture of this.
Emily: There wasn't photography at all.
Lauren: Yes, I know. [00:44:00] I mean, I just need like photographic evidence. Illustration isn't going to do it justice. I need a photo of these black horses with black ostrich feathers.
Emily: Completely agree.