Henry & Eliza: “Supporting Women’s Wrongs”

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Eliza: Is it me? Am I the drama?

We are bringing you PLENTY of drama in this episode, from crime to fanfic, as we read Austen's 1788 work "Henry and Eliza."

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 "Henry and Eliza".

[intro music]

Emily: Once again, we had an absolutely wild story.

Lauren: I think she's just an agent of chaos as a 12 year old. Like, I think that's really just the Jane Austen MO.

Emily: Yeah, I think that that's accurate, absolutely. I mean, also, she's, she's writing these entire stories in five, ten pages, so she's gotta pack a lot of action in there.

Lauren: And there's a lot of action that's packed into this very short story.

Emily: So much action! There's no time to stop and reflect, it's just [snaps] one thing after another. The years start coming and they don't stop coming.

Lauren: Who needs reflection when you have plot?

Emily: Exactly.

Lauren: Intrigue! Drama!

Emily: So much. So much drama.

Lauren: And drama that I thankfully do not have to recap because my last showing was quite poor.

Emily: I prepared today.

Lauren: Oh good, I'm glad that one of us prepared. All right, shall we kick it off with your 30 second recap of "Henry and Eliza"?

Emily: Let's kick it off. Give me that timer, baby.

Lauren: All right. Let me pull up that timer.

Emily: I'm ready. Let's go.

Lauren: Fantastic. Three, two, one, recap.

Emily: So, a gentleman and a lady are out in the country and they find a baby under a haystack and just decide to adopt her. Um, she steals a bunch of money and they turn her out of the house, but a lady takes her in until the girl runs away, uh, with Henry. Um, the two of them hide in France and have kids until Henry dies and Eliza, on returning to England is captured by the lady that she ran away from, um, but she escapes and returns to her adoptive parents, who it turns out were her biological parents all along.

Lauren: Excellent. I did not see the biological parents all along twist coming, I'm not gonna lie.

Emily: [laughing] Me either! There, I mean, there was no, you know, signaling, there was no foreshadowing. We could never have foreseen that.

Lauren: And I, when we, when we get to that too, it's just so funny how it comes to be that they were actually her biological parents this entire time. I just - I love preteen stories so much.

Emily: I know. They hold a special place in my heart.

Lauren: A special, special place. These juvenilia stories are so fun.

Emily: Yes! Oh, so let's talk about "Henry and Eliza" beyond the 30 second recap.

Lauren: Let's do it! All right. So this story is - we're going back a little bit again, so previously... Let me double check my publication dates.

Yes. So "Jack and Alice" was published in 1790, give or take a few months, but for "Henry and Eliza" we're going back to 1788. So we've rewound a bit. Last time we got teenage Jane Austen and now we are back to preteen, probably around 12 years old, Jane Austen.

Emily: Yeah, the notes in this edition do say that "Henry and Eliza" was written either very late in 1788 or early 1789. Um, so yeah, 12, 13 years old. Just a baby.

Lauren: Just a wee babe. And as you do when you are young and writing things, you pull inspiration from your real life. So the Henry in the story is named for her older brother, Henry. And the Eliza is named for the woman who he would eventually marry, though they were not yet married at the writing of this story.

Emily: The, I, this is the first time that I've highlighted a footnote, and just wrote TEA?! next to it, because... Y'all, the story of the real Henry and Eliza. So "the title alludes to her fourth brother Henry and her cousin Eliza, who had married a French soldier in 1781 at the age of 19. As early as August 1788, five years before her husband was guillotined in Paris in 1794, Eliza was expressing an interest in Henry, then a 17 year old student at Oxford. They would eventually marry in December 1797." I didn't do all of the math on their ages, but Eliza is significantly older than Henry.

Lauren: Yeah. And just the casual nature of the footnote saying, Oh, five years before her husband's guillotined in Paris. NBD.

Emily: No follow up.

Lauren: I don't know what could have possibly been going on in Paris in 1794 where heads would've been rolling... there's something that I just can't put my finger on that may have been a major historical event that was going on - I don't know. I don't know.

Emily: There was a lot happening at the time, you know?

Lauren: There was just a lot going on. So even, even just the title alone alludes to some, some drama that was afoot. I wonder how much -

Emily: The namesakes.

Lauren: The namesakes! I wonder how much 12 year old Jane Austen knew. Guess we'll never know. But we do have the drama that she's written them into.

Emily: Oh yes, we start right off with something straight out of a fairy tale. Sir George and Lady Harcourt, who are overseeing their haymakers, "rewarding the industry of some by smiles of approbation and punishing the idleness of others by a cudgel." [laughs]

They find a beautiful three month old baby girl just abandoned under a haycock and they decide, you know what? She's lovely. Let's just take her in. She's our daughter now.

Lauren: And they were going to give her everything that she's ever wanted. She's going to be educated. She'll have all the most beautiful dresses. She'll be doted upon hand and foot.

Emily: She'll have "a love of virtue and a hatred of vice."

Lauren: Exactly. In which they so well succeeded, because "Eliza having a natural turn that way herself, that when she grew up she was the delight of all who knew her." But I'm not sure how well they really succeeded with that hatred of vice, because Eliza gets kicked out not too long after this.

Emily: She turns 18 and then is found stealing a banknote of 50 pounds, which is an outrageous amount of money.

Lauren: It was literally an amount that could have been still punishable by death at that point in time.

Emily: Yeah, it's something over - I looked it up earlier - something over the equivalent of 3, 000 pounds today.

Lauren: Yeah, I would, I can imagine getting kicked out for stealing 3, 000. That, that tracks.

Emily: Yeah, but rather than turn her into the authorities, they just kick her out, and Eliza is completely unbothered by this.

Lauren: She just sings a little song sitting beneath a tree, and we don't have a tune which saves you all because it means I don't have any notes to sing. Um, but her little ditty is, "Though misfortunes my footsteps may ever attend/I hope I shall never have need of a friend/as an innocent heart I will ever preserve/and will never from virtue's dear boundaries swerve." We'll see if she lives up to this song or not.

Emily: The irony is already palpable, because she's sitting under a tree singing because she was kicked out for stealing 50 pounds.

Lauren: Stealing a lot of money.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: And she does this for a couple hours.

Emily: Yep. And then just goes along her way to visit a friend who keeps an inn.

Lauren: Just gonna take, take a long, long walk. Who knows how long she actually walks, but it can't be too far, though. Anything is possible in this story. And when she gets there, uh, the friend, who is "the most amiable creature on earth," immediately writes a letter to a duchess who she holds in high esteem and requests immediately that she receive into her care young Eliza, because she has a wonderful woman who she thinks would make a great companion.

Emily: She tells the Duchess that Eliza is "so good as to choose your society in preference to going to service," which... hmmm... seems a little bit of an obfuscation, because obviously being a kept companion of a noble lady is going to be a cushy your life, I would think, than going into service.

Lauren: Yes. And you're also not going to say, hey this woman of maybe gentle birth - gentle parenting, at least, until she got kicked out - was recently kicked out for stealing a ton of money. Would you like to also bring her into your home so she could potentially steal from you? You have you have to leave those details out.

Emily: It's just, you know, classic lying on your resume.

Lauren: You know, it apparently is a tale as old as time.

Emily: Which we do not endorse, of course.

Lauren: No, as a career coach, please don't do that. Don't, don't lie on your resume. It will come back to bite you.

Emily: Fortunately, the Duchess is overjoyed at such an opportunity of obliging her friend Mrs. Wilson, and on the same day comes to the inn and is delighted with Eliza.

Lauren: Yeah, the Duchess is about 45 and a half. The "and a half" is very important. That also feels like a very 12 year old detail to include, 45 and a half years old. She's a widow, and then she only has one daughter who, of course, is on the point of marriage with a man of considerable fortune. So all is well.

Emily: And as seems to be a trend with these juvenile stories, the Duchess immediately declares that she and Eliza will never be parted. She makes many protestations of friendship, and they go off immediately to the Duchess's seat in Surrey.

Lauren: And no sooner have they gone to Surrey than Eliza meets Mr. Cecil, who is the lover of Lady Harriet. And because he's often with the family, that means he's also with Eliza all of the time.

Emily: "A mutual love took place, and Cecil having declared his first, prevailed on Eliza to consent to a private union, which was easy to be effected, as the duchess's chaplain being very much in love with Eliza himself, would they were certain do anything to oblige her."

Lauren: And the footnotes are also very helpful here because they make sure to note that a chaplain cannot authorize a private marriage without a license from a bishop, and since no arrangement has been made here, this marriage is actually invalid. So they are just continuing to live in sin.

Emily: Yep. They do a little Romeo and Juliet while the Duchess and Lady Harriet are out at an assembly one evening. Henry and Eliza are quietly married illegally by this chaplain, and by the time the ladies return, they have absconded. They leave an incredible note that reads entirely, "Madam, we are married and gone. Henry and Eliza Cecil."

Lauren: I just, it reminds me of a more dramatic version - there was someone at an old place where I worked who resigned via a letter that she just left on her desk. Like she came in earlier before everybody else, we found her keys at the front desk and then immediately went up to her office where she just left a letter that said Yeah, no, I don't want to do this anymore. Here's my keys. Here's my id card. Uh, good luck! I'm out. [laughs]

Emily: Iconic.

Lauren: Honestly, it it really was. I will remember that for the rest of my life. I wish I had that kind of courage to do something like that. But, um, yeah, just leaving a note to say that you're married and you're running off with this man and throwing everything that this woman has given you back in her face is a bold move.

Emily: Yeah, bold and with consequences, unfortunately, because the Duchess is not pleased with this and in short order, "sent out after them 300 armed men with orders not to return without their bodies dead or alive, intending that if they should be brought to her in the latter condition, to have them put to death in some torturelike manner after a few years confinement."

Lauren: And this is after she spent half an hour calling them all of the most terrible names that she can think of. She has cursed them from one end of the earth to the other and then basically said, bring me their heads.

Emily: Very Red Queen. Although I know, obviously, this is more than a century prior to "Alice in Wonderland," but still.

Lauren: Maybe that's where Lewis Carroll got his inspiration, you know, who knows. The female rage of a 12 year old Jane Austen character.

Emily: I really wish that there had been more context about, you know, the availability of a private army to a duchess at this point. Cause this feels... It feels, you know, childhood exaggerated.

Lauren: Yes.

Emily: Drawing on some romanticized medievalisms, perhaps, of high nobles having access to private troops like this.

Lauren: That is the way that I interpreted it, rather than taking it as face value as like a, when you're twelve years old and you are creating a revenge fantasy for one of your characters, it's way more fun if she just has an army at her disposal that she can call up. Like very Game of Thrones, very Cersei Lannister, actually.

Emily: Very Cersei Lannister.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: But I mean, we did already start in the very beginning with finding a baby under a haystack, so it definitely feels like we're continuing this fairy tale like thread.

Lauren: Yeah, a fairy tale is a much better connection or allusion. It makes me think of Moses. But that's because I went to Lutheran school for four years. Moses just being found in the little woven basket after being sent down the river.

Emily: I mean, I've seen Prince of Egypt.

Lauren: I mean, like Moses was adopted too, and he was found like in some hay. You can make reeds into hay. It's the same thing.

Emily: And his adopted family did also try to kill him after he ran away.

Lauren: They did. They did do that.

Emily: Anyway, back to Henry and Eliza, who have run away to the continent for three years. They are hiding in France from the Duchess's forces, and they have two boys.

Lauren: And by the time those three years are up, Eliza finds herself a widow with no money, uh, because Mr. Cecil has been producing about 600 pounds a year on his estate and they've been spending about 12,000 pounds a year and somehow they were able to save "but a trifle,: a. k. a. they could save nothing, a. k. a. they are massively in debt and Eliza is penniless.

Emily: But Eliza, "being perfectly conscious of the derangement in their affairs, immediately on her husband's death set sail for England."

Lauren: In a warship, mind you. Not just any old ship. She takes a warship. Back to England.

Emily: Unfortunately, the Duchess apparently has not let go of the slight because the moment Eliza sets foot on British soil again, she is taken into custody and carried away to "a snug little newgate of their lady's."

Lauren: I love just the mental image of this standing army that the Duchess has raised just hanging out at the Cliffs of Dover. Just waiting.

Emily: For three years.

Lauren: For three years. [laughing] Because, sure, okay, let's say that they know that she went to France. They're like, well, Can't do anything in France. We don't have jurisdiction over there. So I guess we just wait for her to come back.

Emily: Sounds like a pretty cushy job, just hanging around Dover, waiting for this one woman to come back, and then you spirit her away to a private dungeon, and that's that.

Lauren: Because, yeah, everyone has a private dungeon. Like, isn't that just what every nobility has at their own disposal?

Emily: Yeah. Of course, "no sooner had Eliza entered her dungeon than the first thought which occurred to her was how to get out of it again."

Lauren: I would hope so! Like, what? Ma'am! But she goes, she tries the door, um, but the door is locked, and then she goes to the window, and that, of course, has iron bars over it because, you know, it's a prison, so it's not going to be easy for her to get out. And so, disappointed, she's worried of how on earth she's ever going to escape and then she looks in the corner of her cell and there's a small saw and a ladder of ropes. And she's like, Oh, fantastic. This is great. I'm saved.

Emily: So she goes to work. She spends several weeks sawing the bars out of her window. We don't have details on this. It's, you know, it's not a plot hole. Whatever.

Lauren: Just, just imagine, like, a Shawshank Redemption montage. Like, just, you know, you can dig a tunnel for years that will eventually allow you to escape, just like little by little, but you just hide with a poster. And you can just do like a little seesaw every five minutes whenever the guards turn their head. One more shred of iron falling to the ground.

Emily: But once she has effected her means of escape, she runs into another problem, because her children can't climb down this ladder by themselves, and she can't climb up and down the ladder with them. So she decides to just strip, throw all her clothes down on the ground, and just throw the kids out.

Lauren: Just throw the baby. Because mind you, the oldest is like, maximum three, probably not even, because we're, we're going to allow for some time for them being good children of God after their marriage. [laughs] She's just got like a max, like two and a half year old and like, I don't know, a one year old, maybe? who knows. And she's just going to toss them down and be like, Oh, you'll be fine. And they pretty much bounce. And the children are unharmed and all is well.

Emily: Yeah. I mean, she did give them strict charge not to hurt themselves before she threw them out of the window of the dungeon onto her clothes.

Lauren: And she just goes naked down the ladder. And then by the time she gets down there, her boys are in perfect health and fast asleep.

Emily: Of course.

Lauren: I don't know how you sleep through being thrown down a ladder, but I'm glad that worked for them.

Emily: I don't know. But they're out of the dungeon, and now Eliza has to figure out what to do with herself. Um, she decides that it is a fatal necessity that she must sell her wardrobe.

Lauren: And at the beginning of this paragraph, that seems to make a lot of sense. Like, yeah, you have no money. You need money to purchase food. You should sell your clothes. But, um, Eliza has a different idea.

Emily: "With the money she got for them, bought others more useful, some playthings for her boys, and a gold watch for herself."

Lauren: Baby, you can't eat that! You need to eat!

Emily: As she soon discovers.

Lauren: "Scarcely was she provided with the above mentioned necessaries, and she began to find herself rather hungry, and had reason to think, by their biting off two of her fingers, that her children were much in the same situation."

Emily: In her desperation, she decides, well, she'll just go back to her adoptive parents, who threw her out three years prior for stealing fifty pounds. But she's like, hm, they were generous.

Lauren: Yeah, she's like, I mean, how much worse could it get? They already kicked me out once, I'm down two fingers, I'm up two children, and I have no money. So I have nothing to lose.

Emily: "She had about 40 miles to travel before she could reach their hospitable mansion, of which having walked 30 without stopping, she found herself at the entrance of a town where often in happier times she had accompanied Sir George and Lady Harcourt to regale themselves with a cold collation at one of the inns." You walked 30 miles without stopping?! I do not believe that!

Lauren: Just doing a casual marathon, ultra marathon, really. Yeah, no thank you.

Emily: I mean, yeah, I can walk a comfortable pace, like, two miles an hour, so that would be 15 hours without stopping, and she's hauling two children with her.

Lauren: I bet you could probably get to three miles, that's like a 20 minute pace. You could do it.

Emily: But that's still 10 hours.

Lauren: It's a long time. It's like you didn't, like, have a little plop down on the grass. Just catch your breath a little bit. Rest your legs. Straight on through. 30 miles.

Emily: Oh my god.

Lauren: So she's sitting on the steps of a gentleman's house because she finally does take a little bit of a break. She's just having a little reflection on the adventures that she's had so far in her life. And as soon as she's done thinking about what she's done so far, she's like, okay, I will go into the inn and see if she can receive some charitable gratuity, aka she's going to beg.

Emily: But, no sooner has she stationed herself to do this begging for charitable gratuity, than who should turn the corner in their carriage but Sir George and Lady Harcourt, who she was going to see to beg their gratuity?

Lauren: What excellent timing.

Emily: What excellent timing!

Lauren: How fortuitous.

Emily: The lady and gentleman are absolutely astonished to see her.

Lauren: And no sooner have they seen her than Lady Harcourt decides to just drop the revelation of, "Sir George, Sir George, she is not only Eliza, our adopted daughter, but our real child."

Emily: "Our real child? What, Lady Harcourt, do you mean? You know you never even was with child. Explain yourself, I beseech you."

Lauren: And I love that her response is, "You must remember, Sir George, that when you sailed for America, you left me breeding." I HATE that turn of phrase. So much.

Emily: So awful! I definitely cringed physically when I read that.

Lauren: No, thank you.

Emily: I know it's because of modern connotations and implications, but honestly, I feel like - I would have to obviously do some research - but I feel like there must be a similar sort of, ugh, really? I don't know.

Lauren: I'm, I'm wondering if that was the intention because, um, I mean, we also have Lord Harcourt saying "you never even WAS with child," like just the grammar being completely off. So I'm, I'm wondering if they're supposed to be crass and cringey in their dialogue.

Emily: But Lady Harcourt continues and says, "Four months after you were gone, I was delivered of this girl, but dreading your just resentment at her not proving the boy you wished, I took her to a haycock and laid her down. A few weeks afterward, you returned, and fortunately for me, made no inquiries on the subject."

Lauren: You don't want to know anything.

Emily: Nope. "Satisfied within myself of the welfare of my child, I soon forgot I had one. Insomuch that when, when shortly after found her in the very haycock I had placed her, I had no more idea of her being my own than you had, and nothing I will venture to say could have recalled the circumstance to my remembrance, but my thus accidentally hearing her voice, which now strikes me as being the very counterpart of my own child's."

Lauren: The only note I have in the margins here are just, Girl, what?

Emily: What else could you say?

Lauren: Nothing.

Emily: So, her husband sails for America while she is pregnant. She gives birth to a girl and is like, oh, fuck, he wanted a boy. Well, I guess I have to get rid of her. So just abandons her in a field and is so thoroughly content with this decision that she forgets that she ever had a child.

Lauren: As does her husband.

Emily: Yeah, apparently also spreads to her husband who knew that she was pregnant when he left.

Lauren: Yeah, and then she realizes that it's her daughter. Because of her voice, despite the fact that she abandoned her daughter and then found her again when the baby was three months old.

Emily: And then raised her to 18 years old... and never realized?

Lauren: Nope.

Emily: Definitely some fairy tale shenanigans going on here.

Lauren: Also, the baby doesn't die.

Emily: Yes! Being abandoned in a field for a couple of months at least.

Lauren: Strong ass baby.

Emily: Strong ass baby. But, following this speech, Sir George says, "the rational and convincing account you have given of the whole affair leaves no doubt of her being our daughter, and as such, I freely forgive the robbery she was guilty of."

Lauren: "And mutual reconciliation then took place, and Eliza, ascending the carriage with her two children, returned to that home from which she had been absent nearly four years." Oh my god. Would you like to close this out, Emily, with just the final dagger?

Emily: I would love to. So our final paragraph: "No sooner was she reinstated in her accustomed power at Harcourt Hall than she raised an army with which she entirely demolished the Duchess's newgate, snug as it was, and by that act gained the blessings of thousands and the applause of her own heart."

Lauren: The end.

Emily: The end. So yeah, definitely fairytale shades. It feels like some old Italian fairytale that I read when I was a kid, and I can't put my finger now on what it was, but yeah.

Lauren: Yeah. Overall, what were your impressions of "Henry and Eliza"?

Emily: It was, I mean, obviously, as all the Juvenilia have been, uh, it was very fun. I do feel like we're seeing a midpoint between "Frederic and Elfrida" and "Jack and Alice" because there's more focus in the storyline. We do stay on Eliza the entire time. But we haven't reached the kind of, like, interior awareness that she brings out by the time we make it to "Jack and Alice."

Lauren: Agreed. I also found it interesting that the character who's named for her brother is in the story for maybe three paragraphs. Even with "Jack and Alice" as well, Jack is in it for a sentence, just enough to die and then to disappear. It's like there's, I will mention men and I will include them in my story because they're necessary to create a world, but there's a very clear focus on who the characters are who are most important to her as she writes, and it is always the women.

Emily: She is invested in a heroine.

Lauren: As she should be.

Emily: As she should be. Do you have further thoughts?

Lauren: Yeah, no, I think I just. I'm enjoying reading what's essentially like a middle school story and I, I agree with being able to see a midpoint between the action and the romp and adventure of "Frederic and Elfrida" and then a little bit more of like the interiority of "Jack and Alice," especially with some internal motivations for Alice and her lack of awareness and getting the tension between what the characters think of themselves versus what the narrator is telling you of the characters, which is something that she uses with great finesse and care in her later novels, and it's cool to see her beginning that in "Jack and Alice" and also need to see her kind of progress in this midpoint with "Henry and Eliza". We're not really getting too much of the inner thoughts or dialogue of Eliza. We get that she is thinking about things, but we don't really hear what her thoughts are, understand what her motivations are, we're very focused on plot. So it's nice to see the progression of action and adventure and just the most ridiculous story that you can think of. And still a lot of drama in "Jack and Alice," but a bit more time spent inside the, the minds of the characters.

Emily: Definitely.

Lauren: Yeah. I want to see, like, a Drunk History version of these stories, like with, like very just low production value reenactments of Jane Austen's Juvenilia, mostly just because I want to see the army of 300 men just j chillin at Dover and going, oh, oh, wait, oh my gosh, you guys, wait, there's a ship. Is it this one? Oh no, she's not here. Okay.

Emily: Just spending three years kind of perking up and like looking over the cliffs every time something comes by. And then, ah, nah, we're good.

Lauren: Ah, nope. At ease. Not this one. Oh, no, not this one either. Oh, no, not, not that one. Ugh. Okay. I don't think that there is much more to discuss in terms of plot, so I would love to know what your historical connection is.

Emily: [deep breath] Again, I'm not really diving into a fun topic -

Lauren: Emily!

Emily: But it's interesting! I, you know what, Jane Austen is hitting the melodrama hard, and I want to know what's going on in the real world.

Lauren: Alright, I'll allow it.

Emily: So, the thing that spurs Eliza's entire journey, as it were, is her theft of 50 pounds. Which, as the footnotes informed us, is a major crime at the time. Fifty pounds is equivalent to nearly a year's wages for a skilled tradesman at the time. You could have used that money to buy four horses or ten cows. It's an absurd amount of money, which is why this would have been considered grand larceny, which was one of many, many offenses that were subject to capital punishment.

In the late 18th century, the legal landscape of England and Wales was in the midst of what would later come to be called the Bloody Code because of the proliferation of capital offenses. In 1689, there were 50 crimes in England that were punishable by death. But a mere century later, when Jane Austen is writing, that had ballooned to almost 200 and would hit 220 by the 18th century.

Lauren: Geeeez.

Emily: Yeah, there's, there's a lot. There was a lot. Sentencing was very unevenly applied, though, from region to region and from person to person, and these punishments were very often, um, kind of massaged during the legal process to reduce them a little bit, because it was very extreme. Juries, for instance, could use partial verdicts or if there was a case of stolen goods, there might be a deliberate underassessment of their value so that you wouldn't be immediately subject to a mandatory death penalty.

Lauren: That's nice. Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. Towards the end of the 18th century, though, they were experiencing a gradual shift toward reform and deterrence rather than automatic physical punishment. Transportation was being resumed as a punishment post-American Revolution, which disrupted, uh, some of that, because they couldn't just ship people off to the colonies anymore. And also, it was, you know, oh, if we're just getting rid of all these people, then we can't profit off of their labor, essentially.

Lauren: So it's about the time when they were increasing the amount of people they just shipped to Australia?

Emily: Yes. The First Fleet was dispatched to Australia in 1787.

Lauren: There it is.

Emily: So approximately, approximately the year before Jane Austen was writing this. There was, it was the first dedicated penal colony. Um, transportation could be avoided by joining the army, but of course, that wouldn't have been an option for women. Um, yeah, so. Eliza's crime, stealing 50 pounds, was grand larceny. Because grand larceny was defined as theft of property greater in value than 12 pence.

Lauren: Oh yeah, she's way above that.

Emily: She's WAY above that. So, had Eliza been actually apprehended for her robbery, as Sir George put it, if she were not going to be just immediately subject to the death penalty, there would have had to be very significant, intentional, um, obfuscation of what the actual crime was.

Lauren: And honestly, like, I know there's not an actual reason why, but I wonder what the in-universe reason is for her stealing the 50 pounds. Given what we know about her over the next seven pages, it was probably just for shits and giggles, like, just for a little fun. But like 50 pounds, what were you doing with 50 pounds? Like you said, you could buy, what was it, four horses or 10 cows? What is she doing with it? She has no expenses.

Emily: It does make me wonder, you know, given Jane Austen's age, whether this was just kind of a big number pulled out of nowhere. Because like, you know, when I was 12, 13, I knew what I could buy with $5 or $10. I could imagine saving up like 100 maybe. But, you know, the difference between, like, $500 and $5,000 wasn't conceivable to me. They were just big numbers. So is this something that she just, like, threw down? She's like, 50 pounds, that's a lot of money.

Lauren: That's punishable by death. They'll kick her out. That makes sense.

Emily: Yeah, maybe it was just, well, it has to be big enough for them to kick her out.

Lauren: Yeah, I'm sure that's what it was. That's why I was like, I know there's not actually, like, a written explanation for why she would have been stealing the money. I just, it's funny to explore that in my head. Like, what were you going to do with that much money?

Emily: Well, you see, she really needed a gold watch.

Lauren: I honestly, I was like, it was probably for clothes. She probably was just on the high streets like, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.

Emily: A surprisingly stable characteristic throughout the story.

Lauren: Yeah, you know, it feels like the equivalent of stealing daddy's credit card and just going on a shopping spree.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, because she steals his 50 pounds. She and Henry live massively beyond their means. When she sells her wardrobe later, she buys toys for the children, which is understandable, but then also the watch for herself.

Lauren: And also, toys for children would be understandable if she didn't have other survival needs. Like, okay, yeah, sure, get something for your kids, but one of them is like, one. They don't need a toy - just -

Emily: They're eating your fingers, girl.

Lauren: Like, float a leaf in front of his face. He's a baby. He doesn't - He'll be fine. Like, make sure he has food. Oh my goodness. Thank you. I like the historical context a lot.

Emily: Good. What do you have for pop culture today, Lauren?

Lauren: I, on this podcast, have often done different tropes. I usually do tropes that you see in television or in books, but today I am focusing on a trope that relates to "Henry and Eliza" but is mostly found in fanfiction and that is the adoption fic because it felt obvious.

So other nerds like me have decided to put an excellent definition in fanlore.org, which is a website that I was not previously familiar with but thank you to other nerds for deciding to document all of the different media trends that are happening online.I appreciate you so much. And so the definition that is, I guess like the shared definition of what an adoption fic is, is an alternate universe or canon divergence fanfic. And for those who are not in the fan fiction world, that means - alternate universe sounds pretty self explanatory, but it basically just means that whatever truly happens in the story, the author is choosing to ignore that to create their own story in the playground of whatever universe they're choosing.

If we want to take like Twilight, for example, an alternate universe fic might have Bella breaking up with Edward and staying with Jacob. And so she's like, the author will be using the, the universe of Twilight, but saying, I actually don't like what the, what the canon or the actual story is, and I'm going to go over here and play with this instead.

So it could be something as simple as just changing who the main character ends up with. Or it could be, I'm changing everything. Like everything is going to be different now.

So in these fanfictions, these AU or a canon divergent fanfics, the characters are raised by someone else from childhood. So the child has different skills, possibly a different personality and events of canon are altered accordingly. This trope is particularly common in Harry Potter fanfiction and crossovers, but is often seen in other fandoms with canon orphans or characters who can easily be made to be adopted.

And so by adopting and putting this character in a completely different situation, you now open up your story to a whole host of other possibilities. Because if you have your character, be somebody with magical powers who is adopted by a non magical family, for example, now you get to play with, What does it look like to have this magical child stuck with these non magical people? and then they get to discover it, blah blah blah.

This is especially easy to justify in the case of Harry Potter since he was a) orphaned, b) left on a doorstep, and c) had abusive adopted parents. So many stories have him found and rescued immediately after he was orphaned, left on the Dursleys' doorstep but removed and saved by any characters - so maybe like Hagrid came back to get him or Sirius says, you know what, just kidding, I want to come back and I'm going to take Harry and we're going to go on the run. And then you have like a Sirius and Harry, like father-son relationship fic that you have going on over there. Abandoned by the Dursleys at some point after they find him, taken from the Dursleys because they are caught abusing him, or otherwise removed from their care. And so that can be done entirely within the original fandom.

But there are also stories in which Harry is adopted by Snape, the Weasleys, there are some where he's adopted by Gilderoy Lockhart, which I kind of want to read that just to see what they do. That sounds terrible. Or it's a crossover with another fandom. And this is also where you get a lot of possibilities to open up with adoption, so if you want to have Harry Potter adopted by the Cullens, you can do that. It's fanfiction. There are no rules. And now you get to play with what happens when this 11 year old boy wizard is hanging out with a bunch of vampires. You know, who knows?

But a related trope is the "real parent" story in which the character is not adopted, but the character's father or less often mother is someone who's unexpected. In that case, the identity of the real parent and any benefits or problems that result, like superpowers, immense wealth, um, hunted down by like government assassins, you know, whatever, are generally the main focus of the story. And so I liked that in Jane Austen's 12 year old writing, we have elements of these tropes that pop up in fanfiction and popular retellings online today.

And I think so much of it is because we're fascinated by the idea of like how much of our life is determined - It's that nature and nurture question. So, how much of our, our life and our personality is determined by just like the genetic makeup of who we are as people? Like this is always who I was going to be as a person? And how much of who I am is because of the parents that raised me or the environment in which I grew up? How would changing that change the person?

And so fanfiction lets you play with that in a way that you don't really get to do with fiction, because we have the established universe and the established character where you can see Okay, here is path A. Here is how they turned out. We are all familiar with path A because we all read the canon. And I'm going to take you down path B and see how I can change the character and like, find that exploration and create a whole commentary based off of simply changing who raised this person.

So that is my pop culture connection for today. If you were ever interested in seeing how people play with nature versus nurture, whether they realize that they're doing it or not, um, look up the adoption tag on Archive Of Our Own and have at it. Have fun.

Emily: I love that. That's so fun.

Lauren: I thought it was cute. I was like, that is actually a really fun one to be able to talk about.

Emily: I definitely think it also speaks to just, you know, the continuity of the things that people find fascinating.

Lauren: Mhm. Yeah. I think as much as things change, there are always things that are, I think, just core to like the human experience or human question. I think that's one of them that, at some point, we are usually asking ourselves. Doesn't matter what century you're in.

Emily: Yeah, definitely.

Lauren: Does that bring us to final takeaways?

Emily: I think that does bring us to final takeaways. You're up first.

Lauren: It's funny with, um, with this story in particular because we don't really know if it's nature or nurture because her adoptive parents are her actual parents the entire time. But I think, I don't know, I think my final takeaway given my pop culture connection might be that there are some characteristics that are just immutable. I think no matter who Eliza was raised by, she would have been somebody who wanted to spend above her means and just have a good time. And I think it's interesting to see which character traits are built by nurture and our environment and also interesting to see which ones were just going to be who we are regardless. And I think Eliza was going to be that person regardless of who either her biological parents were or who she was raised by. What about you?

Emily: I think my takeaway is just the incredible staying power of this kind of melodramatic story. Because it's in, you know, earlier fairy tales, it's in Jane Austen's Juvenilia, it's in modern fanfiction. Yeah, we just, we love to construct a scenario and throw characters into it and then see what they're gonna do.

Lauren: I just think that storytelling is such an essential part of being a person. And I wish that we understood that in at least like American society more and we placed more value on that.

Emily: Mhm.

Lauren: The end.

Emily: The end.

[outro music]

Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading "The beautiful Cassandra" and "The visit."

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 get access to exclusive content, you can join our Patreon at Reclaiming Jane Pod.

Emily: Reclaiming Jane is produced and co-hosted by Lauren Wethers and Emily Davis-Hale. Our music is by LaTasha Bundy and our show art is by Emily Davis-Hale.

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

[music ends]

Emily: [laughing] Is Eliza Moses?!

Lauren: Well, it was his birth family that tried to kill him. Or no, it was his adopted family -

Emily: No!

Lauren: His birth family didn't. No, you're right. I'm sorry.

Emily: He was the spiritual leader of his birth family!

Lauren: I was thinking of, um, I don't know why in my head I had that Ramesses was Moses's, like, actual birth brother. And I was like, oh wait, no, that's not right. He got picked up by the royals. JK.