Lady Susan (Part 1): “I Love Mess”

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Do you love mess? Lady Susan Vernon sure does — and so do we, let’s be honest. Our final episode of 2024 takes us into a familiar world of high-class drama, plus bite-sized historical and pop culture connections!

Transcript

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 Letters 1 through 14 of Lady Susan.

Emily: This story, this character, is such a piece of work. Oh, my God.

Lauren: I feel like the alternate title that I wrote down for this was, I support women's rights and women's wrongs.

Emily: And there are many women's wrongs apparently.

Lauren: Oh, there are several. She could quite literally write a book.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: I just, I don't even know where to begin with Lady Susan, which is terrible because it's my job to recap.

Emily: Yeah, I was gonna say we're beginning with you, unfortunately.

Lauren: I know, I know. Okay. I, I have faith. I think it's going to be fine.

Emily: I believe in you so much.

Lauren: Thank you. Thank you.

Emily: Let's get the timer out and make sure that it's not set for 30 minutes.

Lauren: No, you can give me 30 minutes. That's fine.

Emily: It took me 30 minutes to read this. All right, Lauren, are you prepared to recap the first 14 letters of Lady Susan?

Lauren: Prepared.

Emily: All right. On your mark. Get set.

Lauren: All right. Lady Susan is a hot girl and she's not going to let the fact that her husband just died stop her from being a hot girl. She does have to leave the original place that she was staying after her husband's death because she was a little bit too [00:02:00] flirty and she's ruined her whole thing and so she goes to her brother in law's house to cause chaos over there instead. His wife does not like her. Her wife's brother is convinced that she's gonna be a hoe. But then he turns, he comes to visit to come see the hoe with his own eyes and it turns out that she knows exactly how to play him and so she's gotten him on her side and And everyone is trying to figure out how she's gotten everybody under her spell.

Emily: Very nice.

Lauren: Yes.

Emily: I accidentally started two timers because I was doing the weird function on my phone. Whatever. We got there.

Lauren: We got there in the end and it was recapped somehow.

Emily: Mm hmm. Oh my goodness. So we begin with Lady Susan writing a very nice proper letter to her late husband's brother saying, it's time for me to move on from this lovely family as much as they've protested.

You've invited me to come and stay with you, so often, I simply must admit that it's, it's time to come and visit. I've never met your wife or your children. So we begin with a very particular picture of who Lady Susan is, and it immediately gets blown up.

Lauren: By her.

Emily: By her! She blew up her own spot, honestly.

Lauren: It's I think the note that I wrote was that we immediately get the Lady Susan that she presents to the public, and then her actual inner monologue, because the next letter that follows is her letter to her friend, where we really find out what she truly thinks about her brother in law, about her daughter, about everyone really.

Emily: Yeah, where that first letter was so polite and courteous. The second one is, like you said, just inner monologue. This is all of her real thoughts. She's unfiltered.

Lauren: Mrs. Johnson gets all of her real thoughts, and she wants to tell Mrs. Johnson that she really thinks that she's done nothing wrong here.

There's no censure to be found in her behavior. She really was trying to [00:04:00] be discreet. She only entertained the attentions of one man. And that just happened to be the man of the house and that's not her fault.

Emily: I was giving her the benefit of the doubt for like the first half page because she talks about going up to the house and thinking that she likes Manwaring.

I don't know if that's how that's pronounced. I hope it's how it's pronounced.

Lauren: We're going to roll with that for this episode because that's how I was going to say it.

Emily: And I was really hoping that Mrs. Manwaring was not married to this man, but was perhaps his mother. No such luck. She's literally been flirting with a married man.

Lauren: And her husband's only been dead for four months.

Emily: Yes! That's so wild.

Lauren: And she's supposed to be in deep mourning for a year. It's been a third of her deep mourning time, and she's already out here, like, Hi, would anybody like to pay attention to me?

Emily: The, yeah, Lady Susan is for the coquettes. They literally describe her as a coquette.

Lauren: Mm hmm. The most determined flirt to ever exist.

Emily: Truly, except that she's in her 30s.

Lauren: Yeah, literally, she's 35. At least.

Emily: At least, yeah. She has a 16 year old daughter.

Lauren: Who she calls the greatest simpleton on earth.

Emily: Oh my goodness, she's so mean to her daughter. And then complains about how people think that she's not tender and motherly. Like, wow, what do you think gives people that impression? Maybe it's because you evidently hate your daughter.

Lauren: You wrote to your friend that your daughter was born to be the torment of my life. Which, I mean, I have heard mothers describe their children that way before, but it's usually in like a Haha, loving type of way.

They get the side eye.

Emily: It does not come off as a joke.

Lauren: No, no. And then there are some people who describe their children that way. And you pause and you say, Oh, you really do not like your kid. This is this is that case. [00:06:00]

Emily: Lady Susan is desperately trying to pawn off Frederica on . If she can't settle her with a man, then she'll just ship her off to school in town and kind of wash her hands of her.

Lauren: And her reasoning in her original letter to her brother in law is that she doesn't really think that she can trust the education that Frederica received from the governess when she was at home. And so to finish her education and to make sure that she gets the best education possible, she's sending her to one of the best private schools in town.

But Frederica is past the age when girls should usually be in school, so if she was really that concerned about her education, she should have done that years ago. It's pretty clear that she just does not want to deal with her daughter, and her daughter's kind of cramping her style. She needs her to get out.

Emily: Yeah, but they definitely both need to get out of Langford quick, because the tides are rising against Lady Susan as she flirts with this married man. Also, the man that she was trying to engage her daughter to had been engaged to the daughter of the man that she was flirting with. And It's so messy.

Lauren: It's so messy. And he also seems like he's interested in her, not just in her daughter, but it's also like, "Hey, Lady Susan, I know you have a 16 year old who you're trying to match me with. And I also know that I'm technically engaged to this other little girl over here. But you have something going on that I really want to be a part of."

Emily: Unbelievable. She seems like one of those people who everyone knows sucks, but she has a weird magnetism anyway. Like, I don't understand why people keep dating this person, and yet they do, and then they're miserable about it, but they're never single. What is that?

Lauren: And she is also, like, very clearly intelligent, even if she is using that intelligence in Nefarious ways because she has a keen understanding of exactly how to manipulate people to get what [00:08:00] she wants. And before we see it play out like in real life, we see hints of it in this first letter that she writes to Mrs. Johnson because she knows that she's going to be able to find a home with Mr. Johnson at least for a time period because "with all his faults, he is a man to whom that great word Respectable is always given, and I'm known to be so intimate with his wife, his slighting me has an awkward look." Basically, like, you can't slight me because social conventions require you to take me in if I ask you to, so good luck with trying to kick me out, but I don't think you're going to be able to.

Emily: Honestly, just the placement and timing of these first three letters are so masterful because you get Lady Susan as she wants to present herself, Lady Susan as she actually is, and then the third letter is from her sister in law. We'll call it sister in law. It's her late husband's brother's wife. who she's imposing on for Christmas, who writes to her own mother complaining about Lady Susan.

So you get the presentation, the internal, and then how other people actually see her.

Lauren: And if you are indeed listening to this on Christmas Day and you have some family members who are really just irking your nerves, Mrs. Vernon can relate because she is really incensed at the fact that she's not going to be able to spend Christmas with her mother because here comes her nightmare of a sister in law who has insisted that she be put up in their home.

And she's a bit put out with her husband for having previously extended an invitation because it means that, given her circumstances as a widow, and not just a widow, but the widow of her husband's brother, and the fact that the invitation had already been extended, she can't really turn her away, but she has a much better sense of who Lady Susan actually is.

Than other people do. And [00:10:00] she is not keen on letting this woman into her home.

Emily: There is some long standing personal friction between Lady Susan and Mrs. Vernon, because Lady Susan tried her best not to let Charles Vernon marry Catherine, his wife. So, Catherine holds a very understandable grudge about that. It's like, yeah, she doesn't even know me.

She's literally never met me, but she did everything in her power to prevent us from getting married. And it doesn't seem to be for any particular reason that we know of.

Lauren: And she kind of gives some kind of flimsy excuse at one point, but it doesn't, I think she just likes to have her way and manipulate people.

Emily: She's a pot stirrer.

Lauren: She's a pot stirrer. And the one good thing is that Frederica is not coming because she's been shipped off to boarding school because Mrs. Vernon also has a very low opinion of Lady Susan's daughter. And says that "a girl of 16 who has received so wretched an education would not be a very desirable companion here."

Emily: To sort of save her own skin from the misery of being locked up with Lady Susan, Mrs. Vernon ends up inviting her own brother, Reginald, to come, too. To sort of lighten the tension, be a barrier, and to see all this in person, too. And when he writes back to her, his letter opens, "My dear sister, I congratulate you and Mr. Vernon on being about to receive into your family the most accomplished coquette in England." Lady Susan is notorious, evidently.

Lauren: She has, her reputation quite literally precedes her.

Emily: Yes, absolutely. And so Reginald is all about it. He has the hot gossip from somebody else who stayed with the Manwarings while Lady Susan was there. So he's got the tea, he's ready to share it with his sister. I very much enjoy what appears to be their sibling relationship.

Lauren: Me too.

Emily: It's [00:12:00] delightful. So he's absolutely on board to come and witness this travesty for himself.

Lauren: Reginald is messy, and I love that.

Emily: I love that for him.

Lauren: He's like, I've heard the tea, and I need to come witness this drama firsthand.

I'm coming over.

Emily: Now, when she arrives at the Vernon's. Despite having left Langford to get out of this sort of mess of a situation, she's still secretly writing to Mr. Manwaring? Because he wrote to her and she managed to convince the Vernons that it was actually from Mrs. Manwaring, his wife. And then when she writes to her friend Mrs. Johnson again, she says, when I write to him, it'll have to be addressed to you instead.

Lauren: Because she can't make it obvious that she's still corresponding with a married man, but she's not going to let that stop her. So instead, she's just going to pretend like she's writing to her friend back and forth, when really, she is still entertaining this very married, very unavailable man.

Emily: Everything just has to be for her own entertainment, and this aligns with her assessment of Churchill, the Vernon's home, too. Because They do not know what to do with their fortune, keep very little company, and never go to town but on business. We shall be as stupid as possible.

Lauren: And she also has clocked the fact that Mrs. Vernon does not seem very fond of her. And although she admits that "she is perfectly well bred indeed and has the air of a woman of fashion, her manners are not such as can persuade me of her being prepossessed in my favor.' You're right, babe. She's not. She does not like you, and she has your number.

Emily: It does not seem to be a very difficult number to get.

But when Mrs. Vernon writes to her brother again, we get a sort of astonished and almost put out reaction at how Lovely Lady Susan seems to be in person. She's [00:14:00] almost disappointed. She says "her address to me was so gentle, frank, and even affectionate that if I had not known how much she has always disliked me for marrying Mr. Vernon and that we had never met before, I should have imagined her an attached friend."

So Lady Susan definitely knows how to deploy the social graces in her favor. And we do even get a hint just through her name, Lady Susan, despite the fact that she was married to a Mr. Vernon that she is nobility by blood.

As the footnote says at the very beginning, her site, "her title tells us that she must be the daughter of a duke, a marquess, or an earl, which are the top three ranks of English nobility." So she has come from some breeding, and some social influence.

Lauren: And it has paid off, because she's not shunned from society, despite everyone knowing that she is a determined coquette.

And she also is very pretty. Mrs. Vernon also makes note of this in her letter to her brother, and she admits that she has seldom seen so lovely a woman as Lady Susan. Like, not only is she charming, but she's gorgeous. And, despite being, like, over the hill in Regency terms Like she is still a captivating beauty to the point where even Mrs. Vernon, who was determined to dislike her, remarks in a letter to her brother how pretty she is. And she is still able to pull interested suitors, honestly, without putting in that much effort and people who would have otherwise gone for younger women or who are still married themselves.

Emily: So after this meeting, Mrs. Vernon is. I'm sort of inclined to maybe give Lady Susan the benefit of the doubt in terms of the gossip that she's heard from her brother, because she [00:16:00] believes that Lady Susan is corresponding with Mrs. Manwaring, which would be perfectly appropriate, unlike the fact that she's corresponding with her husband.

And tells Reginald that surely your, your friend must have been mistaken or exaggerating or something. There's no way that she is actually just deceived this many people. Hmm.

Lauren: Psyche. And then of course, cut to Lady Susan once again writing to Mrs. Johnson. And we can assume that Alicia has-- Alicia's Mrs. Johnson-- that she said something about Frederica in one of her letters back to Lady Susan, because Lady Susan opens her letter talking about her daughter. And once again, just does not miss an opportunity to really kind of kick her while she's down, because she describes her as "a stupid girl and has nothing to recommend her. I would not, therefore, in any account, have you encumber one moment of your precious time by sending for her to Edward Street, especially as every visit is so many hours deducted from the grand affair of education, which I really wish to be attended to, while she remains with Miss Summers."

I'm sure that education is what you're worried about when it comes to her. I'm sure that's it.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Especially because she then goes on to explicitly say that she's trying to make Frederica miserable so that she will accept the man who she previously did not want to marry. The one who broke off his apparent engagement with Miss Manwaring because Lady Susan had interfered.

It's all so complicated. It's incredible. I'm having a great time.

Lauren: It's so funny. And she really is, like, trying to mastermind everything from far away, where it's like, even though her daughter might have cause to think that her mother was no longer involved in her affairs because she shipped her off, really, she's still kind of pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

Emily: She asks Mrs. Johnson to have Sir James over and mention [00:18:00] Frederica to him and just make sure that the Vernon's are still on his mind.

Lauren: It's like she's just going to make sure that Frederica thinks it's her decision to accept him when really she's masterminded this whole thing the entire time.

Emily: It's wild.

And the mastermindery continues. That's probably not a word, but whatever.

Lauren: Mastermindery.

Emily: Yeah. Because Reginald has arrived at Churchill Mr. Vernon, the, no, not Mr. Vernon Mr. DeCourcy. Mrs. Vernon's brother.

Lauren: And now things get interesting.

Emily: And now things get interesting because Lady Susan goes, Oh, here's a handsome young man. He seems like he's not predisposed to like me. And that's a challenge. And, She says to Mrs. Johnson, this is, I immediately had to highlight this in my book. "There is exquisite pleasure in subduing an insolent spirit, in making a person predetermined to dislike acknowledge one's superiority."

Lauren: I could say so many things.

Lady Susan makes her intentions known to her friend in her letter and then the very next letter that we get is Mrs. Vernon complaining about it because she has put her mind to something, Lady Susan, and it is working. And Mrs. Vernon doesn't understand what magic this woman is conducting to make her brother like her, because he arrived determined to dislike her with all of this news and stories about how she had basically been ruining lives where she was before and now all of a sudden he seems to be under her spell and she cannot make heads nor tails of it.

Emily: She's so annoyed because he was supposed to be her ally in this, and yet he is being steadily swayed by Lady Susan and her perfect grace and charm and her attractiveness and her humor and her [00:20:00] wit.

Lauren: She's just dedicated. To making this man hers and the most annoying thing for Mrs. Vernon is that she can't even find any flaws in Lady Susan's behavior because she is so perfectly calculated in what she's doing is that Mrs. Vernon has to admit I have not detect this. I have not detected the smallest impropriety in it. She's not doing anything wrong. And so she has nothing to actually like punish her for or to ask her to stop doing or even to try and like use shame to get her to stop because she's not doing anything wrong.

She just doesn't like it.

Emily: And this is very explicitly calculated. Lady Susan says specifically that this is what she is doing. She is going to convert Reginald to her side without doing anything improper so that she can't be criticized. And it's Toxic Girlboss, just like Gatekeep Girlboss.

Lauren: And the very next letter that we get, we see the very first letter from Mrs. Johnson to Lady Susan. So now we get to see what her friend thinks of all of this. And her friend is clearly just as toxic, which makes sense because Lady Susan is telling her all of her business. And so it would track that she's the same kind of delusional or maybe perhaps very rational and just different moral code.

But her friend writes and says, Oh, you should marry him immediately. Lock that down. He's got good money. He doesn't, you know, he seems like he's enthralled with you. People speak well of him. I haven't heard anything bad. Go ahead and just secure your future with husband number two. Wrap it up. Call it a day.

Emily: And Lady Susan kind of deflects a little bit. She's like, I'm not trying to marry this man. I don't know about that. [00:22:00] But She is, that does not lessen at all her desire to win him over. She says, "my conduct has been equally guarded from the first, and I never behaved less like a coquette in the whole course of my life. Though perhaps my desire of dominion was never more decided," just the words that she chooses are so fascinating to me.

Lauren: desire of dominion is just such a powerful phrase.

Emily: Truly it is. This widowed 30 something who is trying to bring her own daughter to heel, and just wants to use other people as her playthings.

Lauren: And she also says that she does not intend on this becoming a romantic connection at all, nor does she ever see it progressing past platonic friendship. Because she knows that he came into this disliking her, and she's not going to bestow her affection on somebody who had decided not to like her before he even met her.

That's not what she's planning on doing. If he falls in love with her, that's fine, and that's not her problem, but she's not going to be in love with him.

Emily: And of course, she has to give him an unfavorable comparison to Mr. Manwaring, who she's still writing to.

Lauren: Still corresponding with Mr. Manwaring, and on top of that the Sir James who she had intended for her daughter is still in love with her.

And would marry either her or her daughter, if given the chance, and that--

Emily: What a wild dynamic.

Lauren: It just feels like it's out of a really bad movie.

Emily: Truly, yeah. But with every day, Reginald's attraction grows, and Mrs. Vernon writes again to her mother saying, It's getting worse. Please intervene, because their father, Sir Reginald, is unwell, and to like, it's, it's sort of the sense of like, this would be the final blow.

If he actually marries her. Yeah, which sort of gets out [00:24:00] to the father, Sir Reginald, who immediately writes directly to his son, basically saying like, you know, we, For, for the time and for the status we don't care that much about, you know, the fortune of the woman you end up marrying. But she needs to be suitable.

But he comes straight out and says that Lady Susan would be absolutely inappropriate as a match, begs Reginald not to marry her.

Lauren: And he says that her age itself is an objection, but if it, if that weren't enough, it would be one thing if she were 35 and nobody had ever said anything bad about her, but she's 35 and she has a terrible reputation and we have a name to protect, so don't you dare.

Emily: Her neglect of her husband, her encouragement of other men, her extravagance and dissipation were so gross and notorious that no one could be ignorant of them at the time, nor can now have forgotten them.

Lauren: Tell us how you really feel.

Emily: She is a scourge of high society, apparently.

Lauren: Evidently so. And then we find out from Mrs. Vernon's mother writing back to her, like, Girl, I am so sorry. I did not mean for your father to get involved in this. I was feeling terrible. I asked your dad to read the letter to me. And of course, in reading the letter, he found out everything that's been going on, and now he knows, and he wrote to your brother directly.

So if you hear anything, that's why.

Emily: And Reginald wrote back to his father immediately, which, which letter Lady de Courcy sends to her daughter is like, you're going to find this interesting. And he protests the whole way through that. He has no intention whatsoever of marrying Lady Susan. They don't need to worry about that.

However, he does defend her. [00:26:00] He says that she has been misunderstood, that her actions have been misrepresented, basically that people are unfairly gossiping about her. Which we know is not true from Lady Susan's own correspondence with her friend. It is literally all true. She's the worst and she's doing it on purpose.

Lauren: And she's manipulating you into thinking that nothing about her has been a lie.

Emily: Mm hmm. Absolutely wild.

Lauren: And that is the end of Letter 14. And that's where we stop.

Emily: That's where we leave off.

Lauren: You'll have to come back to the next episode to find out what the hell she does next.

Emily: Oh, I'm dying to know.

Lauren: I, what a character. In every sense of the word. Later.

Emily: Truly, it's, I think the thing that stood out to me most in this was the, the very literal interpretation of what some people would call like the deceptions of courtesy. Because that's a bad faith argument that I've seen people make, like, oh, you're being polite to people you don't like.

That's lying to them. Like, that's just functioning in the world. You know, we talked about the social contract last episode or one before. Yeah, like, that's, that's just living in harmony with your fellow human being, honestly. But Lady Susan is very much not that. She is masking her malicious intentions with that sheen of courtesy and society and good breeding and her good family.

Lauren: We talked about how she was the type of person who never seems to be single even though everyone who dates her complains about her. I feel like she's also the type of person who gets married and then after she gets married, then her true personality comes out of the woodworks and she's [00:28:00] suddenly cruel and overbearing and awful and you're confused because she was never like this when you were dating.

What's going on? This isn't the Lady Susan that I know. But it is. She just now is safe enough to drop the mask because now she's secured you.

Emily: You're stuck with her. Wow. I'm, I feel like I'm having way too much fun with this already.

Lauren: I truly, if I didn't have other things to do, I would have just continued reading because it was so entertaining.

Emily: And my love of epistolary writing has been well established. And this is extremely well executed, in my opinion.

Lauren: Oh, 100%. After a previous novel, Or a fragment where it was epistolary just in the sense of it was people writing letters, but we didn't really get the true epistolary sense of the novel. Now we are being fed.

Emily: This is peak. I'm so happy.

Lauren: 100%.

Emily: Good for my soul.

Lauren: Do you remember those chicken soup for the soul books that were huge in like the early 2000s?

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: Jane Austen chicken soup for the soul.

Emily: But in a completely different way, because those were very, like, sort of Christian coded.

Lauren: Oh, yeah. But that is all that we have as far as plot recap. Is there anything else that you want to talk about for Lady Susan?

Emily: I think I pulled it out, that, that undercurrent of deception was the biggest thing for me. Anything else from you?

Lauren: No, I think, I think this discussion has pretty much summed it up. It has teed me up well for my eventual pop culture connection.

Emily: Oh, good. And I'm sure that we will only increase the amount of things that we talk about through the next two parts of Lady Susan. We get to stick with this for three whole episodes. I'm psyched.

Lauren: Me too. If that's all that we have, what is your historical connection for today?

Emily: This is a very small one, but [00:30:00] it Just jumped out to me how persistently Lady Susan uses the word stupid. That's, it's one of her favorite descriptors. She describes her daughter as stupid. She describes the time that they will all have at Churchill as stupid. So, just the tiniest little etymology lesson, I guess.

Lauren: I'm into it. Let's go.

Emily: Yeah. The first attested borrowing into English from the French word stupide is in the 1540s.

It's descended from Latin, stupidest and stupide from proto Indo-European stupide, which is a verb meaning to hit. These early connotations definitely were with being stunned or confounded, associated with like a stupor. That's related. It seems like the particular reference to someone's mental faculties has kind of varied over time.

It doesn't seem to have ever been a thing where it was like, oh, it was never talking about someone's intelligence, or it only developed that later. I think there was always some it could be used in that way. And in the late 18th century, there was a particular shift to using the word stupid to describe a person or a situation being very dull or inane.

So that seems to be what Lady Susan has picked up on and just made this a keystone of her vocabulary.

Lauren: I love that. It's like, you know what? I have latched onto this word and I'm throwing it in all of my conversations from now on, which is another relatable quality of hers.

Emily: Yeah, unfortunately, I definitely do that a lot.

So just a little bite sized etymology lesson, but it stuck out. And we've talked about things like morning practices and girls education and stuff like that. So it's like, we'll go in a slightly different direction.

Lauren: No, I like it. Cause I [00:32:00] think that's one of the things that we don't often think about as far as period pieces, because we take language and the words that we use for granted and just assume that it's been that way the entire time.

And that's not the case. So I like seeing how language has shifted and being able to tie that to Austen as well.

Emily: If it's not something that you have to look up the definition for, we tend to operate on the assumption that it means the same thing, but very often it didn't. And in this case, kind of unfortunately, for the sake of my historical connection, it does seem to have meant roughly the same thing across time.

Lauren: It still worked out. That's okay.

Emily: It worked out. So that's the tiniest history bit I've ever had.

Lauren: I liked it. Thank you. Just a little treat.

Emily: A little, a little bite. Do you have something more substantial for pop culture for us today?

Lauren: I don't think so. I think it is perhaps similarly brief. And I wanted to talk about how Lady Susan knows exactly how to shift her personality based on who she's talking to and has that kind of knowledge of how to position herself and how she behaves to be the most Palatable or charming to the other person. And what it reminded me of in particular is the blockbuster movie of the fall and the holiday season, Wicked and Glinda in particular And when I was reading it, and I think it's also just because I have Wicked on the brain lately, It's been difficult--

Emily: as do many people.

Lauren: As do many people, it's been difficult to avoid if you're trying to avoid it at all, even if you didn't go see the movie. You've surely been touched by the marketing campaign in some way, shape, or form. And I really did enjoy the musical before the movie came out. So it was something that I was anticipating this year.

And so I've been very much enjoying the Wicked discourse that's been coming across my timeline. And one of the things that people often talk about is Glinda's character and her [00:34:00] characterization and whether or not she is truly good, because people like to debate, is she really the good witch or do the choices that she makes throughout the course of the story. mean that she's not good at all? Where is there room for moral complexity? And etc, etc.

I'm not worried about that so much, but more about how someone who is perceived as good, particularly in like this first half of Wicked, where she's a college student, we're not even getting into all the political implications of Wicked yet, we're just talking about the social scene at Shiz University, where she and Elphaba meet for the first time, where she immediately takes the lay of the land, determines that she is going to be at the top of the social ladder, and knows exactly how to play every single other student in that university to make sure that she retains that position. When she turns down a character who wants to ask her to a ball, it's never a direct denial, even though she would never catch herself dead in the same room with this character.

But "you know what would make me really happy? What if you asked out that girl over there? That would make me the happiest girl on earth."

She somehow manages to make him think that she is still wonderful and kind and good as he walks across the room to go ask somebody else out to this ball and does not realize he's been rejected.

As soon as Prince Fiyero comes on the scene, she determines that she is going to have him because why wouldn't she? She is beautiful and popular and gets the lay of the land pretty quickly when it comes to him. Again, knows exactly how to play the game so that he relates to her and wants to know more about her.

And is available but not too available. Is hard to get but, you know, not too standoffish. And the only person who she cannot trust. really work on that with is Madame Morrible and Elphaba. Those are the only two people who she can't deceive, who see her for who she is pretty much immediately, but her game works on every single other person.

And I was thinking about that while reading because if people have watched Wicked this year, or if you've [00:36:00] seen the musical, if you've read the book, though the book is scary, quite different from both the musical and the movie. So if you picked it up hoping that you're going to read the same story, you're not, I'm sorry.

But if you're looking to see what Lady Susan might look like in a different context, that is it. It's Glinda, determined flirt and more than being a determined flirt, just someone who knows exactly how to edit her personality, to get what she wants and to ensure that almost everyone she meets has a high opinion of her.

And it's not necessarily going to be 100%. Same with Lady Susan where Mrs. Vernon is really able to kind of call her out at her own game immediately. Madame Morrible and Elphaba, similarly, really are not falling for any of Glinda's games, but for the most part, they coast through life with everyone liking them because, not by accident, they've mastered that art of charm and deceit and figuring out what it is that they need to do to continue to stay in the social graces of the people around them. So that is my pop culture connection. It is Glinda and Wicked and Lady Susan.

Emily: That is so perfect and so timely.

Lauren: Thank you.

Emily: Thank you for that.

Lauren: All right. Should we do our final takeaways?

Emily: As usual, I forgot until that very moment that we have to do takeaways.

Lauren: We do, and you are up first, my friend.

Emily: I'm not sure this is a perfect takeaway, but I think mine is that you can dislike someone without it having to be justified by evidence. And that's, I think, possibly tying in more to [00:38:00] Internet tendencies of, like, you don't vibe with a person, and so you go and try to dig up dirt on them to explain why you don't like them.

And it feels like poor Mrs. Vernon is kind of hitting this wall where she's like, I, I don't like Lady Susan, but I feel like all my justification is being stripped away. And she is correct. It's being intentionally stripped away by Lady Susan, who is the worst.

Lauren: Sometimes you can trust your gut for why you don't like a person.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: And this is one of those cases.

Emily: That's my sort of tenuous takeaway. But what's yours?

Lauren: Maybe that we sense artifice before we are able to know that it's there. And I don't know how that's a takeaway. I was going away from like, my takeaway was I feel justified in not liking girls in my high school because they were all sweet on the surface, but they were mean girls.

They were mean! And maybe I should just be honest about what my takeaway is, is that I now feel justified in my dislike because there was never anything that was particularly wrong, but I knew that there were some snide comments that they would make and hide them in like sugary, sweet compliments. But they were not being complimentary.

They were being mean. And no one ever believed me. And I feel like I've just been justified because this is proof that there are people like that who exist. And I was dancing around it because I didn't want that to be my takeaway. But it is. I feel justified in my 14 year old dislike.

Emily: Totally fair. She's Regency Regina George.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: Well, I can't wait to come back to more of Lady Susan's shenanigans next episode.

Lauren: Oh my god, it's gonna be

Emily: I love mess.

Lauren: Yes, where's the Marie Kondo gift?

Emily: Precisely. That's going to be such a great way to kick off 2025. I'm like, can't wait.[00:40:00]

Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time, we'll be reading letters 15 through 24 of Lady Susan.

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 catalogue and links to our social media.

Lauren: If you'd like to support us and gain access to exclusive content like video episodes, you can join our Patreon at reclaimingjanepod.

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!

Wait, you know what? No, you know what? Nevermind. I can't say that on a podcast.