Mansfield Park 11-15: “Mission Accomplished”
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Let's... put on a show? In this section, Emily and Lauren talk about accomplishment as we follow the denizens of Mansfield Park through their preparation for a play. Also included: a new arrival, love triangles, and the scandal of the stage.
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Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Season 3 Episode 3 | Mansfield Park 11-15: “Mission Accomplished”
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 talking about chapters 11 through 15 of Mansfield Park through the lens of accomplishment.
Emily: So this was, I don't, I don't know if I want to call it a weird section, but it was a weird section.
Lauren: I feel like we are getting into more significant action, but these chapters were kind of setting up more significant plot points, I suppose. So there are things that are happening, but also not really. The plot didn't really progress by that much.
Yeah. I was trying to think of how I was going to recap this. And I was like, there's one significant thing that I want to mention. So my recap might be 10 seconds long.
Emily: No, I was thinking the same thing. It was like, cause I've, I've started In my own interest, you know, trying to preserve my dignity, taking notes of major events as I'm reading so that I can like review them before we do the recap.
So is that cheating? I don't know, but it makes me feel better about my ability to recap, because my memory is so terrible. But yeah, I was writing things down, I'm like. There's...there's not much, is there?
Lauren: Nope.
Emily: Going to be pretty short recaps.
Lauren: Yeah. Well that means that we have so much, a lot more time to kind of dive into accomplishment, which is our theme for today.
And surprisingly, in these first couple of chapters, I feel like I was making a lot of notes about how accomplishment related to what was happening and the last three, not so much.
Emily: Well, did we want to go ahead and get into recaps?
Lauren: We shall. I believe it is my turn, is it not?
Emily: Yes, it is.
Lauren: Oh, goodness, okay.
Emily: Are you ready, Lauren?
Lauren: Ready.
Emily: 3, 2, 1 go.
Lauren: Okay. The specter of Sir Bertram returning to Mansfield Park is, is upon them. He may or may not be coming back in the fall. They have mixed feelings about this. They're rich and bored and they have nothing to do. So they decide that they're going to put on a play just for themselves, because again, they have nothing to do.
Edmund [00:02:00] is very much against this because as the proper clergyman, he doesn't think that this is something in which they should be engaging. All the rest of them are like, you're such a stick in the mud, shut up, we're going to do the play. And so they are and Edmund hates it. And Fanny's alone still.
Emily: Well, you managed to stretch it up to 30 seconds.
Lauren: I really tried. All right. Can you also stretch this recap to 30 seconds?
Emily: We'll see!
Lauren: Okay. Three, two, one. Go.
Emily: Sir Thomas is still out of the country, but is supposed to be home within the next couple of months. Edmund is extremely into Mary. Fanny doesn't know how to feel about this because she's also into Edmund.
Mary is also into Edmund, so... things. Both of the Bertram sisters are kind of fighting over Henry Crawford. No one knows how he feels about anyone. One of Tom's friends comes to stay with them. They all decide to put on a play. Edmund is very against this. Fanny is on his side.
Lauren: Excellent. Thank you for covering the things that I skipped.
Emily: There wasn't much.
Lauren: And really it's just the romantic drama continues.
Emily: Yeah. That's honestly, that's what it is. There's so much romantic drama. We haven't really had this experience of like, love triangles in the previous two novels that we've looked at. So there's, there's a lot more like interpersonal drama on that kind of direct level, than there was in either Sense and Sensibility or in Pride and Prejudice.
Lauren: And now we have multiple love triangles. We went from zero to at least two.
Emily: We went from zero to a hundred.
Lauren: Real quick. I think the one that is most applicable to the plot is the one between Mary, Edmund, and Fanny. However, the two sisters fighting over one man? I am just engrossed in this drama.
Emily: Especially when one of the sisters is already engaged to a completely different man. Also, oh my God, Mr. Rushworth like, is he a proto-himbo, like, what is going on here?
Lauren: I really feel like he is, he's just rich and [00:04:00] dumb and just wants to make people happy and not comprehending anything that's going on around him.
Emily: I don't, I don't think we have quite enough evidence accumulated of drinking the respect women juice to really call him a himbo. But I-- he's on that track. I think.
Lauren: I think so. I think the only kind of hint of him, maybe perhaps taking a sip of the respect women juice, is that when he's frustrated, because the whole party left him back in the previous section, he doesn't take his frustrations out on the people who left. He just kind of like, pouts and then gathers himself and then goes off to rejoin the company.
Instead of like venting his spleen at the people. Like, I literally left to go get the fricking keys so we could go off together. And then by the time I come back with the key, you've jumped it anyway. Like, what the hell?
Emily: All right. Well, do we want to start from the beginning and kind of go through and incorporate where we see accomplishment?
Lauren: We shall indeed.
Emily: All right. We begin with the news that Sir Thomas is planning his imminent return to England. It's apparently going to take him like two months to get back because sea travel. That sounds terrible. I'm so glad we don't live in those times.
Lauren: I think about that all the time I like, read about travel in any old timey book like this. I cannot fathom just the fact that something that we are now, thank you God for technology, able to do in like seven hours on a plane would take months, months. Absolutely not. I would never go anywhere.
Emily: Yeah, no, definitely not. Especially like overseas travel. I mean, I'm terrified enough being in a plane over open ocean.
Being in a ship for weeks on open sea, it would be like, no, actually that's not going to happen. Hard pass on that one.
Lauren: Nope. You can either be claustrophobic below decks or agoraphobic above deck. Take your pick.
Emily: The ocean is just so terrifying.
Lauren: Better Sir Thomas than us, he can have his terrible sea journey back to England. And [00:06:00] clearly his children don't really care that much either because no one's particularly excited that he's coming back.
Emily: They're really not. I mean, Tom has been enjoying, you know, lording it over as the temporary man of the house. Maria is on the verge of like wishing her father wouldn't come back because as soon as he gets back, her marriage is on and she is definitely having second thoughts about this, which is interesting because in the preceding chapters, it seemed like she was just sort of engaging in this kind of idle flirtation with Henry Crawford. But now we're seeing a little bit more of like, her internal life and thoughts about her impending marriage to Rushworth and she like doesn't actually want it to happen.
Lauren: She does not want to get married to that man at all.
And Julia is also annoyed because she is the one who's actually not engaged and should be the one who's able to kind of engage in these not quite so idle flirtations with Henry Crawford, but her sister is in the way. And so from Julia's perspective, she's like excuse you, you already have a man. I do not have a man. Why are you in my space? Like move over. I'm trying to secure my own marriage.
Emily: Julia's like, it's my turn now, would you please get out of the way?
Lauren: Literally!
Emily: I, I don't blame her.
Lauren: I don't at all. She's definitely not in the wrong. I would be irritated with my sister too. Like girly. I know that apparently you're not happy, but he has money and you're engaged. So just go away.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, they, they both annoy me, but yeah, I feel like Julia definitely has more of a right to her feeling here.
Lauren: Yeah. Neither of them are exactly my favorite. Not going to lie.
Emily: Honestly? None of these people are my favorite.
Lauren: I know. I don't like them.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: It's just kind of a cast of unlikeable characters.
Emily: It is. It really is. Yeah. I don't think anybody's like irredeemable, but they're just not likable people, any of them.
Lauren: Yeah. It's not like it's [00:08:00] a book of villains. There's just nobody who we particularly want to root for, exactly.
Emily: There's no standout hero.
Lauren: By conventions of the story. It's obviously Fanny, but we don't really like her that much. So.
Emily: It's the sympathy support.
Lauren: Exactly. I don't feel as emotionally invested in Fanny as I did in like Elizabeth Bennet or either Elinor or Marianne. Anyway, we also see some more of Mary and Edmund starting to become closer much to Fanny's dismay.
Emily: Oh, Fanny is so just like silently upset by this, but also. All of their interactions seem to be Mary taking the piss out of the clergy and Edmund being like, but it's not that bad. Like what, what does he see in her?
Lauren: Apparently it's like in the lightness of her step and the sway of her hips or something. So it's certainly not in the words that she's saying to him because Jesus.
Emily: Yeah, yeah there it is. "Mary tripped off to the instrument, leaving Edmund looking after her in an ecstasy of admiration of all her many virtues, from her obliging manners down to her light and graceful tread," next to which I wrote, "that's a pretty generous definition of virtue."
Lauren: That is the exact passage that I was thinking of.
Emily: So basically she's hot. And she has a style about her that he likes, but I don't think they're compatible as people.
Lauren: I mean, this is one of the things that she says where I wrote, who hurt you? She goes, "a clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish, read the newspaper, watch the weather and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine."
Emily: She, she's holding a grudge against someone specific.
Lauren: And then she said," I speak what appears to me the general opinion. And when opinion is general, it is usually correct." This is like, "I heard from two other people that they also hate clergymen. So therefore, everybody does. And this applies to everyone."
Emily: Yes. And [00:10:00] also just the concept that the general feeling of the public is always right? In what world?
Lauren: Sometimes the public is really stupid.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: This conversation does give us the line from Miss Crawford, "I fancy Miss Price has been more used to deserve praise than to hear it."
And that was like, one of the phrases that I marked for accomplishment too. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? If you are accomplished, but nobody calls you accomplished, are you really? Where, where does the distinction fall?
Emily: That was such an interesting line. Is Mary actually recognizing that Fanny just goes unobserved by everyone? Or is this just another like snide backhanded compliment?
Lauren: I feel like more the latter. And I also think that Mary is smart enough to be able to see that Edmund is the only one who really takes Fanny into account. And by treating her with any kind of respect that she can gain more of Edmund's preference.
I don't really think she's doing anything for Fanny's benefit.
Emily: Oh, definitely not.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Edmund is the only person who has ever once thought of Fanny's actual benefit.
Lauren: And even he has his moments.
Emily: Lord.
Lauren: I can't even really root for Fanny and Edmund because every time he talks to her, it's in this kind of condescending way.
So I'm like, ehh. Okay.
Emily: And she's clearly just infatuated with him because he's the only person who's ever shown her a modicum of true kindness.
Lauren: Right. I wrote a note right at the beginning of chapter 12. There's a sentence where, when they're talking about Mr. Crawford, where it says, you know, "prosperity has made him thoughtless and selfish," is what the narration says.
And I put, is that a downside of accomplishment?
Emily: Oh, hmm.
Lauren: Are there negatives to becoming what society calls accomplished, because then do you leave things behind that make you a more thoughtful and empathetic person because they don't serve what accomplishment looks like?
Emily: I think that's something that we could [00:12:00] draw really easy parallels with today, because we see people who have followed that trajectory of coming from nothing and now they're wildly successful and they found wealth and fame and they've become completely disconnected from the current realities of the place that they came from. Even if they still remember and feel that they relate to what it was previously, the world moves on.
Lauren: And we have the difference between the vapid and selfish upper-class people who we see trying to amuse themselves throughout this entire section. And then Fanny, who specifically is not the same kind of upper-class who is one who's making all of these insightful comments and even though she doesn't always give herself the credit because she lacks so much self-confidence, is usually the one to actually accurately see what's happening.
So it's the person who by society's standards is least accomplished who's actually the one who's most insightful as to what the dynamics are, what's going on, because all she does is observe. And so she's more likely to accurately describe something than any of the other people who would be considered more, highly educated or accomplished.
Emily: There's something that we could say there about the insulation of in this case, especially wealth and class, where you've never had to see certain realities. And so for you, they simply don't exist or they exist completely in the abstract.
Lauren: Fanny isn't necessarily street smart, but she has been exposed to more of life than these people have.
Emily: Definitely. If only because of those first 10 years of her life. I forgot this note I made with Edmund talking about Henry Crawford. He says, "his manners to women are such as must please." Just for a translation, "what a Chad."
Not relevant to anything, but like [00:14:00] Edmund's dislike of Henry Crawford... at least, I see it as dislike, especially as the section goes on. I think that's becoming more evident, that conflict between these two young men and their views on the world, their experience of the world, their goals for the future. And obviously we can add Tom into the mix, here, too.
Lauren: Yeah. Henry and Edmund are two very different people.
And even though everything Edmund says is cloaked in like this veil of politeness, I think that's as close as to throwing shade as Edmund will get.
Emily: Definitely.
Lauren: Yeah, he does not, does not care for Henry much at all.
Emily: We also get more of Tom in this section than we have before, which is a bit of a trial.
He's terrible. He's just so terrible.
Lauren: I was trying to think of a polite way to say that he sucked, but yeah, that's pretty much it.
Emily: No. Diplomacy here? No.
Lauren: Absolutely not.
Emily: Yeah. One thing that that really got me was Aunt Norris is trying to coax him into going and playing a card game with Mrs. Rushworth. And he very quickly frees himself of the obligation by hurriedly asking Fanny to get up and dance and says, "I wish my good aunt would be a little less busy. And to ask me in such a way too!"-- to play cards-- "without ceremony, before them all so as to leave me no possibility of refusing, that is what I dislike most particularly. It raises my spleen more than anything to have the pretense of being asked, of being given a choice. And at the same time, addressed in such a way as to oblige one to do the very thing."
Sir, that's what you just did to Fanny! You basically grabbed her and said, we're going to dance. Come on.
Lauren: Who does that sound like? And also you have the opportunity to ask her for ages because you've just been sitting there.
Emily: He's so awful. And then we're just exposed to more of him over the next few chapters. As his friend, the honorable John [00:16:00] Yates comes to entertain himself among the Mansfield set. His bro. Oh my God.
Lauren: I feel like that's the most 21st century way to describe him.
Emily: No, it really is.
Lauren: Like, yo, my frat buddy from Oxford is going to come.
Emily: Yeah, basically. So the, the deal with Mr. Yates is that he had been off at some other country estate with some other people. They were planning on putting on a theatrical production and they had everything set and it was two days out. And then someone's grandmother had the audacity to die. He's so mean about this too. He's like, 'it's just somebody's grandmother. Like couldn't they have kept the news for a couple of days. We wanted to put on our play.'
Lauren: No empathy whatsoever.
Emily: No, absolutely not.
Lauren: This negatively affected my life with your death. Like this is so rude.
Emily: Absolutely wild. But with, with his arrival and his obsession with this interrupted play, he brings the spark of interest into Mansfield and everyone is captivated by his stories of basically this play they were putting on and like all of the drama that went into casting parts and how he really wanted this one part, but, well, this guy was sponsoring the play, so we had to let him play that part. This goes on for like three or four pages of him just recounting all of the trivialities and Maria and Julia and Tom are completely obsessed.
Lauren: And Edmund is basically sitting to the side with arms crossed, like, are you kidding me? This is, this is what we're doing?
Emily: Edmund is so ready to be a fun killer.
Lauren: I don't know what your historical context is, but I have a guess. So do you want to explain why Edmund is being a fun killer?
Emily: Yeah, let's go ahead and talk about why, why Edmund is trying to ruin everyone's good time. Your guess from earlier when we were texting was correct.
That my context is about theater and theatrical [00:18:00] productions and the associations that are connected with acting at this time. So theater really hit a new high point and sort of a formalized high point at the end of the Elizabethan period with Shakespeare with permanent theaters. Whereas before theater troupes were sort of itinerant, they would go town to town, just kind of set up in the square, do their productions, that sort of thing.
So there was a high point, which was very quickly cut down for appropriately Puritan reasons during the interregnum, after the English civil war, but had a resurgence when the monarchy was restored. And then the whole scene kind of changed with that resurgence. Theaters were being constructed in a different way.
So there were like assigned seats basically rather than just a pit where you pay your penny to get in and everyone's down there together. In the late 17th century, women were also finally allowed on stage. It was interesting, one of the sources I read said something about how women being on stage brought like this whole new dimension of like plot twists they could have with women dressing as men, like, you know about Shakespeare, right? Like he did that when it was just men allowed on stage, but okay.
Lauren: I was literally thinking that. I was like Twelfth Night? Hello?
Emily: Yeah. Right. Like there's, there were cross dressing plots --. Anyway, whatever.
Lauren: Decades before, but that's fine.
Emily: But yeah. So, so with, especially the emergence of women onto the theatrical stage, actresses in particular were viewed as being of kind of questionable character.
And there's a lot of debate about like why this is, and I'm sure there's a lot of reasons why that happened. I tend to view it as sort of an equivalency of [00:20:00] acting with sex work, where the actor or the sex worker is seen as using their body in a public space to make a living. It's kind of a tenuous connection.
There is also the pretty well-documented historical phenomenon of performers actually also being sex workers. I'm more familiar with this in a ballet context.
Lauren: Really?
Emily: Oh yeah. Yeah. Prima ballerinas were very often quite visible mistresses of nobility or just very rich men.
Lauren: I never knew that.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: What? Sorry, my mind's been blown.
Emily: So-- I'm so glad. So there was, in some cases, an actual connection where theater performers were also sex workers. Also just in case anyone's in doubt, the official Reclaiming Jane stance is that sex work is work. Sex workers are workers, and we're not going into that. So yes, that's-- now that's out of the way.
Yeah, so there, there was, in some cases, a real connection between theatrical work and sex work. It was not universal. You know, it's not a given that if someone, especially a woman, is an actress, that she is also a sex worker, but there was a perceived connection. This connection was actually made on kind of both ends of the moral spectrum.
So these like moralist reformers were writing about acting as being immoral work in connection with sex work, whether actual or imagined. And then people like satirists are thriving off of the, like behind the scenes drama, for lack of a better term, of the theater world, which was in a really interesting state at this period in time in the [00:22:00] Regency.
So in the 18th century, there were certain restrictions placed on what were licensed productions. There were actually only two theaters in London that actually were, were licensed to put on public productions. Which is part of why these private theatrical companies flourished going from estate to estate.
There were some country houses that had like actual constructed theaters. Some that could hold up to like seven, 800 people, but they would be, you know, private functions, your friends would get invited and maybe your friends would invite their friends, but people weren't like, paying to get into a public performance, which is how they kind of flouted those rules of licensing, but also sort of looping back around to this connection between theater and sex work.
One of the things that contributed to the perception of actors being immoral or of questionable character was on stage, they would quite literally act out these situations that in real life would be absolutely unconscionable. Which of course I could go on my whole pre-programmed rant about like the uses of fiction and, and living vicariously through these experiences, which maybe we'll get to that later.
But it also ties in pretty perfectly to the play that they actually ended up choosing, Lovers' Vows. For those who don't know, which is probably most people, the play Lovers' Vows was a 1798 adaptation into English of a German play, Das Kind der Liebe, which is just literally the love child. So right from the start, the title of the original work, we can see it's, [00:24:00] it's addressing these questions of m orality because, you know, love children, natural children, it's all very scandalous.
Lauren: The horror.
Emily: Yeah. And we see these questions of scandal and propriety being raised in the text of Mansfield Park too, as they're talking about whether or not Maria and Julia and Mary should be playing these characters. So I want to just go really quickly through the synopsis.
I assume that people who were reading this contemporary to Jane Austen, because Lovers' Vows was such a popular play, they probably would have known already what was going on. But most of us don't have a clue what this is. So the play begins with Agatha-- name we heard in the text, she's been thrown out of an inn, she's too proud to beg.
And so she's desperate. She is found by this young man Frederick, who it turns out is actually her natural son. He was born out of wedlock from a relationship with Baron Wildenhaim, totally guessing at how they would want to pronounce that.
Lauren: That sounds right. We'll go with that.
Emily: We'll go with that. So after this reunion, they learn that the Baron who is Frederick's father, is now widowed and has a daughter. He's trying to get the daughter Amelia, whose name we also saw, to marry Count Cassel.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: It's already so convoluted. So convoluted. Amelia is set to marry Count Cassel. She doesn't love him because of course. She's actually in love with a poor clergyman named Anhalt. The Baron also apparently comes to regret the actions and the misdeeds of his youth.
In the third act, Frederick gets exceptionally desperate. His begging has not worked out. He and his mother are destitute and he ends up attempting to rob the Baron and the Count. [00:26:00] So he's arrested. He's in trouble. And Holt and Amelia confessed their love for one another, which again is a problem because Amelia is supposed to marry the count. Amelia ends up pleading to save the life of Frederick who she doesn't know, but the Baron's like, no, we must make an example. Reminder that Frederick is the Baron's son, which he does not know!
In the fourth act. Frederick meets Amelia when she brings him some food, he finds out who it actually was that he attacked. He knows that the Baron is actually his father.
Lauren: Oops.
Emily: Yep. Amelia has apparently learned something about how the count is sexually immoral, which the synopsis doesn't really go into this.
Lauren: That can mean many things.
Emily: It could mean many things. Finally Frederick is actually able to speak to the Baron, reveals to him their biological relationship, that the Baron is his father and the synopsis says the Baron is much affected. But finally, in the last act, Frederick and Anhalt, the clergyman convinced the Baron that he has to marry Agatha.
He has to make right his misdeeds from so many years ago. And then, because the Baron is so grateful to Anhalt, he's like, okay, I guess you can marry my daughter. And then, you know, everyone lives happily ever after.
Lauren: The end.
Emily: The end. So there's a lot going on here. There's a lot about class difference and obligations and morality, which makes it a fascinating choice of play for these pompous young people to be putting on.
But like I said, we could talk for hours about the utility of fiction and getting to experience events.
Lauren: I mean, we talked in six degrees of Jane Austen about how we thought Elinor and Colonel Brandon would be secret metal heads because that was [00:28:00] how they would like, release all their pent up angst. I think for this particular group of people, it's just going to be a way for them to enact all those emotions that are bubbling beneath the surface.
Emily: I should've gone back and read the negotiations about casting.
Lauren: Oh my God.
Emily: After reading that synopsis, because without the context of who all the characters are and what's going on in the play. I think it makes it more difficult to understand the meaning of these people being cast as certain characters and the interactions that they're going to have to play on their constructed stage.
Lauren: Yeah. Without knowing the storyline, it's hard to figure out why the sisters are upset. Julia is a heated because Henry Crawford says, "I must entreat you not to play Agatha" because we laugh too much together, and I'm never going to be able to be serious when I look at you. But that means that he's pushed her out of being able to be Agatha and that Maria gets to do it instead.
Maria understands what's happening and she's smirking, which Julia sees because she's like, okay, well, if Maria looks upset, then maybe this isn't the slight that I think it is. But Maria is smirking over there in the corner. And then Julia pitches a fit and like stomps out of the room. It's a whole thing.
Emily: So many dimensions to this whole casting debacle too because it's not just like the appropriateness of being able to play these characters. It's, they're also trying to make arguments about like so-and-so could carry the tragic part. It's exhausting just reading about it.
Lauren: I think the other casting conversation of note is that Miss Crawford keeps trying to convince Edmund to play Anhalt and she has tried to manipulate the situation in such a way that she doesn't have to ask him directly, but, but kind of can hint at it and Edmund still shoots her down. And then she goes, and she pouts about it too.
Emily: Just no one is happy with any of this, except for Mr. Rushworth, who gets to be Count Cassel. [00:30:00]
Lauren: But they decide that since Edmund is being a stick in the mud, that Charles Maddox will come in and play the part instead. Which isn't really agreeable to Edmund either because it means that yet another person is being wrapped up in this play that he doesn't think should be happening at all because it's improper. And now somebody outside of their little circle has been shoehorned into, into the mix. So.
Emily: It was, it was bad enough when it was all their, their intimate acquaintance, but now there's going to be this man who's a stranger to most of them and a stranger to the young ladies who will be playing these highly immoral parts.
Lauren: And, you know, Maria's in a very difficult position seeing as she's already engaged, she must not do anything that could be considered improper. They said that they would remove the things that were too spicy, but she's still going to be playing a spicy part.
Emily: How -- you can't get rid of the spiciness in this play! The spiciness is the point!
Lauren: I don't know, I guess any specific lines about like, oh, let me tell you about the day that your dad and I made you. I don't know.
Emily: Here's the story of your conception! We're going to recreate it on stage.
Lauren: That's how they're acting as though this play is staged. Like from 21st century standards, you would think that it was like enacting pornography on stage.
It's not, it's fine.
Emily: It's really not. But these are, these are proper young ladies. They're not actresses.
Lauren: On display?!
Emily: Heaven forbid.
Lauren: For the public?!
Emily: Not even for the public! In their own house. That, and that's one of the arguments that they use to kind of get permission to do it too, is that well, it'll just be us. It'll just be for the family and the acquaintance. They're not acting in public. It's going to be in the billiard room.
Lauren: You must really be taking morality too far if you can protest against us doing something in private? Why [00:32:00] shouldn't we be able to do something in private? Ahem, Edmund.
And Fanny has also gotten roped into this because at first she also goes along with whatever Edmund says. Edmund doesn't think it's proper, Fanny also doesn't think it's proper.
I mean, she legitimately doesn't, but it helps that Edmund doesn't think it's right either. And so she can be very insistent upon that.
Emily: She doesn't have to take an independent stand. She's just backing up Edmund.
Lauren: And at some point they drag her into being like an old crone role. She doesn't have to say that much.
They were like, just stand there and we're going to put some crows feet on you. It'll be fine. Fanny has a breakdown about it, it's like a whole thing, then Mrs. Norris snaps at her for not being agreeable and not going along with the whims of the group. You know, Mary Crawford kind of sticks up for her. Really, she just takes the heat off of her by like sitting down and redirecting people's attention elsewhere, which of course, Edmund goes all heart eyes over, which Mary knew he would, which is why she did it.
And that's kind of where the section leaves off. Parts have pretty much been assigned. There is still some discontented parties. Edmund is still resolutely standing to the side as they remake over a room of the house into the theater. And that's it. We're going to see what drama comes from that.
Emily: There'll be a lot, I expect.
Lauren: No pun intended.
Emily: Every pun intended, are you kidding? We're talking about interpersonal relationships and theater. It's-- the drama puns--
Lauren: how can you not use them?
Emily: --are built in!
Lauren: They really are. It's just sitting right there for the taking.
Emily: We would be doing ourselves a disservice to not use the drama puns.
So that is our section. That is what's going on with theater and acting in the Regency period. I'm so frustrated with all of these people. I'm so done with them. We're barely into this book. I'm like, no.
Lauren: Yeah, no, I can't say that I'm a fan of anybody in this book.
Emily: At least we're getting good content out of them.
Lauren: We are, we are. I mean, I'm entertained.
Emily: [00:34:00] Yeah.
Lauren: I just don't necessarily like them. And you don't have to like the characters that you've read about in fiction. It makes it more fun. It's not a requirement. Thank God, because I don't like these people.
Emily: Nope. Well, Lauren, I've been through my historical context already. What do you have for pop culture for us today?
Lauren: So, because we were thinking of theater and accomplishment and women being on display. I was thinking about diversity in media and pop culture.
And what is the difference between being represented or being representative and being on display.
Emily: Okay.
Lauren: And we have seen that there is now a difference in between like being the token black best friend, for example, and actually having, like, well-rounded characters who aren't white onscreen. And I actually think that Austen adaptations have done this, like decently well. Not without critique, mind you.
But like most recently in Sanditon, like Georgiana gets to be her own person with her own storyline that is separate from Charlotte. She doesn't exist solely to be Charlotte's friend. She has her own life and storyline going on. Does that get sidelined halfway through the season? Yes. But was she written as a character separate from Charlotte who has her own thoughts and motivations and storyline? Also yes.
So not perfect, but she is an example of like an actual realized character and person, instead of we've just like propped up this person here to say, yay, we're diverse. And even going back to like Clueless with Dionne which is an adaptation of Emma, Dionne is still kind of the token black friend, but isn't as stereotypical as like the sassy black best friend or other instances where it's clear that they're just kind of there to either prove that their show is diverse or you had like the magical Negro friend, who's [00:36:00] just there to be wise, or just the black friend who's there to like make the white character look cool. Dionne, at least is like, she has an element of coolness about her on her own. So you don't feel as though she's just there to make Cher look good because Dionne looks good on her own.
So, sure, she makes Cher look good by association, but that's not really the whole point of her character. And she has her own life going on. Like it's, it's a movie. So there's only so much runtime. You can't spend that much time on Dionne, but like she has her own life separate from Cher. Her motivations and existence as a character is not solely predicated on Cher all the time.
But with a lot of media, that's not necessarily the case when we have black characters who were there. So you have, like I mentioned, like the sassy black friend, you have the magical Negro friend. You have the black guy who's just kind of there in the background. Ahem, Lee Jordan, Dean Thomas in Harry Potter.
And that to me is an example of being on display. That is like the screenwriter or the director going like, "here, you said you wanted black people, I gave you one. Shut up now," and then there's being represented or being able to be representative in a good way where a character was written in a way that makes them a fully realized person or they're protagonists of the film rather than a supporting character.
And there's an element of thought and care that goes into creating that character. Instead of just a, here you go, like a throw away. And I was thinking of display specifically, because we were talking about what theater was like in the Regency period, where it was very much interpreted as women being on display, which was why it was so Pearl clutching for, for ladies to be involved in theater.
And so then when I was thinking of accomplishment and tying that into that, is it an accomplishment to make it into a space that you've historically been shut out of if you're only going to be treated as the display piece and not part of the [00:38:00] conversation?
Emily: Well, that's a, that's a really complex thing to consider.
Lauren: Right?
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: I don't, I don't know that there is one answer to that.
Emily: I, I don't think there is.
Lauren: But I think it's something to chew on and to consider like, okay, well, in our 21st century definition of accomplished, is it an accomplishment if you have made it to be a board member of like a Fortune 500 company, if your opinions are never actually valued. Like sure, you made it, and you're literally, you have a seat at the table, but for what?
Emily: Yeah, I think in one sense we could say the answer is yes, that it is an accomplishment because of such a long history of the experience of minoritized people, especially racially minoritized people having to work so much harder to be recognized for what they've done. In that sense, yeah, it's an accomplishment because they've had to do a hell of a lot to get to that point, but then are you actually able to accomplish anything substantial once you've just been relegated to being the token X.
Lauren: And are you just propping up more harm because, well, they look at you and use you as a scapegoat and say, well, this person approved it. And so as clearly the representative of their entire community, to whatever community that it is that they belong to, clearly, this is fine because they signed off on it. I don't know. I feel like it's, it's rough because it is an accomplishment, but then at what cost and then what can you accomplish in said space?
Emily: I don't think it can really be assessed on anything other than the individual level, because there are also circumstances where the person who's made it to that point is just like knowingly complicit in what's going on.
Lauren: Yep. I think in some cases too, you fight so much to get there that by the time you reach it, you were just tired.
Emily: Yeah, absolutely.
Lauren: And you don't have any fight left because it was such a slog to get to wherever it is that you are in the first place. [00:40:00] And I like, thinking of Hollywood too. I think of all of the black actors and actresses who had to take those token best friend roles and had to take the magical Negro rules because there was nothing else.
Like you, you take this thing that is clearly flat and one dimensional or you take nothing. And you have no seat at the table and you have no industry connections. You get nothing, you take the scraps or you can leave.
Emily: Yeah. And people get a lot of really unfair criticism for having to do that to accomplish anything in their field and they're getting individual judgment for something that is systemic. That they don't actually have any power over.
Lauren: Right. And now I think one of those common critiques is like, oh, well just write your own thing. Yeah, we are. And then the question is, who's going to produce it? Only more recently have we gotten to a space where there are like black led production companies will invest in those types of stories, but okay.
Try to get something that wasn't like a blaxploitation film produced in the seventies. Good luck.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, it's, that's very context dependent too, because like on a smaller scale, like lower stakes, you know, that's one thing it's also still shitty to say, well, you can do your own. But that's something where there, there isn't such a barrier to entry.
Whereas if you're saying, oh, if you want to see more black led blockbusters, like, why don't you make your own, there's an entire industry that has already been set up to forward white people's work. How are you supposed to just upend that overnight and make an entire production happen?
Lauren: Right. Yeah. It's a lot more complex than, just go do it yourself.
Emily: Yeah. It's, it's not a lack of trying on the individual part. It's the fact that there's an entire system that already exists [00:42:00] that in many ways, explicitly excludes that kind of representation at all levels.
Lauren: And even with like the tension between representation and display that I mentioned earlier, even the characters who were there on display were still somebody who we were able to look at, you know, whatever kind of character that was, whether it was like a queer coded character or a character of color.
It's like, we knew that they weren't getting the development that they desire, but they were still there.
Emily: When that's all you have, you'll take it.
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: And you'll run with it, which is why fanfiction exists. You see someone vaguely queer coded, like maybe even in a malicious way. You're like, all right, well, they're mine now.
Lauren: I will take this scrap and I will make it a feast. Thank you so much.
Emily: That is what fandom excels at.
Lauren: I just, I think of like all of those Disney movies where it's like the white protagonists and then their sassy black friend and like, okay. High School Musical I feel like is a very good example of this. You have angry black man basketball playing Chad.
And then you have sassy Taylor. And I'm not saying that that is like all that they are, however comma. Do they have purpose to the story other than to date each other as the only two other black people and to tell Troy and Gabriela what to do. Cause I don't think they do.
Emily: I mean, in High School Musical, everybody's pretty flat. But still that's. Yeah. I mean, it's a symptom of a larger problem, for sure.
Lauren: It's not a perfect example because it's high school musical, like--
Emily: but it's a relatable example.
Lauren: Does anybody get deep character development in High School Musical? No. But this, this is not a case of like Troy Bolton being a fully realized human while Chad is not.
Emily: Yeah. But, but your point stands.
Lauren: I really just wish that they [00:44:00] had gotten Monique Coleman's character, better wigs. You know, she's in headband wigs all the time because nobody knew how to do her hair. Her wig line was atrocious. That's where there's a headband over it all the time.
Emily: Hire a single person who knows how to do that.
Lauren: Listen. Corbin Blue's hair looked great. Somebody had like whatever curl cream was necessary for him on-site because the curls were popping every time. I don't know what the hell was happening on the other side, but they did not know how to do her hair.
You know what? I can't even say that that was Disney's fault because Tyler Perry has his actresses looking wack every movie. I don't know what it is with Tyler Perry's wigs. It's awful. It's terrible. Why did you do that to your own people?
Emily: That's honestly another aspect of the problems between representation and tokenization, because if you're investing in a good representation... okay. Good representation is kind of loaded.
Lauren: Nebulous.
Emily: Yeah. We could do another entire podcast about that. God knows. I see enough discourse on, on the internet, but yeah, I think that that really speaks to how these industries are not investing in supporting the careers of either actors or crew members. Because if you won't even get a hairdresser who knows how to do a black woman's hair, Like. What are you doing?
Lauren: Like it trickles down to the literal lowest of the low, as far as film sets go. Like, when I was in college, I used to go every once in a while to go be an extra onset. And sometimes they would say, not to come with your hair done because they were going to do it. And I was like, no, you're not.
I will be arriving with, with my hair looking presentable because otherwise I'm going to get there and you're going to look at me. And I'm going to look at you. And we were both going to know that you do not know what to do with my hair. So thank you so much, but I will be ignoring that instruction. I was never wrong either.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: And that was all that I had as far as a pop culture [00:46:00] connection was how do we consider representation versus display? And then what does it mean to be accomplished when you've been excluded. And I feel like that's something that anybody could just continue to debate ad nauseum forever. But it's a fun question to think about.
Emily: Yeah. It's not, it's not a question that like, we're going to figure out.
Lauren: I would get paid a lot more money if that was something I knew how to figure out.
Anyway. Should we do final takeaways?
Emily: Yeah. Let's do final takeaways.
Lauren: I feel like we've reached that point.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: I think you go first this time.
Emily: Okay. I think my final takeaway is also going to relate a bit more to what you brought in with pop culture, that there are different dimensions to accomplishment, and it's partly dependent on outside recognition and outside understanding of what that accomplishment means.
Lauren: I think then my final takeaway is that we should look for accomplishment outside of traditional avenues and there is the traditionally accepted view of accomplishment and what accomplishment looks like, but that isn't the only way in which someone can be accomplished. And sometimes when people leave the prescribed definition, they find something that's perhaps more meaningful.
Whew, we made it.
Emily: We did somehow.
Lauren: Shall we pull a tarot card?
Emily: Yes, let's do our tarot.
Lauren: Yay! We pulled the nine of clubs and that is the sun. And the quote that is the artwork on this card, says, "it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible." And that is because the nine of clubs slash the sun represents positivity.
So positivity is our theme for next time.
Emily: Positivity. All right.
Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be [00:48:00] reading chapters 16 through 20 of Mansfield Park through the lens of positivity.
Emily: To read our show notes and a transcript of this episode, check out our website, reclaimingjanepod.com, where you can also find the full back catalog and links to our social media.
Lauren: If you'd like to support us and gain access to exclusive content, you can join our Patreon at 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: See you next time, nerds.
Emily: Yeah, this, this says the count replies that he is a man of the world and reminds the Baron that many men have behaved likewise. So like, okay. Is this like maybe it's supposed to be reflecting the Baron's own previous actions back on him.
Lauren: Maybe.
Emily: Maybe it's gay. I don't know. I have not read the script of this.
Lauren: I don't know. I was hearing like bisexual philanderer.
Emily: I know, right? Both of our minds go to bisexuality. It's just what happens.