Mansfield Park 16-20: “Positively Miserable”

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It's hard to be positive when you're in the middle of a love triangle and the lord of the house comes home and ruins all the theatrical fun. Emily and Lauren try to talk positivity as we cover the mess that is the attempted staging of Lovers' Vows. Also included: what Sir Thomas was really up to in the West Indies, Euphoria, and plenty of pity parties.

Links to topics discussed in this episode:

Unearthing Antigua's Slave Past

What Is Toxic Positivity?

Transcript

Reclaiming Jane Season 3 Episode 4 | Mansfield Park 16-20: “Positively Miserable”

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 16 through 20 of Mansfield Park through the lens of positivity.

Emily: So things are finally happening again.

Lauren: We have a plot!

Emily: We have a plot after the last two sections of just like wandering around somebody's house and doing nothing and fighting over a play. Now, things are finally going on.

Lauren: And the play is a source of much drama.

Emily: Oh my god. For lack of a better term?

Lauren: I 100% did that on purpose this time.

Emily: I mean, I made the same terrible joke last time. It has to be done.

Lauren: It really does.

Emily: Yep.

Lauren: It's for, you know, a section where we're focusing on positivity, it's a lot of angst happening in these five chapters.

Emily: There really is.

Lauren: Just--

Emily: really is.

Lauren: For all, in all senses of the word, for all different reasons. Just people are brooding a lot.

Emily: Yes, definitely. This doesn't feel like much of an introduction, but I don't know what else to say until we get through recaps to start talking about it. Is there, is there anything else you want to preface it with?

Lauren: Ooh, I don't think so. I really feel like all the things that we have to say we have to talk about after we recap it, because I don't think there's really anything else to set up the section that isn't like a spoiler.

Emily: Yeah. I don't have, like, I don't have a topical lead in for this.

Lauren: Yeah. I think we can go ahead and recap and then get into all of the hot goss.

Emily: All right, let's do it.

Lauren: Alright. 30 seconds on the clock. Emily, are you ready to recap first?

Emily: Yes, I am.

Lauren: Okay, on your mark. Get set. Go.

Emily: After the drama of last section, Edmund has decided that he is just going to have to suck it up and play Anhalt. There is a lot of pining going on as Fanny and [00:02:00] Julia are utterly miserable, watching their crushes flirt with other girls. Mr. Rushworth, all he gets from me is a bless his heart. Sir Thomas has finally returned and he shuts down the play for good.

Lauren: Oh, you had six seconds left. Anything else?

Emily: I was ready. Nope. That was it.

Lauren: Look at that!

Emily: Thank you.

Lauren: Well done.

Emily: Sometimes I'm prepared.

Lauren: Metaphorical snaps so that I don't snap into the microphone.

Emily: Thank you. I have overcome my, my week of doing other intellectual work to at least get this recap down. So Lauren, are you ready?

Lauren: I think so.

Emily: All right. Three, two, one, go.

Lauren: Okay. As Emily said, Edmund has now decided to take part in the play.

He and Mary rehearse a very scandalous scene, much to Fanny's dismay, and also Maria and Henry Crawford are off flirting half the time. Sir Thomas comes back. He shuts down the entire play. Mr. Gates, who was Tom's friend who thought this whole thing up, makes everything worse for everyone because he doesn't know how to shut up.

Fanny is surprised by how much Sir Thomas actually likes her? Question mark? And everyone's just kind of sad.

Emily: Ding, ding, ding. Ooh. Yeah, there's a lot of interpersonal action going on here. We've got some love triangle things. We've got some awkward social interaction things we've got Sir Thomas appearing in the hall out of nowhere.

It's a lot of fun.

Lauren: It is.

Emily: Let's get into it.

Lauren: All right. Where do we start?

Emily: At the beginning?

Lauren: I knew you were going to say that. I left that wide open.

Emily: So we open on Fanny's kind of private interior life. Can we please get this girl a therapist? For the love of God.

Lauren: Her plants are her therapists. She talks to them.

Emily: Every interior thought in this section is just Fanny being like riddled with guilt about her own existence because of what Mrs. Norris, especially, but also the Bertrams, have like drilled into her in her life that she's so unworthy of anything [00:04:00] she has to earn whatever she might get from them. It's so messed up.

Lauren: They have her sleeping in pretty much like the cupboard under the stairs equivalent of this house.

Emily: She's like barely half a step up from like a Cinderella.

Lauren: And then, you know, they were generous enough to let her also use what used to be Maria and Julia's old, like, tutoring room because she just ended up spending so much time in there that they all have just kind of unofficially decided that it's Fanny's room since they weren't really using it for anything else. And since Maria and Julia had much better rooms, they were satisfied with letting Fanny have this one.

Emily: Like they won't even light a fire in this room because Fanny is the only one who uses it. So it's not worth using the wood. Like...

Lauren: she really does need a therapist.

Emily: She really does.

Lauren: As messed up as it is how she got to that room. At least she has been able to make it into kind of a sanctuary for her. And one of the things that struck me is that at the very beginning, she's like cataloging all the things that are in the room and how happy they make her.

And she's like, okay, this is my safe space. And then throughout the section, her safe space is violated multiple times.

Emily: Yeah. And not just by other people coming in, which does happen a couple of times. But even as she's, like you said, cataloging all of these items that, that bring her joy. She's also thinking about how, like, oh, her cousins gave them to her as gifts. And so she has to make sure that she like, is worthy of them.

Lauren: Like, I want better for you, and I want you to have the ability to want better, but you've been so beaten down that you can't, and that's almost worse.

Emily: Yeah. Like I know we said last time that we don't, we don't really like Fanny.

Like we don't feel like we can root for her. This, I think we also said in the last episode, that really what we feel for her is pity. And this absolutely reinforces that. Like, I want so much better for Fanny. I don't know, she doesn't speak to me as a heroine or anything, but like this poor girl, [00:06:00] I feel like I need to move on because I'm just going to, I could spend the next two hours just being upset about how Fanny has been treated.

Lauren: Yeah. We're just going to wax poetic about how everyone in that house is awful towards her. And she needs people who treat her as a human being and not as an accessory or a burden.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: It's just sad.

Emily: She does, while she's here, em-- embroiled in her own thoughts, have a visit from Edmund, who comes and makes everything about him.

Lauren: Once again, speaking of Fanny feeling guilty for existing, Edmund has come to offload his guilt onto Fanny because he wants to know what Fanny thinks of the idea of him playing Anhalt. And he is spinning it virtuously by saying, "well, I can't allow somebody else from outside of the house to come in because it's already bad enough as it is. So I will fall on the sword and act alongside the woman who I'm clearly completely enamored with. Fanny, what do you think?"

And she's looking at him, like you've been the biggest opponent to this, this entire time. How could you be so inconsistent? Why would you ever go back? And she's trying to make sense of it, and he senses hesitation and is still, but like-- still thinking, "but it's fine, right? I need you to tell me that it's fine, because if you think so... let me give you more information so that you can now tell me that it's fine."

Emily: Yeah. He comes in saying Fanny, I want your opinion. And she's like, oh, he wants my opinion.

Except he doesn't actually, he wants her to tell him what he wants to hear.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: Which is exactly what everyone else does, except that sometimes Edmund is nicer to her than everyone else. I gave my predictions a couple of episodes ago about like where things were going to go. And this just makes me even more angry about my prediction that Fanny and Edmund are going to end up together in the end because ugh.

Lauren: Yeah, not exactly a romantic hero and heroine potential.

Yeah. Fanny tries to find something nice to say about Edmund, find something nice to say about [00:08:00] Mary, Edmund eventually feels a little bit better about things and goes to tell the rest of the party that he will indeed act, which Maria and Henry especially are like, yes! We beat him down. We've done it!

And ironically enough with a section where we're focusing on positivity, the end of the first chapter in the section ends, "she was beyond their reach, and if at last obliged to yield, no matter. It was all misery now."

Emily: She is just-- really, the only word word is miserable. She's just miserable the whole time. She's miserable that Edmund has basically ignored what her actual opinion is. She's miserable that in his acting, he's basically just taking the excuse to flirt with Mary Crawford the entire time. No one is listening to her. Everyone is constantly making her feel guilty about existing. Fanny has no room for positivity.

Lauren: Nor does Julia who is watching her sister, who, as a reminder, is still engaged to Mr. Rushworth, just continue flirting with Henry who is also reciprocating the attention. And so the two of them are having this very scandalous lil moment over here to the side, every time they rehearse or share a look and every time Julia is in the same room with them, it's like a knife is being twisted further into her side.

Another miserable person to add to the list.

Emily: The people who are not miserable definitely include Mary Crawford, who at the end of the last section was very calculated about her deference to Fanny and going and making her feel better about the whole play thing, because now it's paid off and Edmund is going to act the romantic part opposite her.

So Edmund is Anhalt. Mary is Amelia, who-- the two of them in the end of the play are supposed to, you know, they have their, the consent of parents, et cetera, for a love match, essentially. So Mary's like, yes, I can leverage this.

Lauren: This is fantastic.

Emily: It's all very [00:10:00] romcom.

Lauren: Oh, 100%. The situation with Maria and Henry is even funnier because they're playing mother and son. So not the, not the romantic leads, but it means that that they get to spend lots of time together.

And so Mr. Rushworth is, he has some himbo energy, but he's not so much of a himbo that he can't figure out what's going on right under his own nose. And Mary also sees what's happening and she tries to like mollify him at one point by pointing out, "don't you think Maria's being very maternal, such maternal energy," and that kind of calms him down a little bit.

Emily: It's so awkward, but everyone is also using Fanny as their confidant. She's become everyone's therapist, which is just terrible. Don't do that to your friends, people. Don't.

Lauren: The one who needs the therapist most is the one who is basically acting as like a blank slate. So everyone can talk at her and then feel better about things. They don't actually want her to respond or give them an opinion. They just want somebody who's a captive audience to vent about whatever it is that is irritating them. And then they're like, "you're such a great listener, Fanny," and they leave.

Emily: Yeah. There's one line that isn't necessarily about this, but it's still very evocative of that whole situation for her. It says that, "she alone was sad and insignificant. She had no share in anything. She might go or stay. She might be in the midst of their noise or retreat from it to the solitude of the east room without being seen or missed." Fanny is just, she's a wallflower in like the most literal sense of the word.

Lauren: Yeah. Fanny's often positive for the sake of others while being absolutely miserable herself.

Emily: Also related to everyone using Fanny as their therapist. Now that the initial arguments' conflict over choosing a play and casting a play have all been resolved, everyone's just making up conflict. So everybody is complaining about how everyone else is in competent at one thing or another, they can't remember their lines.

They don't know their blocking. Nothing is right about like, costumes [00:12:00] or the set or the scenes or anything. It's...

Lauren: Maria and Henry keep using the theater room to rehearse and the rest of us have to go elsewhere.

Emily: Oh, they're all so infuriating. I hate all these people. They're just the worst!

Lauren: Mrs. Norris is still trying to find a way to make herself useful and important as usual.

Emily: She's also trying to convince everyone else that Henry and Maria are totally not in love. Henry loves Julia because she's trying to avoid the inevitable blow up when it becomes unavoidable that Maria is actually trying to get with Henry.

Lauren: And the closer we get to Sir Thomas' return, the more likely that blowup becomes.

Emily: Remember, the engagement is only waiting for Sir Thomas' return to be a marriage. They just need him to get back to England so that they can actually plan the wedding and get married. So Mr. Rushworth is gung-ho, he's ready for Sir Thomas to come back, he's totally ready to make Maria his wife and Maria is like, I don't care if he never comes back, which is... wow.

That's a lot.

Lauren: Yeah. The longer he takes to get back, the more time she has to try to convince Henry Crawford to propose to her instead, so that then she can say, well, I don't want to be in this one, but can we, can you approve of this match instead? Because I have somebody else who's asked for my hand in marriage. I won't be a spinster.

I'll still be married just to this person instead.

Emily: Yeah. So she's in crunch time trying to convince Henry Crawford to propose to her basically, which like, even if he weren't a cad, I don't-- actually, probably especially if he weren't a cad, I don't think he would do because she is very publicly engaged to Mr. Rushworth. So, actually as the kind of person he is, he would be more likely to propose to her in this situation, I think, except that he's such a player, he wouldn't propose regardless.

Lauren: Nope. [00:14:00] Yeah. If he were somebody like Edmund, it would be out of the question completely. He would never have even opened up the idea of flirtation with her.

And like you said, he is the type of person who would kind of flout the social conventions because clearly he doesn't care, but he doesn't care enough to continue flouting them to that degree because that means putting his own neck on the line. And why would he do that?

Emily: Yeah, it's just a flirtation. He's not going to suffer any consequences from this, except maybe like not being able to go back to Mansfield.

Lauren: Yeah. And Mary also sees this and she's kind of, she has a side conversation about how both sisters are in love with her brother. And just like, if you weren't such a flirt you wouldn't be in this situation, but what am I going to do about it?

Emily: Yeah. Mary is clearly very done with Henry and whatever he thinks he's doing, but she still has her eyes on the prize of Edmund.

Lauren: And Mary has to look out for number one. She can't be worried about what her brother is doing. Those sisters are going to have to work it out between the two of them. She has a goal and she's fixed upon it.

Emily: Yeah. I think there's a comparison to be made between Mary Crawford and Charlotte Lucas, because they're practical. They're going for what is going to keep them safe and settled in the end. But Mary has a conniving side that Charlotte absolutely does not.

Lauren: Do you think that Mary is more conniving?

Emily: Oh yeah. She's leveraged the way that she interacts with Fanny to appeal more to Edmund, even if she has no idea that Fanny is also in love with Edmund, she's taking advantage of that relationship to make herself more attractive to the man that she wants.

Lauren: That's true.

Emily: Whereas Charlotte was just like Lizzy turned him down? Okay! I guess I'll take that.

Lauren: Yeah. I think I was looking at it in the lens of both of them know how to change their behavior to influence the men in their lives and get what they want.

So thinking about how Charlotte will say things to Mr. Collins, that she knows that he wants to [00:16:00] hear, or will send him off on a different quest that she has time to herself, similar to how Mary knows, 'if I say this thing to Fanny than Edmund will look at me this way,' or 'if I do this then I get that.' I think with Mary, because it's being contrasted to Fanny, it's easier to see it as conniving, but I think both of them are doing the same thing.

Emily: Yeah. Conniving is probably too strong a word there, but I think I also was focused on the fact that Mary is using her relationship with other women to get what she wants out of a man. Whereas Charlotte was acting directly on Mr. Collins.

Lauren: Yeah. That's a good point.

Emily: Yeah. But yeah, I mean, they're definitely both, as you said, modulating their behavior to get what they want, but yeah. Okay. Yeah. Conniving is too strong for Mary, but she definitely knows what she's about.

Lauren: Oh, 100%.

Emily: Eyes on the prize.

Lauren: Yup. Yeah. I can't blame her.

Emily: Yeah, no.

Lauren: She has to get a prize somehow.

Emily: I also can't blame her for taking a look at Tom and being like, actually, no, I'll settle for the second son.

Lauren: I can put up with a lot, but I won't put up with that.

Emily: Yeah. So speaking of Mary and Edmund, they have not been able to find any time to rehearse together and they've come up on a day where in the evening they're supposed to finally have their, like, onstage scene together. So Mary goes to find Fanny to ask Fanny, to read Anhalt's lines, just so that she can, she can learn her lines, which sure, whatever, except that Edmund also shows up.

So Fanny is now trapped awkwardly in this room with these two people who are very obviously flirting with one another, as they're saying these romantic lines to each other. And she's just, she's just there. The third wheel.

Lauren: I do have some of the lines from that scene, if you want to know what they are.

Emily: Yes, I do.

Lauren: When I got to it, I completely understood why. Well, one why Fanny was scandalized. And two, [00:18:00] why, when Mary enters the scene, she's talking about how, you know, it's embarrassing to read some of these lines, I would much rather practice it with you so that when I have to deal with Edmund, it's not so bad.

But it is, it's flirtatious. So this is act three, scene two. I'll skip through most of it cause it's a long scene. We're not here to read the entire thing, but the gist of it is that Anhalt has come to talk to Amelia about the good and the bad of which matrimony is composed.

Emily: Oh.

Lauren: And so Amelia says that "I beg first to be acquainted with the good," to which Anhalt replies,

"When two sympathetic hearts meet in the marriage state, matrimony may be called a happy life. When such a wedded pair find thorns in their path, each will be eager, for the sake of the other, to tear them from the root. When they have to mount hills, or wind a labyrinth, the most experienced will lead the way and be a guide to his companion. Patience and love will accompany them in their journey, while melancholy and discord they leave far behind. Hand-in-hand they pass on from morning till evening, through their summer's day, till the night of age draws on, and the sleep of death overtakes the one. The other, weeping and mourning, yet looks forward to the bright region where he shall meet his still surviving partner, among trees and flowers which themselves have planted, in fields of eternal verdure."

And Amelia's like, okay, well, you can tell my dad I'll marry. Anyway. And she gets up to leave. She's like, that sounds great. Then Anhalt is like, well, but also let me tell you about all the bad things about marriage. They go back and forth and Amelia says okay, well then I won't marry. And he says, you mean to say, you won't fall in love.

And she says, oh no, I am in love. And he goes, "in love with the Count?" She says, "I wish I was." He says, "why so?" And she says, "because he would, perhaps, love me again." And he says, "who is there that would not?" And Amelia says, "would you?"

Emily: Again, what a rom com.

Lauren: And then they go back and forth. Like, he's like, what do you mean?

She's like, what do you mean what do I mean, do you love me or not? Blah, blah, blah, skipping ahead. And so then she said, Oh, she wants him to teach her about the happiness of [00:20:00] marriage. And he says, no. And then she says, "so you may remember I said when you began to teach me mathematics. I said I had rather not know it, but now I have learned it gives me a great deal of pleasure."

And then she hesitates and says, "perhaps who can tell, but I might teach something as pleasant to you as resolving a problem is to me." And he says, "a woman herself is a problem." And she says, "and I'll teach you to make her out." And he says, "you teach?" And she says, "why not? None but a woman can teach the science of herself. And though I own I am very young, a young woman may be as agreeable for a tutoress as an old one. I'm sure I always learned faster from you than from the old clergymen who taught me before you came."

Emily: Yeah, I can see why Fanny is so deeply uncomfortable.

Lauren: Oh yeah. Then the last thing is pretty much. She is still trying to flirt with him. And he is still rebuffing her because Anhalt is basically Edmund, who's a proper clergyman. He's like, 'no! It cannot be!' Despite the fact that this woman's like, let me teach you all the ways of women. And he's like, no!

Emily: Like, sir, you are practically being dragged to her bedroom right now.

Lauren: Literally! And then she just finally says, "I see how it is. You have no inclination to experience with me the good part of matrimony. I am not the female with whom you would like to go hand in hand up hills and through labyrinths, with whom you would like to root up thorns and with whom you would delight to plant lilies and roses. No, you would rather call out, oh, Liberty, dear Liberty."

And then he finally says, "I love you more than life." And that's pretty much that's, we're getting close to the end of the scene, but yeah, that's, that's what they're rehearsing. And that's why Fanny is just mortified because she's watching them flirt back and forth and watching Mary say like, let me teach you all the ways of a woman.

Hint, hint, wink. I can learn you a thing or two, I might be young, but--

Emily: see, I I'm so glad now that I know what those are, what the actual scene was, what the lines were.

Lauren: Yeah, I think the other scene that I found-- I say found, it's in the back of my book. I didn't do any finding, [00:22:00] but it's the one that Maria and Henry are rehearsing all the time.

And that's when Henry's character, Frederick, is coming to the inn and sees his mother begging outside. And so of course, you know, he has to comfort her by pressing her to his breast and buy her wine and blah, blah, blah. So it's, it's a mother son relationship, but they're rehearsing the scene where they get to embrace all the time.

And that's why the others are looking at them like, do you really need to practice this scene this much? Do you not know your lines by now? How many times you need to like, press her hand to your breast and like give her a hug. This is, this is a lot, calm down.

Emily: It's-- they're overdoing it so much. Thank you so much for sharing--

Lauren: oh, you're so welcome--

Emily: the, the actual text of the play. It was so enlightening.

Lauren: Yeah. You said last time that for the contemporary audience of Mansfield Park, because the play was so popular, they don't need it. But to us who are far removed from the context, we are just very confused.

Emily: I hope we've been able to bring some, some enlightenment and some enjoyment to our fellow modern readers.

Lauren: You know, that that scene also stuck out to me because I wrote down misery in Fanny is inspired by positivity in others. Edmund and Mary are having a fantastic time, nothing but positivity between the two of them and completely missing the dark cloud that is Fanny five feet stage left.

Emily: And at the end of this chapter now, we get another situation that is total polar opposites. For some is that it is absolute positivity for some, it is just abject misery.

When Sir Thomas arrives at home unannounced, unexpected, and throws the whole place into chaos.

Lauren: Dun dun duuuun. And it's when they're rehearsing, too.

Emily: Of course! They're all like in the theater, Maria and Henry are literally on stage rehearsing that scene where he pulls her hand to his breast. And Julia bursts in with the news that Sir Thomas is home and they just [00:24:00] freeze. Everyone in the theater... silence.

Lauren: Not to be too much of a chronically online person. But what makes me think of is the Tik Tok trend where it's like the freeze frame. It's like, oh no. Oh no.

Emily: Oh no, no, no, no, no.

Lauren: That's the one!

Emily: That's-- that's precisely what it was. I need someone to recreate that with Mansfield Park now.

Lauren: Oh my gosh. Yes. Find the clip from the movie and then just put that sound over it.

So, Sir Thomas has arrived back, much to the dismay of most of the party, including Fanny, though she's upset for a different reason. She knows where her morality stood this entire time. She's like, I didn't even want to be here. So don't go, don't look at me, but also, please, literally don't look at me because every time you do something bad happens.

So I would just prefer that you stay over there. She doesn't really have much love for Sir Thomas.

Emily: Yeah. Fanny's consternation at Sir Thomas's return is more general. Like I've never enjoyed being around this man. I don't want to be around him again. But then I'm sure the additional layers of guilt that she'll be blamed by association for the things that all of her cousins have been getting up to.

And Sir Thomas is definitely not happy.

Lauren: No. Yeah. She's worried that if they need a scapegoat that it'll end up being her because it certainly wouldn't be any of the people who are much higher above her in, in the rankings of the household. But as it turns out, he's actually very happy to see her. She hangs back a bit because she doesn't want to assert herself as a true member of the family, even though she's literally their niece, but, you know, whatever.

So she waits for all of them to go into the drawing room to go see Sir Thomas and then eventually comes in just as he's asking where she is and is greeting her with warmth and is excited to see her and remarks upon how well she looks. And she eventually lets herself relax and is thinking to herself, okay, this is not as awful as I thought it was going to be.

Emily: This makes me a little bit suspicious of what's going on because it [00:26:00] could just be, ah, he's been away for so long, absence makes the heart grow fonder, but also, is she a pawn in some kind of business machination? I don't know.

Lauren: I think she's just surprised by basic human decency. She gets it so seldom.

Emily: Well, that, too. Yeah. I mean, cause we didn't get the sense before that he was cruel to her. He just went along with basically Mrs. Norris's proclamations about how Fanny should be treated.

Lauren: Right.

Emily: But I'm still suspicious. Within the evening that Sir Thomas returns though, the truth comes out, that they have been putting on a play in his own home.

Before, they can even really break the news to him. He's like, oh, you know what? I want to go and see, you know, my room, my study, I've been away for, it's been like two years, three years that he's been away. And so he, he goes barging through because it's his house. Why shouldn't he? But they've converted the room in front of his room, into their theater.

So he walks in onto the stage where Mr. Yates is just like rehearsing by himself?

Lauren: Apparently a very dramatic monologue. And we get a little bit of Tom's perspective too, when this is happening, because he is trying to head off Sir Thomas and is like, wait, oh crap. I have to go tell him what's happening.

And so, as he comes in, he sees Mr. Yates trying to like come out of whatever character he's in and turn around and then greet Sir Thomas who's like, who in the hell is this person? What are you doing? What is this room? And then Tom is just watching all this happen. Like, oh, I really wish I could find this as funny as it is, but this is not good!

Emily: But he does comment internally, "it would be the last, in all probability, the last scene on that stage, but he was sure there could not be a finer. The house would close with the greatest eclat." Just like, well, if we had to go out like this, [00:28:00] I guess, I guess that's worth it.

Lauren: Couldn't write something better. And, Sir Thomas is also not happy about meeting Mr. Yates in general.

It's implied that his connections and his family are beneath them and he's not very pleased that he's being forced to make this man's acquaintance, but here he is in his house, getting everybody else in the house to engage in something Sir Thomas deeply disapproves of, and you can just sense the, the simmering anger.

Like I'm going to kill you, Tom.

Emily: There's also no little disapproval of Henry Crawford when it comes down to it because he and Mary also have to be introduced to Sir Thomas, because they've arrived since he's been in the Caribbean. And Mr. Rushworth finally speaks his mind. He's like, he's not that great. I don't know why everbody thinks he's so awesome.

Lauren: "I disapprove of theater," to which Sir Thomas is like, I like you. You can marry my daughter. Thank God. Another level headed person in this house. I was kind of wondering, I wasn't so sure about you, but now I see that you share the same love for a tranquil household. I think this will work quite nicely.

Emily: The, the line that actually comes out of that is absolutely hilarious. It says, "Sir Thomas was aware that he must not expect a genius in Mr. Rushworth, but as a well judging steady young man with better notions than his elocution would do justice to, he intended to value him very highly." It's like, 'he'll do as a son-in-law. He's pretty dumb, but, ehhh. Our views align.'

Lauren: He's a bit of a blockhead, but he's rich. You share my opinions.

Emily: I can work with it. The comedy of Sir Thomas returning cannot be understated.

Lauren: Also the fact that the way that Mr Rushworth insults Henry Crawford is to call him short.

Emily: Absolutely hilarious.

Lauren: He says, "I do not say he's not gentleman-like considering, but you should tell your father he's not above five feet eight or [00:30:00] he will be expecting a well looking man."

Emily: Mr. Rushworth can not appreciate a short king.

Lauren: No. Six foot only and above, please.

Emily: Where is Mr. Darcy?

Once Sir Thomas's home now though, the disaster management begins. Edmund is off like a shot to explain himself and try to appease what he perceives to be his father's impending rage about what they've been up to while he's gone.

And he does actually make a point to completely absolve Fanny of any guilt. He's like, okay. The rest of us fucked around, but Fanny's been Fanny the whole time.

Lauren: Fanny just had to find out. She wasn't responsible, I swear.

It's nice to have something to Edmund's credit in the section, because for the rest of it... I mean, not that he's done anything that's irredeemable, just not anything that I necessarily support. But this one, this one, I can get behind. For once you did right by Fanny. Thank you so much.

Emily: This is a point actually in his favor when it comes to his behavior towards Fanny.

Lauren: Also, Mrs. Norris is deprived of being the busy body that she usually wants to be.

Emily: Oh my God. She's so mad that he just showed up.

Lauren: In the narration, it's talking about how she was deprived of hearing it from the Butler and then being able to go around the house and tell everybody. And then, because he had the nerve to not want anything, she couldn't go boss the servants around to say, make dinner or go get this or go do whatever.

And couldn't like bustle around and make herself feel like she had something to do. And so she keeps interrupting his story. He's trying to tell them all about his time in the Caribbean that he's, you know, he's been gone forever.

Emily: And everyone's actually like invested in this story that he's telling.

Lauren: Yeah. And then she's like, are you sure you don't want tea? Let me, let me get you. I'll get something like, let me ring for the servant. He's like, no.

Emily: How about some soup? You want a big basin of soup.

Lauren: Mmhmm, he's like, no, I think I'll just wait until we usually have tea. Like [00:32:00] it's, it's fine. She's like, you want soup? I'm going to go get you soup.

Emily: I actually almost closed the book at the soup. I was like, this is too far. I'm sorry. I can't.

Lauren: She's also trying to do damage control for herself because he also comes up to her to start the conversation of you were the adult in this household, did you not think to tell them that this was inappropriate or to stop them or anything like that?

And she can't really admit that she found nothing wrong with it because it also gave her something to do and to feel important. And so she spins off a story about something else, completely unrelated and eventually gets him to forget about it just because she speaks ad nauseum for so long that he forgets, or at least is more inclined to forgive her, her lapse in judgment.

Emily: Just anything to get out of that conversation at that point. But eventually he, he prevails, everything is broken down. He, he fires the scene painter. He has the carpenter come back and disassemble the stage. He finally gets Mr. Yates out of his freaking house and Henry Crawford also absconds although, before he goes, he makes a very pointed comment that if the play is back on, if somehow they convince Sir Thomas, then he would totally come back.

He would forget any other engagements he had, he would consider that that was his first priority. But Sir Thomas is like, Nope, that's it.

Lauren: And so Henry's like, all right, I'm off to Bath. And Tom's like, it's a little early for that. There's no one that's going to be there. And Henry's like, yeah, I don't care. I'm going to go.

Emily: Apparently that's when his uncle, the Admiral, goes to Bath. And so that's why he's going. But yeah.

Lauren: And Maria knows that he technically does not have anything that's really pressing. It's all engagements or obligations that he's put on himself. And so she feels that insult even more strongly, especially because he said, if the play is still on, then I'll stay.

And so she's like, okay, well then just stay. And she's also feeling either he proposes before he leaves or I'm stuck with Rushworth and she keeps waiting for him to come back because he's left the [00:34:00] house and she's anxious and pacing, and then he finally comes back and it's just to say, yeah, I'm out. Bye.

Emily: Yeah, I think he's definitely using Sir Thomas's reaction to the play as kind of a proxy judgment for how he would react to some douchebag hanging around and flirting with both of his daughters at once.

Lauren: Not a bad idea. It was for once a good judgment on Henry's part.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: Just to get out of dodge before things get worse.

Emily: I mean, I think that he does have a good sense of self preservation.

Lauren: Very true. He knows better than to make an enemy out of Sir Thomas.

Emily: Definitely. So he will just break Maria and Julia's hearts in one fell swoop instead, although Julia seems to have kind of gotten over him a little bit. She's still like eaten up by jealousy about the fact that he's apparently preferring her sister, but at this point it comes across as being like, okay, good riddance.

Lauren: Anger works wonders in helping you to get over someone. Positive feelings, not so much, that makes everything worse.

But when you're ticked?

Emily: Spite is such a strong motivator.

Lauren: It truly is.

Emily: And I think that functionally closes our section.

Lauren: It does indeed. We've come to the end, Sir Thomas is back.

Emily: The troublesome young men are gone.

Lauren: Whatever will happen next.

Emily: Oh my God. I don't even know. I mean, presumably there'll be a wedding, I guess. We'll see. Not if Maria has anything to say about it.

Well, not to bring the mood down, but um...

Lauren: Emily. We're supposed to be talking about positivity!

Emily: I know we're supposed to be talking about positivity, but it would feel a little wrong to stay jovial about chattel slavery, because our history topic for today is the reason that Sir Thomas has been gone for so long.

Lauren: Take it away.

Emily: Oh boy, this is... disclaimer. This is a really heavy topic. I'm only going to be talking about a very small slice of this. There are [00:36:00] a lot of people who have done really great research. As usual, we will drop some links in the description if you want to learn more about this, but yeah, we're going to be talking about the Caribbean slave trade and a little bit of its history and its state at the point of Mansfield Park.

So! Let's start with Antigua.

Lauren: Let's do it.

Emily: Well, I want to kind of start by dispelling this weird, like romanticized notion that we tend to have, especially in the United States, of these areas that became plantations, that became slave holding areas. I think we conceive of them as being like uninhabited paradises before Europeans came.

They were not. Antigua itself at time of European contact was inhabited by at least two different indigenous groups, the Taino and the Kalinago. European settlement actually didn't happen immediately after first contact with Antigua. It was only after that indigenous population was significantly decreased through disease and through malnutrition caused by Europeans and by enslavement.

Lauren: Hm. Sounds like a familiar story.

Emily: I know, right? Yeah. So English settlers really took over running Antigua in the, like the early to mid 1600s. They started growing tobacco and then moved into sugar, which became hugely profitable, hugely popular. And that was part of the reason why importation of enslaved people from west Africa really took off.

So the Caribbean became sort of the crux of this slave trade. It served as a hub there because you know, they're islands. So many ports. So enslavers brought their cargo over from west Africa to be traded out to different [00:38:00] areas. Merchants came from Europe, from Britain, from the United States down to the Caribbean.

And then everyone went off back to wherever they were going to conduct their business. So there was a, a massive influx of both Europeans and unwilling Africans to fuel this sugar plantation craze. And Antigua specifically was a leading producer of sugar actually until the 1950s.

Lauren: I did not know it was that late in the game.

Emily: I didn't either. On Antigua alone, which is only about 108 square miles, there were 200 sugar plantations. Now, I don't know if that was all at the same time, because that would be a plantation every half mile, but still that is, that is a huge, a huge number.

There, of course, were a number of revolts led by enslaved people on Antigua specifically, there were at least two, one in 1701 and in 1729, there was another planned in 1736, but the planning was discovered in advance and unsurprisingly, it was violently suppressed with the leaders executed.

Like I said, this is heavy, but by the 1770s, the effect of the importation of slaves was such that on Antigua, which again is only 108 square miles. There were more than 37,000 enslaved people on this island. The white population was less than 3000.

Lauren: That is literally bigger than my hometown.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: My hometown was like maybe 8,000 people. That's insane.

Emily: So just the disparities. [00:40:00] And then also the fact that sugar production was one of the most brutal, grueling products that was made possible by the slave trade. It was such that the death rate of slaves outran the birth rate. And so a plantation owner had to account in their yearly budget for the importation of new slaves.

Lauren: You would think that anybody with like a modicum of human empathy, which I know is already devoid just by the mere fact, they were running a plantation, so that's out of the question, but you would think like, maybe I should change what I'm doing to these people because they keep dying. Like, even if you just look at it from a purely capitalist perspective, you spend less money by just not working them to literal death.

Emily: Yeah. Even if it's just sheer economy and, you know, leaving morality out of it, that's just that's bad business, honestly, right?

Lauren: How can you be that much of just a monstrous human that you literally spend more money because you can't like treat anybody with like a thing of kindness and be like, Hmm, this is really, really hard literal backbreaking work.

Maybe I should not force you to do it sun up to sundown in this kind of condition. But no, that was apparently too much to ask.

Emily: Yeah. The, the horrors of sugar production apparently were not enough to overcome the profits, which is absolutely horrific.

Lauren: Humans can be very monstrous.

Emily: Truly, truly.

Lauren: It's a little terrifying.

Emily: Yeah. So as I think we've mentioned in, I think I talked about it maybe during Sense and Sensibility, it was quite awhile ago. Britain actually abolished the trafficking of slaves in 1807. So British ships could not transport human beings for the purpose of enslavement, which was prior to the release of Mansfield Park.

Although its writing [00:42:00] might have preceded it. We don't really know the specifics of when Jane Austen actually wrote some of these novels. But of course, abolishing trafficking doesn't actually end slavery. It just meant that they couldn't bring new people in from outside, although I'm sure that also didn't stop it just because human beings are terrible.

And when something is profitable, even if it's illegal, we will continue to do it. So officially, they weren't supposed to be bringing new people into the slave trade, but--

Lauren: off the books...

Emily: off the books. Exactly. And especially if they were working with traders of other nationalities that didn't have the same hangups, what's going to stop them.

Lauren: It's fair game.

Emily: Yeah. So.

Lauren: It's free real estate.

Emily: So, following that, slavery itself, like the practice of unpaid labor, at least by that name wasn't banned until 1833 within the British empire. But of course that was immediately replaced with things that basically differed only in name from slavery because they were unpaid labor.

So practices of apprenticeship and indentured servitude took over from there. So that's what Sir Thomas has been off doing for the last few years is managing his brutal, humanity destroying sugar production on a tiny island in the Caribbean so that he can continue to make money and fund the lifestyle that his children live.

Lauren: To buy all of the draperies and sets that they just used for their theater.

Emily: Exactly.

Lauren: You know what? I'm glad he's back. So it means he's no longer there.

Emily: I mean, he's, he's still profiting from it.

Lauren: Well, yeah, but I don't know. It feels less like a direct facilitation when he's so far removed from it. Even though I know that's not the case, it's like I would rather you not exist at all, but at least you're no longer there witnessing that with your own [00:44:00] eyes and being like, this is fine. Because I think with so many distasteful things, the way that we make it palatable is by not looking at it or not looking too closely because then we can convince ourselves that everything is fine. And to witness that every day and still think that this is a good and right thing to be doing, I cannot and will not ever understand.

And...yeah.

Emily: I think that's the kind of narrative that I, I mean, I can't speak for other countries, but Americans definitely. We want to tell ourselves that story to free our founders, especially, from that kind of guilt. It's like, oh yeah, George Washington owned slaves. But like, he wasn't there. We want, we want to put the blame on the people who were, you know, literally cracking the whip when there was a larger structure in place that the people at the top were getting all of the benefit from.

Lauren: Yeah, the founders also could have abolished slavery when they founded the country. So why we--

Emily: keep that in mind!

Lauren: Why we seem intent to absolve them of that I have no idea. Like they were literally creating new rules with a stroke of a pen. They could have added another couple of strokes and been like, by the way, we're not going to do this anymore. But they make money off of it. So why would they do that?

Yeah, no, that always irritated me. That, and then you mentioned indentured servitude and that was something I remember that people used to like throw back as a way to refute that, like slavery in the U S wasn't as bad. And be like, well, white people were slaves, too. What do you mean by that?

Well, you know, my ancestors were indentured servants. Like, okay. Yes. A form of slavery. However, what I'm specifically talking about, your ancestors were not subjected to.

Emily: Like, we're talking about the multi-generational, this centuries long practice of active suppression and genocide of people based on their nationality, their race, [00:46:00] there's a whole other structure that has gone into chattel slavery.

Like, I'm not trying to minimize what indentured servants went through. Britain and Ireland have their own whole history. But we can talk about multiple topics and, and have empathy for the victims of these systems all at the same time.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. And it's comparing apples to oranges in a way. They're both fruits, but they're not, these are not the same thing.

Emily: Yeah. They were both bad, but there's a lot of different layers to both of those that are not the same.

Lauren: Yeah. Well, thanks Sir Thomas, for...

Emily: yeah. Thanks for being a cog in the machine, bud.

Lauren: I think it would be stranger if Sir Thomas were meant to be a sympathetic character and when-- he's not, really, not for that reason, but just because he's not exactly a loving father figure, I think it would be even more uncomfortable for most readers to have this conversation if he were somebody like Mr. Darcy who had gone off to Antigua and then come back, I feel like that would be even more of a motive for people to stick their heads in the sand about what this beloved character is up to, because you don't want to think-- you don't want to reconcile the person on the page with what the reality would have been in that time period for what he was doing.

Emily: Absolutely. And we talked about this during Sense and Sensibility as well with Colonel Brandon and what his role as a military man would have been. And yeah, I think we also have to keep in mind that contemporary readers, when these books were published, would have had a much better sense of what that actually meant socially than we do now at, at such a remove.

Lauren: Yep. Hmm.

Emily: So fun topics.

Lauren: It's like, I don't really know how to follow that.

Emily: No, really no positivity to be, to be discussed there.

Lauren: I wish I could say that my pop culture connection was also [00:48:00] really fun, but for positivity, it's not.

Emily: What is your pop culture connection today?

Lauren: Toxic positivity.

Emily: Oh fun! Let's, let's just get all of our toxicity out of the way in this episode, huh? Let's be happy the rest of the season.

Lauren: Yeah. The fact that we managed to do this with what's supposed to be a happy topic is honestly incredible.

Emily: Just, it's all been downers in Mansfield Park so far.

Lauren: Yeah. There hasn't been much positive to talk about. And I think what is positive is a forced positivity, which is what made me think of toxic positivity as a, as a topic.

Emily: Will you explain what you are talking about when you say toxic positivity?

Lauren: I will indeed. Toxic positivity as a term has come into more popular use as of late. And people think that it really got its start with social media, but really it goes farther back than that. And the basic definition is, it's the overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state that results in the denial, minimization and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.

And why it has really entered the conversation more in the age of social media is of course, because on social media, everyone is quote, unquote, happy, you get the highlight reel of everyone's life. That's the common metaphor is, and you don't see any of the stuff that's happening behind the scenes.

And so if you're scrolling through Instagram or something like that, all you see are people like showing their achievements or the happy things that are going on in their lives. And nothing of like the disappointing or upsetting or anything like that. And where toxic positivity really comes into play is in interactions with other people.

So telling people that everything will be fine when they've just shared that they have cancer. Like everything will objectively not be fine. And it's okay to say that. And you don't have to always be really upbeat when talking about things. That toxic positivity [00:50:00] comes in when you're minimizing other people's experiences and telling them just be happy, just feel good.

And don't feel any of the negative emotions that you're trying to express to me right now, because I want you to be happy. Isn't everything fine, every-- isn't everything great? And I think that happens more often in American culture than it does, where it's more acceptable to just be in a, like a flat emotional state.

You know, I think in the U S specifically, like, we ask service workers to always have a smile on their face. For note, they're not happy to be getting you McDonald's fries. Like it's okay that you don't have to act as though it's the best interaction that they've had all day. But we force that upon people because everyone should be happy all the time.

We ask strangers on the street, why aren't you smiling? Cause I don't need to, I don't need a smile all the time. It's garish. But that's where toxic positivity tends to manifest. And I was thinking of that. We mentioned earlier how Fanny is positive for everyone else's sake, but her own. And that she's really not able to feel or express any negative emotions in the company of other people, but neither are the other people around her, truly.

Anything that's surface level, like Julia's irritation with Maria, that's, you know, more socially acceptable. But if she were to actually try to express like any deep insecurities, that's too much, that's not allowed to...

Emily: shut that shit down.

Lauren: Shut it down, shut it down. And when we're, we've had the conversation before about, like, the British stiff upper lip, and I feel like toxic positivity really plays a part in that, or can be tied to it, rather than plays a part in it, of the same thing of, "present this image to me so that I can feel better."

Emily: Yeah. I, I would say that there could definitely be, you could make a conceptual link between the two of them.

Lauren: Exactly. Yeah. Toxic positivity didn't influence the stiff upper lip, but you can draw a connection between the two of them. And the specific pop culture connection that I was [00:52:00] thinking of is there's a scene in this season of Euphoria, which is a TV show on HBO that Zendaya is in is probably how most people know the show. That's like huge amongst probably like the 16 to like 25, 26 demographic. I mean, people like outside of that age range also watch it. But I feel like that's the main viewing audience of Euphoria, especially because it's set in high school.

And one of the characters, Kat, is, you know, she's not completely happy in her relationship. And so she's sitting down to make a pros and cons list of like, why don't I like this person as much as I should. And she realizes that she's only writing pros down and there's actually no cons. And that the issue is with herself.

She's like, oh, I don't like myself. And so I'm not happy. Then she's like, well, shit. And so she goes to wallow in her room. And they have a scene where like the personification of all these Instagram influencers are like, girl, just be happy, girl, be a boss bitch. You're the strongest bravest person I know. And she's looking at them going, no, I'm not. I actually feel like really trash right now.

"You getting out of bed is fantastic!" She's like, but I can't get out of bed. And so why are you telling me this? "You look fantastic!" I don't, I feel objectively unhealthy. "No, you look great." I really do not. And you don't need to continue telling me. And just the back and forth and the representation of what those messages are that we get all the time that are telling us, we shouldn't be feeling any negative emotions.

We should just be a boss babe, and go figure it out and everything will be great. And how toxic that is when we're not allowed to feel anything negative or even acknowledge that it exists because we're just supposed to like, I don't know, girl boss our way out of it or something.

And that was what I was thinking of was like that scene in Euphoria, specifically, related to toxic positivity, because I think those are the same messages that-- or not the same, but similar messages that people or the women, especially, in Mansfield Park would get, you know, be the pretty ornament, do this thing, acquiesce to my request.

And don't have any [00:54:00] other feelings or emotions about the matter that I don't like.

Emily: Yeah. I think we definitely, I mean, explicitly see that with Fanny, as she is feeling these things and in the moment telling herself I'm not allowed to feel those things.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: I have to be nice and passive and acquiescent because that's all I'm good for.

Lauren: She has to be the constantly positive person. But in that case, that's where it positivity becomes toxic because it's harmful to her emotional wellbeing as she's trying to make sure that everybody else's emotional state is taken into account. Yeah. So that was my, that was my pop culture connection for today.

When positivity becomes toxic. When it becomes so loud that it drowns out everything else.

Emily: That is so fascinating to think about.

Lauren: I'm glad that it's entered the conversation more recently. I was surprised when I was looking it up. I was like, oh, there's something in Teen Vogue and a host of other well-known publications were kind of talking about this and dissecting it.

And the fact that it was in Teen Vogue stood out to me specifically, because I feel like the audience who reads that is probably the one who needs to hear it the most, because I know I've had to unlearn a lot of that where I've always just been very upbeat and positive, and that's the role that I play.

And people don't always need me or want me to be upbeat and positive, but that was definitely something that I fell into a lot, like in high school and college, it was like, okay, well I'll make you feel better because that's, what's, that's what's needed of me in this moment. Or I won't dwell too much on things that make me sad because I should be happy.

Look at all the reasons I have to be happy. So I'm glad that it's becoming more of a conversation so that more people can realize that doesn't have to be the case.

Emily: Yeah. And I think, like you said, toxic positivity is not new. We're definitely talking about it more. But social media, I think has created just a new tight rope to walk, especially when [00:56:00] you're thinking about like public persona and the sharing of private information.

So like you said, someone sharing, they have cancer. That's something that like, that's a decision that you would have to make initially, do I want to share this private information about myself? But then when it comes to a culture of toxic positivity, it brings in a new aspect of, do I want to share this downer?

Lauren: I'm going to ruin the vibe.

Emily: Right. Even if you desperately need, you know, outside validation of the things that you're feeling. I mean, if you've just gotten a cancer diagnosis, you should not have to be worried about whether or not it's going to make somebody else feel shitty.

Lauren: But I think women and people who have been socialized as women, especially, are super attuned to how we make other people feel and are more likely to downplay our own feelings, because we don't want to upset other people, but we should also be allowed to be upset.

Like we shouldn't always be walking on eggshells around other people so that we don't upset them with our own negative emotions.

Yeah. So anyway, hopefully in the next section we'll have something that's actually positive for the section when we're not talking about positivity.

Emily: We did not understand the assignment.

Lauren: No, sorry, listeners. I'm sure you were like, oh my gosh, positivity. We're going to have a nice fun episode to listen to Reclaiming Jane today.

Emily: It's going to be so upbeat and fun. No, actually we're going to talk about slavery and toxic positivity.

Lauren: This was the ultimate bait and switch. That was unintentional, guys, I'm sorry.

Emily: Did we just Gaslight our listeners?

Lauren: Oh no.

Emily: Can't girl boss our way out of this one, Lauren.

Lauren: Can I gatekeep? Does that work?

Emily: Yes, but our entire premise is about not gatekeeping.

Lauren: Dang it!.

Emily: We're screwed. We have no other options.

Lauren: No, I think, I think the only thing we can do now is just go to final takeaways and apologize.

Emily: Shut it down.

Lauren: [00:58:00] Just shut it down. We'll try again next week.

Emily: Hopefully we'll have better luck.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: All right, well--

Lauren: Is it me?

Emily: Final takeaways. Take it away.

It's okay to not be okay. I know it's like a very pithy, like, Pinterest statement, but I feel like that sums up the last part of this episode.

Yeah, absolutely.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: I think mine is going to be, to have some awareness and compassion for the people around you.

Lauren: Yeah, it's a, it's a small ask with such a big impact.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: Just be nice to people. Please.

Emily: Please. Well, shall we pull our topic for next time?

Lauren: We shall. I think it's your turn to, to pull it.

Emily: Fun. So we've drawn the seven of clubs, Lauren, what is it?

Lauren: That is challenge.

Emily: Challenge.

Lauren: It is indeed. The artwork is flowers and it says, developing a green thumb requires vigilance. Keep watering your garden. So challenge is what we will be thinking of for next time.

Emily: Alright.

Lauren: Oh, this should be good.

Emily: Hopefully it won't be a challenge to come up with our topics.

Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading chapters 21 through 25 of Mansfield Park with a focus on challenge.

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, including special patron only events, you can join our Patreon @ReclaimingJanePod.

Reclaiming

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

Lauren: See you next time nerds.

Emily: I'm so glad now that I know what those are, what the actual scene was, what the lines were, because as I was reading this and [01:00:00] it was talking about Fanny and Mary reading the lines together. My own interminable commentary of course, goes to fanfic and was like, all right. In, in the fan fiction version of this, this is where Mary and Fanny fall in love.

Lauren: Gay! Gay! Gay! Gay!

Emily: I may or may not have written that exact scenario in a completely different fandom, but that's not online anywhere, so no one will ever read it.

Lauren: No, I was going to say drop the link!

Emily: Absolutely not.

Lauren: Every time I ask you for this. And every time you say no.

Emily: Sorry. It only exists in private chats from like five years ago.

Lauren: So rude!

Emily: I know.