Mansfield Park 26-30: “Vibe Check”
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This section's got BDE (Big Debutante Energy). Join Lauren and Emily for an energetic discussion of Fanny's coming out! Also included: balls, typical Fanny anxiety, and some truly inspired matching of characters with the same energy.
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Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Season 3 Episode 6 | Mansfield Park 26-30: “Vibe Check”
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 26 through 30 of Mansfield Park through the lens of energy.
Emily: I feel like, I feel like we have some energy starting this today. We just recorded a little bit for our patrons about our thoughts on Bridgerton season two. So we already got the recording energy going.
Lauren: We're a little, a little hyped. It's a gorgeous day outside.
Emily: Oh my God. It's so beautiful.
Lauren: It's just contributing. Spring has sprung. We have high energy today.
Emily: It's great. I love it.
Lauren: I am also just really excited to talk about this section. Cause I feel like it one, has some good thematic ties, but also is setting us up for some, for some future drama.
Emily: Oh my goodness. There's definitely going to be future drama.
Lauren: I can't wait. So yeah, we'll see. I feel like maybe this will be episode two in a row where we have like, high energy, fun episode. We had two episodes of a downer. Maybe now we'll have two episodes of, you know, happiness and joy.
Emily: We need to, we need to compensate. We need to balance them out a little bit.
Lauren: We really do.
Emily: Because yeah, we had two major downer episodes in a row, so.
It is my turn to recap first.
Lauren: It is indeed. Are you ready?
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Okay. Three, two, one, go.
Emily: So after the comments at the end of the last section about seeing Fanny dance, Sir Thomas decides that he is going to give a ball before William leaves and it's in Fanny's honor, Edmund is unfortunately still on the Mary train and has kind of decided that he might want to ask her to marry him? Maybe? William has given Fanny a pretty little cross pendant. She's looking for a chain. Mary offers her a fancy one and then Edmund gives her a perfect one. Oh God, William and Henry both leave [00:02:00] town. Henry comes back. He's gonna propose to Fanny.
Lauren: The end!
Emily: Got a, got a little off the rails there. Lauren, are you ready to give your recap?
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: All right. Three, two, one, go.
Lauren: Okay. Everything that Emily said, also Fanny eventually chooses the chain that Edmund gives her because it's perfect and it fits her cross. And she has lots of thoughts about the chain that Mary gave to her because Henry originally gave it to her. She goes to the ball.
She's very uncomfortable with the attention, but she looks fantastic. Edmund and Mary have a fight. Ish. Edmund realizes that maybe she's not the girl for him. Fanny has to say goodbye to William, Henry decides that he's going to marry Fanny, but he actually means it, like he's actually in love with her. And it's super weird.
Emily: There we go. Recaps accomplished.
Lauren: Maybe not our best showings, but that's okay.
Emily: Maybe not. But there was, I --god, I feel like we say this every single time, but there was so much that happened. So we, we opened with Sir Thomas deciding that he's going to give a ball and it's only like a week until William leaves. So they've got to get this together. Fast.
Lauren: And they're trying to figure out, you know, which young people around that we can invite, who can come on short notice. Mrs. Norris of course, has something to say about how they shouldn't have a ball in Fanny's honor and Sir Thomas is like, shut up, I already picked the date and I already decided, and so she can't protest.
Emily: She's so mad because he's already decided everything. So she can't even do any of the planning.
Lauren: Nope. She can't bustle around and make herself feel busy, so she's miserable, but everybody else is happy. Fanny is a little bit uncomfortable because Fanny hates attention. But eventually she's able to start, like looking forward to it like a little baby bit, except for the whole thing is tainted with angst over how clearly in love Edmund is with Mary.
Emily: And they even have a conversation where once again, I, it's not even really a conversation. Edmund is talking at Fanny under the guise of like looking for advice when really he just wants her to nod and smile.
Lauren: He vexes me. I need everyone in this section to redirect their energy [00:04:00] elsewhere. Thank you so much. The end.
Emily: K thanks byeee!
Lauren: Kay thanks bye. That's it. That's the episode.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: Redirect your energy somewhere else.
Emily: Find something better to do, please.
Lauren: Mrs. Norris, redirect your energy into kickboxing or something. Like get your nose out of everybody else's business.
Emily: I would love to see Mrs. Norris attempt kickboxing.
Lauren: Honestly. It's like when Regina George joined lacrosse or is it lacrosse or field hockey? Or rugby? I don't know. The point is that she needs to get out her aggression to other people through physicality instead of manipulating everybody around her.
I also, so I made a stupid note in my book because I know what they mean when they say like, oh, we're picking a gold chain for Fanny. Because William has given her a cross, but it does not come with a chain to make it a necklace, they're like, finding like, a jewelry gold chain.
I always just crack up because when I hear like, oh, I'm getting a chain, it's like, I'm getting like a gold chain, like a hip-hop gold chain. I was like, Fanny's getting a gold chain?! She valid, let's go. Like--
Emily: That sounds incredible. Someone draw Fanny with a chain.
Lauren: Fanny with like a braided gold chain. That's it. That's all I want.
Emily: Incredible. Flawless.
Lauren: Yeah. Said gold chain is a product of what initially seems like good energy between Fanny and Mary, which is then promptly ruined by Mary revealing her true intentions.
Emily: Well, they're not even, I, I don't know. It's hard to tell if, if Mary has intentions about this, but it comes off as that yes, she's intentionally trying to give Fanny this necklace that Henry originally gave her. And Fanny's concern is that like, there's some ulterior motive that then Henry will have the opportunity to like, comment on it and be like, oh, you're wearing a piece of jewelry that I procured. So basically she's expecting the Crawford siblings to be weird about it.
Lauren: And, but they are weird about it though.
Emily: They are. They're super weird about it.
Lauren: She's like, you can't just think of me when you have this gift, Mary's saying that, she's like, you must think of the brother also. And then Fanny goes into a tizzy. You [00:06:00] know, she was already having a difficult time accepting the gift from Mary and is protesting to the point of almost being rude.
And then finally, is convinced to accept the gift. And then that's when Mary says, well, don't just think of me. You have to think of Henry also. And Fanny's like WHAT?!
Emily: It's like, it's the weirdest wing man move ever. And after Mary's the one who told Henry, like, don't do that to this poor girl. Now she's in on it?
Lauren: She confuses me.
Emily: I-- she's just bored.
Lauren: Yeah. Literally. Has nothing better to do. And then Fanny comes home from the parsonage and Edmund is in her room writing her the beginnings of a note, because he was waiting for her to come back and she was gone and then he stands up and he's like, oh, well now you're here.
So I don't have to write the note. I'll just tell you, I got you this pretty chain for your necklace. And so then Fanny is overcome because Edmund has thought of her and he's gotten her a gift. And also she now has the only letter he will ever write to her where he's addressed her by name.
Emily: My comment on this whole section was just that it's, it's such a teenage girl in love energy, like the hopeless romance of it all.
Because he's, he's only written like a sentence and a half of the note that he was going to leave her before she came back into the room. But it says that, "she seized the scrap of paper on which Edmund had begun writing to her as a treasure beyond all her hopes," which like, yeah, if you were 18 and had never interacted with someone in a romantic capacity before. Yeah. I, I understand that energy, viscerally.
Lauren: I was thinking of, you would appreciate this reference. So the, the one sentence that he's written before she walks into the room is, "my very dear Fanny. You must do me the favor to accept--" and I wrote down, "my dearest, comma, Angelica energy."
Emily: Oh, that's good. That is good. Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. That's very much what it made me think of. And so then she has to decide whose chain she's going to wear, does she wear her love's, Edmund's, or does she wear the gift that has been given to her? Because it would be incredibly rude [00:08:00] not to.
And I won't say who this was because I'm not going to like, put them on blast, but it just reminded me of this person who I knew in college who had gotten a gift from his girlfriend and then a gift from his mother. They had both given him sunglasses. They were telling me, they're like, I don't know which ones to wear on vacation because someone's going to be mad at me. It reminded me of that. Very much of "I'm going to offend somebody by not wearing them. Who do I feel like offending?"
Emily: Well, she even, she says to Edmund, like, of course in Fanny's mind, it's like, oh, I have to come clean about this. So she tells him that Mary has given her a necklace to wear with the cross and he's like, oh yeah, that one's so much nicer. It's so much more appropriate for a ball.
Wear that one, like don't even worry about mine, but of course, Fanny "consumed with anxiety" Price is so relieved to find out that the decision's basically been made for her because Mary's necklace won't fit the cross. Of course, in the end, she actually ends up wearing both, which was I had a little moment of like, yay, Fanny, like do something a little fancier for yourself.
You can wear two pieces of jewelry at once. It's a ball!
Lauren: For you!
Emily: For you!
Lauren: It's a ball for you.
Emily: Which she apparently doesn't realize until the ball when Sir Thomas is like, no, yeah, you have to open the first dance. Like it's a ball in your honor. Like you're, you're the lady of the evening essentially. And she's like, what? Excuse me.
Lauren: Pure panic.
Emily: Absolute panic.
Lauren: Okay. Okay. Who do we think is more anxious, Fanny Price or Chidi from The Good Place?
Emily: I think. And this is, this is something that they actually addressed in The Good Place as well. I think it has to be Chidi just because he has so many more things to be anxious about.
Lauren: This is fair.
Emily: Because of the state of the modern world.
Lauren: That is fair enough. Yeah. He also literally goes to hell because of his anxiety.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: Sorry, spoiler alert.
Emily: Which is a little too relatable.
Lauren: I can't make a decision over anything. And that leads to your demise. Cause you're just stressing over every little thing.[00:10:00]
Emily: Yeah. And in terms of like absolute levels of anxiety, I don't know if I could make a decision between Fanny and Chidi.
Lauren: They're pretty equal, honestly. Both of them just balls of anxiety at all times.
Emily: Yeah. That's all of Fanny's energy is directed towards being anxious about pleasing other people, which is so exhausting to read.
Lauren: It really is. It's like, you know, I, too, have been a people pleaser in my life, but I would like to think that I was never that much of a people pleaser to where I lost all sense of self.
And speaking of other, like, options and things to stress about though, one of the things that I made note of was, you know, even something as simple as a ball has dozens of potential interactions and slights to consider where she's talking about, "to dance without much observation or any extraordinary fatigue, to have strength and partners for about half the evening, to dance a little with Edmund and not a great deal with Mr. Crawford, to see William enjoy himself and be able to keep away from her Aunt Norris was the height of her ambition and seemed to comprehend her greatest possibility of happiness."
Where it should just be a normal ball, no big deal. But in order for everything to go perfectly, she's like, okay, I have to be a little bit of this and a little of that, spend some time here, but not too much over there to be seen as the perfect, pious, presentable young woman.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. She has all of these internal standards that she's set for herself that no one, except maybe Aunt Norris actually have imposed for her. Everyone else is just like, be a normal 18 year old girl.
Lauren: That's it. Pages later where I just wrote down, 'you've broken the poor girl,' like.
Emily: Yeah. And speaking of aunt Norris, that horrible jealousy that I talked about last episode comes back at the beginning of chapter 28. They're talking about how nice Fanny looks in advance of the ball. And Aunt Norris says, "she has good reason to look well with all her advantages brought up in this family, as she has been with all the [00:12:00] benefit of her cousins' manners before her." And of course, Mrs. Norris has also, she gives herself credit for the cousins' manners.
She, she thinks that she's partially responsible for how well Julia and Maria turned out. And so she's still pissed that Fanny has gotten to grow up in a higher status than she was born to and higher status than Mrs. Norris has achieved. Just what a Shrew, what a horrible woman.
Lauren: I need her to redirect her energy again, into anything else.
Emily: Literally, anything else.
Lauren: Just the worst.
Emily: Get into really aggressive needle point, I don't know.
Lauren: Something, please! Embroider curse words or something and then burn it. I don't know, just like do something else with your time.
Emily: Anything but bullying your niece for no reason.
Lauren: And inserting yourself into literally everything that your brother-in-law does. She keeps saying like, 'oh, well what we have done to bring up--" like girl, who is we?
Emily: There is no we!
Lauren: Who is this we you speak of? We speak French now. Like what.
Emily: I'm just so grateful that I don't have to spend time in real life around a person like this, because I think I would have to go to prison because I would hurt them.
Lauren: I have the curse of a very expressive face when I don't realize that my face is portraying all of my emotions at once. And even if I managed to hold my tongue, I would have the girl, what the hell,' look on my face the whole time. And it would get me in trouble.
Emily: Which is very entertaining for those around you. But yeah.
Lauren: Not for me.
Emily: The lack of a poker face would be problematic in this instance.
Lauren: Yes it would. Though speaking of the ball and energy though, I loved the descriptions that we get and the narration of how the energy of the room shifts with each new addition to the parties. So where, you know, with a certain number of couples there's conversation, but it's a little bit stilted, it's a bit awkward.
And then a few [00:14:00] more characters arrive and now people can break off into their groups, into their cliques. And now everything feels a lot more relaxed and happy because people are talking to people with whom they're comfortable and then kind of documenting the flow of energy throughout the night. And then finally into the next morning where the house is much quieter and melancholy because William is leaving and the frivolity of the night is over.
I liked that description of just like how social energy shifts, depending on who's in the room and what's happening. I really liked that.
Emily: Yeah. The, the way that you described that just then it feels sort of like the sense that you get in like Cinderella or something where, you know, at a certain moment, like the focus changes to one person or another.
And then like the morning after, you have just that, like the energy let down.
Lauren: Or alternatively that one shot scene in Pride and Prejudice 2005 at to the ball.
Emily: Yessss. So good. I can't not think of it.
Lauren: It's so, it's excellent. I just love that movie so much.
Emily: But Sir Thomas is very pleased with, with Fanny's comportment at the ball.
He thinks that she, she looks very well, very appropriate, but also quite beautiful. And also says, "he was proud of his niece and without attributing all her personal beauty as Mrs. Norris seemed to do to her transportation to Mansfield." So he's just like, yes, she's a lovely young girl. And he recognizes the advantages that she's had, but also that she is her own person. Who is quite nice.
Lauren: With one line he's already better than Mrs. Norris, you know how awful you have to be for the literal slaver to be better than you?
Emily: Look, we've already talked about how Mrs. Norris would just be straight up a slavery apologist. But yeah, he, he is very pleased with her behavior, with how she is modest without being rude.
She dances appropriately with the people [00:16:00] that she should.
Lauren: She opens the ball with Henry.
Emily: She opens the ball, yes.
Lauren: Everything has gone quite the way he imagined. And he is convinced that Henry Crawford is in love with Fanny. And so he's purposely invites them over the next morning for breakfast with William before they leave.
Because Sir Thomas is seeing the way that he's interacting with Fanny and the attention that he's paying to her and is like, 'well, let me have my own little matchmaker moment of my own. Henry. Would you like to come over for breakfast tomorrow?"
Emily: He's actually like looking out for Fanny's future in a way that neither Lady Bertram or Aunt Norris will do, because the two of them are just like, oh yeah, Fanny will always be around the house. Like, they're just kind of expecting her to be a lifelong companion for them. But Sir, Thomas is like, we're going to get you hitched.
Lauren: They have no motivation to have any personal interest in her life because if she has to stay there, then it's to their benefit. But if they get her married off, then they've lost their entertainment and then what are they gonna do?
Emily: Right now, she's well-trained to attend to their every need. And that's a perfectly respectable position for, you know--
Lauren: a woman of her birth.
Emily: A lower class relation to be attendant upon the noble ladies.
Lauren: I can't.
Emily: Yeah, no.
Lauren: Shout out to Sir Thomas for actually trying to do right by Fanny.
Emily: Yeah. That's one thing we can give him.
Lauren: We'll give you that.
Emily: And we have questions about some other aspects of your life, but we'll give you that. You're nice to Fanny right now.
Lauren: I think the last energy note that I had before we move on to like, historical context and pop culture, unless there other energy things that you wanted to point out was the desperate energy from Mary in those last couple of chapters, because she's figured out that she has maybe said too much when it comes to Edmund, because Edmund has finally figured out that Mary has seemed a little bit hot and cold.
Like one of the things that he's talking to Fanny about is that, you know, sometimes when I consider what her [00:18:00] response would be, if I were to ask her, you know, that significant question, I think absolutely, yes. And then other times her behavior, or things that she said leads me to believe that it would be like a scornful no. And he's finally figured out that maybe this person who rags on the clergy all the time and also has said how much she prefers living in London and doesn't want to be in the country maybe wouldn't be happy with someone who's going to be a clergyman in the country and has kind of cooled off towards Mary and also didn't specifically go ask her to marry him, like Fanny thought that he was going to do. Mary also feels that sleight. And so she comes over to ask. Like, where's Edmund been these days? Like, do you know when he's coming back? Cause he's also gone, he's gone off to Thornton Lacey and--
Emily: he's gone to be ordained!
Lauren: He's gone to be ordained and Mary is now having a panic attack about it. And she's like, well, shit, let me go talk to Fanny and see what she knows. And so at first Lady Bertram's in the room because of course, that's where Fanny spends all of her time. And then once Lady Bertram has like vacated the premises, then Mary seizes her chance and is just... even Fanny can tell that she's not her normal self, that now there's a tinge desperation to, oh no, I fucked up.
Emily: She can see this slipping through her fingers. Like, oh, I might actually have gone too far and lost my opportunity with Edmund.
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: Which from what we can tell has been her best chance so far.
Lauren: You done messed up, A-a-ron.
Emily: That's definitely some desperate energy.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Yeah. I did actually have one more energy note. The change in Henry's energy from that initial decision last section that he's gonna make Fanny Price fall in love with him to... Is Henry in love with Fanny? Because he's decided that he's going to ask Fanny to marry him.
He's decided that she would make an excellent wife and that he wants to settle down with her, which is just. What?!
Lauren: A complete 180.
Emily: [00:20:00] Yeah. Like, sorry. Is this the same Henry Crawford who left for London a few days ago? Cause I think a different guy came back.
Lauren: I don't know what's happening here. Like, are you the same person who was flirting with both of the Bertram sisters?
Emily: Right? Without any intention of following through with either of them.
Lauren: And now you want to marry Fanny. Did you bump your head?
Emily: Yeah, I, I don't think that he's really like in love with her. He just thinks that she would be a proper little wife. To make a household for him, which he's right.
Lauren: She'll never say no, she's never going to argue with you.
Emily: Yeah. But he, he says some very pretty things about making Fanny happy and being in love with her. But I, I, I don't know if he's outright lying about that to assuage Mary, or if he's convinced himself that he's actually in love with Fanny, but.
Lauren: And even the nice thing he says is kind of building up his own ego rather than being nice to Fanny just that nobody else has paid attention to her, and no one else has given her her due, but I will. I see the special thing, I can do whatever.
Emily: Yep. I have it highlighted, he says, "it will be the completion of my happiness to know that I am the doer of it," of making her happy, "that I am the person to give the consequence so justly her due." And my literal note that I wrote in my copy was, 'there it is, it's for his own consequence.'
He wants to feel good about giving Fanny the things that she deserves, but he doesn't actually care about Fanny getting what she deserves and the happiness that she should have. It's just, I want to feel good about doing something for this poor little girl.
Lauren: He feels like he's doing charity work.
Emily: Yes, yes.
Lauren: And this goes back to what we said last episode about people being equals. This is clearly not a relationship of equals if you're already condescending to ask this person to marry you. So we'll see how that plays out next episode.
Emily: Ooh, we'll see.
Lauren: That ended on like a semi cliffhanger of he's going to ask Fanny to marry him, but he hasn't actually gone off to ask permission or anything yet. He's just [00:22:00] told Mary what his intentions are, and then...
Emily: To be continued!
Lauren: That's the end of chapter 30.
Emily: We can assume, I think, that Sir Thomas would agree, but how would Fanny act?
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: I mean, would she say yes, out of obligation, would she be so taken aback that she would actually turn down something that wouldn't make her happy? We'll see!
Lauren: Tune in next time to find out!
Emily: I mean, we're like, we're like, okay, well we're a little over halfway through the book now. It was like, it's too early for Fanny to actually accept a proposal at this point.
Lauren: Well, we'll see!
Emily: We shall see. But I'm moving backwards through our section a little bit for historical context. I wanted to get a little bit into what's going on with this ball and the role that it plays in like courtship and stuff.
Lauren: Excellent. Please continue.
Emily: Yeah. So we, especially back in Pride and Prejudice, we saw several balls. We haven't really had that in Mansfield Park, but in Pride and Prejudice, especially, we saw sort of the difference between like private versus public events. So this is very much a private ball. It's given in a private home by a single host and it's attendance only by invitation.
It's not something that you can purchase a ticket to, like might happen in London during the season. And this is really a crux of social interaction, especially for people who were on like that courtship market. So this is, this is a really important field of play, basically, for the people who are eligible.
And that's, that seems to be kind of one of the main reasons why, why these things are put on is to give young unmarried people a chance to interact in a controlled setting. Especially in a private ball, it's very much controlled because all of the people are there explicitly by invitation. They have been chosen by the host, even things like introductions are heavily mediated.
So all unmarried young ladies are under the supervision of a [00:24:00] chaperone, usually an older married lady. So their mother, their aunt, something like that. Clearly, Fanny is replete with chaperones here.
Lauren: She can't go anywhere.
Emily: She can't go anywhere. But yeah. So in any young gentleman that she meets at this ball that introduction would have to be mediated by either the host, so presumably her uncle, or by a mutual friend of those parties. Any young gentleman would have to be introduced to her before he could ask her to dance. And then that dancing actually served an important courting role. This is the place where you're able to converse without so much opportunity of like your horrible aunt listening over your shoulder.
So one thing is the actual dances that they're doing, it's not the one-on-one waltzes that Bridgerton loves so much to get people like really face-to-face. I, oh my God, such drama waltzes were not happening at balls at this particular point. Well maybe a little bit, but like towards the end of the 1810s, they were becoming more popular.
But at this point, like when Jane Austen is writing Mansfield Park, it was more, these dances that are performed like sort of in lines. So yes, you're coupled off, but each couple will like dance between each other and they're sort of facing each other. Exactly the kind of thing you see in like all the Pride and Prejudice adaptations and stuff like that.
And so there's a lot of kind of downtime, idle time, both on the floor and off the floor where you have the opportunity to chat with your partner, have a little casual conversation. Feel them out a bit, I guess. So presumably that's the kind of thing that Fanny would be doing if she weren't Fanny. I can only assume that she does not speak a word to any of her partners, even, even when she dances with Edmund, it says in the book that like they went through it so soberly that Sir Thomas is like, oh yes, no one can accuse me of having tried to raise a wife for my second [00:26:00] son, which is just so like, I can't even get into that right now.
Lauren: Where do we even start?
Emily: Seriously. But these private balls especially were big affairs. They would go all night. Jane Austen actually wrote once about a ball that she had attended that started at 9:00 PM. They had their supper at 1:00 AM and yeah, a lot of these balls would culminate in like, a breakfast for everyone who was still there. They would keep dancing till like 7:00 AM and then eat breakfast and then leave.
Lauren: Wow.
Emily: So in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, when the Bennets are driving away in their carriage in the morning, yeah, that's not actually that unusual. They would have stayed literally all night. They just keep going.
Lauren: Keep the party going.
Emily: So poor Fanny really, really tapped out early. 3:00 AM. Jeez.
Lauren: I'm so glad you brought that up because I was so confused and I said like, you have to go up early and it's three o'clock in the morning. I was like, that's early?
Emily: They partied hard, man.
Lauren: Bars close at 2:00 AM in most cities and this ball is still going and she's going to bed early at three o'clock in the morning? It's like, okay, damn. I didn't know the Regency got down like that.
Emily: Yeah. It's, it's kind of excessive, honestly. I don't know if I could make it through a Regency ball. What am I saying? I absolutely could not.
Lauren: Yeah. I feel like put you in a different context and you'd be fine. You would have like taken a nap beforehand or...
Emily: I would have prepared.
Lauren: You would have prepped. You would have. Yeah, you could've made it.
Emily: And also it's not like going out on a Friday night after a full work week. You're, you're a person of leisure.
Lauren: Like you're, you're up and dancing at a Regency ball, but also, like you said, there's lots of idle time within the dance. And you can go and sit down.
Emily: Yeah, and they did sit down and have a meal, which I maintain more parties these days need to do that.
Lauren: I agree.
Emily: If you're, if you're going to have a long party, you need to have a meal.
Lauren: This is a hostess note--
Emily: feed me!
Lauren: For all people who are throwing house parties in the near future. Do not just have [00:28:00] charcuterie boards, feed people meals.
Emily: You can start with charcuterie board.
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: But I want to sit down with a plate and a fork at some point.
Lauren: Though be warned, that may mean that people are in your house until three o'clock in the morning.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: So if you don't want that, maybe just let them starve and then they leave.
Emily: Starve me out, that's the easiest way to get rid of me. Speaking of getting rid of people, though, I mentioned before that a gentleman, once introduced, could ask a lady to dance, but it was, unfortunately for Fanny, quite rude to refuse an invitation to dance.
Lauren: Ahem. Eloise.
Emily: Yeah. So if you, if you refused an eligible gentleman and you were not already engaged for that set that was kind of indicating, like I'm done dancing for the night. So if you stood up with someone else, like that is a slight to whoever asked you.
Lauren: Got it.
Emily: Yeah. But also Edmund mentions, I think a couple of other times throughout the section is mentioned the idea of a set of, so that's typical, you ask to dance, two consecutive dances with someone and that is generally all you would dance with one person.
If you take more than one set with the same partner, that's indicating like a very specific interest in that person. Like you'd better be on the brink of engagement if you're going to dance more than to someone.
Lauren: Okay. Interesting.
Emily: Yeah. So poor Fanny has so much to be anxious about with this ball. She's never been to a ball before and suddenly like she's basically the guest of honor, like this is functionally, her coming out.
Lauren: Fanny's out now! We finally have an answer to the question.
Emily: Congratulations, Fanny, we're so proud of you.
Lauren: You may or may not be snatched up off the market in about two days, but. It was a very successful ball at that rate.
Emily: Oh yeah. So yeah, that's a, that's what's going on with all these people invading Fanny's house that she now has to tip toe around, not [00:30:00] offending anyone.
Lauren: So many social conventions.
Emily: I know, right.
Lauren: That's so exhausting.
Emily: As if we don't also have myriad social conventions that would baffle anyone else.
Lauren: This is very true.
Emily: We're just not aware of them because we live within them. Well, I don't, I don't know what your pop culture connection is, so I don't know how to transition, but that was because the section focused so heavily on the ball that felt like a perfect little nugget to pull out for historical context.
Lauren: I love it. I feel like that works really well. I don't have like a, thematic pop culture connection. It's more. Well, it is tied to our theme, but perhaps not uniform is what I'm looking for.
Emily: Okay.
Lauren: So, in the theme of energy, you know, one of the slang terms that you hear is like, oh, such-and-such has blank energy.
So I am taking that and applying it to like some-- six of the characters from Mansfield Park. Like this character has this character's energy.
Emily: I can't wait to hear what you come up with.
Lauren: Okay. So I started off with our dear, dear Fanny Price.
Emily: God bless. God love her. Bless her heart.
Lauren: Bless her heart. The epitome of bless her heart. Fanny Price has Tohru energy from the anime Fruits Basket.
Emily: I wish I had the context for that. I don't know Fruits Basket.
Lauren: Yeah. I feel like most people who are listening to this also don't, but people who do are going to be very excited, but most of the people listening probably don't. But. It is based off of a manga series that came out in like the early 2000s.
And then the anime has had a revival over the last couple of years, but Tohru is this very, very sweet teenager who is embarrassed when people pay attention to her and is just like the sweetest, loveliest girl who people really love and pay attention to, but she's taken in by another family because she can't be with her original family.
So she like makes her way into this other family completely on accident, blah, blah, blah. And is obliging to a fault, just very sweet, very demure, very obliging.
Emily: It sounds like Fanny.
Lauren: Yep. Tohru I think has more of a spine and energy than Fanny [00:32:00] does, but like the essence of their two characters? Very much alike.
Emily: All right.
Lauren: Yeah, so Fanny has big Tohru energy. The next person I did, you will know this reference. So I chose Edmund specifically thinking about how he is sanctimonious and self-righteous and overly pious. Edmund has Edward Cullen energy.
Emily: I was not expecting that!
Lauren: Tell me I'm wrong!
Emily: You're not! Oh, no.
Lauren: He really does. He was the hardest one. When I was trying to think of like, who does he remind me of? He reminds me of Edward Cullen. He always knows better than you. He was trying to tell you what he thinks you should do. And it's always with an air of, I have the moral high ground.
Emily: Listeners. I wish you could have seen the way I just lost my shit at that comparison. Almost fell out of my chair. I mean, you're correct. You are, but that never in a million years, would've crossed my mind that that's who you would choose to compare Edmund to.
Lauren: Welcome to my brain.
Emily: Wow. Wow. Edmund Bertram. And Edward Cullen. Okay.
Lauren: Don't admit that they're wrong.
Emily: Just, just plow right through.
Lauren: And will always think that they know best for you and whatever they choose should make you happy because it makes them happy.
Emily: All right. We have, we have Edmund and Edward, so who's up next?
Lauren: Okay. So our next person is Mary Crawford and I went in a different direction for that. I think that she has the Baroness from the 2021 Cruella energy. So that is the character that Emma Thompson plays. She's a little bit Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada. I don't know who else you would compare her with, but I think Miranda Priestly is the best descriptor because she's, you know, head of [00:34:00] a fashion magazine and Emma Stone's Cruella is like trying to get in her good graces, blah, blah, blah.
That feels very Devil Wears Prada. What I'm thinking that for Mary is how the baroness is always like slightly manipulating people behind the scenes. And that gives Mary energy to me. So the Mary to me has the Baroness energy from Cruella. But like, if you age Mary, by like 50 years and put her in a position of power, there she is.
Emily: Okay.
Lauren: She is Baroness from 2021 Cruella. I feel like I can come up with a better comparison for her, but that's where my brain went first. So I'm saying she is Baroness energy and we're going to go with it.
Emily: All right.
Lauren: Okay. Henry Crawford, her brother. Did you ever see The Princess Diaries?
Emily: What kind of question is that? Oh my God. Yes.
Lauren: Okay. Sorry.
Emily: Who is he?!
Lauren: Josh Bryant, the blonde kid.
Emily: No. Who only pays attention to Mia once she's a princess.
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: Heyyyyy. I want to be with you.
Lauren: That is who Henry Crawford is.
Emily: That's incredible. Oh my god.
Lauren: He is the preppy blonde boy from The Princess Diaries, Josh Bryant.
Emily: Amazing. Yes.
Lauren: That comparison just makes me laugh every time I think about it because it just lines up so perfectly. So that's who, that's who Henry is.
Emily: I like that a lot.
Maria.
Lauren: I had two for her, one that's just her on her own. And then one that's her with Julia.
Emily: Okay.
Lauren: Maria on her own. It gives me Gretchen Weiners energy from Mean Girls. Very much, my dad, the inventor of toaster strudel, would not be happy to hear about this. Maria!
And then together with Julia. They give me evil step sisters specifically from the Hilary Duff Cinderella Story.
Emily: Oh God, I don't have think I've seen that since middle school.
Lauren: I have not seen it in ages, but specifically, if you have not seen that movie, just look up the carwash scene from A Cinderella Story with those two step sisters and tell me that that is not Maria and Julia fighting over Henry Crawford.
Emily: Alright, that's gonna be the first thing I do when we finish [00:36:00] recording.
Lauren: It lines up so well, which then makes Lady Bertram Jennifer Coolidge as the evil stepmother.
Emily: I just love everything Jennifer Coolidge does.
Lauren: Agreed. She can do no wrong. So that would be the female Bertrams over there. We have the evil stepsisters and the evil stepmother, but make it early two thousands.
Emily: Now I just really, I really want to see an adaptation of Mansfield Park with Jennifer Coolidge as Lady Bertram. Please give it to me.
Lauren: Make it happen!
Emily: I mean, it's definitely high time that we had another Mansfield Park, right? So make Jennifer Coolidge Lady Bertram. We've already started casting for you.
Lauren: That -- we don't --
Emily: So easy.
Lauren: She can just be American with no other explanation. She can be like Cora in Downton Abbey, where he married an American. It's fine. Don't make her do a British accent because then you lose all things good about Jennifer Coolidge.
Emily: Just make it another one of these, ahistorical things. Like there's so many, like The Great and Our Flag Means Death where it's like, yeah, this is vaguely based on something, but also we're going to throw all of the rules out and make it better. So give us that kind of Mansfield Park, please.
Lauren: Please.
Emily: Please and thank you.
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: That was incredible. Do we have any anybody else?
Lauren: I have one final one.
Emily: Okay.
Lauren: And I probably should have left the Bertrams as like my grand finale, but I was skipping over it cause I did Maria and then this person and then Julia and Maria together. But I was trying to think of like, what himbo energy can I give to Mr. Rushworth? And I decided upon Emmett Cullen. So we have two Twilight ones.
Emily: Wow. Oh, that one's, that one's so good too, because there's like the problematic elements too, but also just himbo.
Lauren: Yup. And I feel like with both Mr.Rushworth and Emmett, they're not quite, no thoughts head empty. Like there's a little bit of cunning there. It's just like very, it's buried very way down deep.
Emily: It is. It is extremely, no thoughts head empty vibe.
Lauren: The vibe is there. Yeah. And then I also feel like Mr. Rushworth has the potential to dote on a partner, the way the Emmett does [00:38:00] on Rosalie. I don't know that he would do that with Maria, but the potential is there.
Emily: I feel like Maria wouldn't let him.
Lauren: No.
Emily: She wants to be spoiled, yes, but she doesn't want to be doted on.
Lauren: I feel like --agreed, yeah.
Emily: There's a subtle difference there somehow.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: I don't know what it is. I can't explain it, but.
Lauren: So those, those are my pop culture connections. Fanny Price has Tohru energy.
Edmund has Edward Cullen energy. Mary Crawford is the Baroness. Henry Crawford is Josh Bryant from The Princess Diaries, Julia and Maria and Lady Bertram are the evil step sisters and stepmother. And then Mr. Rushworth is Emmett Cullen.
Emily: Well done. That was so excellent. I love, I love when you do these comparisons for the pop culture connection, because it's hilarious every time. And so spot on.
Lauren: Thank you. I think Edmund and Edward might be my favorite.
Emily: They're very good. That's very good.
Lauren: This is my calling.
Emily: Someone has to do it.
Lauren: You know...
Emily: you're my hero, Lauren.
Lauren: This random encyclopedic pop culture knowledge has to be good for something.
Emily: Yeah. I mean like, like you said, last time when I got to go on my tangent about muslin. What do you need trivia nights for when you have a podcast?
Lauren: Thank you for indulging me. That was so fun.
Emily: You're so welcome. Thank you for bringing that energy to the podcast.
Lauren: You're welcome.
Emily: It's always a delight.
Lauren: Anytime.
Emily: So, all right. Final takeaways. You, you are up first because I recapped. So what's your final takeaway for this section, Lauren?
Lauren: Everybody redirect your energy somewhere else.
Emily: Amen.
Lauren: You're all wrong, everybody fix it. That's it.
Emily: I can get behind that. Absolutely. A hundred percent.
Lauren: What is your final takeaway?
Emily: Mine, I think is a little too similar to yours, maybe. But to a certain extent, we do have some control over where we direct our energies [00:40:00] and we, we can choose better places typically.
Lauren: I agree.
Emily: So it's basically the same as yours, but.
Lauren: Well, yours was generalized and mine was just ragging on the characters. So you at least gave advice to listeners, I was just bitching at people.
Emily: Look, sometimes we just have to do that. Sometimes they're just driving us up a wall.
Lauren: Sometimes people deserve to get dragged.
Emily: Let's see how we're going to drag them next week. Our card is the emperor, or the king of spades.
Lauren: Ooh, okay.
Emily: We actually got like a major arcana one.
Lauren: Let's go.
Emily: It's a portrait and profile of a young gentleman... who is it?
Lauren: It is captain Wentworth. And I won't read you the full description because he's from Persuasion and you've not read it yet.
Emily: No spoilers for 200 year-old books.
Lauren: No spoilers, but this theme is authority.
Emily: Oh, okay. I feel like we're going to have some interesting implications with authority in the next section, just given what's been set up so I can't wait to get into that one.
Lauren: I think that's going to be a good one.
Emily: Ah, alright.
Lauren: Well chosen.
Emily: Thanks. I did it on purpose.
Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading chapters 31 through 35 of Mansfield Park with a focus on authority.
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, like all of our thoughts on Bridgerton, you can join our Patreon @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: More likely to self-destruct than to actually admit that they might be wrong.
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: Hopefully less literally in Edmund's case, I don't know what to expect out of Jane Austen now.
Lauren: You know, I, I don't see Edmund flying to Italy to go commit suicide by [00:42:00] government official. So maybe in that sense, they are different, but.
Emily: I have had, I feel like Twilight has come up so often for me in the last few months, I, I think I sent Lauren a screenshot of this conversation that my sister texted me.
Lauren: Oh, you did.
Emily: Like, "yeah, I was just thinking about Twilight the other day. I just want to know what the political ramifications are of the last Twilight book. Like after they defeat the Volturi, what happens then?" Like, why are you texting me? It was like the middle of the day. Like, are you at work? What's going on here?
Lauren: Because these are the people with whom we spend our time.
Emily: Yes. Yes. And I love it.
Lauren: It's nerds all the way down.