Mansfield Park 31-35: “Who Authorized This?”

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Welcome to another episode where we wish the theme were less relevant. This week, Lauren and Emily talk about authority with detours into performance, affection, and probably more violence than you'd expect from an Austen podcast.

Links to topics discussed in this episode:

The History and Evolution of Public Speaking

Transcript

Reclaiming Jane Season 3 Episode 7 | Mansfield Park 31-35: “Who Authorized This?”

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 31 through 35 of Mansfield Park through the lens of authority.

Emily: All right. So I texted Lauren about this earlier, and I also tweeted about it. I was angry this section, I'm going to fight somebody.

Lauren: Oh, I missed your tweet about it.

Emily: Oh yeah. I tweeted that I was going to fight Sir Thomas.

Lauren: Oh yeah.

Emily: Yeah. Which is exactly what I texted you.

Lauren: Yup.

Emily: Yup. So there's, there's a lot of emotion in this chapter.

Lauren: Yeah. I found this whole section incredibly difficult to read. My last note is just, 'I had to skim some of this, it made me so uncomfortable.'

Emily: Yeah, a lot of discomfort and a lot of authority, interestingly.

Lauren: We lucked out on this.

Emily: Yeah, we did.

Lauren: In a way, I wish we hadn't honestly, but...

Emily: Right? Yeah. Sometimes you get, you get the serendipity and you're like, can we not though, maybe?

Lauren: I could have done without this level of authority being projected.

Emily: Yeah. So why don't, why don't we go ahead and recap so that we can talk about what's going on.

Lauren: That sounds like a plan to me. I feel like my recap is going to be very short.

Emily: That's fair. If it's short, it's short. Are you ready though?

Lauren: Yes.

Emily: All right. 3, 2, 1, go.

Lauren: Okay. Henry Crawford has proposed to Fanny. Fanny is horrified. She's like, absolutely not. I don't think so. This is the worst thing that could ever happen. No. Sir Thomas is like, what the hell is wrong with you? Why would you refuse such a man? Why do you think this is something that you can do? He has now reversed his good opinion of her. Fanny's miserable, Henry Crawford won't take no for an answer.

He wants to still make her fall in love with him. He's on the hunt again, because he's like, oh my God, somebody said no to me?! This is so interesting. Edmund thinks she should marry him. And Fanny is still saying no. Good for her, honestly.

Emily: All right.

Lauren: Okay. That actually ended up taking the whole 30 [00:02:00] seconds.

Emily: It did. There's a lot to express about this section.

Lauren: Yeah. I almost just said everyone thinks that Fanny should marry Henry and Fanny is like, no, but that didn't give enough nuance. So I expanded it.

Okay. Emily, are you ready?

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: Okay. On your mark. Get set. Go.

Emily: So William got promoted and Henry did it. So he's trying to coast on the wave of that gratitude to get Fanny to marry him, but she says no. And she keeps saying no. Everyone else around her is trying to convince her that she should really accept Henry's proposal. And so she's absolutely miserable about it and riddled with guilt and spends the entire time, just like trying to stand by her decision while everyone around her is like, but you should do it, though.

Lauren: The end?

Emily: The end.

Lauren: Cool. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. We open right off the bat with Henry coming in to give Fanny the news that William has been promoted to Lieutenant, which they were talking about while he was still visiting. And Henry's the one who's been able to procure this promotion through his connections to his uncle, the admiral.

Lauren: And before he continues on with why he's come with this good news, Fanny is delighted. This is the best news she's ever gotten. You know, her brother has a secure position in life. He's been promoted. This is fantastic. And then Henry decides to, in her view, ruin everything by explaining that he has done all of this for her because he's fallen in love with her and he wants to marry her.

And if we've seen Fanny as a deer in headlights before, in literally every other chapter of the book, multiply that by about 10 thousand.

Emily: This is just the direct continuation of what we were talking about last time with Henry keeps saying that he wants to make Fanny happy, but he's only doing it to advance his own consequence in the eyes of others.

So when Fanny starts asking about like, oh, how did this happen? How did, how did it [00:04:00] come about? It says, "Henry was most happy to make it more intelligible by beginning at an earlier stage and explaining very particularly what he had done." He wants all of the credit for this, and it immediately struck me the comparison to Pride and Prejudice and Darcy finding Lydia and Wickham, paying for them to be married, paying for Wickham's commission. The results of these two actions are just so utterly different and really illustrate why Darcy deserves to be that romantic hero and Henry very much doesn't because--

Lauren: And the motivations behind those two.

Emily: It's the motivations. Yeah, because Darcy does it and is like desperately trying to keep everyone quiet about it because his motivation was to protect Elizabeth, but he doesn't want her to know that. Whereas Henry does this to ostensibly make Fanny happy, but he immediately barges in and is like, guess what? I did this for you. Aren't you grateful to me?

Lauren: Yeah. Darcy specifically does not want the knowledge of what he's done to manipulate Elizabeth. He doesn't want her to feel as though she needs to marry him or even thank him out of obligation, he wants none of it. Henry, on the other hand, has seen how much Fanny cares for William and how important he is to her and has figured out, 'the way that I get into her good graces is by doing something good for her brother. And if I do this, then she'll marry me.'

It's like the same hashtag like, "nice guy" equation of, 'if I put kindness coins in, sex comes out.' Like, that's not how that works.

Emily: That's exactly what it is. Yeah. He's trying to leverage the affection that she already has for her brother to insert himself in the equation. And it's just so horrible and transparent. And that's the beginning of just a five chapter long rage. [00:06:00]

Lauren: It's just so awkward. I hate it all.

Emily: Of course, it gets worse when, after Fanny has initially refused him and basically said, don't ever bring this up again. This is the worst, you've made me really uncomfortable. Henry goes to Sir Thomas and like, applies for his permission to ask Fanny to marry him and implies that Fanny has encouraged him in this.

Lauren: Yeah, it says later that Fanny thinks that she's being very direct in her pleas to say no, but because she has such a like, soft and gentle, as per the description, manner of speaking. It doesn't come off that way to other people. So even if Henry were not completely vain and self-absorbed, even a more reasonable person would, based on her manner of delivering this message, interpret it as, 'oh, she's just being properly modest. And so she might be persuaded to change her mind.' He's not understanding that she's like, 'this is literally disgusting, please leave me alone.' That's what she's trying to say. It's just not coming out right.

Emily: Yeah. I mean, God, basically the theme of this whole section is just, well, we can talk Fanny into changing her mind. Which is absolutely infuriating.

Lauren: And not just, 'we can talk Fanny into changing her mind,' but, 'if you are the woman that we think you are, if you are the good and virtuous picture of femininity, then you will be pliable and change your mind and you won't be strong-willed and you won't be selfish.'

Emily: Yeah. That's the thing that really breaks her after she's told Sir Thomas, no, I don't want to marry him. Yes, I intend to refuse him and he says, "I will only add, as thinking it my duty to mark my opinion of your conduct, that you have disappointed every expectation I had formed and proved yourself a character at the very reverse of what I had supposed."

Like, she's just been starting to understand, maybe accept, that Sir Thomas cares for her in a familial way. And now he's like, you fucked it up [00:08:00] by not being obliging and compliant and just accepting this man.

Lauren: Yeah. So this speech from Sir Thomas is what really started to get my blood boiling. There were many things, but this one specifically, where as you were saying, he's telling her that his opinion of her has been very negatively changed and that he thought that she was all things good and obliging, and really she's not.

And then really puts the nail in the coffin by saying, "I had thought you free from willfulness of temper, self conceit, and every tendency to that independence of spirit, which prevails so much in modern days, even in young women, and in which young women is offensive and disgusting beyond all common offense," which I know that we are two centuries removed, but oh my God.

Emily: That was particularly striking.

Lauren: I could not read that and not want to throw the book at the wall. And then he continues, "but you have now shown me that you can be willful and perverse, that you can and will decide for yourself without any consideration or deference for those who have surely some right to guide you without even asking their advice."

Emily: This is where I decided to fight Sir Thomas Bertram. It was this moment where I was like, actually, I will hurt this man.

Lauren: This calls for violence.

Emily: It does. He has brought it upon himself.

Lauren: Where is Will Smith when you need him?

Emily: Like, I may not like Fanny is a heroine, but no one deserves this. And especially not this poor girl who has been beaten down by her family for the last eight and a half years for not being appropriately grateful when all she's done is shown deference and gratitude to them. I am. Angry.

Lauren: Yeah. I just wrote down, 'one, wretch. Two, the horror of a woman being the authority on her own life choices. And three, don't talk to Fanny like that. I don't like her, but you can't talk to her like that.' And this is where we support Fanny.

Emily: This is where we support Fanny.

Lauren: When other characters tick us off enough. And we're like, actually, no, we ride for Fanny. [00:10:00]

Emily: Unconditionally now I am on Fanny's side.

Lauren: We ride at dawn.

Emily: We've never been against Fanny in any way. We just thought that she wasn't compelling as a heroine.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: Which I still believe, but yeah, I will commit violence. In this instance.

Lauren: There was so much in just that first chapter on authority too, because it starts with Henry giving William indirectly additional authority by making him a Lieutenant. So he now has authority, he now has a better station in life.

And then we go into Henry thinking that he has the authority to decide what is going to happen with Fanny and this marriage, and then passing it on to Sir Thomas, who was like 'excuse you. Why do you think that you have the authority to make your own decision about your life? That should come to the people who have raised you, that should come to the men in your life who clearly know better than you.'

Emily: It's just a continual exercise of authority over Fanny. Henry showing his authority as a man of consequence by getting William the promotion. Then when that's not enough to convince Fanny to marry him, going to a figure of even greater authority in her life.

Lauren: Going to those authority figures and telling Fanny that having any authority over herself is not just unwanted, but disgusting.

Emily: In that exact phrasing too.

Lauren: Oof.

Emily: Yeah. Oof is really all we can say there. That encapsulates it.

Lauren: And let it be known. If anybody ever tries to tell anyone in the 21st century that you should not have authority over your own choices and other people should be making them for you?

No.

Emily: Absolutely not. I will fight your modern Sir Thomas Bertrams too.

Lauren: I know that there are cultural differences between the Western hyperindividualism and other cultures where it's more collectivist and you have more of a duty to your family, and I don't want to like, ignore that, however...

Emily: this is different.

Lauren: You get to make your own choices for yourself.

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: You are the authority on your life and your body and your choices. Not anybody [00:12:00] else around you.

Emily: Throughout the rest of the section, Henry continues trying to leverage Fanny's temper against her, basically. And he's eventually got basically everyone on his side about this. Mary sends a note to Fanny basically saying like, can't wait to congratulate you when you accept my brother, wink, wink.

Lauren: Using her first name, being more familiar with her.

Emily: Yeah, leveraging those social customs that don't always ping immediately to us, but were very significant at the time. Obviously, Sir Thomas is on that side. When eventually Aunt Bertram and Mrs. Norris are informed, it's even more of a shit show. And then even Edmund, when he comes back from his stay with a friend after being ordained, is also trying to convince Fanny that she should accept henry!

Lauren: And even like, he tries to be like, 'oh, I'm sure Fanny's had no one to talk to except for me, so I'm going to talk to her and I'm going to give her an outlet.' She still doesn't really want to talk to him because they go on a walk and Edmund is like, 'I know you have some things on your mind. Let's talk about it.' And she goes, well, 'if you know I have things on my mind, then you already know what's going on and I don't really want to continue discussing it.'

And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, let's just, I just want to hear your thoughts, you know, no judgment, it'll be fine. And so she finally shares some things with him, like, well, I didn't really think that our characters are aligned. I didn't like the way that he acted with Maria and Julia. I didn't like this. I didn't like that. Here are all the reasons that I don't think that we would be compatible, minus the glaringly obvious one that she can't tell him, which is that. 'I'm madly in love with you, oh my God, please don't be the one to tell me that I should marry this man.'

And Edmund is just like, no, but I actually think that your tempers could align. I think this could be good. I think, blah, blah, blah.

Emily: He pulls the whole opposites attract.

Lauren: Yeah. And basically says, you know, I think that you have proven yourself to be a model of a perfect woman already, you've shown restraint, you haven't gone after him too [00:14:00] eagerly, so now complete the picture and be the perfect and obliging woman that I know you were born to be.

And just say yes.

Emily: This whole thing just, it just shows yet again, that even Edmund, the one person she thinks she can confide in, has never actually understood her and has no intention of listening to her far enough to comprehend Fanny at all.

Lauren: Like girl at this point, just marry Henry Crawford because the man who you're in love with doesn't get you either. So...

Emily: seriously.

Lauren: I support you in saying, 'I don't love him. I don't want to marry this man,' but you love Edmund, but he doesn't get you either. You think he's going to understand you and he keeps showing you that he does not.

Emily: That point was where I wrote in all caps in my margin, 'I'm going to fight this entire family.'

Lauren: It was just a lot that was happening. And the other thing that I found interesting was that we've been talking a lot about how Mrs. Norris is so god awful to Fanny because she's jealous of her. And that was pretty much confirmed in the section as well. Lady Bertram basically takes it as a compliment to herself.

She's like, 'fantastic. I'm hot. My niece is hot. We're all hot here, she got a really good offer,' and she thinks better of Fanny now that she's been made an offer of marriage by this man. She just sees this all as entertainment; she's not really upset. Mrs. Norris, on the other hand, even though she's kind of kept in check by Sir Thomas and she doesn't scream at Fanny the way she probably wants to, just sends her lots of angry looks.

And it says that she's more angry that he did not propose to Julia and that he should have made an offer to Fanny at all. And that she would have been elevated by accepting this offer of marriage when she had spent so long trying to keep her down. It was like, well, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't have good things.

I've been trying to stop you from having good things. And this is even better than I thought you could aspire to. So what the hell? She probably would have been angrier had Fanny accepted because then she really would have been above Mrs. Norris. And we can't have that.

Emily: Oh God, no.

Lauren: The horror.

Emily: So yeah, this whole section is just [00:16:00] infuriating.

Lauren: It's such a depressing commentary on it is literally impossible to be the perfect woman, whatever society's idea of what the perfect woman is. You're not going to live up to it, whether it's 1813 or 2013 or whatever, because poor Fanny is really caught between a rock and a hard place. And she even says in her conversation with Edmund where he's trying to like, give her some kind of graces, 'you weren't given time to form an attachment, so just give it some time and maybe you'll come to regard Henry in some way.'

And she straight up tells him, she's like, 'people would've thought that I was incredibly vain if I ever thought that he was being serious. If she had immediately accepted, people also would've found something negative to say. She says no, because she doesn't think that she can love him or she doesn't think that their stations are aligned and she's wrong. She says, yes and she's wrong. She does this and she's obliging, she does this and she's vain. There is no winning. You cannot be the perfect virtuous woman. It's impossible.

Emily: Yeah, there is no, no such thing. It's damned if you do damned if you don't, because you're going to garner criticism from some corner, no matter what.

Lauren: Yeah. And even Edmund criticized his own sisters because they dare to show interest in Mr. Crawford. Oh my God, heaven forbid, someone responded to a man who's charming and flirting with. You should just do nothing, I guess. Like don't have any feelings and don't respond to that?

Emily: Yeah. And Fanny points out the impropriety of Henry flirting with the sisters and Edmund says, "nothing could be more improper than the whole business. I'm shocked whenever I think that Maria could be capable of it, but if she could undertake the part, we must not be surprised at the rest."

Lauren: mylongestdeepsighever.MP3.

Emily: And of course, as usual, throughout this whole conversation where Edmund thinks he's going to like comfort Fanny and offer her an outlet, his dialogue absolutely dominates because the man won't shut up and listen to the person [00:18:00] that he thinks he's helping.

Lauren: It's all couched in what he can do for his friend, but his friend is not Fanny. His friend is Mr. Crawford. Like, what can I do to help him achieve his goal of marrying Fanny?

Emily: He is explicitly on Henry's side here and even goes into that conversation with Fanny with the intent of convincing her to give Henry a chance.

Lauren: Because even Sir Thomas is like, Edmund, go talk to your cousin. Can you help us out here? Like come on.

Emily: And he does!

Lauren: Get the girl to go marry him. Yeah. I, they were just, there was so many places, but the whole thing was just about who has authority over whom.

Emily: Everyone has authority over Fanny.

Lauren: Everyone has authority over Fanny. What does the hierarchy look like? What does power balance look like between all these characters? Who gets to wield authority and win? All of it.

It was perfect. And it was annoying.

Emily: Yeah. I hate how perfect it was. But that's actually, the, the idea of wielding authority is actually a really good segue into my history topic.

Lauren: Oh? Do tell.

Emily: Which I struggled a little bit because so much of this was just interpersonal and people talking to one another, but then Henry Crawford decided to read Shakespeare really well and gave me the perfect idea to look at public speaking.

So the origins here, which they would have been especially conscious of in the Regency period, public speaking is traditionally considered to have originated in classical Greece in Athens with democracy and politicians coming in and speaking to the masses. And in that context, as it is today, it's often leverage to persuade or to debate, to make your point of view known and to get other people to agree with you. And that idea was definitely having a resurgence in the Enlightenment period that directly proceeded the Regency.

During the Renaissance, there was a little bit of a shift towards like, oh, we should use [00:20:00] logic to advance our ideas. But the Enlightenment brought back that neoclassical idea of rhetoric and persuasion, and also not necessarily introduced, but really forwarded the idea of elocution being a valid area of study, basically.

So when I talk about elocution, I'm talking about like, that emphasis on delivery, like Henry's exceptional reading of Shakespeare that so captivated even Fanny, who was determined not to pay attention to what he was doing. But that also ties into what I've talked about ages and ages ago, maybe in our first season about what gentlemanly behavior is.

Lauren: Oh yeah.

Emily: Yeah. If you're well-trained in elocution and can perform this sort of public speaking, that kind of flags you as being gentlemanly cause that involves, you know, confidence and manners and carrying yourself well, in addition to like, indicating things like education or using heavy air quotes, "correct language." I'm a linguist, I'm contractually obligated to say that that's bullshit. There's no such thing, but anyway.

Henry's ability to leverage this kind of public speaking, this kind of elocution and rhetoric, I think kind of speaks to his character as both trying to present himself as a gentleman, but then also thinking that he has the kind of power to persuade.

And that was also something that I was kind of thinking of... what I texted Lauren about was speech act theory, which is just getting into some real nerd shit here. So speech acts, generally, this is referring to something that both presents information and performs an action. So some of the kind of classic examples are like performing a wedding.

Lauren: Oh, okay.

Emily: So you say, I now pronounce you man and wife and that both presents information about what's [00:22:00] happening and formally accomplishes that action, which also kind of ties over to Edmund being a clergyman because that kind of speech act is going to be something that features really heavily in his occupation moving forward.

So yeah, it tied into more things than I expected, but yeah, public speaking is what I was thinking about and how it contributes to characterization for these people.

Lauren: That's really interesting. And I, you know, what's really funny is that I was just reading about Regency ideas of what a good performance was for a monologue for research I was doing for a different podcast appearance.

And depending on when this episode comes out, it may or may not be out. Spoiler alert, if it's not, I'm going to be on The Thing About Austen, you should go over there and go listen to it. But--

Emily: If it is out, we will obviously link to it.

Lauren: Yes. But one of the things that came up when I was thinking about Regency theater was the standards that they had for actors. And what are the standards for pronouncing certain vowels or what your elocution had to be? What do you do and not do with your hands to be a good actor or like all these other things. Fascinating.

Emily: Yeah. It's, these are things that we just don't think about until some random specific topic comes up. And then, you know, being the nerds that we are, we are fascinated by differences then and now.

Lauren: I think we undervalue how important history is because there's so much that we can learn about why we are the way we are today. If we just look backwards, even a little bit, even little things like public speaking can teach us so much about different cultural norms that we have today.

Emily: Yeah, it was actually really interesting just in doing the research for this. And most of what comes up is websites shilling for their own public speaking courses.

Lauren: That it sounds right.

Emily: But there were a couple of like, lists of the greatest public speakers and it was all like 20th century politicians and ancient Greeks. Or Romans, I wasn't paying that close attention. Also, one [00:24:00] of the lists included like Ronald Reagan. Like he's an actor.

Lauren: I mean, maybe that's why they included him because he's an actor.

Emily: That would make sense. I'm, there's definitely obviously overlap between acting and public speaking.

Lauren: Yeah. Being able to perform in a way.

Emily: Public speech is absolutely performance.

Lauren: Yeah, there was--

Emily: not, not just in speech act theory ways.

Lauren: Yeah. There was a really good thread on Twitter the other day, where somebody was talking about how he gave a speech at like an academic conference or something that he thought went really well.

And then his friend who was not in academia, but was in public speaking also was at that talk. And so he asked for their opinion and the friend was like, yeah, no, dude, that wasn't very good, but gave him advice on how to make his academic talks more engaging. The main point of that whole Twitter thread was just that learning the principles of public speaking made his academic talks better because even though he thought he knew how to speak to an audience, there were extra elements of public speaking that made his performance more engaging because even giving an academic job talk is a performance.

And it's not completely related to what we were talking about, but it just popped into my brain because it happened to be something that I saw as like part of the hashtag discourse on academic Twitter the other day, about how, even though it's not something that is included in PhD programs, maybe it should be because learning those principles of public speaking and how to deliver a message in a way that's interesting to people really is to the benefit of everybody else in academia, because your research actually reaches the people you're trying to get across to.

Emily: Yeah. There's, speaking as someone in a PhD program, there's a lot that they just do not teach you to prepare even for the careers that they want and expect you to take.

There are no pedagogy courses. They don't actually teach you how to like plan a class.

Lauren: Which is ridiculous.

Emily: Which is ridiculous. And so, yeah, if you've had really horrible teachers who are like genius researchers... This is just becoming an academia rant, but [00:26:00] there's no like, there's no recognition of the differences in strengths that it takes to do all these different things. And there's no training to try and shore up weaknesses.

Lauren: I wonder what, what training Henry Crawford received to where he's so good at reading Shakespeare, even Fanny pays attention.

Emily: Yeah. Well, I feel like Shakespeare is a good point to, I don't know, do a weird ADHD jump play. Shakespeare is media, pop culture is media, Lauren, what do you have for us?

Lauren: Pop culture connection! And so I've had happy pop culture connections, last couple episodes. And this one is not entirely happy, but it does involve Bridgerton. So I hope you forgive me.

Emily: I'm willing to be persuaded.

Lauren: Okay. Spoiler for season two of Bridgerton, if you have not watched it, all of it. Don't listen to this, but also by the time this episode airs, there should have been plenty of time for everyone to have watched season two of Bridgeton, because we're recording this with plenty of advanced notice.

Emily: It would be like a month since the season was out. So if we're spoiling it for you, not our fault.

Lauren: Yeah, catch up, what are you doing? I wanted to talk about how Kate Sharma doesn't believe that Anthony, the viscount, could love her similar to how Fanny doesn't believe that Henry Crawford could actually be in love with her. Two very different situations, but the motivations at the heart of both of those are very similar in that Kate finds it impossible to believe that Anthony is totally in love with her, despite the mounting evidence that he's absolutely feral for her. Like in the literal sense of the word, he can't get enough of her scent. Like--

Emily: what a description.

Lauren: Dude. He could not be more into you, but she finds it impossible to believe because she won't allow herself to believe it because she knows that she comes from a completely different class than the Bridgertons do. And that she's only been elevated through association with her stepmother and her half sister. And that by birth she's nowhere near them.

And even though he truly does love her, out of self preservation she won't let [00:28:00] herself believe that because it is so much worse to want something that she knows that she can't have, to express that want and then have it thrown back in her face. "That's ridiculous. Why would you even believe that?"

It's much safer to not want it or not believe that it's possible because then you don't get hurt that way. And Fanny also says something similar, even though hers doesn't come from a place of, 'I don't want to get hurt,' because she doesn't have any feelings for Henry Crawford at all. But when she's talking to Edmund, one of the things that she expresses is that 'we're from two completely different social spheres,' even though Fanny doesn't desire Henry's affections in the same way.

If she had allowed herself to be wooed by Henry in the way that he wanted her to be, then she would have been seen as incredibly vain, because why would you think that someone of your birth, someone of your status could ever turn the head of somebody like Henry Crawford? So even if she were like, let's take Edmund out of the equation and let's pretend as though she is the 18 year old, that everyone thinks that she is, to where this would be the best thing to ever happen to her, which, you know, we can unpack that later.

But even if that were the case and she weren't completely in love with somebody else, that wouldn't be something that she could really allow herself to hope for because a) it's probably not going to happen, b) all the people around her have impressed upon her how unlikely it is, anything like that is ever going to happen to her because she's been told since day one of arriving at Mansfield Park that she's lesser than, and that's her lesser station. And c), even if she did believe it, and let's assume again, that she's this 18 year old who really would desire those kinds of attentions, if she allows herself to want that and then she's rebuffed. It just hurts that much worse.

And with Kate Sharma on Bridgerton, there's the added dimension for the audience, at least, who's watching this, because there's different racial rules in Bridgerton that are a little bit inconsistent from season to season, but we're not going to get into that. For the audience who's watching, especially for people of color [00:30:00] who grew up in predominantly white areas, we have that added emotional baggage of nine times out of 10, we know in our friend groups in puberty and in childhood growing up that we're not going to be the first one desired because the authorities on what is considered femininity or beautiful have not included us in what that description is.

And so if you were the token person of color in like a predominantly white community, odds were, that was something that you grew up understanding. And this is specifically for women as well, because men have a different experience. So like black men can be seen as desirable because they're cool and edgy in predominantly white spaces, whereas black women are seen as the last choice. So your mileage may vary depending on what gender you are.

But we know that our femininity, it didn't, didn't necessarily match what was desirable. And even though one, beauty is incredibly subjective, which we know, and two, the opinions of your white peers are not the be-all, end-all like you shouldn't just be doing things for white approval.

There's still something healing and reaffirming of watching somebody who looks like you be desired on television. And ardently desired, but you also understand why it is that she doesn't think that this is something that could ever actually happen to her because if you've been told for whatever reason, either because of class or because your looks don't fit what the beauty standard is supposed to be that you're not going to be the one that's desired.

You're not going to believe in it. You're not going to let yourself want it because if you want it, and then you're told again, this isn't for you, then it's just like twisting the knife. So that was what I was thinking of as I was reading this, those weird parallels. I mean, even shows like The Courtship on NBC, the fact that they chose a black woman for that. I was so excited, even though I have my quibbles about shows like The Bachelorette, seeing a black woman in those roles and having somebody fight for the affections of black women? Inject it, bring it on every time, I will watch all of it.

Emily: Yeah. I mean, we've talked about this before, too. People of color, and especially in the United States, black women, deserve to see themselves in these frivolous things. Like everyone needs to have the leeway to make [00:32:00] terrible media that is just fun. Not saying The Courtship is bad. I haven't seen it. I don't know anything about it. That's not my point.

Lauren: Yeah, I know, I firmly believe that you cannot say that a trope has played out until authors or writers of color have gotten to play in that same trope. Like I do not want to hear you say, 'I don't want to hear about fake dating, we've done it so many times.' If I have POC fake dating, I will watch it. I don't care that it's been done 10,000 times before, I will watch it again. And I don't want to hear that it's been played out. It's not played out until we get to do it too.

Emily: Also certain things endure for a reason, like, come on.

Lauren: They're tropes for a reason, because they're fun.

Emily: But yes, absolutely agree that you can't say that everything has been done in a certain space until everyone's had the chance to do that on equal footing.

Lauren: Right, exactly. So, anyway, that is my pop culture connection is Kate Sharma from Bridgerton and Fanny Price from Mansfield Park actually have a lot in common in not believing that insert man of high class here could be in love with them for very different yet somehow similar reasons.

Emily: Kate is so much more compelling as a main character though.

Lauren: 10000%.

Emily: I'll take Kate over Fanny any day.

Lauren: I adore Kate, Kate is the love of my life. If you ever, you know, become a widow, hit me up.

Emily: Well, that was very fun. I didn't see that comparison coming, but it's really good.

Lauren: Also I found on Twitter the other day that I said I would bring up The Courtship as my pop culture connection in give or take six weeks. I think it took me four. I was right. That wasn't intentional.

Emily: Well done.

Lauren: Thank you. Thank you. I can predict my own actions disturbingly well.

Emily: So, we've done our history. We've done our pop culture. Now we got to do our final takeaways. My final takeaway is that I'm going to fight the Bertram family.

Lauren: Damn it!

Emily: Frankly. That's, that's what I've got. I'm so infuriated with these people for dog piling on defenseless Fanny and leveraging all of her own guilt and obligation to try and talk her into doing something.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: [00:34:00] I'm just so mad about it. That is all I can think of. I hope you have something better.

Lauren: I support it. I mean, I was going to say, just fight Sir Thomas.

I think that my final takeaway is that you were the only authority on yourself.

Emily: Oh, that's good.

Lauren: That's it. Don't listen to anybody else. You get to decide what's right for you. And other people might have your best interests at heart, but that doesn't mean that they know better than you what's good for you.

Emily: Very nice. All right. Let's pull our card for next time.

Lauren: Okay. Eight of spades.

Emily: Eight of spades, the scales must balance if everything is to be harmonious. So our theme for next time is balance.

Lauren: Ooh. Okay. I thought it was going to be justice based off of the artwork.

Emily: It is, it's both. It's eight of spades slash justice. That's the tarot thing is justice, but our theme is balance.

Lauren: Cool.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading chapters 36-40 of Mansfield Park, with a focus on balance.

Emily: To read our show notes and a transcript of this episode, check out our website, reclaimingjanepod.com, where you can also find the full back catalog and links to our social media.

Lauren: If you'd like to support us and get access to exclusive content, including special patron only events, you can join our Patreon at Reclaiming Jane Pod.

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: All right. So let me check my calendar. I need to schedule the fight with the Bertram family.

Lauren: Whenever time travel's invented, it's like, okay, so.

Emily: That's the first thing I'm doing!

Lauren: I have a note in my journal. I've got to go find the Bertrams and need to go fight some fictional characters, BRB.

Emily: As soon as the technology exists, that's first on my list.

Lauren: Can you imagine though, if somebody actually made technology, like not even time travel, but just like a video game that allows you to fight whatever fictional character you have beef with.

Emily: That's amazing. Is anyone working on this? There [00:36:00] are a lot of fictional characters I want to fight, but...

Lauren: you've heard of The Sims, I raise you...

I don't know, somebody come up with that. I can't code. Someone else's going to have to take this idea and run with it. Just give me like 2% or something.

Emily: I'm very into this. I need the catharsis right now of punching a 19th century nobleman.

Lauren: I mean, the man's probably a dandy anyway. You could probably, you could take him.

Emily: I know, it's not like it's Tom.

Lauren: No, I mean, yeah. Tom could probably actually fight because he's gotten into how many fights over gambling? Who knows. Sir Thomas, on the other hand, meh, I don't believe it.

Emily: And then--

Lauren: easy, easy money.

Emily: Sir Thomas was also a slave owner. So just even more incentive to punch him.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: He's done nothing to warrant, not being punched.

Lauren: No. Some people deserve to be punched.

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: Sir Thomas is one of them. Sometimes violence is the answer.

Emily: Sometimes violence is the only answer.

Lauren: Don't quote me on that. Do not use that for nefarious ends. I didn't say anything.