Mansfield Park 36-40: “Find Your Balance”

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After a short hiatus (which will be explained, don't worry), we're back! Jump into the balance of Fanny's life with Lauren and Emily while we discuss decision making, household management, and Selling Sunset.

Show Notes

Did you miss us?!

Honestly, the fact that we’re a year and a half into this podcast and only just now missed a scheduled episode is kind of incredible, especially given the fact that the entirety of this podcast has been produced during a pandemic, one host was briefly laid out by the virus at the center of said pandemic, and both hosts were displaced by a literal hurricane. But it seems fitting that the theme for our first episode back is balance, because as important as it is to us to create regular episodes for you, it’s more important for us to have balance in our lives so that this podcast is still a source of joy. Both for us and for our listeners. :) (Besides, we make better episodes when we’re having fun and not losing our minds, so really, everyone wins.)

Sitting down and getting back to recording was such a welcome return to routine, though, and despite some early misgivings about how rusty we felt, we think that this episode ended up being pretty good. It might have only been a month and some change away from the microphones, but wow, did it feel great to record again.

We have two more episodes of Mansfield Park since we’ll split the last six chapters into two episodes instead of cramming it in one. But until then, enjoy this week’s ramblings — and if you see Emily active on IG or Twitter, make sure to congratulate them for becoming officially ABD!

Transcript

Reclaiming Jane Season 3 Episode 8

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 36 through 40 of Mansfield Park through the lens of balance.

Emily: We are back!

Lauren: Yay, we're back!

Emily: Thank you so much for your patience in that sort of unplanned short hiatus.

Lauren: We had hoped that we were going to be able to stay on schedule, but we also want to make sure that we are taking into account our own mental health as we produce this podcast. So we took a short break because Emily has some very exciting personal slash professional news to share.

If you don't follow us on social media, Emily, what do you have going on in your life?

Emily: So I have spent the past semester working on my dissertation prospectus, which I defended two weeks ago.

Lauren: Woohoo!

Emily: Which means that I have completed the second to last milestone in my degree. And all I have left to do now is write a dissertation, which is famously the easiest part of a PhD. So I'm not concerned at all.

Lauren: Emily is ABD!

Emily: Emily's ABD. Emily's a PhD candidate. We are back now. And we are moving on with our last three episodes of reading analysis for Mansfield Park.

Lauren: We are, you know, we had to just delay the end a little bit because we just weren't quite ready to let Fanny go.

Emily: That's totally what it was.

Lauren: It does feel really good to be recording again though. I'm excited to be back.

Emily: Me too. But also, like, if this episode has weird energy or weird timing, it's because we had a month off and my brain was a little bit occupied elsewhere, so we'll see how it goes.

Lauren: I think it's going to be great.

Emily: I, I appreciate your confidence.

Lauren: I am nothing if not optimistic.

Emily: All right. Shall we move on and get started with recap?

Lauren: Yes. Are you still optimistic knowing that you recap first?

Emily: No, I wasn't optimistic before. I [00:02:00] just said that!

Lauren: I, you know, I said that and I was like, oh, that was the wrong turn of phrase. I am optimistic on your behalf. I will have enough hope for you.

Emily: Thank you. Hopefully this goes as well as my prospectus defense.

Lauren: There you go. See, cause that was a breeze and that was much harder than summing up five chapters in 30 seconds.

Emily: See, you say that now.

Lauren: Mind over matter.

Emily: Sure.

Lauren: Okay. 3, 2, 1 go.

Emily: All right. Everyone is still on team "Fanny needs to marry Henry," but the Crawfords are leaving. They're going off to fulfill obligations with other friends and to go to town, et cetera. Fortunately to cheer Fanny up, William comes to visit again, but then it's decided -- sort of without anyone's input -- that Fanny should go back to Portsmouth and spend a little time with her family. Sir Thomas thinks that this will make her appreciate Mansfield more. We'll see how it goes. She's also supposed to change her mind about Henry, but then everything at home is worse than she expected.

Lauren: Done. For being a month and six weeks at a practice. That was a pretty decent recap.

Emily: Okay, alright. I'll take it. Are you ready, Lauren?

Lauren: I think so.

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

Lauren: Okay. Fanny finally is seeming to get away from the very ends of the Marry Henry Crawford campaign. Mary comes by one last time to apply to her yet again, and then she and Henry are off, but Fanny is still worried that Mary and Edmund are about to be a done deal. Sir Thomas sends Fanny off to be with her family because he's like, let you go be with some poor people and then you'll realize what you're going to miss out by not marrying Henry.

So go be miserable for a bit and then come back. Fanny thinks this is going to be great, except for her family doesn't really like her that much and everything is noisy and she hates it.

Emily: All right.

Lauren: Yay.

Emily: Right. Yeah.

Lauren: I feel like that was pretty good for both of us.

Emily: It was decent.

Lauren: Yeah. Have we had better? Yes. Have we had worse? Absolutely.

Emily: I mean, we have absolutely trashed some of these recaps.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: So, this was sufficiently middle of the road.

Lauren: I'll take it, honestly.

Emily: But I mean, it's also weird going back, jumping back into Jane Austen in the middle of a book after not having read any of it for a month was just a very weird experience, because normally when we have breaks like this it's [00:04:00] in between books, but here I had to like go back and reread the last chapter of the previous section to remember where I was and everything. I've also read four other books in this break, in addition to doing, you know, school things. So it was an intellectual exercise.

We'll call it that.

Lauren: So if you were also struggling, fear not, so are your hosts.

Emily: Yes. We're always struggling.

Lauren: That's so true.

Emily: We're so relatable.

Lauren: This is a struggle bus, every episode.

Emily: Every single episode, but I think that this is going to be a great section and accompanying topic to get us back into it because balance as our theme is so intriguing for the events that happen.

Lauren: Okay. So where did you first see balance?

Emily: I feel like it's so well encapsulated by the whole thing that it's hard to pinpoint, like one thing where I first saw balance, but at the very beginning of chapter 36. It seems like the, the balance of the pressure to marry Henry is firmly weighted against Fanny. Everyone thinks that she should just suck it up and make this decision for her own good, basically.

Lauren: I was thinking about that too. That was the first note that I wrote down, was "how does one balance duty to others with being true to yourself?"

And I think that is what Fanny has been having to contend with for the last like, 10 chapters. Cause this has been going on for quite some time where she feels like she has a sense of obligation to the Bertram family because they've taken her in and placed her in these social circles where an engagement to Henry Crawford is even possible, but at the same time, what does she really have an obligation to do out of gratitude to them? And how much does she have an obligation to herself to do the thing that's going to make her happy? And finding that balance, I think is something that can [00:06:00] be relatable to anybody.

Emily: Yeah. I think really this is Fanny's ultimate struggle, is balancing duty versus self. And in the previous sections, especially since Henry asked for her hand, she's been actually figuring out what it is that she wants, or rather what it is she doesn't want, but she's recognizing her own desires and saying, "oh, I can act on these," but then having to reconcile her sense of gratitude to the Bertrams with her sense of not being miserable.

Lauren: Which is such a constant state for her.

Emily: But yeah, I think the section really well illustrates the struggle that Fanny has been going through.

Lauren: And even with some of the characters who are trying to influence that decision, you can see Mary Crawford trying to balance persuading Fanny with not being overly obvious that that's what she's trying to do. I mean, subtlety is not her strong suit in this endeavor.

Emily: She does such a bad job of being subtle.

Lauren: She does a terrible job. And she's only trying to be subtle sometimes, but still when she's attempting to it fails completely.

Emily: Absolutely. She's like musing on these other friends of hers that she knows who are married and talking about how like, even the one person who would like try to do everything right and stopped and thought about her engagement before she accepted the proposal, like, still ended up miserable. Like, what are you trying to accomplish here?

Lauren: It doesn't make any sense.

Emily: It's, it's still just eternal Henry for Crawford hype club.

Lauren: Yeah. She's saying to Fanny, if only they knew in our social circle, that Henry made an offer to you, you should see how many hearts have been broken because they were in love with Henry. And he said, no. And you would be the chosen one. It's like, clearly she does not know Fanny at all, because that would be mortifying to her. That wouldn't make it better. She would hate that.

Emily: The early parts of the section are also chock-full of people simply not understanding Fanny at all.

Lauren: No, but she does actually stand up for herself at [00:08:00] one point, I was so proud of her. Because she says to Mary, that she had noticed Henry flirting with both of her cousins before. What Fanny says, language that she uses, is, "I was quiet, but I was not blind." I was like, absolutely. You tell her. Like, you know what, I might be in the corner and I might be minding my own business most of the time. But that doesn't mean I don't see what's going on. I'm quiet, but I'm not stupid.

Emily: Fanny is incredibly observant. She just doesn't speak on the things that she sees.

Lauren: Right. She doesn't feel the need to make her thoughts known about every little thing, which is not necessarily relatable to most of the other people in her orbit who are determined to make sure that everyone knows their very self-important thoughts on whatever thing might arise.

Fanny doesn't do that. And so people think that she doesn't notice or pick up on things, or they read her innocence as just a lack of knowledge about the world, which it is sometimes. But in these types of interpersonal relationships, or as far as emotions go, she's very good at reading those and people don't give her credit for that.

Emily: Yeah. Just because she has the tendency to internalize all of these things, which, personally, is extremely relatable. People have this sense now for one, Sir Thomas assuming that she'll just be completely malleable to whatever the people around her want. She does have a sense of self. It may have been consumed to some extent by her sense of obligation to the people who've done so much for her, but Fanny knows her own mind.

Lauren: Much to the chagrin of everyone around her, who'd rather that she didn't.

Emily: No kidding, which is what leads to Sir Thomas deciding, without input from Fanny, without input from anybody else in the house, without actually contacting the Prices, that Fanny is going to go stay with them for a little bit. When William goes back to Portsmouth before he leaves on his next cruise, Fanny's going to go with him and she's going to remember what it is to be poor for a little bit.

And then she'll appreciate Mansfield so much more.

Lauren: Yeah, for like two months. And [00:10:00] he basically is thinking, although he doesn't share this thought process with anybody else, it's under the guise of, 'oh, Fanny, you haven't seen your family in years, wouldn't it be nice to be reunited? And then you can spend more time with William and see him in his uniform before he leaves' and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Meanwhile, his secret scheme is once she goes back and she realizes how much it sucks to be poor, she'll come back and accept Henry's hand immediately.

Emily: Yeah. One of the lines that I highlighted was, "it was a medicinal project upon his nieces understanding, which he must consider as at present, diseased," like--

Lauren: What a word.

Emily: There's something wrong with this girl, but if we knock her down a peg she'll realize what the right decision is.

Lauren: As though they haven't been knocking her down pegs since she got there.

Emily: Oh my god. Fanny has never risen a peg ever.

Lauren: Ever. They don't allow it.

Emily: Yeah. It's just. The continual frustration with the treatment of this person.

Lauren: And I, I marked too in chapter 37. That the way Fanny speaking is so typical of like, survivors of abuse, because she's talking about being able to go back and see her family again and specifically her mother. And she says, " her mother had certainly shown no remarkable fondness for her formerly, but this you could easily suppose to have been her own fault or her own fancy. She probably alienated love by the helplessness and fretfulness of a fearful temper, or been unreasonable in wanting a larger share than anyone among so many could deserve. Now, when she knew better how to be useful and how to forebear, and when her mother could be no longer occupied by the incessant demands of a house full of little children, there would be leisure and inclination for every comfort and they should soon be what mother and daughter ought to be to each other."

Girl no!

Emily: It's so depressing. Just the further we get into this book, the more gutted. I am about the entirety of Fanny's character.

Lauren: And it makes sense that she would blame herself for that. But no, [00:12:00] none of this was your fault. And also you were a child. There's nothing that you could have done that would have like, prohibited you from receiving a mother's love.

That's not, that is not on you as a child or as an adult to be like, 'oh, well, I guess I like, if I hadn't slammed the door that one time maybe things would be better, maybe my relationship would be better.' No, that was on the adult and your parent to remedy that. That's not your fault.

Emily: Yeah. It's just heartbreaking.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: And even more so when she actually gets back to Portsmouth and she has been building up in her mind the loving reception that she'll have once again, being, you know, in the bosom of her immediate family. And then she gets there and there's a maid on the step to greet them. William's immediately hustled away.

Her mother barely speaks to her. The house is full of noise and yelling and people running around. No one knows what's going on. Everyone's frustrated. Her father's an alcoholic. And it's just, like, the, the worst possible letdown.

Lauren: You know, her mom is doting on first William and then on the other boys in the house, because the narration makes a point to say, she doesn't really like any of her daughters that much. She likes Betsy, who's the youngest daughter, but not really any of the rest of them, but she loves her boys and pays close attention to them. So even if Fanny had stayed there, there's no inclination that she would've played favorites with Fanny at all, either. And then her own dad has to be basically reminded that Fanny exists.

William is trying to say like, don't you want to talk to your daughter who has returned from ages away from home? And he's like, meh.

Emily: Yeah!

Lauren: He has no, no consideration for her whatsoever. And at one point they're left alone in the sitting room and he just goes to his newspaper. It takes the only candle in the room and Fanny's like, well, I have a headache anyway. So I guess this is fine. No!

Emily: It's not fine! [00:14:00]

Lauren: That poor girl.

Emily: I know. Yeah. She, she gets to one point where she's comparing to herself the experiences with the Prices and with the Bertrams and says, "in a review of the two houses as they appeared to her before the end of the week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson's celebrated judgment as to matrimony and celibacy and say that though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures."

So of course I had to look it up. It's a reference to an allegorical story called The History of Rasselas by Samuel Johnson, which is sort of a, like, philosophical meditation on bliss and ignorance.

And the actual quote that it's referencing says that "although matrimony might have some pains, celibacy could have no pleasures." So. There's, there's a lot to unpack there.

Lauren: Yeah. I wonder given the drama of the last several sections of the pains that result in Fanny's mind if she had married Henry, is celibacy really any better? Cause she's pretty miserable right now.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: Many different layers to that turn of phrase.

Emily: Definitely. And I mean, it also says so much about what Fanny has had access to while at Mansfield Park, because she also talks about how there're like no books in her family's house. She subscribes to a circulating library, but here she is just sort of off the cuff making these kinds of literary references and it speaks to the kind of opportunities that she has had.

And yet it hasn't made her happier.

Lauren: No, and she's also trying to balance-- again, onto the theme -- the reality of having had a more fortunate upbringing than her siblings with the fact that she finally feels like she's amongst equals and she doesn't want to be lording that over anybody.

So at one point she wants to get a knife for one of her [00:16:00] sisters, because she has one sister who died while she was at Mansfield Park, who was a younger sister. And her dying wish was for a different sister to have like this knife of hers. And one of the other younger sisters is forever taking it from her and, you know, doing what siblings do and taking this thing that's very precious to the middle sister.

And so Fanny sees this and sees that her mother is doing nothing about it. And because Sir Thomas had given her 10 pounds, which is a ridiculous amount of money.

Emily: That's insane.

Lauren: So much money to just give her as like, pocket money for while she's gone for two months. But has enough money to go and buy a second one so that they both can have one and they can kind of resolve this dispute, but she goes back and forth with herself for ages about whether or not it's something that she should do, because then does it look like she's lording over the fact that she has money?

She doesn't want to put herself above the people who are meant to be her closest family, but she wants to do this out of the kindness of her heart. And she's never really been able to do charity for people other than the poor. And she doesn't really know what her station is still. Even when she's in the family, into which she was born.

She still doesn't really know where she fits.

Emily: Yeah, I think narratively, what would be the greatest resolution for Fanny would be her finding a place where she doesn't have to struggle internally to balance all of these aspects. I don't know if she'll ever find it, but I hope she does.

Lauren: You know what's funny is that Susan, the sister with whom she shares a bedroom and who the knife was gifted to, she reminds me a little bit of Kitty from Pride and Prejudice, specifically in the epilogue of Pride and Prejudice, where they're talking about how once removed from Lydia's bad influence and brought with Elizabeth and Darcy, Kitty actually wasn't so bad. Susan seems to be the same.

Not that her family is a bad influence, but she gets along with Fanny better. And it seems as though she's finding some own like, inner peace by sitting with Fanny upstairs and just being quiet for awhile or reading a [00:18:00] book or working on needle point, but being removed from the general chaos of the rest of the house seems to be doing her a world of good.

Emily: Yeah. You get the sense that this kind of quiet space, isn't something that's ever been an option for Susan before, which is why she's developed what Fanny sees as sort of an abrasive personality to cope with, like you said, the rest of the general chaos in the house, because when you've got a bunch of younger brothers who are running around screaming, your mother is completely unable to manage the household, your father is good for nothing. You have to know how to raise your voice a little bit.

Lauren: And it says at one point, too, that everyone is always shouting over one another and no one is heard despite yelling at the top of their lungs.

Emily: My introvert self was exhausted just reading about it.

Lauren: No wonder Fanny is like I'm having a terrible time.

Emily: It feels like, it feels like, Elinor Dashwood at the Middletons sitting there and having to hear everyone coo over these horrible children and thinking to herself, I never appreciate quiet children so much as when I'm here.

Lauren: It's like the scene in, I don't know, like a mid-budget romcom or comedy movie where the character who hates kids goes to visit their friend who has kids. And inevitably there's a scene where there's just children yelling and screaming for no reason, just around the protagonist in circles. And they're just sitting there staring at the camera like Jesus, Lord, someone get me out.

Emily: The one thing that does shift in Fanny's mind about her previous situation while she is in Portsmouth, is that she comes to appreciate Mary Crawford's letters a lot more because they're, they're one semblance of civility in the absolute middle-class chaos that she's found herself in.

Lauren: And since Henry has moved, she doesn't have any like side messages from Henry in Mary's letters anymore. So that fear has been removed. That angst isn't there anymore. She doesn't have to worry about when she opens the letter from Mary, there's going to be three or four lines that Henry has dictated to her as, as Mary is writing. [00:20:00]

Emily: She does dread the possibility of receiving a letter from Edmund because probably the only time that he would write to her is if he had proposed to Mary and Mary had accepted.

Lauren: And he hinted at that before Fanny left, too. And she remarks, to herself of course, about how ironic it is that she's dreading correspondence from the person who she loves most in the world. Other than William.

Emily: Although she did, as she was on the cusp of leaving Mansfield, think to herself that it might be good for her to get away from him for a little while to sort of cool her feelings a little bit.

Lauren: Yeah. That some self-imposed distance might be nice.

Emily: It doesn't really help, but.

Lauren: No, but at least they're not in the same room all the time and she doesn't have to listen to him speaking admirably of Mary every day without fail. Just twisting the knife a little bit deeper.

Oh, one plot point that's not really relevant, but that I did just want to bring back into the conversation is how Mrs. Norris almost threatens to come with them back to Portsmouth to go see her beloved sister.

Emily: She is so up in arms about the fact that Sir Thomas has given the money to travel post that she's like, no, he better get his money's worth. I should go too, until she realized that she, she would have to pay her own way back. Poor William and Fanny spend the whole day absolutely stressed about the idea that she might be in the carriage with them the entire time, inescapable, when they're like, they're so looking forward to traveling together and getting to catch up and just see the country and like, I'm so happy for them that they actually got to do that.

It was so interesting to read the comparisons of Mrs. Price to her sisters though. And how she would have been as good a fine lady as Lady Bertram is, but Mrs. Norris would have been the one who could have managed 10 children and a household. Apparently, Mrs. Price's disposition is [00:22:00] just not cut out for what she has found herself in the position to be doing.

Lauren: No, it says she's always working, but always behind and always complaining about being behind and is really more cut out for the life of luxury that her eldest sister has, but chose a marriage that was not going to grant that to her. So here she is.

Emily: And I think that's actually a decent transition into what I wanted to talk about.

Lauren: Lovely. Okay. Which is?

Emily: Because. Mrs. Price has married into what her sisters considered to be a poor family, but they're actually, basically middle-class.

Lauren: Okay. I'm glad you brought this up because the moment that they mentioned that there were servants there, I was like, okay, well then you're not poor.

Emily: Yeah. The servants are exactly what I want to talk about. Because domestic service was kind of a different thing in the Regency than we typically think about. It wasn't the sort of like, regimented lifelong job that we see in like, Victorian period pieces. This is not Downton Abbey. That's not what's going on, but we've talked before, I want to say in Sense and Sensibility, about like, the rise of the middle class and how their new trades and the Industrial Revolution is sort of giving rise to this new economic demographic.

Part of showing that you're part of that class is employing other people to help do the physical labor of running a household. Because as a couple of the articles that I read about this pointed out, there was a lot more work involved in running a house because you have fires to light, you have water to haul, you know, you don't have electricity, you don't have water pipes and everything. You've got to do so much more work. So being able to afford a servant or two was kind of a mark of being that middle-class, there is someone below [00:24:00] me who will work for me.

So even as a relatively lower class household, you know, compared to the Bertrams, the Prices, as we see, they have two housemaids who are doing physical labor, even if Mrs. Price is an absolutely terrible manager of these housemaids, and they're always like slacking off or doing something else, or they're not where they're supposed to be.

Lauren: Tea takes forever to arrive.

Emily: Oh my God. It's absurd. Which is, it's weird to think about that being like a middle-class thing, because I'm middle-class and the closest I've ever had to having a maid is like, housekeeping at a hotel. So just the idea of a person being there all day, every day, doing your chores is completely foreign to me. But labor was really cheap and there were a lot of people looking for work, partly because of the Industrial Revolution.

So farm work didn't require as many laborers as before. So there were people coming to cities like Portsmouth and looking for employment and domestic service was a relatively easy place to get it. The average term of work was closer to two or three years, not the six month turnover the Price household has, which I think probably speaks more to the Prices than the quality of servants that they're getting.

I don't blame these girls for being in and out.

Lauren: Like, you guys are a mess and I can't help you.

Emily: Yeah, seriously. But again, it's not the same as what we see for Victorians, where there was like training programs to be a lady's maid or whatever. You're just kind of applying skills that you already have.

Some people are more specialized. So someone like Lady Bertram's lady's maid might have actually... I don't know if studied is the term, but, but would have acquired specific skills to wait upon a [00:26:00] lady. That's the kind of thing where you might see someone treating it more as a career than just a stop gap.

Lauren: That makes sense.

Emily: Yeah. And it could be a pretty decent job depending on the family. And it was certainly less dangerous than a lot of other employment at the time. Like these sort of nascent factory situations where all of the machinery is, you know, barely invented and it's horrible and dangerous. And like, yeah, you're less likely to be physically mangled while working in a normal household. Hopefully.

Lauren: And one, you know, one would hope.

Emily: One would hope.

Lauren: In factories with, you know, no hint of regulation whatsoever and no such thing as labor laws. I can only imagine what a nightmare that must've been.

Emily: Yeah. So working as a servant in a middle class household was, you know, not glamorous, but also for a young woman, it was pretty decent work.

Lauren: The more you know.

Emily: Yeah. So I didn't have a lot today, but like, like we've mentioned my brain's been elsewhere, so, and I, I was interested in this concept of domestic servants and a middle-class house.

Lauren: It was helpful context, too.

Emily: Good.

Lauren: Because I definitely was looking at that thinking, your definition of poor and my definition of poor are two very different things, Mrs. Norris.

Emily: Very different things, oh yes.

Lauren: Which, you know, shocker.

Emily: I mean, even Mrs. Norris wouldn't have had more than a few servants, but she would probably have like, and I think we've seen this in comparison, like with the Grants as well, they probably have access to the same resources that Mrs. Norris would. So they have like, a cook, they might have a butler or something and a few housemaids, but still that's a significantly better staffed house than the Prices have. There, you know, there's like a dozen people in this family. They have two overworked housemaids who are going to be gone in six months.

Lauren: [00:28:00] Not exactly a model of a well-run household.

Emily: Definitely not. You get the sense that Mrs. Norris might be a nightmare to work for, but at least she would know what she wants.

Lauren: Which is probably why it's remarked upon that she would have been the better manager of this family, because even though, like you said, she would be a total nightmare, there would be no ambiguity with her. And she would know exactly what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and how she wants it done. And would have no qualms whatsoever about communicating that to you.

Emily: She would definitely be a micromanager.

Lauren: Oh, one hundred percent. She needs something to keep her busy. And if she's having other people do the work for her, then God knows she's going to put all of the effort necessary into micromanaging those people.

Emily: And then complain about how much oversight she has to give them, even though they would be perfectly competent on their own.

Lauren: I'm honestly shocked that we haven't had a, "they have no compassion for my poor nerves!"

Emily: After Mrs. Bennet. Mrs. Norris would be my top contender for that line.

Lauren: Yep. 100%. I don't feel like I have a very good segue from that into pop culture connection.

Emily: We rarely do.

Lauren: We rarely do because they're always so disparate, on like opposite ends of the spectrum.

Emily: I mean, in case y'all didn't know, we don't coordinate our topics ahead of time. So we have the overarching theme, but Lauren usually doesn't know what my history topic is. I don't usually know what the pop culture topic is. So it makes the transition between the two a little bit hard.

Lauren: We find out when we turn on the microphones.

Emily: Unless there's something specific that requires a warning ahead of time, it's a surprise. And I love it.

Lauren: It makes recording so much more fun.

Emily: It does.

Lauren: So I was kind of struggling to think of a pop culture connection, because balance is so broad and I didn't feel like there were analogies or comparisons that immediately came to mind as far as the events of this section went. But I eventually was thinking about the theme of balance in relation to [00:30:00] relationships, but stumbled upon Selling Sunset.

And I cannot remember if I've talked about it on this podcast or not. But for those of you who are not connoisseurs of trash reality TV, Selling Sunset is a Netflix show that I have described in the past as Real Housewives meets HGTV, or perhaps Real Housewives meets Awe TV, which is basically reality TV shows about luxury. It's like, it's a whole separate channel for talking about mansions and yachts and whatever.

And it follows a real estate group in the LA area of California and the multimillion dollar homes that they sell. But also all the interpersonal drama between the all female team of agents.

And I was thinking of Selling Sunset specifically, because on this latest season, the like sweetheart of the show, Chrishell, has been dating one of the owners of the group. But the relationship is significant and is related to this because throughout the time period of season five, while they're still a couple, the other cast of characters are talking about how they're this it couple and how they're so in love and they'll work so well together.

And they're meant to be like something to aspire to, or at least that's what they're held up as. Except for the ultimate reason for their breakup is that Crishell really wants children and Jason doesn't. And so even though they have all this love for one another and they're meant to be like this model couple of mutual love and respect and admiration.

They still end because Chrishell isn't willing to compromise on something that's very important to her. And so I was thinking about how sometimes there is no balance to be found in relationships, depending on what it is that you want, because you have to know, when do I compromise and when do I balance what I want versus what's good for both of us?

And when is it going to be a bad decision for both of us, for me to compromise on what I want, because then neither of us is going to be happy. And she found that there wasn't a balance to be found and said, okay, well then [00:32:00] I'm removing myself from the situation. I'm going to do what makes me happy because I know what I want and what I want is children. And you don't want that, and that's fine, but that means that we need to go in our separate directions.

So, as much as reality TV usually does not contain storylines to which anyone should aspire, I did appreciate that example of when do you find balance and when do you place more weight on yourself and what you want, knowing that it's best for you?

Emily: This was so much more relatable as a topic than servants.

Lauren: Okay. But that was necessary though.

Emily: No, that's. I mean for one, it's kind of funny that it comes out of like Selling Sunset.

Lauren: You know...

Emily: but it's just another example of where you can find relate-ability and good life lessons anywhere if you're looking for them.

Lauren: The end. That is my pop culture connection..

Emily: Well, I loved it because that's something that I never would have known about otherwise.

Lauren: You know, I love my good trash TV. It's so bad.

Emily: This is part of the balance of our relationship.

Lauren: I have also been watching good things and that-- they will probably also make their way into the conversation at a future date.

Emily: All right. Well, are we ready to move on to final takeaways?

Lauren: I think we have reached that point.

Emily: Alright, you are up first.

Lauren: I think my final takeaway is my final note from my pop culture connection, and I just wrote down, know what your non-negotiables are.

Emily: That's good.

Lauren: Know what's important to you and where you can find balance, but where you also are not willing to compromise.

Emily: Okay. So my takeaway has definitely changed in the course of our conversation, but now I'm going to say it's that relying on external factors to balance your measures of happiness is not a healthy thing. [00:34:00] You have to have that, that internal sense of yourself, like we were talking about for Fanny.

Lauren: I like it. We give good advice.

Emily: We do give good advice. Or at least it sounds like nice advice.

Lauren: I mean, I feel like I just end up giving the advice that I need to take. And then I hope it's applying to other people.

Emily: Do as I say, not as I do?

Lauren: Exactly. That's what I tell my students every other week.

Emily: All right. Whose turn is it to draw a tarot card? I have no idea.

Lauren: I was also trying to figure that out. You want to rock paper scissors it?

Emily: Sure.

All right. So the card Lauren pulled was Jack of hearts, which represents charm. The card is Lydia Bennet who is young, charming, and full of romantic notions about handsome officers.

Lauren: Oh, okay. Oh, charm should be an interesting one. Huh. Okay. Alright.

Emily: You know, it occurred to me that every time we pull one of these, we just make some thoughtful comment about how, oh, that should be so interesting. And that's going to be a really fun one. So just to break the monotony, I'm going to say that sounds terrible. I don't want to do charm. I'm not looking forward to it at all. Nobody is.

Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time, we'll be reading chapters 41 through 44 of Mansfield Park, with a focus on charm.

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 @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: Later nerds.

Emily: Just thought of the scenes from Parks and Rec where the high powered, what is she? A consultant, a campaign manager, something, where she's at [00:36:00] Ben and Leslie's house. And was like, oh God, what was that? When the kids run by.

Lauren: A child! Kathryn Hahn's character.

Emily: A child?!

Lauren: No!

Yes. We still quote vine in this house.

Emily: Yeah, of course we do. We're millennials. What do you want from us?