Mansfield Park 41-44: “Charmed, I’m Sure”

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Let's take a detour through historic Portsmouth with a surprise visitor to the Price household! And what do Mario, Anthony J. Crowley, and Henry Crawford have in common?

Transcript

Reclaiming Jane Season 3 Episode 9 | Mansfield Park 41-44: “Charmed, I’m Sure”

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 41 through 44 of Mansfield Park through the lens of charm.

Emily: Charm, what a lovely topic.

Lauren: Makes me think of like, charm school.

Emily: Yeah, same.

Lauren: I think many of the characters in this book could stand to go to charm school.

Emily: You are not wrong, especially with some of the looks that we get at certain people in this section.

Lauren: I have many thoughts.

Emily: You have many thoughts? Would you like to begin sharing them with us with your recap?

Lauren: I would love to.

Emily: Lovely. Are you ready?

Lauren: I think so.

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

Lauren: Okay. Fanny is still with her family, who comes to visit but Henry Crawford?? He's surprisingly likable and even Fanny has to admit that he kind of seems improved. She's still waiting on her letter from Edmund. She finally receives it.

It is a long letter of him just word vomiting onto the page and talking about how much he loves Mary Crawford, much to Fanny's chagrin. Tom gets really sick. He hit his head being drunk and has come back home to Mansfield Park. And the whole family is atwitter and Fanny really, actually wants to get back to Mansfield because everything sucks.

Emily: Nice. One second to spare.

Lauren: Boom. I was not as confident about this recap as I had been in other episodes. So that was reaffirming.

Emily: Okay.

Lauren: All right, Emily, are you ready?

Emily: Ready enough.

Lauren: Okay. On your marks, get set. Go.

Emily: Fanny's still in Portsmouth and Henry Crawford shows up out of nowhere. He spends a couple of days hanging out with her family and being surprisingly likable? He offers to bring her back to Mansfield anytime she wants, after he leaves his sister also writes and repeats that offer. Edmund writes his stupid long letter to her using Fanny as a therapist like [00:02:00] everyone does. He has not proposed. She's getting annoyed about that. Tom is very suddenly and scarily ill for a several weeks.

And Fanny generally has no idea when she can go home again.

Lauren: Beautiful. Exactly 30 seconds.

Emily: Yes! I feel like the Vlogbrothers trying to meet exactly four minutes.

Lauren: Oh my gosh. Right. I forgot about that.

Emily: I have actually gone back to keeping up with their videos lately, not like, religiously, but it's, it's a pleasant little four minute break from just absolute chaos. I mean, sometimes their videos are also chaos, but enjoyable.

Lauren: Benevolent chaos.

Emily: Yes. Benevolent chaos. That's the kind of energy that I try to bring into the world, at least in my internet presence.

Lauren: Love that. I feel like that's also a good description for the section, benevolent chaos.

Emily: Definitely. I can agree with that, because the very first thing that happens is Henry Crawford shows up.

It's very like, "Surprise, bitch, thought that you thought you'd seen the last of me." Like he's just out of nowhere. No warning whatsoever. Mary didn't mention it in any of her increasingly scattered letters to Fanny. He didn't write, he's just at the door all of a sudden. And Fanny is in distress about it.

Lauren: Because of course she is, she's in distress over the smallest things. Though, Henry does seem to have kind of gotten the hang of how to make Fanny more comfortable and recognize her emotions. So it says that he doesn't make eye contact or pay special attention to her for the first, you know, however many hours of his visit, he speaks to the rest of her family and pays other people attention and just sits in the same room with her until she can calm herself down enough to look at him in the eye.

And then he starts talking to her again and paying her attention and he's learning.

Emily: So, so Henry shows up, charms everybody immediately because as we [00:04:00] have seen, he is a charming gentleman, but much to Fanny's surprise, she's also feeling a little bit charmed.

Lauren: So we actually just got a comment on Twitter today about how we've been dragging Henry Crawford. And that person is correct. We have been dragging Henry Crawford. I would like to clarify that we are not Team Edmund. We are team no one. We agree with this commenter that everyone in this book sucks. However, we have been giving Henry deserved lashings, and we have not been giving Edmund his lashings, which we'll get to later, but I feel like we can ease off on Henry a little bit for just, for just this one section. We can give him a break.

Emily: Yeah. I w-- I mean, I feel like, inevitably, the comparison comes up with Darcy also changing throughout Pride and Prejudice. I think the difference here is their starting points, because Henry is very much a CAD. Like he was clearly toying with the feelings of the Bertram sisters and now... like, he's coming off as very charming, he's clearly putting some effort into it, but to what end. Like, has he genuinely changed under the influence of his affections for Fanny or is he still just kind of trying to get a nice little wife?

Lauren: Only time will tell.

Emily: Only time will tell. I mean, he also, I feel like this is a good parallel to a scene that we had much, much earlier with Edmund where Henry is asking Fanny's advice about something. So this happens while the family is all out for their sort of post Sunday service stroll, and Fanny and Henry have ended up sort of accidentally paired. And he starts out expressing his concern for her wellbeing and then immediately veers right into his own business concerns.

And at the end asks her opinion about it and her advice, but he's still spent the entire interaction talking about what he's going to do about this agent that he's dealing with. And it's just, yeah, [00:06:00] this is why we're team no one, not team Edmund, not team Henry. Just team, no one.

Lauren: Team no one. I will say that he is nice to people other than Fanny, too.

So he is attentive to Susan and to her needs and is able to get along with her really well and is really kind to her father. And it doesn't seem like, again, you know, we don't know what the motivations are, but it seems genuine. Like, it doesn't seem like a calculated kindness, like in the way that Mary's is most of the time. This seems like he just genuinely feels like being nice to people. Though he also has not seen them at their worst at meal times, so who knows how long that would have continued, but.

Emily: Yeah, that's, that's a good point. And there's also the consideration that like, we haven't gotten the sense, I don't think, that Henry is a gold digger or anything. I mean, why would he--

Lauren: impossible.

Emily: Why would he be pursuing Fanny if he were? But he seems like the kind of person who would be more intentionally polite towards people of an upper class who could benefit him in some way. But he's, he's seems to be genuinely friendly towards the Price family, despite them being definitely of lower social standing than he is.

Lauren: Yeah. And Fanny worries about that specifically with her father as well, because when they meet, it's like out on the road, it's not at home and she's worried about how this interaction is going to go because she knows how her father is. But she's surprised to see that even her father's manners kind of like, rise to meet Henry's a little bit, and some of it is helped by the environment. So his loud voice is better suited to outside, he apparently always uses his outside voice, he has refrained from swearing throughout his interactions with Henry, so his language has been cleaned up.

It's interesting to see how those interpersonal interactions play out between two people of different social standings, who don't really have any cause to be overly charming or nice to one another other than just your standard politeness.

Emily: It's a, it's an interesting dynamic to think about, because Henry clearly is still kind of angling towards getting Fanny to, to accept him, which [00:08:00] is definitely confirmed by Mary's later letter when she's still going on about like, how their families are going to be connected and everything. And Fanny is sitting there thinking it's only going to be connected if you marry Edmund, which is still not happening.

Lauren: Yeah. And that's hinted at in Mary's letters where even she is like, kind of hinting at the fact that "I know you're waiting for a specific kind of news, but I don't have any, there's nothing to report over here. Go ahead and marry my brother so I have something to talk about. Thanks."

Emily: Yeah, the contrast between Mary's letter and Edmund's letter talking about the same circles of interaction that they had in London, these people would just be such a disaster. How are we still doing this?

Lauren: I --okay. So I feel like this is my green light for my Edmund lashings, because he really got on my nerves.

Emily: SAME.

Lauren: He, despite in his letter saying that, you know, Mary is the only woman who he could ever conceive of marrying, which... vomit. Despite saying how in love he is with her, spends the majority of his letter critiquing her. And he before has been only able to talk about the charms and the virtues of Mary Crawford.

Now, in this letter, he is just talking about how, you know, she has been influenced poorly by the people around her, that he doesn't think that she would respect him for what he does and isn't that awful and blah, blah, blah. And you know, when you're listening to somebody who almost gets the point and just isn't quite there?

Emily: Yes. That's exactly what it is.

Lauren: That was the whole letter!

Emily: He really needs a therapist instead of just writing to Fanny. I mean, this letter is absolutely ridiculous.

Lauren: It's self-indulgent! That should have been a journal entry.

Emily: Seriously.

Lauren: That was not a letter to a friend. And even Fanny gets mad. Fanny doesn't get mad and Fanny is angry. That's how you know it's bad.

Emily: She does quickly temper it, but her initial reaction, as soon as the letter ends, is, "I [00:10:00] never will, no I certainly never will wish for a letter again. What do they bring but disappointment and sorrow?" Just she's like, this is bullshit. Absolutely not. Stop writing to me if it's only going to be everyone trying to use me as a therapist.

Lauren: Right. And then she, I was so disappointed when she walked it back and she was like, 'well, actually this is fine. This is something to be treasured.' No, it's not. Your initial reaction was correct. This is... he's on some bullshit. You should be mad.

Emily: Yeah. "She was almost vexed into displeasure and anger against Edmund," as you should be.

Lauren: So close.

Emily: He is so mistreating your relationship. I really hope that this is Fanny getting over Edmund being like, you know what? He is absolutely not worth it, which, you know, she could have realized like a year ago. Or more.

Lauren: Like, I don't think that. And I think I've said this in a previous episode, I don't think that her marriage to Henry would be a happy one, but also at this point, what are you holding out for?

Because if you think it's such a forgone conclusion that Edmund is going to marry someone else. Then why are you punishing yourself? What are you going to do for the rest of your life? Just serve Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris for forever?

Emily: That seems like what she's going for.

Lauren: Like, you have an easy out, just take the easy out because both of these options are terrible.

Like it's not as though, like you're choosing between like, oh, I have my true love who I can be happy with, or I can tamper my own emotions and go with somebody who I don't really love, but who's offering a h ome and affection. It's, I have somebody who's offering me a home and affection, or I can stay in the home environment that sucked my entire life.

Why is this the option you're choosing? Why??

Emily: And especially after a line like, 'Mary's the only woman I could ever conceive of marrying.'

Lauren: Girl, give it up.

Emily: Seriously. Like again, we're team no one, but if it's between Edmund and Henry, like just go with Henry, I guess? Like, you'll be at least well off. You'll have a house of your own to manage in whichever way you prefer. [00:12:00] You don't have to be connected to the Bertrams anymore, if you don't want to be because they continue mistreating her.

Lauren: The lack of charm just oozing from Edmund is astounding.

Emily: It truly, truly is.

Lauren: Astounding. I can't. Yeah, everybody sucks in this book. No one, I just don't want anybody to win. I want Fanny to be magically independently wealthy and she can just go leave all the rest of these people behind and go to Bath or something.

I don't know, like just go, go somewhere else.

Emily: She can just have her own nice little cottage and manage her house however she would like, and not have to deal with a horrible husband.

Lauren: Yeah. Just read books all day. Go walk by the seaside for your exercise so that you don't lose the good health that you've been building up like it says that she has been in this section. Go for a walk by the ocean, come back, read your book, drink your tea, speak to no one. Unless you feel like it.

Emily: Have William come and visit you whenever you want.

Lauren: Have William come and visit you. That is a life I want for her.

Emily: Yes. Please Jane Austen, give it to us.

Lauren: Like, can there be another wealthy relative who mysteriously dies and leaves Fanny their fortune. And it's like, I've been watching you from afar, even though you didn't know that I exist. Here's a letter with a fortune of 10,000 pounds. You're welcome, goodbye.

Emily: You know, it's not impossible. Apparently Lady Bertram has all of these correspondences that she's been maintaining for years because she's such a prolific letter writer. Like maybe she's been writing to another relative. Who's like, you know what? This Fanny girl seems chill. All of my potential heirs are trash. I'm just going to leave my money to her. There we go. Problem solved.

Lauren: Including the two Bertram sons, because I can read in between the lines of what their mother is sending.

Emily: Oh, my God. I definitely had a moment there where it was like, if Tom died and Edmund was suddenly heir, how would Mary's tune change?

Lauren: Ooh. You know that all of a sudden she'd be gung ho.

Emily: Oh, absolutely.

Lauren: Yeah. If she doesn't have to live in the quiet little parsonage anymore and [00:14:00] she can have her house in town and she can have the creature comforts that she wants and the man who she allegedly loves? Easy sell.

Emily: But then Tom gets better.

Lauren: Yeah, well.

Emily: Opportunity missed.

Lauren: Not that I was like actively rooting for him to die. Like I do with some story villains who are just awful. I was just indifferent. And I was like, eh, whatever.

Emily: Yeah. Mostly because of the consequences of that would just be Edmund's the heir now. We've already had an heir switcheroo in the Austen Canon.

Lauren: Right. And no one really needs that. Though I did, I think I did make a note that Tom was acting like a frat boy. And that's why he's sick.

Emily: I mean, it was quite literally... here, let me see. Ah, "Tom had gone from London with a party of young men to Newmarket, where a neglected fall and a good deal of drinking had brought on a fever. And when the party broke up, being unable to move, had been left by himself at the house of one of these young men to the comforts of sickness and solitude and the attendance only of servants."

Lauren: If that is not frat boys not taking care of one of their friends after they get too drunk the night before and just being like, eh, he's fine. And then he is very clearly not fine. And has to go to the hospital. I don't know what is.

Emily: It's just, it's peak frat boy behavior, which is Tom clearly has exhibited through the entire book.

Lauren: Also head injuries are scary. That was the one thing. If you were just like sick and it was a hangover, it'd be like, a ha ha, poor baby. But no, he has like a severe head injury, apparently, especially because it says a fall that was neglected and then he's still sick for weeks. That's not good.

Emily: No.

Lauren: That's another thing where it's like, you wonder how that would change personalities and how things would. I don't want to say maybe that knocked some sense into him, but maybe it will.

Emily: Yeah, we'll see. Maybe he'll, you know, ease off the drinking a little bit.

Lauren: I hope so. For his own sake, for his brain's sake, I hope he eases off the drinking.

Were there other things of note that really happened in the section? I feel like it was pretty nondescript. I know we only had four chapters instead of five. That doesn't really [00:16:00] make a giant difference, but still.

Emily: Yeah. I mean, we had Henry's visit and then we had the correspondence with other people and that was...

Lauren: That was pretty much it.

Emily: Yeah, that was the main of it.

Lauren: Yep. Cool. Do you have historical context for us today?

Emily: I do have historical contexts.

Lauren: I don't know if there's anything else we have to say about like summarizing the section, you know?

Emily: Yeah. And I'm sure other discussion will come up. Yeah. I mean, like it's centered around the section, so. Yeah, so considering all the time that they spent on their walks and talking about the environment of the city they're in, I wanted to learn more about the history of Portsmouth.

Lauren: Ooh, lovely.

Emily: Because I know some like general English history, most of my English history knowledge is centered around, like social aspects of like the Tudor period and stuff. I don't really know, like the history of cities specifically. For one, I didn't really know where it was. So Portsmouth is in sort of the central area of the Southern coast of England. For some reason I was imagining it like way out on the west coast where I think like, Plymouth is.

So that's probably what I was thinking of. I don't really know English geography. I'm an American, I don't need to. But--

Lauren: Oh, no.

Emily: Portsmouth, obviously a port, the name is actually derived, it's come down like directly from old English. So like in the Anglo-Saxon period, it was Portesmūða, which is from port, meaning like a Haven and mūða, which is just the mouth of a river or an estuary. So a pretty literal name and has basically kept its meaning the whole time, which etymologically is super cool.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. It's been pretty much continuously settled and occupied as long as we know anything about it. There was a Roman Fort established nearby, you know, in the early centuries AD and it's had sort of fluctuations in importance throughout the years, but it's, it's always been a pretty [00:18:00] major port.

In 1194, it was first deemed a market town by King Richard the first and then the Naval base was initially established by King John, less than 20 years later. The first docks were constructed there in 1212, which is. Like that's just so long ago. It's so wild to me that there are continuously operating things because we don't have that depth of time in most of the Americas.

Lauren: No, like the United States recorded colonial history is like, less than 500 years old.

Emily: Yeah. And like, actual like real life work on central America and the Maya, the cities and the settlements that I look at from the classic period have not been used in that way for quite a few centuries. So just seeing this, like, oh yeah, we built docks here in 1212, and we're still using those docks is just unfathomable.

Lauren: It's wild.

Emily: Yeah. Those dock yards and the military fortifications continue to expand in the 15th and 16th centuries. And it became increasingly important after the restoration. So post English civil war in the 17th century, Charles the second married, his wife, Catherine of Braganza in the Garrison chapel, which is where the Prices go to Sunday service.

Lauren: Oh!

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: Wait. That's so random.

Emily: It seems like it. Yeah, but there were only a few major churches there, so yeah. That's where both of those things happen. New ships were being built for the Navy and the fortifications were rebuilt and eventually made the city one of the most heavily fortified in the world.

Lauren: Wow.

Emily: Yeah. So Portsmouth is a major Naval base, major military operations happening there for centuries at a time.

Lauren: That's wild.

Emily: It really is.

Lauren: And I think of, it's [00:20:00] not a city that's on people's radar today.

Emily: Yeah. So because of all of that significance, it was a seemingly pretty major center of colonial activity in the late 18th century. Some of the major happenings were that it was the place where the HMS Endeavor arrived after Captain James Cook's-- boo hiss-- global circumnavigation. It is where they launched the fleet that actually established the first European colony in Australia which effectively started the practice of prisoner transportation.

Lauren: Hm.

Emily: Yup. It's also where the HMS Bounty was launched, as well as the ship that brought the mutineers of the Bounty back to England for trial. And then as of 1808, so around the time that the events of this book are happening, presumably. Depends on when Jane Austen was writing, it was made the base of the Navy's new West Africa squadron, which was established to patrol the coast of West Africa with the goal of suppressing the Atlantic slave trade.

Lauren: Okay. I was wondering where you were going to go with that. You said West Africa and I was like, oh no.

Emily: Yeah. That was news to me. I had no idea that there was actually like a nominal force to try and actually stop it. So they, they passed the slave act in 1807 saying like, England's not gonna participate in this anymore. But then they actually had a dedicated force of the Navy to stop it.

Lauren: They actually put their money where their mouth was.

Emily: Apparently. I don't, I didn't look deeply into how successful it was, but. They did something.

Lauren: Color me somewhat shocked. I mean, I know that they were still profiting off of it as we've talked about before, because it just said that they weren't trading anymore. And not that they had to free the slaves they currently owned. So it's not like, you know, they were saints about it, but. So [00:22:00] this is a very small win.

Emily: Yes, very small. But it's something!

Lauren: It's itty bitty, but it's there.

Emily: Portsmouth was also an early center of industrial innovation for England. The first mass production line in the world was established at Portsmouth in 1803. By Marc Isambard Brunel making pully blocks for rigging on Navy ships. There was also a service of piped water to residential areas that was established in 1811. It served about 4,500 houses, obviously upper and middle-class, but that was completely new.

Lauren: And very modern.

Emily: Very modern. Yeah. And pretty early in the 19th century as well. And then throughout that century really continued being a large industrial site. It was one of the largest industrial cities by the end of the 19th.

Lauren: What caused it to no longer be one of the larger industrial cities?

Emily: Probably just the decline of that specific kind of industry.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: But yeah. And then because of those very long associations with the Navy and with industry and it just being an international port, it's or it had been, and I'm not sure if it continues to be, but was a relatively diverse English city because of factors that we've discussed in the past. So yes, a slave trade, indentured servitude, but also just if people were coming from other world areas, for any reason, they were coming through Portsmouth. Largely.

Lauren: Cool.

Emily: Yeah. So that's, that's the state of the city that Fanny is walking around in. There's blooming industry all around, there's tons of Navy activity in and out, new innovations happening everywhere. And it would be relatively diverse too.

Lauren: Neat. Thank you.

Emily: You're so welcome.

Lauren: That's really interesting context. I don't think I've ever actually thought to look up the history of Portsmouth before. So this was context I didn't have.

Emily: Yeah. [00:24:00] The first place that we've really seen in these Austen novels aside from London, where the place itself seems significant and is not fictional.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: So yeah, I wanted to see more of what that was. I mean, I guess, I guess we could say Brighton, but we have not actually been, the narration has not taken place in Brighton before.

Lauren: Right.

Emily: Yeah. I wanted to see what Fanny was seeing.

Lauren: I, you know, I'm glad that you were serious because I was not. So this'll be good. Good balance.

Emily: Yes. Get a little juxtaposition in here. All right. So what is your completely unserious pop culture connection?

Lauren: So I was thinking about the contrast between Henry and Edmund, where Henry has literally traveled to come and see Fanny. And Edmund could not be bothered to write. And then when he did bother to write, it was basically a self-indulgent journal entry with no actual care for Fanny at all.

And it made me think of the popular phrase 'if he wanted to, he would.'

Emily: Oh, yes.

Lauren: So I was thinking about, who are some of my, like, notable fictional men who embodied the, 'if he wanted to, he would,' trope or... and then continued to pick completely unserious examples instead of going for the obvious ones.

Emily: Okay. I feel like, as I mentioned before, possibly the most obvious is Darcy.

Lauren: Yes. But I felt like that was too obvious. So you can't say that.

Emily: Yeah. We didn't even need the prompting of the comparison.

Lauren: We had a whole season about that. That's boring. So I chose three. And then I'm hoping to hear from you, too, what some of your favorites are. Also some that are more serious than this. So the one that perhaps makes the most sense is any man from a Talia Hibbert novel.

Emily: Oh, yes!

Lauren: Who, for those of you who don't know, is a Black British romance novelist. 10 out of 10, tens across the board. All of her books are good. All of her heroes are fantastic.

Emily: The Brown Sisters series. Absolutely exceptional. It's also just, [00:26:00] you know, very good romance, especially if you like a little bit of erotica in your romance.

Lauren: If you like a little spice. Yeah, those are my three favorite romance novels. I love those books.

Also love both the heroes and the heroines in those books. So.

Emily: All excellent. I'm a little bit in love with every single one of them. So she really did her job well.

Lauren: She really did. So that is my number one. Any man written by Talia Hibbert embodies if he wanted to, he would.

Emily: Very good start.

Lauren: My second. My second one is from video games.

Emily: Okay. I probably won't know it then.

Lauren: No, you absolutely will.

Emily: Oh?

Lauren: Mario, from Nintendo.

He's literally out here fighting giant dragons. Just to go get this girl Peach who keeps getting stolen like every other day. Ladies, if he wanted to fight somebody 10 times his size, he would do it.

Emily: He's just a humble plumber. And yet he does it.

Lauren: You see what I mean by I'm not being serious.

Emily: Yes. But I love it! Look, we need some levity. We've had some serious episodes this season. It's nice to lighten it up a little towards the end.

Lauren: And then my last one was just tongue in cheek just because I think it's funny.

Emily: Okay.

Lauren: Jamie Lannister.

Emily: No. Can I cancel you for that?

Lauren: You can. That is a very cancelable thing. I still think it's funny.

Emily: It is.

Lauren: Like, I'm just saying he would go to the ends of the earth and push children off towers for that woman.

Emily: The things I do for love.

Lauren: Exactly! Don't be like Jamie, he's a terrible example, but it's still funny.

Emily: Yeah, no, we cannot recommend.

Lauren: We do not recommend attempted child murder. We do not endorse that on this show.

Emily: Do not endorse the Jamie Lannister method of courting.

Lauren: Please no. Also...

Emily: or incest.

Lauren: I was about to say! Or who he is courting. Please don't sleep with your twins. It's really weird.

Emily: All right. All right. I'm going to try and come up with some, some [00:28:00] additional, if he wanted to, he would. It's difficult with some of the, the media that I've been recently consuming. First thing that comes to mind is Good Omens. Especially in the TV show where they made it a little more like obvious that Aziraphale and Crowley have kind of a romantic thing going on.

Just everything between those two is if he wanted to, he would.

Lauren: Yup.

Emily: Yup.

Lauren: Move heaven and hell. Almost literally.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's for the humans. Sure. But it's also for each other.

Lauren: It's for my demon boyfriend, truly.

Emily: Yes. Or my angel boyfriend.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: Yes. Also in line with the rest of the internet, Our Flag Means Death.

Lauren: I knew that was coming next.

Emily: Yes. I'm shocked that wasn't the first thing that popped into my mind. Oh, I'm almost reluctant to like, say it cause I don't want to spoil it for anybody if they, they don't know, but basically everything in like episodes eight and nine, that that Ed does for Stede is the embodiment of if he wanted to, he would.

Lauren: This is very true.

Emily: I was trying to get past what I, what I'm currently reading, which is for the fourth time, reading Gideon the Ninth.

Lauren: Nice.

Emily: Which actually that kind of fits too.

Lauren: Yeah, the books I'm reading don't really fit right. I'm reading The Murmur of Bees and then Stamped from the Beginning, which is about American racism. So.

Emily: Yeah...

Lauren: no good. No good candidates there. Yeah.

Emily: Not so much the ship dynamic in that one, I'm assuming.

Lauren: No. Yeah, no.

This was fun.

Emily: It was very fun.

Lauren: Thank you for indulging me.

Emily: You're so welcome. I love getting to play along with the pop culture section. Cause I feel like I need to come into that with, with history at some point, find a way to, to play a game with you for history.

Lauren: To meld the two. I like it. All right. I suppose.

Do you want to do final takeaways?

Emily: Yeah, let's do final takeaways.

Lauren: Have we reached that point?

Emily: I [00:30:00] guess so.

Lauren: I feel like we really sped through this episode.

Emily: We really did. But like...I dunno. I mean, there wasn't that much action to discuss, and then we just had a good time with the rest of it.

Lauren: And so it goes.

Emily: So it goes.

Lauren: Okay. I recapped first. So you get the first takeaway.

Emily: Oh, okay. Kind of tying in with, if he wanted to, he would. I think my takeaway is that people will show you what you mean to them.

Lauren: I like that.

Emily: Thank you. And what's your takeaway?

Lauren: Being truthful is more important than being charming.

Emily: Oh, that's good. That's good.

Lauren: Charm has its uses, but charm can also be a lie. I think that's my final takeaway.

Emily: Nice. Yeah. I think I made a similar note to that. That when we're trying to be charming. We are bringing out intentionally all of our best qualities, which is what Fanny was noticing about Henry when he was sitting there talking to her family.

Lauren: Yep.

Emily: Well, now that we've done takeaways shall we go ahead and pull our new tarot card?

Lauren: It's our last tarot card for this book.

Emily: Oh my gosh. It is.

Lauren: We only have one more section to go.

Emily: One more analysis section and then our book wrap up. So we only have two more Mansfield Park episodes. Wild, absolutely wild.

Lauren: I believe it is your turn to pull a card.

Emily: It is.

Lauren: Oh, I know which one I hope we pull.

Emily: Okay. Let's see if I can channel that energy. Let's see. Three of spades.

Lauren: Two off!

Emily: Two off, no!

Lauren: I wanted five of spades.

Emily: All right. Well, do you have three of spades, which has a lovely little illustration of three hats of different styles?

Lauren: I actually think I like this better. Okay. Three of spades is rejection. And the explanation for the illustration is the once popular beaver hat was slowly replaced by the silk top hat. Fashion is ruthless. [00:32:00]

Emily: Fashion is ruthless. And I wonder if we'll get to see a little lack of Ruth from Fanny in our final four chapters.

Lauren: We'll see. I like it. I like it. We can work with this.

Emily: I can't wait to see how it turns out. All right. Last section, coming up, make sure you stay tuned and finish out the season with us.

Lauren: We only have four more to go and then we get to talk about Emma. I'm so excited.

Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading the last four chapters of Mansfield Park with a focus on rejection.

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, and 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: We'll see you next time nerds.

Did you have any other, a third one? Do you want to close this out with, to make it even three and three?

Emily: Oh, I'm trying to think through the other things that I have consumed recently. I think this one is going to count. I don't think it's one that you would know.

Lauren: Okay.

Emily: But from what we do in the shadows, the TV show.

Lauren: No, I haven't watched that.

Emily: Guillermo Fernando, or we'll see if that incites anybody to agree or disagree with me.

Lauren: Emily, you know, the three things you just cited are the 2022 SuperWhoLock.

Emily: I take everything back.

Lauren: No it's too late now.

Emily: Oh, I'm so glad. I was never a SuperWhoLock.

Lauren: That's okay. You're making up for it a decade later.

Emily: Apparently so. Three things that I enjoyed before they [00:34:00] became this juggernaut.

Lauren: Yup.

Emily: Before people decided that they were --

Lauren: Okay, hipster. Okay.

Emily: Yes. See, usually I'm five years behind the times. It's kind of nice to be on top of the trends.

Lauren: It is a nice shift. Yeah.

Emily: In this very specific instance. Yeah.

Lauren: The second you said what we do in the shadows, I was like, oh no.

Emily: Also a very good show. You should also watch that they have just announced that there is going to be another season. So.

Lauren: I think I watched the movie, but I haven't seen it.

Emily: The show is very, very funny.

Lauren: Okay. Noted. I've heard good things about it, but you just, you know, I have like two dozen shows on my, I eventually will watch this list, so yeah.

Emily: And you, you have such a more expensive, like spread of genres that you watch than I do.

Lauren: For better, or for worse.

Emily: Yeah. But yeah.