Mansfield Park 45-48: “Rejection Island”
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Alternate title: "We Reject Your Ending and Substitute Our Own"
In our final analysis episode of Mansfield Park, Emily and Lauren have strong opinions about both the rejections in the book and the ones we think should have happened. Also included: Love Island's second appearance and the biggest scandal of them all.
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Season 3 Episode 10
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 45 through 48 of Mansfield Park through the lens of rejection.
Emily: It's our final recap episode, final analysis episode, and good Lord. What happened in these four chapters? Like, I was trying to make notes for my recap review and was just like, it's gonna be the most chaotic set of recaps we have ever done because it's the most chaotic set of chapters we've ever had.
Lauren: Truly hit warp speed in the last four chapters, because this all came out of nowhere.
Emily: We previously have been through multiple sections where the whole section takes like two days.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: And now we're just like, oh wait, we have to have everything happen. So like, I'm sorry, Ms. Austen. But your pacing got a little skewed on this one.
Lauren: You know what it reminds me of that actually just came to mind this moment? Is when people decide that they are just like over a fan fiction that they're writing and they just hurry up and wrap up all the, all the loose ends in the plot. And they're just like, anyway, things happen, bye.
Emily: that's--
Lauren: and that's it.
Emily: That's hilarious. I love that comparison.
Lauren: You know, it's better than people just abandoning it and you think that you're reading a really good fan fiction and then it's just sat there incomplete for years.
Shall we? Shall we recap the chaos that is contained within these four chapters of the Austen fandom?
Emily: We can sure try.
Lauren: Lord have mercy on our souls. Okay.
Emily: Seriously. Unfortunately, it's me first.
Lauren: It is indeed.
Emily: I have notes. So we'll, we'll see what I can accomplish in 30 seconds.
Lauren: All right. 30 seconds on the clock.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: On your mark. Get set. Go.
Emily: Fanny is still stuck in Portsmouth up to three months while everything everywhere [00:02:00] else falls apart.
Thomas is sick, but it also makes him kind of get over himself. Maria runs away with Henry and then hugely regrets it after Rushworth divorces her and she has to live with Aunt Norris. Julia elopes with John Yates from like a million years ago. Sir Thomas tries to replace these two wayward daughters with Fanny and her sister, Susan. Edmund finally gives up on Mary and then Fanny, unfortunately marries Edmund and they live.
That's what I got.
Lauren: Not even, "they live happily ever after." And they live.
Emily: Look, there's a reason that our Patreon sticker for this season is going to be "Fanny Price deserved better."
Lauren: You heard it here first folks.
Emily: I guess that's our official announcement.
Lauren: It's the exclusive.
Emily: All right.
Lauren: Lord have mercy, she truly does.
Emily: Are you ready, Lauren?
Lauren: I hope so, shoot.
Emily: Okay. 3, 2, 1, go.
Lauren: Everything is in chaos. As Emily said, Tom is actually really sick. But it kind of humbles him a little bit. Maria runs off with Henry, Henry also turns out to regret running off with Maria because he still allegedly loves Fanny.
Maria is stuck with Mrs. Norris. Julia is married to Mr. Yates. Mary, not Maria tells Edmund the way life actually is, and he hates it. Edmund gets over her. He marries Fanny, Sir John actually really loves Fanny, the end.
Emily: All right.
Lauren: I don't know what that was.
Emily: I don't know. I, I would just like to say right off the top, I have a lot of respect for Julia Bertram. Because she took one look at her sister about to ruin her own life and was like, I'm gonna put a little distance between myself and that. And then Maria runs off with Henry and Julia's like, you know what, before this gets out and ruins me, I'm gonna get married so that it doesn't touch me. I, I have to respect that. Go Julia.
Lauren: Respect the hustle.
Emily: Julia is the only person here that I respect.
Lauren: You're the only bitch in this house that I ever respected.
Emily: Oh my God. Well, do we wanna start from the beginning? This is gonna take--
Lauren: that's the only way we [00:04:00] can--
Emily: so long.
Lauren: That's okay. We have time.
Emily: We do. We do. All right. So right off the bat, we find out that despite Lady Bertram's letters of the previous section assuring Fanny, that everything's fine with Tom, it's just a little bit of fever. He's actually quite ill. Everyone at Mansfield is just like, awkward. Doesn't know what to do, hoping that their heir doesn't die, but there's one person not at Mansfield who's like, that wouldn't be so bad because Mary fucking Crawford--
Lauren: did we, or did we not call this last episode?
Emily: We called it.
Lauren: I literally put that note down on page 429. "Didn't Em ask about how Mary would feel with Edmund as the, as the first son," and then at page 4322, "and called it. Could she be more transparent?"
Emily: Here it is. "If he is to die, there will be two poor young men less in the world, and with a fearless face and bold voice would I say to anyone that wealth and consequence could fall into no hands more deserving of them?" I am so glad that Edmund finally dropped her.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. The narration says, too, that "Miss Crawford gave her," her meaning Fanny, "the idea of being the child of good luck, and to her selfishness and vanity, it would be good luck to have Edmund the only son," not, you know, not thinking of Edmund and his feelings at all for having lost an older brother or the family into which she'd be marrying.
No, just instead of being married to the second son, relegated to being a, a priest in a, in a village, she gets to be the first son's wife and inherits Mansfield Park and all this other stuff. Like just, just thinking of her own consequence.
Emily: Mm-hmm. And of course it's not even that. I mean, presumably Edmund never actually knew about that particular opinion. It's not even that that makes him realize just how, like, vain and shallow she is. It's her reaction to Henry and Maria running away. [00:06:00]
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: He's so mad about that. And I'm like, honey, this is what gets you? This was the last straw?
Lauren: You know what, the funny thing about that is that Mary's being very callous in this instance, but she's not wrong. And what I wrote was that, you know, Mary is being very practical and is like calling the world as it is, pretty much, and is laying blame equally with both Henry and with Maria, which Edmund does not appreciate. And Edmund rejects her for it because his idea of like, the perfect feminine woman does not include any kind of independent thought.
And it especially does not include any woman seeing the world, not in the same moral code that he does, and because they do not share the same moral code, which we have been saying this entire book, he finally cottons onto the fact that 'maybe we're not compatible because we have two completely disparate ways of looking at the world.'
Emily: Absolutely absurd.
Lauren: Yeah. Edmund is mad because he says, "she saw it only as folly and that folly stamped only by exposure." So basically she doesn't care that they actually ran off together. She just cares that everybody knows about it. She's not really concerned about the morality of the whole thing, as it stands.
He goes, "oh, Fanny, it was the detection, not the offense which she reprimanded. It was the imprudence which had brought things to extremity and obliged her brother to give up every dearer plan in order to fly with her." And he, he's just beside himself because she's not really concerned about, 'yeah, you know, it was really immoral for a married woman to run off with a man. Maybe they shouldn't have done that.'
She's like, 'oh my God, if you guys were going to do this, could you at least not have gotten caught. Like now you've just made everybody's lives more complicated. This is ridiculous.' She's not wrong.
Emily: She is not wrong. But Edmund is so mad that like, he's found out how, I don't know, in some ways she's kind of mercenary. Like we saw with her opinion about like, well, if Tom died, it wouldn't be that bad.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: But also that she does not have the same assessment of [00:08:00] morality that he does.
Lauren: They're fundamentally mismatched.
Emily: And it took him until the final chapters of the book to realize that. He's been saying it the whole time. He's been saying, well, we don't agree on these things. And she doesn't like my job cuz she thinks it's stupid, but it's fine. I still love her. And it took him until the final chapters to be like, oh actually, maybe we're incompatible as people.
Lauren: And this conversation, of course, we find out about because he is once again, venting to Fanny, this time in person, not in a letter because he's come to pick her up because she's finally going to go back to Mansfield.
And so Fanny is, you know, she's trying to balance her emotions because when she first finds out about Maria and Henry through the newspaper. So she had gotten the first, like, hint from Mary saying, 'if you hear any gossip, like don't pay attention to it. Everything's fine.'
Emily: That was hilarious.
Lauren: Everything's great. Don't worry. And Fanny's like, I haven't heard anything. What the, what are you talking about? and then there's a little blurb in the newspaper that her father reads and he is like, 'Hey, where did you say your cousin lives again? Is it Wimpole Street? I think there might be some drama going on over there that you should hear about.'
And she's beside herself when she hears this and puts the pieces together and realizes what Henry and Mara have done. But then when she realizes, once she gets the communication, that this means she gets to go back to Mansfield and that Edmund is the one who's going to pick her up. She's like, I know I should be really upset right now, but this is the best day of my life.
Emily: Unfortunately, Edmund... As usual, is still on his bullshit. And the narration acknowledges this when they're finally back in Mansfield and the two of them have sort of a, a semi solitary moment because Lady Bertram is like asleep in the corner. And it says, "with the usual beginnings, hardly to be traced as to what came first, and the usual declaration that if she would listen to him for a few minutes, he should be very brief and certainly never tax her kindness in the same way again. And she need not fear of repetition. It would be a subject prohibited entirely." He's been doing this, the entire book. I need him to shut up. [00:10:00] I need him to stop talking.
Lauren: Like, I swear, I'm not going to bother you about this again, but like, can you just listen to me vent for two seconds and I'm never going to bring it up. I swear.
Emily: This is the kind of person who is always befuddled about why they don't have any friends.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Like, it's because you keep trying to use your friends as your therapist.
Lauren: It's giving off the same vibe of like, somebody getting extremely messy drunk and waking up the next morning saying, oh my God, I'm never doing that again. Only to turn around and do it again in two days.
Emily: I I'm sure everyone has that friend.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: I'm just, I'm, I'm so mad that she marries him in the end. He has done nothing to deserve it at all.
Lauren: Also. Okay. Speaking of doing nothing to deserve things, in the vein of our theme for today of rejection and Edmund not deserving Fanny, I made a note because I was so irritated and I was like, 'how is he rejecting Fanny and making things about him when she's supposed to be in pain? When the person who has been pursuing her has run off with her cousin.' Like, he has not given a moment to consider Fanny's feelings. And he is about to, the passage starts off with saying that Fanny of course was, you know, watching him, with never failing solicitude, and every once in a while she would catch his eye and like receive an affectionate smile in response.
And this is when they're in the carriage on the way back to Mansfield Park and eventually Edmund kind of realizes he should actually look at Fanny, like really look at her and not just glance at her every once in a while, and takes her hand and says in a low, but very expressive tone, "no wonder. You must feel it. You must suffer-- how a man who had once loved could desert you, but yours, your regard was new compared with-- Fanny, think of me." Please keep that thunk in there, because what the hell.
Emily: I was just about to say, I have to keep the thunk because that's, look, that was me the entire time I was reading this section.
Lauren: How are you [00:12:00] rejecting... acknowledging her own emotions in favor of making it about yourself again? Can you not just give her the benefit of listening to and considering her feelings for more than 15 seconds?
Emily: Like she's not mad about Henry because she didn't actually love him.
Lauren: But she was still upset for a little bit. I mean like, upset just about the situation in general, which she is allowed to be upset about because it's patently upsetting.
Emily: It is.
Lauren: Especially considering all the social implications for the rest of the family. Like we talked about how, if Lydia Bennett's marriage in Pride and Prejudice hadn't been arranged and patched up, like the rest of the Bennetts would be ruined. Like, here's Maria divorced from her husband because she very publicly ran off with another man. Like you said, if Julia hadn't married. Mr. Yates, she can forget about it.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: It's not happening.
Emily: She would be ruined, ruined.
Lauren: Forever. Ridiculous.
Emily: Absolutely ridiculous.
Lauren: So Fanny does have reason to be upset regardless or outside of the fact of the man who has been pursuing her for months running off with her cousin, but he won't even give her the benefit of acknowledging that for more than a passing sentence.
Emily: Because Fanny has no autonomy in his eyes.
Lauren: I just, I don't know. I feel like this was a lot of Edmund rejecting Mary, Mary rejecting, you know, like Edmund's philosophies, Henry kind of in a way rejecting Fanny, but really he's just like, it says he's pretty much just trying to soothe his own vanity. He's a flirt. He went to go see Maria and she was cold to him.
And he said earlier, he likes the hunt and he was like, well, what the hell? She's not paying me attention. I wanna get her to flirt with me again and then realized, oh shit, she's actually still in love with me. Did too much ,did too much, abort mission, but it was too late.
Emily: dumb ass. Oh, my god.
Lauren: He wasn't even trying, he didn't go to London with a view to like run away with Maria, which we find out later, he was just going, just, you [00:14:00] know, he had his own reasons for being there, wanted to go meet up with her and then was too vain to just let it go, that she wasn't paying him as much attention as she used to despite the fact that she's literally a married woman. And then played with fire and got burned because surprise, she's totally obsessed with you.
Emily: Fanny was right the entire time.
Lauren: Fanny deserves better.
Emily: Fanny deserves better. Oh my God. I can't. I'm just, I'm so mad that we went from Mr. Darcy to this. like really? Really,
Lauren: I mean, very different goals in this story than in the last one, for sure. But yeah, definitely went from having like the romantic hero of the ages to everyone in this book kind of sucks. Pretty jarring departure.
Emily: No kidding. But can we talk about like, sort of the wrap up and like the consequences for all these people?
Lauren: I was literally just about to say, can we please talk about just this last chapter in general.
Emily: First off, like. Maria, I guess, gets what she deserves by ending up having to live with Aunt Norris, who is pissed at Fanny when she gets back to Mansfield Park!
Lauren: Shocker.
Emily: Says Mrs. Norris, instead of having comfort from either Edmund or Fanny was but the more irritated by the sight of the person whom, in the blindness of her anger, she could have charged as the demon of the piece had Fanny accepted Mr. Crawford, this could have not have happened.
Lauren: Something tells me that's not true.
Emily: Yeah. Something tells me that Henry would just continue to fuck around.
Lauren: And he found out.
Emily: Yep. and just the, I was gonna say implication, but it's not implication. It's outright stated that both Henry and Maria made one another miserable while they were living together, god forbid. And then Aunt Norris and Maria also made each other miserable.
Lauren: And Aunt Norris is also not as welcome in Mansfield Park as she once was because Sir Thomas has finally cottoned on to all of her meddling instincts [00:16:00] that don't align with the parenting philosophies that he has. And he hadn't really realized just how much she was truly spoiling his daughters to the point where they are this kind of entitled duo that does things like run off with random, well, not random, but run off with unapproved men.
And so she's not really as welcome in Mansfield Park as she once was. So she also is halfway banished to go live with Maria .
Emily: Yeah. Similar to Mr. Bennett. He has kind of an end of book reckoning with like, oh, I really could have done better with raising my children, but like, aside from Maria's disgrace, I guess, like he doesn't feel any consequences of that.
He has no material loss from his daughter looking bad. it didn't prevent his other daughter from getting married. So,
Lauren: so it's fine!
Emily: Mm-hmm. And then after that he realizes like, oh, Fanny is the only good one of the bunch and says basically looking at the Price children, forever repeated reason to rejoice in what he had done for them all and acknowledge the advantages of early hardship and discipline and the consciousness of being born to struggle and endure.
Screw you, man.
Would we expect anything else from somebody who owns a plantation?
Lauren: No, absolutely not. Because he probably thinks that he's worked hard for what he has.
Mm-hmm. And this is also what I found really interesting is that the narrator is like, actively interfering and is telling the reader that the narrator is interfering.
The last chapter starts off with, "let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort and to have done with all the rest." Like basically the characters who I like, who didn't completely screw up.
You guys are gonna have a happy ending. If you done messed up A-A-ron, you're, you're SOL.
Emily: Everybody else gets comeuppance, but like Fanny didn't do anything wrong. So she gets a happily ever after, or at least whatever Fanny thinks her happily ever after should be. Yeah. I, I think [00:18:00] we would both contend that Edmund has done a lot wrong in his life.
Lauren: I can't stand that, man. Yeah. I was like, it says, you know, "Fanny was returned to Mansfield Park. She was useful. She was beloved. She was safe from Mr. Crawford. And when Sir Thomas came back, she had every proof that could be given in his then melancholy state of spirits, of his perfect approbation and increased regard and happy as all this must make her, she would still have been happy without any of it, for Edmund was no longer the dupe of Miss Crawford."
Just like, Fanny has now had everything she's ever wanted. Here you go.
Emily: I'm sorry. The moral here is that if you're meek and nice, then things will just work out. I cannot support that.
Lauren: I don't know. I feel like between Fanny and Mary, I guess-- and in a way, because Fanny's rewarded at the end, it's like, 'this is the right way to be a woman, is to be this kind of feminine,' but both of them are kind of punished by the people around them for the ways in which they decide to exercise their femininity.
Maria decides that she's going to be a sexual being and like, is cast down. Fanny is happyish, but at what cost? I kind of feel like it's, there's no way to win. But you cannot live up to the ideals of a perfect woman. Cuz even Fanny who evidently is, according to the people around her, was shit on by those same people for years.
Emily: Honestly, I feel like Mary won out of all of this because it seems that she just never found a man who was worthy of her 20,000 pounds and just went and continued to live with her sister. Like that's the dream.
Lauren: That sounds fantastic. I know society thinks that you're a spinster, but girl, you won.
Emily: I hope she appreciates that.
Lauren: You know what? I hope this fictional character knows that she really...
Emily: She lucked out.
Lauren: She lucked out. Given the world she lived in, you know, you're not in your parents' house. You've got hella money. You can hang out with your sister the whole time.
Emily: Perfectly comfortable, not relying on anybody else. Come on.
Lauren: You're not constantly trying to assuage somebody else's emotions... [00:20:00] Edmund.
Emily: God, I would hate to have this man as my priest.
Lauren: He would definitely be the self sanctimonious asshole that made you feel guilty for every sin you've ever committed while like actively screwing the girl next door behind you.
Emily: Like, he's the kind of person who is completely blind to his own faults.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: And like in the grand scheme of things, I guess, like, you know, he's not out here committing adultery or murdering people. So like sure, whatever, but...
Lauren: Hot priest from Fleabag he is not.
Speaking of unevenly punished sins, the narrator makes it a point to say that Henry gets off much better than Maria does. And obliquely says why, because it's the 19th century and Jane Austen can't just say, "he's a man! And so his life is going to be better!" But it does say, you know, "that punishment, the public punishment of disgrace should, in a just measure, attend his share of the offenses. We know not one of the barriers which society gives to virtue."
Emily: There's our Jane.
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: Yeah. We haven't had much of that scathing voice that we did, like throughout Pride and Prejudice.
Lauren: I think we got it every once in a while when she was poking fun at some of the characters, but not as, this was not as sarcastic a book as Pride and Prejudice was. I feel like she poked fun at a lot more characters in Pride and Prejudice. And it was like a constant wink that we didn't see as much here.
Emily: Which makes sense, given our sort of point of view characters, you know, Lizzy was an extremely sarcastic person --
Lauren: mm-hmm.
Emily: And was always shooting barbs at people in the text. Fanny would never dream of doing such a thing. So like tonally, it it's consistent with those lead characters, but man, these people deserved it.
Lauren: I know, I missed witty Jane. I mean, the book is still witty, but you know what I mean?
Emily: I do.
Lauren: And again, with like, the narrator basically just saying, I really-- like, manipulating the story, but then also saying, "I really don't care. You [00:22:00] guys can figure out what the story is gonna be on your own."
She says, as she's trying to explain Edmund's regard fading for Mary and his regard for Fanny growing, she says, "I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that everyone may be at Liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people." Basically, it's like, you know what? You, you know, how long it would take you to get over somebody. So you just place that timeframe on whatever Edmund did, and then you'll be happy.
Emily: Solving all of the fandom problems of timeline in one fell swoop.
Lauren: Exactly. And then says, "I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford and became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire." Everybody was happy. It happened at exactly when it should be. Don't tell me that it was rushed because you made up this timeline on your own.
Emily: You have only yourself to blame!
Lauren: "He wouldn't have gotten over her that quickly." How quickly did you decide? That sounds like a you problem.
Emily: Amazing. What a queen, I feel like simultaneously there is so much more that we could possibly say, but also like that's all our major events. So do we wanna talk about explicitly where we saw rejection?
Lauren: Yes, let's do that because I think God, there was so much to talk about that we completely got away from... I mean, the whole thing was rejection.
Emily: It was.
Lauren: I don't know. What about you? What were some of the, the key points aside from the general, everything where you saw rejection?
Emily: I mean, right at the beginning of that first chapter is the rejection of Lady Bertram's narrative about what's going on with Tom.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Because she apparently just doesn't know what's going on with Tom, really. No one's really managed to convince her of what the truth is. And they're also kind of hiding it a little bit to preserve her feelings in her sanity, presumably. So there's that [00:24:00] rejection.
There's the rejection by Maria and Henry of all sense of propriety, evidently. There's the rejection by Julia of the disaster that her sister's actions would bring down on her. There's Mary and Edmund's almost mutual rejection, finally.
Lauren: Yeah. Took long enough.
Emily: And look, they've been, they've been rejecting each other's viewpoints, the entire book. It's just finally sunk in.
Lauren: Accepted reality, rejected each other.
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Yeah. And, and then even at the end, there's Sir Thomas rejecting Mrs. Norris, also rejecting Maria because Mrs. Norris is angling for her to come back into the house and he says, absolutely not. I'm not receiving her in this home. That would be an insult to the society in this town. So, no, she's not coming back here. Harsh.
Emily: Very.
Lauren: I mean, expected nothing less, but geez.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: And then, I mean, I guess it's a final rejection of Henry by Fanny. Not that it's active in any way, but just that the, the door is officially closed because there's no way she could possibly associate with him anymore. And so he's really put himself outta commission rather than Fanny actively rejecting him because his own actions have just decided that that door's going to be closed.
Emily: Yeah. He's made it so that he cannot be anything but rejected by Fanny. Even though she's already rejected him. That's the only agency she's had in this entire book.
Lauren: Multiple times. You know, what I just thought of though was, I don't remember if it's history of Japan or history of entire world, I guess, like, 'open the borders, stop having them be closed.'
Emily: That's history of Japan. Yeah. In boats with guns, gun boats. I need to watch that again.
Lauren: Why is that stupid video so funny?
Emily: It's just, it's iconic, you know, it's classic 2016.
Lauren: Yeah. I feel like you really hit all the main places where we see where we see rejection. I just feel like it would've been so sweet. If the whole book had just ended with Fanny rejecting everyone and riding off into the sunset, [00:26:00] however, despite the narrator, just deciding how things are going to be, they couldn't just decide for that to be the case, because it wouldn't make any sense, so fine, I guess, but, would've loved for that to be the final rejection, of Fanny just putting up a middle finger at everybody and saying like, bye suckers, I'm gonna go be my beautiful meek self somewhere else, unbothered by the rest of you."
Emily: I would've loved that so much. She just, you know, has a tiny cottage somewhere.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Gets to see the people that she wants to see.
Lauren: Just let her be quiet and nice and sweet on her own where she's not being manipulated for being quiet and nice and sweet. I feel like we have ragged on Fanny a lot. Mostly deservedly. But also. In my case, anyway, it's more out of frustration with how other people are treating her. And I wanted her to stand up for herself. Not that I don't think that a quieter personality, isn't something to be valued. I think we put so much emphasis on characters like Lizzie Bennett, because we like those kinds of sassy, strong minded women.
And then when we have characters who aren't like that, then it's easy to look over them or toss 'em aside. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't value those characteristics. It just frustrates me when I read them, because I want her to want better for herself in her interactions with other people.
Emily: Yeah. Fanny is no less strong in her base convictions than Lizzy is.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: But her outward temperament is such that she's just constantly being taken advantage of and never quite realizes that she is being taken advantage of. Some, sometimes it kind of breaks through and she's like, Hmm, I do a lot for these people and no one ever recognizes me.
But...
Lauren: yeah, I feel like we'll probably touch on this in like our final recap episode, but like the whole rejection of Henry, that takes a very strong will to do that when everyone is telling you to do something and you still say no. That takes like, a lot of presence of mind to be able to do that. I probably would've folded. And I've been yelling her this whole book.
Emily: Yeah. Even the things that she does while she's in Portsmouth with her family, like [00:28:00] getting a subscription to the circulating library,
Lauren: mm-hmm,
Emily: and trying to educate her younger siblings a little bit more. She's trying to do things and, and act on her beliefs and what she thinks would make the world a little bit of a better place.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: But she just doesn't have the force behind her will to make other people go along with it.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Or, or, and she doesn't really try to convince people. She doesn't try to forcefully to convince people of things, because we saw her trying to tell Edmund that Mary doesn't respect him and he shouldn't be so infatuated with her, but because she's seen as just kind of this little wallflower...
Lauren: mm-hmm.
Emily: She just doesn't..
Lauren: It's not heard. Yeah.
Emily: She doesn't manage to accomplish anything. And again, like it's not a bad thing to be a quiet person, but it's really frustrating to us as readers.
Lauren: Yeah. And so we've come to the end.
Emily: So we've come to the end, such as it is.
Lauren: I'm really curious to hear what your historical context ended up being for this section, because it didn't really give you much to work with.
Emily: It didn't and I cycled through, like, three or four ideas that I kind of started researching a little bit, but none of 'em quite stuck until I realized that I should really just talk about the divorce.
Lauren: Oh yeah.
Emily: Because that was prompted by such an explicit rejection of social norms.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: And you don't hear about divorce during the Regency, it's not really a thing that happened.
Lauren: Nope.
Emily: It was exceptionally rare. Between 1765 and 1847, there were only 276 divorces granted in England.
Lauren: Wow.
Emily: Only four of those were granted to women. And the first of those was in 1801.
Lauren: That's mad.
Emily: Yeah. By comparison today in the United States, there are over 750,000 [00:30:00] divorces per year.
Lauren: There's that many?!
Emily: There's that many.
Lauren: Holy shit.
Emily: Yeah. And yet over a period of 80 years, there were not even 300 in England because they were exceptionally difficult and expensive to obtain and they had a lot of social ramifications.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Because getting a divorce basically requires the husband to publicly admit to his own embarrassment. So a divorce in England at this time, and for quite a long time, it was very different from an annulment, which was also difficult to get. An annulment was only granted in cases of fraud, impotence, or incompetence. And it basically said like, okay, this marriage never happened, but divorce was a really lengthy and very expensive process.
And it comes in several parts. So the first part is a civil trial for adultery brought by the husband against the wife's lover.
Lauren: Oh.
Emily: The wife is not a principle at all.
Lauren: Of course she's not, she's property.
Emily: Of couse not, she's literally property.
Lauren: Ugh.
Emily: Yeah. So there's a civil trial for adultery against the wife's lover. If there is a conviction in this adultery trial,
Lauren: mm-hmm,
Emily: then you can attempt to separate yourself from your marital responsibilities by divorce. There's two ways that this could be accomplished. One is an ecclesiastical divorce, so divorce through the church, which would have to be overseen by the Bishop who's in charge of the parish where the couple was married.
But an ecclesiastical divorce does not allow remarriage for either party.
Lauren: Oh.
Emily: If you want that to be an option, you have to get a legal divorce, which you could only get by a private act of divorcement that had to be passed by Parliament.
Lauren: No.
Emily: Yes. [00:32:00] So you can see why there were fewer than 300 granted--
Lauren: yeah.
Emily: Over a period of 80 years. I mean, because you had to have the means to bring that before parliament, you also had to have the fortitude to be publicly embarrassed like that.
Lauren: Yeah, my wife's been sleeping around with other men, can you help me get a divorce? Allegedly sleeping, you know, whatever.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: But if you're going through all the trouble of bringing it to Parliament, she probably actually is.
Emily: Yeah. or at least you want out of that marriage bad enough to sacrifice your own face and just torch everything.
Lauren: Everyone's going out in a blaze of glory. Everything's going up in flames.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Including you.
Emily: Yeah. But yeah, I mean, as, as you noted before, the woman doesn't have any kind of agency in this. Both legally and socially, she's pretty much erased because during marriage, she is her husband's property, legally, unfortunately. In these adultery cases, the suit is brought against her lover. She's not allowed in court. She's not brought as a witness. She doesn't make any kind of statements. She's not involved in the suit at all.
Except as, you know, a piece of property that has been violated by another man who is a legal entity under the law.
Lauren: Thanks. I hate it.
Emily: Yeah, I do too. And then after all of these proceedings, if a divorce is granted, the woman, if she were of a high enough social status to have been involved at court in any capacity, she would be barred.
Lauren: And by court you now mean like Royal court?
Emily: Royal court, yes.
Lauren: Not legal court.
Emily: Yeah. Yes. Yeah, she would be barred from the Royal court. If she remarried after a, a legal divorce where remarriage was an option, which is presumably what would've happened in the case of the Rushworths, because Mr. Rushworth goes on and remarries and Maria thinks that for some reason, she has a chance of marrying Henry.
Nope. If, [00:34:00] if she remarried, then any legitimate daughters from that second marriage would not be allowed to be presented at court.
Lauren: Dang.
Emily: So there's ramifications down through generations as well.
Lauren: Oh, that's... oh.
Emily: Yeah. And these private acts of divorcement too, they were written on an individual basis to address whatever the specific terms of the marriage were.
So some women would have to consign their fortune to that first husband. There is all kinds of legal repercussions for going through a divorce. So it's absolutely incredible that this actually happened, that Mr. Rushworth actually went through with it.
Lauren: That's just nuts.
Emily: It really is.
Lauren: I cannot imagine going through that much effort just to get divorced, like the fact that you have to bring it to Parliament?! Now I really wanna know what the case was for the four women who somehow managed to get divorces because I cannot. And like how on earth do you do that if you're not even allowed in Parliament and you need to bring articles of divorcement before Parliament and you can't do that as a woman, how do they actually win?
Emily: Presumably with some very powerful men on their sides?
Lauren: It must have been because good Lord.
Emily: Yeah, it must have been, you know, daughters of Lords and stuff who were like, actually I want this son-in-law out of my life.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Yeah. I, I wish I'd been able to find more about those particular cases, but yeah, just everything that you have to go through, the publicity of it, all, everyone is going to know about this.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: Because it's incredibly rare and you also have to drag all your dirty laundry out in front of everyone. So yeah, that's how I'm wrapping up our, our historical topics for this season.
Lauren: That was an excellent way to end.
Emily: I'm so glad you think so.
Lauren: It was very much needed to fill in that context, I think. And also just funnyish to think about.
I also was trying to think of how to [00:36:00] weave in rejection to pop culture. And I feel like I have talked about this on the podcast before, and I meant to go back and look in my notes to see if I have. I'm 95% sure I have. But once again, it is Love Island time. And I would like to talk about Love Island.
Emily: It's been a while since we've talked about Love Island.
Lauren: It's been months, probably since last season.
Emily: All right. How are you, how are you tying in Love Island?
Lauren: Okay. So. If I did not give this background last time, slash it's been months, so even if you did listen to those episodes that has probably left your mind, or maybe you're just, you know, going out of order and listening to random things.
So here is another primer, very quick, on what Love Island actually is. It's a British reality TV dating show, where you have anywhere from 12 to 15, 20 somethings in this luxury Villa at any given time. And the basic premise is you have to stay in the Villa for the whole eight weeks in a couple. If you make it to the end of this eight weeks and you're coupled up, then you have a chance to face a public vote and win 50,000 pounds at the end. That's like the most basic thing.
Within that, there's lots of politics and game playing and whatever, because they will literally introduce new people into the Villa who they call bombshells to see if they can shake up the dynamics of the established couples to see if your head can be turned.
And the sticking point of Love Island as well is that you don't want to just put all of your eggs into one basket of one specific person, because there could be somebody who comes in literally the next day, who's exactly their type who they're more interested in. And you, and so you're having to balance how loyal do I say to this person who I may or may not be actually romantically interested in, and how much am I going to get to know the other people who are either already here or who might come into the Villa, because I need to make sure that my spot is secure. And also, you know, allegedly you also wanna find a genuine connection, whatever, some people might, other people are definitely there, like, I'm playing a game. There's 50,000 pounds at stake here. Like, I'm just trying to stay put.[00:38:00]
Emily: That, that would be my approach. Not to be like, you know, RIP to these other people, but I'm different, but like, why would you not just come in, like, immediately make an agreement with someone else, be like, "we're gonna be the cutest established couple and nothing can possibly break us apart and we're going to work it so that we win this 50,000 pounds."
And then we just break up and each ta--, take 25 K, like...
Lauren: Because, so you could do that, if it weren't almost being simulcast and the public also gets to vote. It's not live, it's clearly like taped and then edited, but you have to be aware, if you're playing the game, of how the audience perceives you and the audience wants to buy into the idea that people are in it to at least try and find love.
Like no one thinks that people are going to like get married forever and ever, but they would like to think that you actually do like the people you're hanging out with, and since the public can also vote while this is happening, they will kick you out if you think that you're just.
Emily: Boring.
Lauren: Yeah. If they think that you're boring, if you're too obvious of a game player and it doesn't seem like you have any kind of regard for other people, sometimes it works if you just stay with one person for forever and you try like, the 'we're gonna be in an established couple' thing, but somebody got kicked out for that last year.
The point is that you are dependent on if the person that you're coupled up with, if their head is turned by whoever walks into the Villa, or if they're going to stay with you, and if their head is turned, then it's a very public rejection.
And I was thinking about how Henry has spent ages telling Fanny, 'I'm completely head over heels for you. I'm enamored with you. You're the only one for me. My head can't be turned,' only to turn his head to go run off with Maria. Not entirely the plan, but he still does it, even if the narration does say that there's an element of regret to what it is that he's done.
And simultaneously on Love Island, there are multiple conversations that the couples have one on one asking each other, you know, [00:40:00] like, do you think your head could be turned or do you think that this is something that you want to pursue? Because rejection makes you vulnerable in the Love Island universe in a way it doesn't necessarily in real life because rejection, isn't just an emotional thing where you have to go back and lick your wounds and say, oh, that didn't really feel great.
Like, it doesn't feel nice to be rejected as a person, but that's okay. I'm gonna pick myself up and move on. The other implication is that you're now out of the running for the prize, you're gonna get kicked outta the Villa. You might lose your chance of finding love with someone else, you know, heavy air quotes, whatever, but I think, aside from the rejection piece, you could make a very strong argument for the fact that shows like Love Island, The Bachelor, things like that are a very good modern example of what the modern marriage market is like. As close to it, as you can get, especially because you can see all these different social dynamics playing out on screen and very small interpersonal interactions suddenly carry a lot more weight because it feels like it's creating a commentary on what's happening socially at the time.
Especially on shows like Love Island and The Bachelor, where you're being judged on your looks on your personality, on what it is that you do, if that's something that you choose to reveal, and you can see people going up and down in estimation in real time, and you can also see who, especially on Love Island, where it's kind of a free for all where everybody can get with everybody, who's the most desired woman or man, why they're the most desired woman or man, who are the people who are off to the side, who aren't being chosen very often, and what do they look like? And what does that say about class, about race, about whatever. And it's just this really weird microcosm of if you were to have a 19th century marriage market and pick it up and put it in the 21st century, kind of seems like it would look something like this.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Whoever has written that paper about how Love Island or The Bachelor or whatever is like the 21st century marriage market. I know it exists, someone please send it to me!
Emily: There has to be a paper or a [00:42:00] video essay or something.
Lauren: Something! It has to, I, this is not an original thought. Somebody has had this thought and has fleshed it out. Someone, please send me the paper, cuz I wanna read it. The article in like, I don't know, fricking, The New Yorker or something. Give me the content.
Emily: Where is the Brandon Taylor essay on it?
Lauren: Literally, I know it's somewhere, it's in somebody's Substack. It's something. So final point, just to like tie it back into the theme, is that rejection on Love Island has serious mental health effects too.
And I wonder about the mental state of Maria after being so publicly rejected, especially after our discussion about divorce and all of that public rigamarole that you have to go through. It just says that she's very annoyed and frustrated, but that has to take a toll.
Emily: Mm-hmm, she's not a legal entity, but it is all kind of predicated on the decision that she made. And yeah, that's a lot, it's all revolving around her without her being able to have any real input.
Lauren: Did she start the domino effect that like created all of this madness for herself? Yes, she did. But I do also think that I would have some empathy for like, that would just, that's really hard to have to sit with, especially knowing that you did it to yourself.
You went through all of this really invasive and embarrassing public spectacle, and it was kind of your fault.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: And now you have to live with that forever.
Emily: And for what?
Lauren: And for what, yeah.
Emily: She doesn't even end up with anybody in the end and she's at home with a woman who she doesn't like. Maria's the biggest loser here.
Lauren: That's so true. Yeah. She really did not have a happy ending.
Emily: No, she didn't.
Lauren: Fanny did. And that is all the narrator cared about anyway, because
Emily: Fanny did nothing wrong.
Lauren: Fanny did nothing wrong. Fanny deserves better. This has been me on my soapbox signing off.
Emily: Thank you.
Lauren: Thank you so much.
Now that we've been properly chaotic, I suppose should we do our final takeaways?
Emily: I [00:44:00] guess so. Are we. I was thinking about this earlier, is, is this our last takeaway or are we doing full book takeaways? I meant to go back and look at our last episode of the last season.
Lauren: I think we're doing takeaways for this section and then we're doing full book takeaways in our full book recap.
Emily: Okay, cool.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: You're up first.
Lauren: Oh yeah.
What I want to say is that there is power in rejection and within every rejection there's a different power dynamic at play. Yeah, I think that's the best I'm gonna be able to say that.
Emily: Yeah, no, that's good.
Lauren: Yeah, that's good.
Emily: I think I'm gonna frame mine kind of in contrast to Pride and Prejudice.
Lauren: Mm, okay.
Emily: And say that not everyone has the desire to change, even if it would be for the better.
Lauren: Ooh, interesting. I like it.
Emily: Mostly thinking about Henry, but I think it applies to almost everyone here.
Lauren: Yeah. I don't know that we really see any character arcs in this book the way that we do in Pride and Prejudice with like significant character development where they're much changed from page one to the end of the book.
Emily: I think. We get, Sir Thomas, like making realizations,
Lauren: mm-hmm,
Emily: about like, oh, this thing isn't exactly what I thought it was.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: And again, I have to give props to Julia for being like, this man is not worth my time, but yeah, like Fanny doesn't change significantly. Edmund certainly doesn't change at all. Maria doesn't change. Mrs. Norris and Lady Bertram don't change.
Lauren: And I suppose that's more realistic.
Emily: Yeah, unfortu, unfortunately.
Lauren: That, that ties right into your final takeaway. Sometimes people just don't have the desire of the wherewithal to change.
Emily: Mm-hmm. Little bleak for our last section, but maybe I'll turn it around for the full book takeaway next time.
Lauren: Oh gosh. I can't even wrap my [00:46:00] brain around recapping all of Mansfield Park right now. Have mercy. Okay. Okay.
Emily: Well, we do not have a tarot card to pull, so...
Lauren: oh, you're right. We don't.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Oh, that makes me kind of sad actually. Well, we'll come back to it eventually.
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Once we get to Emma, we can pull more tarot cards.
Emily: Emma's gonna be so much fun.
Lauren: Emma's gonna be a blast. I can't wait.
Emily: but before that we've got Mansfield Park wrap up.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: We are going to play six degrees of Austen again. And we will be appearing at Virtual Jane Con with The Thing About Austen.
Lauren: Woohoo! Our faves. I can't wait. I'm so excited.
Emily: So keep an eye out on our social media for more information about that.
Lauren: We will be appearing on your screens, not just in your ears.
Emily: Yes. For the second time ever.
Lauren: Yes. And we also will be running a Twitter poll for which adaptation of Mansfield Park you'd like us to live tweet. To be determined by you.
Emily: We will be gathering suggestions for six degrees topics as well, because we need a lot of 'em.
Lauren: Yeah. We have some from last time and we'll be going through those as well. However, now is the time. If you have any burning things you'd ever like to hear us connect to Jane Austen somehow, speak now or hold your peace until the end of Emma.
Emily: And once again, patrons will be able to vote on which ones we actually cover. So if you want an input other than just nominating, make sure you subscribe to our Patreon because everybody at any level will have voting power.
Lauren: You got the power!
Emily: And I think that's a good place to transition out.
Lauren: yeah, this has gone off the rails.
Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be wrapping up our final thoughts on the whole of Mansfield Park, as well as giving some questionable advice to the characters in our segment, Advising Austen.
Emily: To read show notes and a transcript of this episode, check out our website, reclaimingjanepod.com, where you can also find the full back [00:48:00] catalog and links to our social media.
Lauren: If you'd like to support us and get access to exclusive content, including opportunities like voting on our six degrees of Jane Austen topics, you can join our Patreon at Reclaiming Jane.
Emily: Reclaiming Jane is produced and co-hosted by Lauren Wethers and Emily Davis-Hale. Our music is by Latasha Bundy and our show art is by Emily Davis-Hale.
Lauren: See you next time, nerds.
Emily: I may or may not have one. That's sat unfinished since 2016. So sorry to all those people, but I have moved way past that now.
Lauren: This was also a self call out. I definitely had a fan fiction that I had been updating with regularity that has not been touched since 2012. So.
Emily: I think at least that's the only one I have that like as a single work is unfinished.
Lauren: That's not bad.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: And in my defense, the, the work that was unfinished was a sequel. So they had a full, complete work --
Emily: there you go --
Lauren: before, that they can go back to and reread and then like half a sequel. It's fine. Whatever. It's fine. It's a dead fandom anyway. No one's checking for it anymore.
Emily: No fandom ever really dies Lauren.
Lauren: This, yeah. That's fair.
Emily: I mean, just look at Jane Austen.
Lauren: also fair. I don't know, this was for James Patterson series though, and I feel like he's successfully torpedoed his reputation.
Emily: Yeah. It now might officially be dead.
Lauren: It might officially be dead now.
Emily: So I think you've been absolved of that unfinished sequel.
Lauren: Thank God. can you stop leaving angry reviews now telling me to update. I'm not going to, it's been a
decade.