Mansfield Park 6-10: “Wanna Collab?”
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Anchor | Breaker | Castbox | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Radio Public
Don’t see your platform of choice? Click play above!
Relationships are getting complicated in the next chapters of Mansfield Park! Lauren and Emily talk about collaboration – or rather, the distinct lack of it. Also included: gaslight/gatekeep/girlboss and a healthy helping of harping on ha-has.
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
Show Notes
Y’all, when we tell you getting back into the swing of podcasting after being out of your normal routine is an effort…
Our break between seasons 2 and 3 was necessary and ended up being fortuitously timed due to some health issues, but it also means that we’ve been out of our usual recording schedule. Our date for recording this episode changed twice, and then when we finally sat down to record, we had the dreaded return of “neighbor’s construction noise.” (Seriously, Lauren’s next-door neighbors have been renovating for the entire year she’s been there.)
So this session was alternately frustrating as we paused for bouts of bandsaws that drowned out every word we said and hilarious, because we just could not stop laughing at the word “ha-ha” and were also happy just to be together again. This episode is around half an hour because that’s about the amount of time that we were focused and not off on a tangent about something completely unrelated. (Or slightly related, like how Mrs. Norris finally helps us to understand the namesake of the cat from Harry Potter.)
Also, a disclaimer — while we talk about the “women supporting women” catchphrase in this episode and discuss the virtues of seeing women as collaborators rather than competitors, we also realize that real life isn’t that simple. Bad opinions aren’t restricted to one gender. Howeverrrr…being a woman is hard enough, show each other some love, xoxo
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Season 3 Episode 2 | Mansfield Park 6-10: “Wanna Collab?”
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 six through 10 of Mansfield Park through the lens of collaboration.
Welcome back. We sadly do not have any guest stars with us this time, you were only blessed with the two of us, but hopefully we will suffice.
Emily: At least we have better audio quality this time.
Lauren: We do.
Emily: Zoom is not cutting it.
Lauren: You know, as many benefits as Zoom has, recording podcast audio is not its forte.
Emily: It's not, but we are, we are very excited to get into the second section of Mansfield Park with our theme today of collaboration. So we are, we are ready to stop. Collaborate. And listen.
Lauren: Why?
Emily: Because I thought of it on the way over here and I couldn't help myself. Why don't we stop and recap?
Lauren: You are up first friend. Are you ready?
Emily: As ready as I'll ever be.
Lauren: All right. Three, two, one, go.
Emily: Sir Thomas is still out of the country and all of the young people are still sort of courting. So Mr. Rushworth shows up and he's going on and on about how he wants to get his landscaping done. And so they're like, Hey, let's all go see your landscaping because I guess that's what rich young people do in the Regency.
Edmund is teaching Mary Crawford how to ride a horse. They are getting very close and they are one of two love triangles, ish.
Lauren: Done!
Emily: Are you ready?
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: Okay. Three, two, one, go.
Lauren: Okay. Love is in the air. There's lots of people flirting. They have nothing better to do with their time. So they keep coming up with different ways to fill it. And in each way to fill their time, poor Fanny gets left out. No one wants to hang out with her. Edmund is the only one who really looks out for her, but his head is a little bit filled [00:02:00] by Mary Crawford. So even Edmund sometimes forgets about Fanny. They go to Mr. Rushworth's house. They forget all about poor Mr. Rushworth. He's like, where the hell did my friends go? They're off doing their own things. Mrs. Norris still sucks. Fanny deserves the world and that's it.
Emily: Ooh. Yeah. So this is very heavily focused on all of the young people and their relationships with one another.
Lauren: Also Mary Crawford is working my last nerve.
Emily: Oh, really.
Lauren: Okay. So most of it was that conversation where she's talking about trying to bring her harp in, because that is the most important thing in the world to her. And she cannot fathom why the farmers are like, no, it's the middle of the harvest season. You cannot have my horse to bring your stupid harp from London.
And she's like, but why not?
Emily: We're in the country. Everyone has a cart and horse. Why can't I just use one?
Lauren: I would like to practice my art. What is your livelihood to me playing the harp? I was like, girl, if you don't shut up.
Emily: Well, she does find another pastime in learning to ride, which I was reading that was like, is this, that seemed like a thing that just all old timey English people know how to do is like ride horses. Right. Isn't that how, isn't that how England works?
I don't know.
Lauren: That would have been the assumption in my brain. I was like, you guys are all just born knowing how to ride horses, so you never have to learn. You just know. It's like a thing.
Emily: Yeah. But the arrangement that they come up with is that the horse that Edmund had bought specifically for Fanny to ride will be used so that he can teach Mary how to ride, which means that Fanny has been deprived of like, her daily exercise so that Mary can use the horse and Mary and Edmund are getting really close and Fanny is getting jealous, even though she is adamant that she's definitely not jealous.
Lauren: Not jealous at all.
Emily: Totally not jealous.
Lauren: It also means she's stuck in the house, which is not fantastic.
Emily: Fanny's having an absolutely terrible time.
Lauren: She's already the one who was usually left out of things, but now there are [00:04:00] even more young people around and she's still getting left out. I mean, fitting that the end of the last section was the Crawfords declaring, "oh, okay. Well then it's settled. Fanny is not out." She is not, she's not out and about with anybody.
She's not out in society. She's not out having fun with the other young people. Poor Fanny is just confined to wherever Mrs. Norris wants her to be, unless Edmund realizes what is happening and steps in to make sure that she can have like a little bit of joy.
Emily: A little bit of normal human interaction as a treat. But it all gets even worse. Everyone is a mess, basically. So like Maria is engaged to Mr. Rushworth, but she very clearly has a crush on Henry, but Julia thinks that she kind of has the right to Henry because her older sister is already engaged. And Henry seems to also like Julia, but he's not really discouraging Maria either. So that's our second little love triangle where the other one is Fanny/Edmund/Mary. They're just all such disasters.
Lauren: I mean, it's really their best form of entertainment, so milk it as long as it lasts, but God, at what emotional cost. That's just sounds exhausting.
Emily: I know.
Lauren: So, you know, it is comforting to know some things never change, you know, over the centuries, you will always fight with your sibling about who gets to sit in the front.
Emily: And just the whole thing about going to Mr. Rushworth's and just the petty drama that they all seem determined to kick up as they're walking around the grounds and going on off into different pairs.
Lauren: And Fanny almost doesn't even get to go, because when Mrs. Norris was helping to arrange this whole thing, she's like, oh no, no, no, Fanny couldn't possibly she'll stay at home because Lady Bertram isn't going anywhere.
Her stamina won't allow it. So Fanny will stay here and be her companion. She's making up excuses. She just likes having somebody beneath her and Fanny serves that purpose.
Emily: That's literally what it is. Yeah.
Lauren: It's like, girl, it's not Fanny's [00:06:00] fault that you didn't marry as well as your sister. Can you, can you let her be?
Emily: In short, there is very little collaboration going on in this section.
Lauren: And that was my note. There was no collaboration except for conspiring to keep Fanny from having fun.
Emily: That's the entirety of it.
Lauren: There's conspiracy, no collaboration. And well I guess, like, those little side romps through the haha.
In Unison: Also, what is that?
Lauren: I'm going to Google it because I cannot abide not knowing things.
Okay. It's a ditch with a wall on its inner side below ground level, forming a boundary to a park or garden without interrupting the view.
Emily: Okay.
Lauren: What does--
Emily: why the hell is it called a haha.
Lauren: I don't know, that's what--
Emily: Who named that, who's responsible?
Lauren: Oh, it's the French.
Emily: That...
Lauren: It says, "early 18th century, from French, said to be from the cry of surprise on suddenly encountering such an obstacle."
Emily: That's the only thing that makes sense. Honestly, it's absolutely absurd and I love it. Okay. I, I have changed my mind about where on the absurdity scale this lies. It's gone from, 'what is this and why' to, 'this is my favorite thing ever.'
Lauren: The more, you know, today I learned.
Emily: The more, you know, yeah. Actually that-- I don't want to transition us earlier than usual, but that actually, that actually does tie in really well with what my, my history research was this time.
Lauren: Do it, do it, do it! Because we needed to talk specifically about collaboration anyway, and--
Emily: yes.
Lauren: Yeah. Lord knows that that's going to give us slim pickings, so. Let's talk about history instead!
Emily: Yeah, so, actually, the history is also kind of anti collaboration.
I went a little further back than usual this time to kind of set up the context of what I'm talking about here. Because I want to talk about private lands and land ownership among the Gentry. So we're actually going all the way back to 1066 and the Norman conquest.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: Because when the Normans took over England, [00:08:00] the way the system worked was that the crown functionally owned all of the land in England and in exchange for occupying and using the land, all inhabitants had to offer either their service or, if they had it, their money. But of course, things changed over time and two different systems of land management emerged. So there was the sort of original open field system where it was all common land and you offered either service or money to the crown, basically for use of it.
But increasingly over time and starting really in earnest as early as the 12th century, enclosure became a more popular phenomenon, which is exactly what it sounds like. Lands were enclosed, therefore removing the opportunity for common use and commoners rights to any land.
Most often this happened informally. So one person sort of acquires a few different adjacent pieces of land and then literally encloses them with a fence so that, you know, the plebes can't get in and graze their sheep on their land or whatever. So land enclosures are becoming increasingly common. They were very popular around the Tudor period for sheep farming specifically because enclosure became more and more motivated by financial gain.
So if you're the only person who has access to the resources on that land, you can leverage that into more financial resources for yourself. This was still happening by just kind of informal method until the first parliamentary enclosure in 1604. So this is, this is the first time it's become, it's actually come down from the government saying yes, this land is all one [00:10:00] parcel and it is owned slash administered by this specific person.
It's not crown land, I guess we might think of it as.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: But that wasn't actually officially legalized along with the removal of commoners rights to access until 1773, which is shockingly late.
Lauren: That was a couple of generations of time. Yeah.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. It took, it took a very long time for it to be officially legalized, but, you know, these things take a long time. And with official legalization also came the creation of posts of commissioners who were the ones who actually enforced this privatization of land and then clearance of land. If you have any familiarity with English history and things that were going on in the British Isles.
Some of the consequences of these enclosures were known as the clearances, the Scottish lowland and Highland clearances are pretty well known for also being linked with violent revolts, which is understandable because people were being literally kicked off of their land so that someone else could do whatever they wanted with it.
Lauren: The British are so good at colonizing, they even colonized their own island.
In Unison: They literally, literally did.
Emily: Yeah. So that's part of where we see some of the cons of this, you know, pros, rich people get richer, cons, poor people get poorer because people are being quite literally physically displaced, which leads to depopulation in these rural areas.
Rents were increased because now homes were on private land and their work was on private land, their agricultural work. So they had to also rent any fields from the landlord. Literal Lord of that land. There was a slight [00:12:00] pro in the improvement of the road system. So part of the commissioner's job, I guess, was to make sure that the roads were like, they were of a certain width and they were straight and they were very, they were subject to like judiciary inspection.
Lauren: 'Straight' and English roads do not match in my brain.
Emily: I don't know. Like the Romans did pretty well with that, but yeah, I mean, they were, they were basically improving what had just been informal, like cart tracks or cattle tracks or whatever for hundreds of years and, you know, paving them, filling them in with a lot of the same consequences that we see, like in the United States over the last few decades with clearing cities, for, for interstates and things like that.
But enclosure land was also perceived to be linked to this pursuit of excessive wealth, which we see with people like Mr. Rushworth, who are using their enclosed lands, not for financial gains. They're not farming this land. It's just for leisure. They're, they're not producing anything. It's literally just showing off, "I have all of this land that I can maintain and administer, and I don't even have to do anything with it because I'm so wealthy."
Which is where we get the phenomenon of landscape gardens, which is the big focal point of everything that happens in these five chapters. And it was very, it's very centered on an idealized version of nature. They're trying to curate these literal landscapes to have nice views from the house. Like they're, like they're talking about in this section, lots of lakes and wide rolling lawns and little picturesque groves of trees. And also a shocking number of recreations of very romanticized architecture. So literally just like, building classical [00:14:00] Greek ruins on your lawn because I don't know, it's a photo op?
Lauren: See, also the botched proposal scene from Pride and Prejudice 2005.
Emily: You're completely right. Like actually, yeah. So I, I believe they mentioned in the section Repton, who was a very prominent landscape architect and was... sort of styled himself as a successor of the man who really brought this into public consciousness and made it really popular whose name is absolutely incredible. This man's actual birth name is Lancelot Brown. He went by Capability Brown.
Lauren: No.
Emily: Yes. Like your name is Lancelot and your nickname is Capability? It's just, it's just so much, but yeah, Repton who they're talking about here, was responsible for popularizing some very specific theories of how these manorial landscapes should be arranged to best effect.
So Rushworth is definitely buying into that. And a lot of this actually for, for another layer of colonialism, was initially inspired by the supposed naturalism of the way Chinese gardens were arranged. But of course that comes through several layers of telephone. You know, one person actually visits China and writes a letter home about it, somebody puts it in a travel journal and then by the time it gets to England, it's like, I'm sorry, you think Chinese gardens are what?
Lauren: That...
Emily: England.
Lauren: Is both totally unsurprising and surprising. It's like really? England was taking notes from China? Where? But the telephone game makes it, yeah. Make a lot more sense.
Emily: I mean, Orientalism was on its way to a hey day.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah.
Emily: And then as, as one final little tidbit, this anonymous poem from the 18th century, talking about land enclosures. "The law locks up the man or woman who steals the goose from off the common, but lets the greater felon loose who steals the common from the goose."
Lauren: Well [00:16:00] done.
Emily: I know, right? Absolutely incredible. I'm so, I'm so glad I found that poem. So that's, that's our history of land enclosures. I'm sure you did not come to a Jane Austen podcast today expecting to hear about that. But that's what we've got.
Lauren: No, I love it because it gives so much context as to why they're so excited to go walk around this guy's yard.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: That's pretty much all they're doing.
Emily: Yeah. That's yeah. That's what they're doing. He's, it's a status symbol. It's conspicuous consumption. It's everything that, that we expect from that class. It's just completely unproductive land that once belonged to the people at large, who would have used it for farming and living.
And now, nope, it's just his to have a ha-ha on.
Lauren: And you can even tie that, like draw a direct line from that phenomenon to us having lawns today.
Emily: Oh yeah.
Lauren: There is no point. I mean, that's exactly where it comes from. There's no point to having lawns other than just to show that you can have this land and waste it by watering grass.
Emily: Yeah. And it's, it's interesting to see this English version of it compared to like the French trend towards these highly stylized ornamental gardens, the really geometric gardens that you see the English were like, no, no, no, that's French. We don't do that. So we're going to steal this like weird adulterated version of Chinese gardening.
Lauren: Do we want to return to some kind of sense that, that we have historical context for why they're wandering through gardens and see where in these odd chapters we found any collaboration?
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: Yes, there was definitely, like you said, some conspiratorial collaboration between a couple of these small groups.
Lauren: People like their inside jokes in this section, I feel like, and they like to feel like they're in on the joke.
But to be in on the joke, somebody has to be excluded and they're excluding, like there are different pairs. Mr. Rushworth [00:18:00] even gets excluded because they decided that rather than wait for him to come back with a key, to unlock a gate, they're all just going to jump the fence and go exploring.
Emily: What was that? Like, I'm sorry, but Fanny has some really good points about not ripping your dress.
Lauren: Right, really. Then Mr. Rushworth comes back and looks at Fanny and he goes, where did they go? And she has to tell him they didn't want to wait for you. So they all left and hopped the fence, even though you specifically left to get the key.
So they would not have to hop the fence and they still just dipped. And then he kind of paces for a little bit and is sulking. And then rather than keep company, which she could do because Fanny's sitting by herself, she encourages him to go off and go find the rest of the group and then continues sitting by herself until she eventually gets up because curiosity gets the better of her.
Emily: It's all so high school.
Lauren: It really is. And I think sometimes in these early chapters, people have critiqued, Fanny for being too passive. Cause like you could just get up and go follow people and you don't have to continue sitting by yourself. It's like she's resting at first, but then she's gotten back her stamina and continues just kind of hanging out.
But it is really disheartening to know that nobody wants you there. And then you're not going to go and insert yourself into the conversation because it's going to be immediately apparent from the way that the interactions, the dynamic shift, that you're the unwanted one there, and you're the third wheel in whatever group you decided to go and join.
And that's just not fun. That makes you feel terrible. So of course, she's going to just continue sitting by herself because that's peaceful.
Emily: Yeah. It's being the kid who gets picked last in PE for your entire K-12 career. And then someone seeing you sitting alone. You know, while everybody else is off playing and being like, oh, why don't you go and join that team?
It's like, because they've shown me for, in her case, half a decade, that no one actually wants [00:20:00] to spend time with me and they've gone off again. So why would I do that to myself when I could just, I know how to be alone. So why wouldn't I?
Lauren: She's been taught implicitly not to collaborate because it doesn't work well for her. Just better to be on her own.
Emily: Because she's not of the same class and standing that they are.
Lauren: Exactly. And I think too, with all of these pairs coupling off, that's one form of collaboration, but I think something that's interesting is how we see how poorly suited to collaboration Mary and Edmund are despite all of this like, flirting and long conversations that they're having.
I'm thinking specifically of-- they get into a back and forth about, you know, what the role of a pastor is for his church. And Edmund is looking at it from the rural perspective, where they're more of like a cornerstone of the community. Mary's looking at it from the London city perspective, where she's like, church's just a place where I show up on Sunday.
Like the pastors of that church do nothing for me. There is no community, there's no leadership. So why would you want to do that? And they have two completely opposing views on religion and the church's role in society. And I'm not getting happy couple vibes from this conversation.
Emily: Yeah, no, they have opposing views, but neither of them are actually listening to what the other person is saying.
Lauren: You don't have to agree, but you can at least try and like come to some kind of consensus or understanding. They're just talking past one another.
Emily: Yeah. There's no communication there.
Lauren: I feel like we could find a collaboration, both everywhere and nowhere. And that makes it a little bit difficult to focus on a specific scene or to focus a conversation because we could turn everything into collaboration because technically it is.
But also they're very individualistic in these chapters. It is every man and woman for themselves, and they do not really care about if they're hurting other people's feelings. I mean, it's in a very low stakes way, but it's still, this is going to make me happy. And I really don't care that I'm watching your feelings get hurt [00:22:00] right in front of me.
Emily: Well, you say it's low stakes, but like going back to the conversation that we had last time about the actual stakes that come up in marriage in this class at this time, the person you marry could be the biggest stake in your life.
Lauren: That's true. That's a good point. I think really the only people who are actively trying to consider other people's feelings are Edmund and Fanny. And even Edmund slips up because sometimes he forgets to consider Fanny because he's so wrapped up in Mary and doesn't want to tell her no.
When Mary wants to ride the whole day on the horse, even though he knows that that means that family isn't going to be able to go outside and get any exercise for that day or they go and wander off. It's only going to be for a moment Fanny, and then they're gone giggling together under a tree for an hour and he does better than the others, but he still is not perfect.
Emily: Also, I have questions about how Fanny can ride a horse for however long, but like she's not strong enough to do all of this walking, like riding a horse is really hard exercise.
Lauren: Yeah. That doesn't make much sense to me. Her constitution confuses me. I don't understand what the issue is. I also do not really remember the finer details of this book. I remember the main plot points. I can tell you the end game, everything in between. I got nothing, y'all.
Emily: My gut is telling me that Maria is going to have a real bad time.
Lauren: Do you have any other, any other predictions while we're in the earliest stages of this novel?
Emily: I feel like... just from what I know of Jane Austen and like the trajectory relationships, I feel like it's going to be Edmund and Fanny, but with strong prior indications of Edmund and Mary.
Lauren: Kay.
Emily: Maria is going to have a bad time. I think that Julia might end up with Henry.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: But I'm not completely firm on that.
Lauren: Noted.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: Any Mrs. Norris predictions?
Emily: She's going to continue being terrible. [00:24:00] She will weasel her way into some kind of setup for herself that is all benefits. It's all going to come up Aunt Norris. Do I have any other predictions? I feel like Tom's gonna end up with some woman. Who's going to be utterly miserable.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: And will Sir Thomas die overseas? I don't know, maybe.
Lauren: Questions, questions.
Emily: Many questions. I think those are all my predictions for now.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: But as always, I can't wait to see what, what pop culture you're bringing to this.
Lauren: So I was trying to think about how do I relate collaboration to a pop culture theme. So many different ways in which we could take this. And what I was thinking of was twofold. One, the saying "girls support girls" and then two, Legally Blonde, a classic of our times.
Emily: Oh yes.
Lauren: And I'll explain why I am thinking of Legally Blonde. One, because I could not use Mean Girls again, because I've used it too many times.
Emily: Look, it's not our fault that it's always relevant.
Lauren: You know, it was just a cultural touchstone and two, because Legally Blonde is excellent and we should talk about it more and we have not yet on this podcast.
So let's talk about Legally Blonde. It's truly shocking. It is not, as I usually clarify whenever I give any kind of pop culture connection, that perfect parallel. But thinking about Vivian and Elle and Mary and Fanny. Although they are both from upper-class backgrounds, you know, like Elle's family is also quite wealthy, but she's a different kind of wealthy. It's implied that they're kind of like maybe newly rich, but either way it's like California rich versus east coast, upper-crust old money rich.
And at the beginning of the movie, Elle's boyfriend dumps her because he needs to settle down with somebody serious, a better pick for him, heavy air quotes. And he's going to Harvard Law School in the fall, Elle because she's [00:26:00] brilliant and her stupid boyfriend underestimated her also studies and gets into Harvard law to follow him because she thinks this is a great plan.
Emily: It's not like it's hard. ICON.
Lauren: So then when she arrives at Harvard law, she finds Warner. However, he has gone home, reconnected with an old flame and put a ring on it in like four months, the timeline doesn't make sense, but we're going to forgive it. And said old flame is Vivian, who is like the dark haired, serious future attorney to Elle's, like, bright and bubbly and pink and blonde, more hyper feminine self.
And Vivian does everything in her power at the beginning to make sure that Elle knows that she is not welcome with this class of people. And I was thinking about how, even though Mary isn't being conniving in a way that Vivian was at the beginning, but she also participates in making sure that Fanny still feels othered. It's like, she knows that the horse that she's riding on is Fanny's horse.
She could use her own judgment and figure out like, Hmm, somebody else usually rides this all the time. But instead, because she has her eye on the prize of Edmund, she is very content to push Fanny to the side and just be like, doesn't matter, I'm going to make sure that you stay over here in your box while I'm in my domain as somebody who's higher class and actually worthy of this person and make sure I take my place by his side. And you can't.
So I was thinking about how you could draw parallels between the two. And eventually spoiler alert for Legally Blonde, this movie that's been out for twenty something years, Vivian and Elle come together and it's more of like a girls supporting girls moment rather than collaborating to exclude other women because there's this scarcity mindset, which is not incorrect in Fanny and Mary's time.
It's not unfounded, but I would love to see what collaboration would look like between women in Regency times. I want a Regency Legally Blonde is what I'm saying.
Emily: I like it. I like the consideration of what [00:28:00] it could look like if it were an inclusion of other women rather than exclusion, but also, yeah, I understand why it plays out the way it does, because this isn't a situation where female empowerment is going to be a viable outcome.
You can't just go off to law school on your own. Be like, actually I don't need a man because you do need a man.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah.
Emily: Especially if you're Fanny.
Lauren: Ooh, goodness. And Fanny would not survive on her own.
Emily: If she doesn't have a man, by the end of this book, she's going to be doomed to be Lady Bertram's sad companion for the rest of her life.
Lauren: Get thee to the nunnery. That'd be better.
I think that we managed to create a lot out of something from which I thought we would be able to create very little.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. We've got, we've got some collaborations, some noticeable lack of collaboration,
Lauren: some contriving, some conniving, some conspiring.
Emily: Yes. Some girl bossing. Let's do some final takeaways and then we can pull our next tarot for next episode's theme. So I recapped first, which means Lauren, you're on deck.
Lauren: Is it corny to say that my final takeaway should be that women should support women more often?
Emily: No, that's not corny.
Lauren: I think that there is value in seeing one another as collaborators, rather than competition, which we've been programmed to do. And I think that we should do that more often.
What is your final takeaway?
Emily: My non-serious takeaway is that we should bring back the use of the ha-ha.
Lauren: No one said these had to be serious. We just said, what are our final takeaways going to be?
Emily: Yes. But now we have a tradition of making them serious. So I feel like, I feel like I need to something more substantial to say.
My takeaway is that we create a lot of artificial boundaries that we put in the way of our own collaborations.
Lauren: Ooh, excellent.
Emily: Thank you. I was very, very proud of that. Very proud of that.
Lauren: As you should be.
Emily: [00:30:00] Cause you know, I mean artificial boundaries, we can still talk about ha-has.
All right. Shall we take this energy and channel it into choosing our next topic?
Lauren: We shall. Would you like to do the honors this time?
Emily: I would love to.
We have the 10 of diamonds.
Lauren: 10 of diamonds...
Emily: which has a very lovely little flower arrangement in some sort of classical urn, which hearkens very nicely to our landscape, the gardens.
Lauren: Ooh. And also that means that our theme for next episode is accomplishment.
Emily: Ooh.
Lauren: And the explanation for the art on this card is that the fruit of labor and the family garden is a beautiful bouquet. Sit back and enjoy.
Emily: That's going to be very fun to work with because we have already so much talk about accomplishments in this book.
Lauren: Mmhmm, accomplished ladies, career accomplishments for men, we have a lot we can dig into.
Emily: It will be fruitful ground, I think.
Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading chapters 11 through 15 of Mansfield Park through the lens of accomplishment.
Emily: For a full transcript of this episode, check out our website, reclaimingjanepod.com, where you can also find show notes, the full back catalog and links to our social media.
Lauren: If you'd like to support us and gain 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: See you next time, nerds.
Stop collaborate and listen, Reclaiming Jane with a brand new edition.