Mansfield Park: The Wrap-Up
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At long last, we have come to the end of Mansfield Park. Join Lauren and Emily for a retrospective on the book, a deluge of questionable advice for the characters, and an inevitable airing of grievances.
Show Notes
All good things must come to an end, and so, dear listeners, here we are. And what a journey it’s been!
Mansfield Park feels like the Austen novel you either love (and end up constantly defending) or love to hate. You can likely guess which side of that we fall on, so our apologies to the fans who truly love MP and stuck with us despite the difference in opinions. You da real MVPs.
6 Degrees of Jane Austen is our next episode and we are still collecting potential topics — let us know in the comments below or on social what outlandish things you’d like to see us connect! Even if it’s not chosen this season, we’ll keep it in mind for next time.
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Season 3 Episode 11 | Mansfield Park: The Wrap-Up
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 wrapping up our discussion of Mansfield Park and giving some questionable advice to fictional characters.
Emily: We are finally at the end of Mansfield Park!
Lauren: We made it!
Emily: We made it.
Lauren: Mama, we made it.
Emily: We are celebrating the end with some lovely improvised cocktails. Hibiscus rum and what, cran apple juice?
Lauren: Yeah, it, it tastes better than it sounds.
Emily: It, it does.
Lauren: It's like a hibiscus cranberry apple cocktail.
Emily: But I, I would also like to shout out a recipe submitted by Carrie Paris for a new drink called the Fanny Price, which is a quarter cup of water and a 32 ounce glass with plenty of room left for everyone else's baggage.
Lauren: The way I shrieked when I saw that recommendation. Honestly, A plus.
Emily: Well done.
Lauren: Well done. Thank you for that suggestion.
Emily: So let's start with our, our general impressions of like the experience of reading this book.
Lauren: I think my first thought is that we're not supposed to enjoy reading Mansfield Park as much as we enjoy books like Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.
Emily: I concur.
Lauren: It's not a fault of the book that it's not as enjoyable to read. It's it's a feature, not a flaw, so I can appreciate the goal of the book and what it's going for, even as I wish I were having more fun reading the book.
Emily: Definitely Mansfield Park, especially coming right off of Pride and Prejudice is like definitely a downer and clearly is... it's not supposed to be uplifting.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: But I feel like I'm, I'm going to have to reread Mansfield Park in the future [00:02:00] and just see if experiencing it differently, changes my perspective on it.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Or gives me new understandings on it because we do read these books really slowly. I mean, it's effectively five chapters every two weeks, which is much, much slower than I usually read.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: And so with just that being so spaced out and then I'm always reading other books at the same time, too. So it, it gets kind of chopped up in my brain.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: So at some future point after we're done reading the rest of Austen, maybe I wanna go back to it, even though I didn't particularly enjoy this experience, and reread it and see how it comes off to me then and what I pick up in a different reading.
Lauren: Yeah. Now that we've finished the book, what are your general impressions of some of the main characters? So, I mean, I feel like our, our opinions on Edmund have been pretty well documented. What are your final opinions on people like Mary or... who else do I wanna pick?
Let's do Mary and Fanny, what are your final opinions on those two?
Emily: I ship 'em.
Lauren: Oh, I forgot about our fan fiction moment.
Emily: Right? Yeah. It's still, you know, it's still percolating in the back of my mind.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Yeah. Fair-- fairy.
Lauren: That's their ship name!
Emily: Fary! Better than Manny.
Lauren: No!
Emily: The rum's taking effect.
Lauren: I didn't even think we needed rum for that.
Emily: Oh, fanny and Mary. I don't know. It's almost difficult to formulate opinions on them because as frustrated as I am with both of them and like, the decisions they made and the actions they took, I also completely understood why they did what they did.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Which is just very, like, these are two people existing in the world that they have to exist [00:04:00] in. So they both make a lot of sense to me as characters inhabiting their world. But also I hate them.
Lauren: Okay. All right.
Emily: Okay. That's, that might be, that might be a little stronger than I wanna come off. I don't, I don't hate them, but I just spent so much time frustrated with both of them.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: When, you know, from an outside perspective, it's so obvious that like Mary needs to just dump Edmund. There's no reason to keep stringing him along like this. And Fanny does not have nearly as clear a path out because she's very dependent on the very people who are, you know, making life miserable for her. But she also just keeps pining after Edmund, basically.
Okay. To not to kick off our advice too early, both of them need to get the fuck over Edmund. He is not worth it.
Lauren: Just isn't there a picture of a celebrity in a t-shirt that just says dump him? Is it Britney Spears? But that is, that is the vibe.
Emily: Edmund is the real villain of Mansfield Park. He just ruins both these women for no reason.
Lauren: And he's not even worth it.
Emily: He's not!
Lauren: He's not a prize.
Emily: That's the worst part.
Lauren: Like, can you at least fight over someone worth fighting for?
Emily: Honestly.
Lauren: I mean, not like they're fighting. It's very...
Emily: I don't know. I feel like Mary kind of is.
Lauren: That's true. She is at the beginning of their interactions. I think when she realizes that Edmund and Fanny both hold each other in like very high esteem, and so she's making sure to insert herself into every conversation and to create situations where Edmund needs to spend time with her instead of spending time with Fanny. But then I think she realizes at the moment, that she's won. And so it's no longer a fight anymore. She's like, okay, cool. Got it.
Man secured. anyway, I just need to wait for him to actually pop the question.
Emily: Might have happened sooner if you would stop insulting him, but...
Lauren: [00:06:00] perhaps.
Emily: So Lauren, since you have read Mansfield Park before albeit several years ago, how was this experience for you? Because we've talked before about how reading the books in this format is very different than doing it for a class or doing it independently.
So did anything change for you in, in this reading?
Lauren: I wish I could say, oh, I like the book so much more now, but I don't. Cuz I don't remember liking it the first time I read it either. And I know that's a hot take, I guess. Well, not necessarily a hot take because it's not the most popular book in the Austen fandom, but I wanted to like it more because I can appreciate all of the intricacies in the book and all of the different messages and themes and things that you can pull out of it from reading, especially given how we've approached the book this year.
And so that I did enjoy. I enjoyed being able to kind of make the book our own in a way. And even though I don't necessarily enjoy the book on its own, it's not something that I would personally pull out and reread for pleasure, I did like being able to find joy in connecting themes to the passages and in finding new ways to like, to look at or interpret characters that made it a lot more fun.
So even though overall, still not my favorite in the Austen canon, I did enjoy the experience of reading it more, even though I don't like the book more this time around. And I wanted to have that shift in opinion in thinking like, well, maybe as I come to it as a more mature reader and with more perspective, I'll enjoy the book more, but I, I don't.
Emily: Yeah, I, I feel like we definitely had to make a lot of our own joy in reading this book with the other things that we decided to talk about.
Lauren: This is, this is true. We made it fun and hopefully we made it a fun listening experience as well. Whether you love the book, in which case, you're probably very unhappy with us in this conversation right now.
Emily: Sorry.
Lauren: Or if you had similar struggles in, in reading Mansfield Park. [00:08:00] Yeah. And if you love the book, I'm really sorry cuz you, I --you've made it this far and honestly congrats to you because we've kind of been ragging on it the whole time.
Emily: Bless you for sticking it out.
Lauren: Thank you.
Thinking of how reading it through different themes made it more fun. We can think about the different themes that we read through this season and how we connected them back to Mansfield Park, a little trip down memory lane, if you will.
Emily: Yeah. So we did this similar overview in previous wrap up episodes. So our 10 themes for this book were disappointment, which was a great place to start.
Thank you again to The Thing About Austen for joining us in that one. Also, you can catch us with The Thing About Austen again in a few weeks at Virtual Jane Con.
Lauren: A few weeks if you're listening to this in real time, if you're binge watching, it's already up! Or binge listening, rather.
Emily: So from disappointment, we went to collaboration, followed by accomplishment, positivity, challenge, energy authority, balance charm, and finally rejection, which was such a place to end this book.
Lauren: It really was.
Emily: We, we reject Mansfield Park.
Lauren: Which of these themes was your favorite?
Emily: I think I'm gonna have to say authority.
Lauren: Mm. Okay.
Emily: Not because I enjoyed it per se, but because there is so much to dig into in the whole book, not just in that particular section.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: About who is wielding authority and how they use it.
Lauren: Yeah. We were talking about how it made the book more fun to be able to read it through those themes, and there's so much that you could do reading the entire book, like you said, and just focusing on that to the exclusion of all else. And you could come up with so many different interpretations and meanings and all this stuff just by focusing on who has power and even something as sig-- like small as a single conversation.
Emily: What about you? What was your favorite theme?
Lauren: I think mine was [00:10:00] challenge, and probably for similar reasons, thinking about who was being challenged and how, and what that looks like, because I'm really interested in what those interpersonal dynamics look like. And that so much of this book is studying the way that what can seem like an innocuous conversation is really an interaction with so much depth to it. Where something that can on the surface level just seem like two women talking about what they'd like to do with their lives or something like that, when really there's this undercurrent of, 'I'm telling you what my future is going to be. And it's going to be a future with this person who's in your life, which means that that is a future that's closed to you,' or having a conversation about what's possible for other people while reminding someone else of what their place is and the different levels that every conversation functions at, I think is really interesting.
And what Jane Austen does the entire time and the challenge that's inherent in all of that is both people challenging one another, being challenged to understand one another, which we saw so often with Mary and Edmund speaking to, and not hearing one another at all. Or even being challenged to verbally stand up for yourself as Fanny does.
So I think that was one of my favorites, though positivity and charm were also fun.
Emily: Okay. I wanna ask you of our history topics, what was your favorite? So to refresh both you and everyone else, our topics were marriage, privatized lands, theater, slavery and Antigua, muslin, balls, public speaking, domestic servants, Portmouth and divorce.
Lauren: That's so hard.
Emily: There was a vast range of topics going on this season.
Lauren: Can I okay. Can I cheat and choose two?
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Okay. Thank you for that very swift answer.
Emily: you're welcome.
Lauren: I think it's weird to say this as like a favorite, but one that I feel like is probably going to be my obvious choice is [00:12:00] I really appreciated being able to bring the discussion of slavery into the book.
And that's always come up when Mansfield Park is a topic of discussion. I think because it's the only direct reference to slavery we get in Austen's novels. But I just think it's important to recognize how woven into the fabric of society it was, and is because it's such an insidious thing, that we tend to forget how big of an impact it had on everything and how far reaching it was.
Aside from the obvious of these characters derive their wealth from the plantation, but just in how it leaked its way into everyday life. I think that's an important distinction to make so that we can understand why the slave trade has an enduring effect today. And that it's not just something that we can forget about or that people are harping on about it's because it had a massive impact on society then, and still has an impact on society today.
So I think that was one of the favorites because of the significance.
Emily: Yeah. That was one that when we first started talking about doing a podcast of this format. I've wanted to talk about that, because it's a controversial topic today.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Even though it shouldn't be, it's a fact of history and I was sort of waiting for Mansfield Park to do it because going into this book, basically the only thing I knew was that they talked about slavery at some point.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: So I was like, okay, Mansfield is when I'm gonna have to do it. And then was just like, waiting for the right section to bring it in. So I'm, I'm glad that, that you, if not enjoyed, appreciated, being able to talk about that context.
Lauren: Yeah, I really did. And I think it gets back to one of the goals we had on this podcast of being able to have those difficult conversations, because look at the New York Times article that came out where it was covering people upset with Jane Austen's House for daring to mention, you know, any racism effects that happened to be a part [00:14:00] of Jane Austen's daily life. People were heated. When it's just a fact of life. And it's important to bring those conversations into fandom circles.
Emily: Definitely. So you said you had two. What was your other?
Lauren: I did, I think really one of my other ones was muslin because I just had no idea! Like I, so I, the number of times I've seen that textile referenced and I just did not know. I like, I didn't know what they're talking about. I had no frame of reference. I was just like, I don't know, cotton and I would keep it moving.
So I learned something new. I now have much better context for having like, historical fashion discussions. And also the history of that was fascinating because I didn't know about all of the different weaving techniques or even the technique necessary to get the fabric in the first place. Or the fact that we had lost this really valuable knowledge about how to create something that's so fine.
I didn't know any of that. So for a completely different reason, that was my other favorite just because it was so new and cool to me to learn. And it was a neat way to get at a small aspect of the book, but that provides so much context for other people like me, who just don't know why that's significant because we are not contemporary readers of Austen, who would've been able to know it off the bat. We need that extra context. That was my other favorite.
Emily: Yeah, that, that's what I was gonna say too, was like, yeah. As non contemporary readers of Austen, there's so many things that she brings up that we don't have the ambient knowledge of because that's not the same world that we live in anymore.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: So I'm, I'm very glad you enjoyed that. That was possibly my favorite one to present. Oh, just-
Lauren: oh good!
Emily: Like, I mean, God, going through and trying to edit that episode. I ran out of breath so many times because I was just so excitedly talking about muslin and textile production. And then it was like, wait, I have to breathe.
Lauren: I would ask you what your favorite pop culture topics are, but I would also have to [00:16:00] ask you to read it from your iPad because I didn't write them down.
Emily: I can do that. So some of our pop culture topics were a little more, it, it, wasn't just a, a neat little envelope where I can say the name of a thing.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: But correct me if I misinterpreted any of these from our transcript.
Lauren: All right.
Emily: Our topics began with Pirates of the Caribbean, which...
Lauren: classic--
Emily: --was an excellent place to start. Followed by the idea of girls support girls. Which you presented through the lens of Legally Blonde.
Lauren: also great. I forgot about that.
Emily: Media representation of diversity, especially racial diversity. Euphoria, the enemies to lovers trope, the idea of matching energy between people or characters, Kate Sharma from Bridgerton, Selling Sunset, 'if he wanted to he would,' and finally, our grand finale, Love Island.
Lauren: And we're back.
Emily: And we're back.
Lauren: Okay. Of, of those extremely varied pop culture topics. What was your favorite?
Emily: So hard to choose! So hard to choose. Can I choose 10?
Lauren: No, max two. I got two.
Emily: Okay. Okay. Just on principle, I loved Pirates of the Caribbean. That was great.
Lauren: Bisexual canon.
Emily: But I also had a really good time matching the vibes of characters. That was in, in episode six where our theme was energy. I mean, I love a play along with me pop culture episode.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: So that, that one was definitely a win for me.
Lauren: Nice. Nice. This might be recency bias, but if he wanted to, he would I just remember being extremely funny. I had fun with it.
Emily: it was also great.
Lauren: I think, I don't know that would necessarily be my favorite, but that was the one where I laughed the most. I think.
Emily: I like episodes where we get to laugh about it a lot.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Especially if it's, you know, immediately following up a dour history topic.
Lauren: Oh yeah. It was a, it was a needed shift.
Emily: [00:18:00] Yeah. Yeah. We, we failed to lighten the mood when ironically positivity was our theme and we, we had slavery followed by Euphoria.
Lauren: "Positively miserable" was an apt title for that episode.
Emily: It really was.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Overall, I feel like we kept the mood fairly up for Mansfield Park.
Lauren: Given the tone of this book, that was really difficult to do.
Emily: That's an excellent point.
Lauren: We did our best.
Emily: While still dunking on Henry and Edmund.
Lauren: Who deserved it.
Emily: Both of them.
Lauren: Every single time. We should have dunked on them more, honestly, mostly Edmund.
Emily: Also going through our old transcripts, I found my, I think it was only on episode two where we remembered to get my predictions for things.
Lauren: Oh yeah.
Emily: And one of them was that Julia ends up with Henry. I was incorrect on that one. Because I didn't, it, I didn't think the Rushworths were gonna get a divorce!
Lauren: Because why would you think that?
Emily: Why would I think that. No one thought that until it happened.
Lauren: Not a prediction you would usually make for a Regency novel.
Emily: But yeah, this was, this was a bit of a roller coaster of a book because we,
Lauren: It really was.
Emily: We had some fun in our episodes, but I think that was desperately trying to make up for how little fun we were having reading the actual book.
Lauren: Yeah there, there are many of Austen's novels to which I'll return just for fun, either in adaptation form or rereading the book, because I genuinely get joy or pleasure from reading them. And this one, I feel like I can learn a lot and it can spark a lot of really good discussions either about femininity or about authority or you know, about the slave trade, like we were talking about slavery. As much as I can appreciate it for the discussions that it creates and the thought that it provokes, I don't necessarily enjoy the experience of reading it. So I don't turn back to it on my own.
Emily: Well, [00:20:00] now you never have to read it again if you don't want to.
Lauren: I likely won't, to be completely honest.
Emily: And that's perfectly valid. There are plenty of books that I never wanna read again.
Lauren: But our, our upcoming book is one that I will reread.
Emily: Yeah, this one is gonna be interesting because now two of our books I have not read before at all.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Pride and Prejudice I've read quite a few times.
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: Emma, I've read about half.
Lauren: You've also watched an adaptation.
Emily: I have watched the most recent adaptation.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: So it'll be a little bit weird. Well, we've talked about the themes we covered.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Our history topics, our pop culture topics. Is it time to give some really questionable advice?
Lauren: It is time to give some questionable advice.
Emily: Yes! Now, do you have a list of characters? You usually are the one who pulls that out.
Lauren: I am. And I wrote down a list of characters for the last one. And then I sat down to do this this year and I didn't. And that bodes well for the chaos vibes of this episode, but not for my episode planning.
Emily: You know what, so I feel like we could give one piece of blanket advice to everyone in this book and that's do better.
Lauren: Amen.
Emily: that's all you need. All right. Episode's over.
Lauren: That's it. That's, that is, that, that is our segment. Thank you so much.
Emily: From Fanny all the way down to Aunt Norris, just do better. Why are you the way that you all are?
Lauren: I hate so much about the way that you choose to be.
Emily: Everyone except like, Mrs. Grant is probably fine. Like she, she's nice to her siblings.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: And seems to be a cheerful person who is also friendly to Fanny.
Lauren: Okay--
Emily: but--
Lauren: I now have a list of six.
Emily: Everyone else do better.
Lauren: Everyone else do better.
Emily: You have a list of six?
Lauren: Yes. Of six characters.
Emily: Okay. All right. Are we, are we starting from the, the top of the hierarchy or are we going from the bottom? Or are we gonna mix it up?
Lauren: Chaos mode.
Emily: Chaos mode?
Lauren: I think first up, let's give some advice to Henry.
Emily: Henry.
Lauren: Henry.
Emily: Do better. Henry. [00:22:00] Stop playing around with people's hearts, because human beings are not your play things.
Lauren: And in the vein of my college marginalia, when not hunting game, he hunts affection. Maybe just stick to hunting game and stop toying with people's emotions for your own amusement. Because as we have seen, that does end up kind of biting you in the ass.
So it's not just, you know, I would appeal to your moral sensibilities of, 'oh, it's not nice. Don't do that to people.' Something tells me this fictional character would laugh in my face if I said that. How about to save your own skin? You just don't do it.
Emily: Let's introduce Henry to the idea of consequences. I still feel like he wouldn't listen. He would think that he's completely immune.
Lauren: Maybe this is advice that we give to him after he's already knocked on his ass. And then he's humbled a little bit and is more likely to listen.
Emily: He deserved to be humbled. God, what a jackass.
Lauren: Like I wonder if maybe the other piece of advice would be to be more genuine in your emotions, because I feel like he was on a path to being less of a jackass and then he fell back into his old ways and he kind of screwed up whatever character development was brewing.
So.
Emily: Yeah, cuz he had that one visit to Portsmouth where even I was starting to go. Mm. Okay. Is he, is he gonna pull a little Darcy here?
Lauren: I was seeing some improvement. I'm not gonna lie.
Emily: Yeah. He seemed like he was getting better. And then he got back into Maria's orbit and it was all out the window.
Lauren: And he backslid. So my other piece of advice would be to lean into those emotions that you feel when you're with Fanny, because they make you better. They make you a little bit less of an ass.
Emily: You know, for billing this as being questionable advice, I think we give really solid advice to these characters.
Lauren: For those of you who have not already figured this out, if you were to run into us in the bathroom of a club, we are the ones who tell you, 'you go out there and you leave him and you go out because you're gonna be the [00:24:00] beautiful woman that you are.'
Emily: And then we would also fix your eyeliner and give you a shot.
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: We just, we just wanna hype, hype up the people who deserve it.
Lauren: We just want you to be happy. Happy and safe. Do you need me to call you an Uber? Like how are you getting home? Because it's not with him. Please, please get him away.
Emily: all right. All right. Chaos mode. Who's after Henry, right?
Lauren: Edmund.
Emily: Edmund needs to get his head out of his own ass and see what's actually happening in front of him. He needs to see people for who they are and hear what they're actually trying to say both for Mary and for Fanny.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. One of the running jokes that we used to have in our family was "listen louder."
Edmund. Listen louder.
Emily: Listen louder Edmund.
Lauren: Maybe to use terms that he would understand, stop being so holier than thou.
Emily: That's very good.
Lauren: a little humility goes a long way and it's also, you know, an admirable trait to have in a clergyman.
Emily: mm-hmm. Yeah, he, he keeps trying to pass it off like he's being humble, especially in the way he treats Fanny.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: But then he just goes on and tramples over her anyway, which is why I'm so mad that they end up married in the end.
Fanny Price deserves better.
Lauren: Once again, she should just be an heiress. I don't know that I have any other real advice for Edmund other than like, shut up and listen.
Emily: I, I think that covers it, really.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Like I, he was clearly doing fine for himself just in life. In general. He just needs to be more considerate of the women in his life, especially.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Where is Lily from The Princess Diaries when you need her? "Hello and welcome back to shut up and listen."
Emily: Perfect. I would like to see that crossover. I, I wish that we could have her on the podcast just for this segment.
Lauren: That would be fantastic. Hmm. Okay. Who should we choose next?
Emily: I don't know. You're the one who has the list and we're in chaos mode.
Lauren: I'm gonna go with [00:26:00] Maria.
Emily: Oh, Maria.
Lauren: Don't leave your husband?
Emily: Oh my God. Like. If Maria were living today, if she were the girl in the bathroom, I would tell her to leave her husband. Even if, like, he seems like a pretty inoffensive guy, I don't know, like he is boring and not great, but whatever.
Lauren: But I don't know that we would tell her to leave her husband for Henry. Leave him in general.
Emily: Definitely not. Yeah.
Lauren: But not for Henry.
Emily: Yeah. No, that, that would be it. Yeah. Leave, leave your husband, but also maybe like, don't, don't go back to that other guy.
Lauren: Maybe don't be so hung up on him.
Emily: I don't think my voice has ever gotten that high in the podcast.
Lauren: I don't think it has. It's like, you know, maybe download Hinge, you know, put your foot back in the dating pool, but don't go, don't go running back to him, baby girl. Don't do it.
Emily: Yeah. Honestly, I, I think my only piece of advice for Maria is just to like, just stay away from Henry. Like, whatever else you do. That's, that's all I've really got for her because anything else would just be like, change your whole personality?
Lauren: Yeah. Ooh. Spend all of Rushworth's money while you have it.
Emily: He has so much. He's gonna be fine.
Lauren: He's got enough. Just go, just go ham.
Emily: He's a landowner in the early 19th century. Spend his money.
Lauren: Spend his money!
Emily: All right, I'm gonna go chaos mode.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: And ask, what advice would you give to Aunt Norris?
Lauren: Oh, she was on my list.
Emily: good.
Lauren: Other than stop being so awful. I think my other piece of advice would be to find fulfillment outside of being in other people's business. What's a better way to say that? Like, your sole purpose in life should not be trailing behind your older sister and trying to insert yourself into the life that she has.
Emily: Find your own life. Get a hobby.
Lauren: Yeah. Literally get a life. Literally get a life is my advice.
Emily: Yeah. I feel like get a hobby was advice that we gave to someone [00:28:00] on a previous season, but I,
Lauren: that sounds right.
Emily: I can't remember, but yeah. Get a life, Aunt Norris.
Lauren: I think it would do you and the people around you a world of good.
Emily: Especially the people around you.
Lauren: Oh my goodness. Yes. Cuz they don't even like her by the end of the book.
Emily: Mm-mm.
Lauren: They're sick of her. What's your advice for Mrs. Norris?
Emily: Pretty much that, yeah. Mind your own business, which I feel like is related to get a life.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: But yeah. Let other people do what they're going to do, especially because she's not even like giving good advice.
Lauren: No.
Emily: She just wants to be a busy body and control everybody else and live vicariously through them. But you can't do that.
Lauren: Nope. Mary?
Emily: Mary... break it off with Edmund sooner. Because it's pretty early in the book that we realize they're just not compatible as people. Otherwise, I feel like her life turned out alright. She got to go and live with the sister that she liked.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: And spend her own fortune. Like, I, I think we said last episode too, that's pretty much the best outcome you could hope for as a, an upper class single woman.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: During the Regency.
Lauren: Yeah. I think maybe this isn't real advice, but like, be genuinely nice to Fanny earlier. Because she didn't need to be the hashtag mean girl at the beginning, which she doesn't necessarily know. And she is trying to secure her own spot in life, which I can't begrudge her, but she also didn't actually have to be like, mean to Fanny because she would've gotten what she wanted anyway.
Emily: She didn't have to take the horse.
Lauren: I was literally just about to say, let her have the horse, like that's her one joy in life. Just let her have the horse. Edmund is going to follow after you like a lost puppy anyway. Like you, you have already ensnared him. Congratulations. You're hot. Like let Fanny have the horse.
Emily: I love, I love that both of us came back to the horse. That was such a, a small thing. So early in the book, but you know what, minds think alike.
Lauren: Because Fanny wanted that horse for just her [00:30:00] one joy in her day. And Mary was like, no.
Emily: I still don't believe that Mary didn't actually know how to ride.
Lauren: She totally knew how to ride! That was 100% Cady Heron in Mean Girls. Oh my God. I suck at calculus, Aaron Samuels, can you help me, when she gets A's on everything in her sleep.
Emily: Yes, absolutely.
Lauren: Everything comes back to Mean Girls, you can relate everything to that movie. It's a cultural touchstone.
Emily: It is. Come on, are we, or are we not millennials?
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Alright have we, have we been through five? Do we only have one left?
Lauren: Three guesses who.
Emily: Fanny, Fanny and Fanny.
Lauren: Correct! Yeah.
Emily: oh, Fanny. She's so tough because there's not like, actionable advice that you could give her. Because you could say, like we told Edward Ferrars grow a spine, but she's--
Lauren: it's not really fair.
Emily: It's not, because she's completely dependent on these people. And even if she stood up to them, like, as we can see her after Henry's proposal and everything, like they're just gonna treat her like more trash. So as much as I didn't enjoy Fanny as a heroine of a novel, Fanny never actually did anything wrong.
Lauren: Fanny Price deserves better.
Emily: Fanny Price deserves better.
Lauren: Not Fanny Dashwood, though, screw her.
Emily: Yeah, Fanny Dashwood hate club forever. Another benefit of becoming a patron is you can acquire an exclusive Fanny Price deserves better sticker at the five and $10 levels.
Lauren: Ayy.
Emily: Shameless plugs.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Look, we have a Patreon for a reason. We're trying to cover our costs.
Lauren: Just, we're just trying to break even and like buy a coffee.
Emily: Please. we really need coffee. Yeah. I also need to purchase a copy of Emma at some point, so.
Lauren: Oh yeah. That'd be good.
Trying to think of what my advice to Fanny would be. My sweet little delicate baby flower.
I don't know what to tell you. I would tell her to place less of [00:32:00] her self worth into the hands of other people.
Emily: Oh, that's very good.
Lauren: And I know that she does that because she's been in a very like closed environment. And so all of her self worth is based off of the opinions for other people. Like, it makes logical sense why. But if I were able to reach back into fictional time and tell her anything, it would be for her self worth to come from herself and not from the constantly changing opinions of the people around her, who are looking for an excuse to cut her down again and remind her that she is ostensibly lesser than despite the fact that she's literally blood related to them. Honestly, screw all of them for that. That was so screwed up. Mostly Aunt Norris. Cause that was like 99% her, but like, you guys all contributed,.
Emily: Everyone was complicit.
Lauren: Yes!
Emily: And it was so bad! At any point, any of them could have spoken up to the rest of the house and been like, Hey this is kind of fucked. Can we not treat Fanny like this?
Lauren: Like who, who decides that they're going to bring a 10 year old into their home and say, Hey, you know what? I know that this is my literal niece and my blood family, but I'm going to be sure she feels like a second class citizen in this house for the duration of her time here.
Emily: They gave her the Cinderella treatment and why?
Lauren: For what?
Emily: Literally, just because her mother married badly.
Lauren: Like what-- that is. I cannot, cannot imagine, like, not spoiling the hell out of like, either like my friend's kids or like, if I actually have like blood, like nieces and nephews, or like baby cousins, whatever, like they will get just.
Do you wanna go out for ice cream? Do you wanna do like a, to-- what do you want, a toy? A book? What, what is it? I will buy anything. You will spend time with me. Like I don't. How do you not love those kids? I don't get it.
Emily: I don't get it either.
Lauren: Questions that need answers.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Anyway, that's been my soapbox. Thank you for coming.
Emily: It was, it was a soapbox that deserved to be stood upon.
Lauren: Because these people are all awful.
Emily: They are! [00:34:00]
Lauren: We've been saying it all the whole book, but God, y'all suck.
Emily: From the jump, we have told them all that they're terrible, but no one listened to us.
Lauren: You know, you just keep telling fictional characters, don't go downstairs. There's a monster down there. And every time they go downstairs. It's like nothing ever happens.
Emily: It's like they don't even care about our opinions.
Lauren: It's like they don't even hear us.
Emily: Yeah, Mansfield Park definitely made me angrier than I anticipated.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: And for sure, I am more mad at this book than I have been at either of the others.
Lauren: I feel like this has good educational value.
Emily: I mean, yeah, if nothing else, it brings up topics that... I can't say that we don't see them in any of her other novels, but things like, Sir Thomas's involvement in the sugar trade.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: And by extension the slave trade, the dependence of certain classes of people or certain individuals on others who have significant power.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: I mean, yeah. I think, I think the dynamics of authority are perhaps the biggest theme that we could draw out of this. That was a very good topic to have.
Lauren: It really was because it's just so central to everything.
Emily: It's so horribly relevant
Lauren: it. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Very, very true.
Emily: Well on that note, with our opinion of the most salient topic, shall we look at what our complete takeaways were? Our final, final takeaways.
Lauren: I think we shall. And you have the benefit of going first.
Emily: I do. See, normally this is horrible going first because I'm caught off guard and have no idea what I'm gonna say, but this time I know, because I've been thinking about it for hours. And it's horribly, horribly relevant right now.
Lauren: Oh, no.
Emily: Because my takeaway from Mansfield Park is the importance of autonomy.
Lauren: Do you wanna expand on that?
Emily: I mean, I, [00:36:00] I feel like we've kind of covered it already in the remainder of this episode, especially talking about authority and how many people have either real or imagined authority over Fanny, the ways that she's robbed of her own autonomy, the ways she unwittingly gives it up.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: And even just, you know, our discussion in advice to her about her own lack of autonomy and how, no matter what advice we could give, she wouldn't be able to apply it in any meaningful way.
Yeah. So that's, that's my final takeaway is how indispensable autonomy really is. To be able to live your life in the way that you want to.
Lauren: Well said.
Emily: Thank you. I really wish that it didn't have so many real world parallels right now, but I'm not gonna think about that too hard. So instead, Lauren, what is your final, final takeaway from Mansfield Park?
Lauren: Hmm. Given our conversation that we've had today and then kind of thinking back over the various topics that we've had over the season and the discussion of the entire book. I feel like my final takeaway is to listen. Both to yourself and to other people. And I think I would probably come up with something else that I think is like my, my main, main takeaway, because there's so many other things and I'm, I'm thinking about challenge and authority and all of that, but I feel like we've covered that already, so I don't want to rehash it.
But I think listening to yourself and your intuition and your emotions and what it is that you really want. We see how important that is and what happens when you don't. And also what happens when you do, you know, like Fanny stands firm in her convictions and she gets the ending, that she wants, it's not the ending, that we wanted, but she gets the ending, that she wants.
And she would not have received that had she not stood firm in her own convictions. But we also see what happens when you don't listen to the people around you, or you're talking [00:38:00] past one another, or you're miscommunicating. All of the misfortunes that can come from that, I guess, or even just misunderstandings, lower stakes than misfortunes.
So I think my final takeaway is just to listen.
Emily: Yeah. That's really good. That's really good. And that's something, you know, that's advice that pretty much everyone... I mean, I know this is takeaways and not advice, but that's something that I think every character in this book could've benefited from.
Lauren: Our takeaways sometimes end up obliquely becoming advice.
Emily: That's very true.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Well, we certainly didn't enjoy Mansfield Park, but we did learn a lot and sometimes that's all you can say.
Lauren: and we enjoyed the time we spent together.
Emily: That's you know, that's most of it, it's excuses to see each other regularly.
Lauren: Yeah. We get to hang out. It's more fun.
Emily: And have a book club at the same time. It's great.
Lauren: Yeah. So we hope that you have also enjoyed hanging out with us as we read Mansfield Park. And if you enjoyed the book, tell us why. And if you didn't enjoy the book, also tell us why. Share your thoughts on social. We wanna know.
Emily: Well, I think, I think that wraps up our book.
Lauren: I think so effectively. Ah, weird.
Emily: We're halfway through the novels.
Lauren: No, I don't like that.
Okay, nevermind.
Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time, we'll have our second six degrees of Jane Austen segment, where we ignore the rules of the six degrees game and connect random topics to Austen.
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 gain access to exclusive content, including being able to vote [00:40:00] on which topics we cover in six degrees of Jane Austen, 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.
Honestly, it's very like college energy because we were just figuring out what we can make given what's lying around the house.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. We probably could have come up with something more sophisticated, but you know, sometimes you get to the end of Mansfield Park and you just need to have college energy for another night.
Lauren: Could I have made a Total Wine run in anticipation of this episode slash just to stock my house in general? Absolutely. Did I do it? No.
Emily: I mean, similarly, I could have stopped at the grocery store on the way over here, but didn't.
Lauren: Look at what we improvised. It's actually really good.
Emily: Look at what we've created.
Lauren: Look at us, who would've thought.