Northanger Abbey 19-21: “A Particular Set of Skills”

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Gothic shenanigans are officially afoot as Catherine and the Tilneys make their way to Northanger Abbey! Pay no mind to that mysterious furniture, look at these renovated windows and spontaneous dance numbers instead.

Transcript

Reclaiming Jane Season 6 Episode 7 | Northanger Abbey 19-21: “A Particular Set of Skills”

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 reading chapters 19 through 21 of Northanger Abbey through the theme of skill.

Emily: This was such a fun section.

Lauren: It was a super fun section.

Emily: It spent a lot of time on unexpected things.

Lauren: Yeah, and I think... This was one of the sections where I actually had to work to find the theme for once. It was really fun to read and entertaining. I actually laughed out loud at several parts in this section, but I had to actually go back and think about, hmm, where did I see skill in this section?

Many unexpected twists and turns, both for us and for Catherine.

Emily: Definitely. She's having a great time though. And I'm so happy for her.

Lauren: She's living her best life. I'm not sure if that life 100 percent corresponds to the life that other people are living around her, but she's having a great time.

Emily: That's what matters.

Lauren: That's all that matters.

Emily: Well, shall we go ahead and get our recap started so we can talk about the delightful time that Catherine's having in this very gothic mansion?

Lauren: Yes, please. And it is yours first.

Emily: It is indeed.

Lauren: You have 30 seconds on the clock. Ready. Set. Go.

Emily: Catherine is still feeling kind of weird about the energy between Isabella and Captain Tilney, but it gets kind of cut off because the more important thing is that they are off to Northanger Abbey finally.

She's also a little uncomfortable about, like, the intensity that General Tilney seems to have, but Henry and Elinor are making up for [00:02:00] it. she gets to make the second half of the trip in Henry's curricle, which she has a lovely time with, and then the Abbey is unfortunately kind of modernized, but she does find some spooky stuff in her room.

Lauren: That's it!

Emily: Okay, good enough. Are you prepared to tackle this section?

Lauren: I'm ready.

Emily: Okay. On your mark, get set, go.

Lauren: Catherine is still a little bit apprehensive of the vibe she's picking up on between Isabella and Captain Tilney. Isabella's still being a little bit sketch, but Henry convinces her that everything is fine, and so she's reluctantly going to let it go.

She finally gets to go to Northanger Abbey. General Tilney's acting a little bit weird, but she gets to ride with Henry in his curricle, and it's like the most wonderful thing she's ever experienced. And Henry's telling her all these tales about how gothic her adventure is going to be. It's not. She gets to the Abbey.

It's very normal. General Tilney's really intense about dinner time, and she finds weird things in her room.

Emily: Very nice.

Lauren: Thank you. Thank you.

Emily: Yeah, there was there was a lot of intensity in this section and similarly it took some work to find skill.

Lauren: It was a little bit hard to find skill, but I think we will be able to pull something out.

Emily: Definitely. I think one of the main things I see, is Henry's skill in like talking Catherine around, like. The man's got something of a silver tongue, I think.

Lauren: 100%, yes.

Emily: She, early on, expresses her misgivings about these interactions between Isabella and Captain Tilney. And Henry is, he's not really trying to talk her out of it, I guess, because he sees what's going on and is desperately trying to also make her aware.

But he is also kind of trying to, like, get her to worry less about it, because it is out of her hands, and it doesn't actually involve her.

Lauren: Yeah, this is one of the rare cases where he is employing a little bit of a silver tongue, not to gaslight her, because he's not trying to make her believe that she doesn't see what she sees, but just to, like you said, get her to worry a little bit less, because [00:04:00] Henry can see very clearly what's happening.

And he also knows that no matter how much Catherine worries about it, isabella and her brother are going to do what they're going to do, regardless of Catherine's opinion on the situation. And is he aware that James would be the collateral damage? Sure, but like. He's also aware enough to know he can't really do anything about that and that James is an adult and he will eventually move on if Isabella and Captain Tilney do decide to run off together as it seems like they're going to do.

So he's trying to not necessarily convince her otherwise, but give her other things to focus on. So, for example, he does try and tell her, you know, 'Your brother and Isabella know themselves and their relationship better than you do. You're not in the relationship. They know what's okay and what's not. So if you believe the best of Isabella and you believe the best of James, then you also have to believe that whatever she's doing is probably fine.

And if it's not, there's really not that much that you can do about it anyway.'

Emily: That's Isabella's problem at that point.

Lauren: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And Catherine is kind of convinced. But not completely. Enough to to let the topic drop at least for that conversation.

Emily: What a mess.

Lauren: Catherine's social skills are also getting better, which is how she can pick up on what's happening. So she's improved to the point of being able to catch on to what is going on between Isabella and Captain Tilney, but not quite to the point of being able to fully think ill of Isabella or to be able to assign negative motives to either one of them.

Because she's like, surely they don't know how much this is going to hurt my brother. And they can't know that this is inappropriate. Otherwise they wouldn't do it. And Henry's like, Well...

Emily: she just, she refuses to assign malice to anyone's motivations.

Lauren: Very Jane Bennet coded.

Emily: Very Jane Bennet coded.

Lauren: Like, it's just, it's all sun and rainbows, right?

Emily: Mm hmm.

Lauren: That's how I see it.

Emily: She thinks that surely, surely they just must [00:06:00] be missing information. Maybe Captain Tilney doesn't know that Isabella is engaged. And Henry says, 'no, he knows. I told him.' 'Maybe Isabella doesn't realize that she's flirting!'

Lauren: No, she knows.

Emily: Yep. Maybe she doesn't realize how much it would hurt James.

I think she doesn't care.

Lauren: She realizes it. It's not really registering as a reason for her to stop. Isabella is looking out for one person and one person only. Isabella.

Emily: It's gonna be a spectacular explosion when it comes around.

Lauren: Oh, yes. And to add insult to injury, Captain Tilney is not removing with them to Northanger Abbey.

He is staying behind in Bath. Because at first, Catherine thinks, okay, well, this is not great, but... At least all the Tilneys are leaving, so he will be out of Isabella's way, and everything will be right again, and then she finds out that he's not leaving, and alarm bells start going off in her mind, like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you can't stay here, and then I'm leaving to stop Isabella from doing anything stupid.

Emily: Yeah, I think her concerns are not misplaced in this.

Lauren: Not at all. She is 100 percent right to be worried.

Emily: Yeah, Isabella has shown how willful she can be, especially in small things. I don't imagine that that doesn't extend to the big things, too.

Lauren: Mm hmm. We'll find out.

Emily: Mm. We sure will. Oh, but for now, it's all about the Tilneys, and it's all about Northanger Abbey.

Lauren: We start with Catherine being able to go to breakfast with the Tilneys before they set off with their adventure, and the energy is already a little bit off when she gets there, so she's very anxious because she's very aware that she's the guest, and she's being treated very nicely, and welcomed into the family, which already puts her at high alert because in a very relatable fashion, when someone is being so kind to you, you're now intimately aware of every single action and every weird way that you put your hand or any turn of phrase that you're just going now repeat in your brain [00:08:00] ad nauseum because you said something strangely; and so that's unfortunately happening for poor Catherine. And it's only worsened by the fact that General Tilney is so concerned about her enjoying herself to the point where she can't even enjoy her breakfast because she's so anxious about everything.

Emily: Yeah. And she's, she has an additional layer of, like, status anxiety, because the Tilneys are definitely richer than the Morlands. She says that this is like, the most extensive breakfast table she's ever seen laid out, and that makes her nervous, too. But, yeah, definitely relate to that, like, going over to a friend's house and their parents are, like, fawning over you and you're just like, I would like to be invisible now, please.

And it gets so much worse when Captain Tilney shows up late to the breakfast table and his father, like, berates him for being late because it disrespects Catherine. And, like, you can tell how badly she wants to just become part of the wallpaper. She does not want to exist in this room anymore.

Lauren: And because then you feel like the other person's displeasure with being berated is also directed at you because you've been given as a reason for why they're being yelled at.

It's like, no, but I had nothing to do with this. I don't actually care. I didn't ask for this. Please don't perceive me.

Emily: Yeah. General Tilney continues to be incredibly intense and it seems pretty clearly makes his children uncomfortable to be around him. which is unfortunate, but they still, you know, put on their, their nice manners and their civility and are lovely to Catherine.

She just wishes that she didn't have to be around General Tilney so much.

Lauren: Yeah. And even when they're trying to pack everything up in the carriages to leave, there's all this commotion, which honestly is relatable as... For anyone who's ever been on a road trip about trying to pack the car, and then this is wrong, the middle seat's down, it's supposed to be up, because we have to put somebody in this middle seat, this person brought too much luggage, there's too many boxes, and General Tilney is in such a fuss about [00:10:00] all of this, a writing desk that Catherine herself bought almost gets tossed into the street because he's trying to get rid of things so that they can get going.

It's just a mess.

Emily: Definitely. He's, he's clearly just like the overbearing dad who has to have everything correct.

Lauren: Oh my God. He's airport dad.

Emily: He's airport dad!

Lauren: Oh no.

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: If you've never seen the TikTok trend of airport dad, please go search that hashtag so you know what we're talking about and make sure you watch the videos with the Home Depot music overlaid over the whole thing.

Emily: Once they're on their way, fortunately, the actual ride is not too bad. Catherine is in the larger carriage with Miss Tilney and her ladies' maid. For the first half, they spend an excruciating two hours, like, layover at this one place, I guess to rest their horses? and then, like, have to... Deal with General Tilney ordering lunch and just like abusing the wait staff.

But the second half of the day is where things are really coming up Catherine, because General Tilney insists that he swap with her, and so she's going to ride alone in the curricle with Henry Tilney.

Lauren: And this at first is almost too much because she remembers what Mr. Allen had said about ladies and gentlemen riding together alone in curricles being improper.

But then she reminds herself that General Tilney surely would not suggest it if he didn't think it was proper for her to do. So she allows herself to say yes and to sit with Henry.

Emily: And it turns out to be a wonderful time. She does get to see more of the countryside, but also as she's expressing her excitement about seeing this abbey, this old Gothic building. Henry Tilney spins this magnificent Gothic tale of what she's going to encounter and the sliding doors and tapestries and the old housekeeper and how she'll find a secret passage and there'll be a cabinet she hadn't seen and will come upon a manuscript. I wish I could just read the whole thing, but it takes up like six pages.

Lauren: I was similarly tempted to. That was another, another [00:12:00] area where I noted skill because he's a very skilled storyteller, and he also has enough knowledge of the gothic genre convention to be able to just pull this out of nowhere because he, like Catherine, has read so many of these books that he's able to hit all of the typical beats of a gothic story as they're driving this curricle through the countryside to the point where even Catherine is, you know, forgets that he's teasing and making fun and goes, and then what happens? And he's like, what do you mean then what happens? I'm like, I'm making this up as I go.

Emily: But he's very good natured about it. Yeah.

My other note of skill comes before, that story starts being spun as Catherine's getting in the curricle with Henry and notes some comparisons to her previous experience riding alone with a gentleman. She says, "the merit of the curricle did not all belong to the horses. Henry drove so well, so quietly, without making any disturbance, without parading to her or swearing at them.

So different from the only gentleman coachman whom it was in her power to compare him with." She's like, 'wow, this is so much less stressful than riding with John Thorpe.'

Lauren: It is a wonderful comparison between the two and also I think a really good example of like a gentler masculinity that we see in Henry that we can uphold as a masculinity to aspire to rather than one that is just destroying everything in its path for the sake of making itself larger.

Emily: Yeah, he's skilled. He's in control of his actions. He's creative, clearly. Love a man who can spin a story.

Lauren: Spinning a story while controlling the horses so well that you don't even notice what's happening as you drive through the countryside.

I would fall in love too, Catherine. I get it.

Emily: Yep. So they spend a lovely couple hours on their final leg to Northanger Abbey. Unfortunately, she is disappointed by the initial approach because they come through just like a regular modern kind of gatehouse and then the land around it just looks ordinary.

She's been looking for an ancient chimney for the last several miles, hoping [00:14:00] for this looming edifice, and then it's just like, it's so short that she doesn't see it until they're like driving right up. The roads are normal and fine. They're cleanly paved.

Lauren: There's no moat.

Emily: And then it starts pouring down rain right as they're driving up, so she doesn't even get to, like, take in the view of this building.

She has to dash inside.

Lauren: At least the rain is atmospheric.

At least the rain's atmospheric. Catherine's worry about her straw hat is also a reference to the Mysteries of Udolpho. Because when Emily fled Udolpho Castle to escape Montoni, "Her appearance excited some surprise among the locals, for she was without a hat, having had time only to throw on her veil before she left the castle."

And then money is found, "and this necessary article of dress, a little straw hat, such as was worn by the peasant girls of Tuscany, is purchased before they continue on their way."

Emily: Incredible. I feel like I need to read all these Gothic novels now, although apparently there's such a profusion of them that Henry's pulled from like a dozen different, stories to make up his own.

Lauren: It does make me want to go read the, the novels and the genre that's being parodied within Northanger Abbey just because I feel like it would be that much more entertaining to know every reference intimately as you're picking up on them in the book.

Emily: But upon their arrival, once Catherine has, you know, kind of shaken off the rain and has a chance to look around at the drawing room that they're in, she's disappointed because it's just been, like, renovated.

It's got a modern fireplace and everything. Like, it's like, It's not the, the gothic window panes. They're just like normal glass. It's not dark and gloomy and stuffy. It's just a regular house.

Lauren: And General Tilney is speaking very proudly of all the work that he's had done to the house and what they did for the windows.

And Catherine's just like, but why?

Emily: It does give me a little bit of the feeling from seeing. Like, house [00:16:00] flippers take a beautiful, like, Victorian or older building and just, like, strip it out and make it, like, open concept and get rid of all the original woodwork. Just like, oh, I feel it in my soul. It's horrible.

Lauren: Irks me to no end. When it's like, oh, look at all this architectural vernacular that we've just removed from this house completely. Like, no, that was location specific and you just ruined it? Why? No!

Emily: Of course, there's always arguments to be made about preserving history versus updating and what things are worth saving, but sometimes it's just painful.

Lauren: Agreed. And for Catherine, she is definitely feeling the pain.

Emily: She's so disappointed.

Lauren: And even with Henry's teasing about, oh, what do you think you're going to see, trying to prepare her for the fact that this is not going to be an abbey out of your gothic novels, but we can... Pretend and kind of spin a yarn on our way there.

She had that in her mind already and it's still just a little bit disappointing because she knew it wasn't going to be exactly like a gothic novel, but can she get a stained glass window? Can she get a sooty fireplace? You know, anything.

Emily: Can a girl get an edifice?

Lauren: I'm just, I, listen, she's not asking for much.

Emily: She was a little bit worried about possibly having like a big, oversized, drafty room all by herself in a separate wing, but she's two doors down from Miss Tilney and her room is modestly sized. But when she gets in there and they're quickly dressing for dinner because they only have 20 minutes before General Tilney wants dinner on the table, he is adamant about this! She gets distracted by a big heavy chest that is difficult to unlock and and it's hard to open up and then there's just like a duvet.

Lauren: Just some linens.

Emily: Just some linens. And when Miss Tilney comes in to fetch her for dinner, she's like, Oh, yeah, I don't really know where that came from. It's just, I haven't moved it, but it's convenient enough. I thought maybe we [00:18:00] could put some hats in it if I needed to. And over there in the corner, it's kind of out of the way.

Lauren: And there's so much, like, faked narrative tension over this chest. Because Catherine is at first, single minded over, 'I only have 20 minutes to get ready for dinner. General Tilney is being super weird about this. I must get ready for dinner on time. Okay, focus.' And she starts getting ready for dinner, but then she sees this chest.

And so she's going back and forth with herself about 'must get ready on time. But also, how am I supposed to get ready on time when there is this mysterious chest just staring at me?' And then a lady's maid comes to her door to offer to, like, help her get ready and Catherine's like, 'Goodbye!' So at one point she has, like, one arm through a sleeve, the other arm, like, reaching to see if she can unlock this chest.

Emily: The specificity of that, like, she got one arm into her gown was so funny.

Lauren: She's just overcome with curiosity and she must find out what is in the mysterious chest and then it's just like just a duvet, just some linens. No big deal.

Emily: Her curiosity, however, is rewarded after dinner when she returns to her room and she notices a piece of furniture that she hadn't seen before, bizarrely. it's a big, mysterious cabinet that's clearly locked. It's even more difficult to open than the chest. She has to wrestle with the lock for a long time, and it's late. There's a storm outside. There are drafts coming in through the windows and moving the curtains.

Lauren: Just like Henry said!

Emily: Just like Henry said! And then she finally gets this open, and she checks through all of the drawers, but there's one more, like, cabinet inside that's also locked and it's so hard to get open too, and she finally gets to it and then, just as Henry said, there's an ancient manuscript. She gets far enough to pull out this roll of paper and like, see that it has writing on it and then accidentally blows her candle out and is like, 'Oh, [00:20:00] I'm alone in the dark and it's drafty,' and just like dives into bed because she had refused to stoke up the fire for fear that it would look like she was afraid of the dark.

Lauren: Which clearly she is.

Emily: Clearly she is. She's, she's run her overactive imagination so far that she won't even stand in the dark.

Lauren: So we, we end the chapter with Catherine kind of shivering beneath the covers as a storm rages outside, but Still burning with curiosity to know what this mysterious manuscript says, but of course she cannot find out until the morning because she didn't stoke the fire and her candles blown out and she has no way of getting enough light to read this manuscript. So she's just going to have to wait. And at first she thinks how could she possibly fall asleep because she just, she must know! There's so many agonizing hours until daylight! But of course she does.

Emily: It does take her a while, it seems.

I think they said that, she heard the clocks in the house strike three before either the storm quieted down or she fell asleep.

Lauren: Oh, God bless her.

Emily: I'm super curious about this roll of paper, too, now.

Lauren: Dun dun dun!

Emily: I've been drawn into the, the gothic mystery of it all.

Lauren: You have to know.

Emily: You are not immune to gothic romance.

Lauren: Listen, genre conventions exist because they work.

Emily: I'm invested.

Lauren: And that is the end of the plot points for our section.

Emily: It was so fun to read. I loved all of the elaborating on their mutually beloved gothic novels and Catherine. It was, it was very funny to see her disappointed by like, Oh, this is just a renovated house.

Lauren: It's just normal.

Emily: It's just normal. How dare they?

Lauren: Don't they know what they're sitting on? It is funny to think about what I guess renovations would be like in the 19th century. So we're very familiar with like, 21st century renovations and usually people are renovating like 19th or 20th [00:22:00] century structures, at least in the US.

And so it's funny to me to think about like being in the 19th century and having an even older piece of architecture to say like, well, look at what we've done with it to put it on the 19th century equivalent of Zillow. The property value has gone up so much higher.

Emily: That originally is what I wanted to talk about for history, but for the love of me, I could not word my, search in a way that didn't just give me, like, tips on renovating Georgian houses.

Like, that's not what I want. I want to know what the Georgians were doing to their earlier houses.

Lauren: That's not my question.

Emily: Yes. So yeah, tragically, I wasn't able to get that together for this episode.

Lauren: R. I. P.

Emily: If anybody does have information on that, I want to know what the approaches were. Like, we talked about, like, landscape architecture for, I think it was Mansfield Park.

and some of the changes that people were making there to, like, their grounds. but I, I want to know what they were saying about, like, oh, do you hate this, you know, gloomy Gothic architecture? Here's how you update it.

Lauren: Brighten up your living space.

Emily: Literally. Well, if that wraps up our plot points, did you have any other places where you were able to bring Skill into this reading?

Lauren: No, I, I think this is everything I noted with Skill, though I was reminded of a particular line that I wanted to just highlight, going back to Catherine's disappointment at the stubborn, normal nature of Northanger Abbey when they're, they finish their approach to the Abbey and as she's, you know, starting to be able to explore it, she's very upset because the breeze had not seemed to waft the sighs of the murdered to her.

And it wafted nothing worse than a thick, mizzling rain.

Emily: Poor thing. No ghosts, just weather.

Lauren: Catherine, did you, did you want to have the smell of death wafted to you on the air? I don't know that you really know what you're asking for here. [00:24:00] It wouldn't be very pleasant.

Emily: She's just devoted to the drama and the romanticism of it all.

Lauren: You know what? I admire the commitment to the bit. What about you? Did you see Skill anywhere else?

Emily: I think that about covered it for me too.

Lauren: Skill of Jane Austen.

Emily: Skill of Jane Austen. Absolutely. I, yeah, I was going to say, we do have to recognize her skill in crafting such an intriguing story.

Lauren: I think that covers all of our bases, then.

Emily: Works for me.

Lauren: Perfect. Okay, so we do not have Georgian era property brothers, but what do we have for our historical topic today?

Emily: We have something related to Georgian Era Property Brothers.

Lauren: Oh, excellent.

Emily: I decided to just get more specific.

Lauren: Okay.

Emily: Because one of the things that Catherine calls out is the windows being so disappointed.

And windows and window glass are so interesting to me because I'm a huge nerd. If anyone missed that memo.

Lauren: Okay, go on.

Emily: Yeah. But specifically because this is a gothic building, I looked back a little bit at what was up with English Gothic windows and what happened after that, that means the Northanger Abbey no longer has them-- the English Gothic windows.

Which, along with the rest of Gothic architecture, first appears as a style in England in the late 12th century, are really notable for their very elaborate stained glass. They're composed of hundreds or thousands of small pieces of really deep and rich colored glass that are assembled really like a mosaic, into a cohesive image.

if you want a great example of like that early look, you can look up, the Thomas Beckett window at Canterbury Cathedral. So that's the, the defining style as it arrives in England. Throughout the, the 14th century, the window openings got larger to accommodate more light in chapels because these were ecclesiastical [00:26:00] buildings.

They weren't domestic dwellings. Better materials also led to much more consistent and delicate glass that also could be made into larger pieces, than the small and kind of color streaked earlier iterations in the stained glass. Then once you get to the 15th and 16th century, there were new techniques that were making the images themselves more naturalistic and less mosaic like because you did have these larger panes of glass.

And so then you are able to bring in more sort of painterly techniques to bring depth and rendering to these images. Of course, a lot of these windows were intentionally destroyed during the multiple waves of particularly anti- Catholic sentiment, like the Reformation under Henry VIII, which is when things like abbeys would have been seized and become private homes, like we talked about in Emma with Donwell Abbey.

the English Civil War was another one of these, where a lot of this architecture was destroyed intentionally. Then we get to the 17th century when English glassblowers, developed some new processes that made glass clearer and a lot easier to manipulate into these larger sheets, but it was still difficult and expensive enough that having a large number of windows, especially with large panes was definitely a sign of wealth.

So General Tilney is certainly showing off the amount of money that he or the family was able to put into this renovation to, replace these windows, whether they were destroyed or not, with these nice big clear panes that let in so much light as the Georgians loved.

Lauren: Much to Catherine's dismay.

Emily: Much to Catherine's dismay.

Much to my dismay, too. The stained glass is beautiful. That was just a tiny little detour into the window glass and one of the things that Catherine was so devastated to see was no longer Abbey like.

Lauren: I love specific history. Thank you.

Emily: Me too. [00:28:00]

Lauren: I'm glad you tied it back to how abbeys became private possessions in the first place because I think that that can be sometimes confusing when you combine the, the definition of an abbey with going to someone's private home. Without that context, it can sometimes get confusing.

Like, what, what do you mean your home is an abbey?

Emily: Right. Maybe this is just a way that people name their homes, but it's not. It really was an actual abbey.

Lauren: Until it wasn't.

Emily: Until it wasn't. Until it very forcefully wasn't.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: Yeah, but I, I liked this as well because it definitely ties into the amount of skill that went into creating either the original Gothic windows or the more recent, delicate clear glass that windows were glazed with.

Lauren: Both examples of craftsmanship, just with different goals.

Emily: Exactly.

Lauren: Neat. Thank you.

Emily: You're welcome. What do you have for pop culture for us today?

Lauren: So I was thinking about how Catherine is living in her own story. I think yours is a good example of skill being tied to your historical topic. Mine is not. I decided not to go with the theme this time.

And I was thinking of what other stories or heroines I could think of where the supporting cast is in one story and the heroine is clearly in another. And the example that I came up with was Enchanted.

Emily: That's so good. I love that.

Lauren: So for those of you who haven't seen the movie, Enchanted is a 2007 Disney film that is both kind of honoring and poking fun at golden era Disney films and before that as well.

So like the traditional Disney animation is Snow White, Cinderella, things like that. And the plot is that, Giselle is a princess in this fantasy land. And when you first encounter her, she's like, in the traditional Disney animation. And she is pushed by the evil queen into a well because Giselle is a threat to her to her queendom because you know, this is skewering Disney [00:30:00] films.

So of course. And When Giselle is pushed down this well, she is taken through an interdimensional portal into 2007 New York City

Emily: I gotta say, this movie was the origin of my crushes on both Amy Adams and James Marsden. Amen.

Lauren: Once again, bisexual awakening for the bi community of the 2000s.

Emily: They did so much for us.

Lauren: They did so much for us. Thank you.

Emily: But please continue.

Lauren: James Marsden is the prince in an excellently cast decision. And when Giselle is placed into New York City, she still has all of the social references and mannerisms of a Disney princess from like a 1950s Disney film. So of course, when you place her in New York City of all places, which is one of the most cynical American cities that we have.

There's a very stark contrast to the way that she's interacting with the world and the way that the world is interacting with her. But for the majority of the movie, like she's really not aware of this at all. So she is still living in her Disney world. And that's the way that she's perceiving 2007 New York around her, despite the fact that the people around her, including Patrick Dempsey, who encounters her with his young daughter and then brings her into his apartment because his daughter insists that she's a real princess and they need to bring her home and save her.

Despite his skepticism and basically him telling her in so many words that she's crazy, she just continues to live her life as though she's still in her original land. And it sometimes works for her. Like she, you know, she goes on a whole musical number throughout New York when she's trying to explain to Patrick Dempsey's character why his fiance is upset with him.

Emily: I still get that song stuck in my head.

Lauren: In the course of that musical number, even though Patrick Dempsey's character is looking at her like, 'how does everyone know the words to this song? What is happening?' She gets other people to cooperate with her. It's one of the moments I love where people acknowledge the fact that they're in a musical and they are actually acknowledging the absurdity [00:32:00] of all these random people suddenly knowing a intricately choreographed number.

And the way that she interacts with the world around her retains so much just like innocence and charm despite the realities of like our world trying to make her smaller or put her into a specific definition of what she should be that she does not fit with.

And so even as she learns more of like, modern day New York social cues. She still retains a lot of who she was at the beginning of the story and like, in the best way possible. And I think another way in which she and Catherine are similar is that they both believe the best in everyone and they completely miss like basic social cues for different reasons. But I see similarities in those two characters in particular.

But that, that is my pop culture connection for today. The similarities between Enchanted and Northanger Abbey.

Emily: I love that so much. What a good movie. If you have not seen it, you definitely should.

Lauren: It's a great movie.

Emily: All right. I guess I need to rewatch it.

Lauren: I know. I kind of feel like rewatching it after writing down what these comparisons were. And now I want to go back and rewatch that movie.

Emily: Absolutely delightful. And yeah, completely on point about how they're just, like you said, for very different reasons, but both of these characters are definitely living in their own worlds and just interpreting what they want out of the realities around them.

Lauren: With a slightly cynical, but ultimately caring man alongside them.

Emily: Yeah, definitely.

Lauren: That's all she wrote.

Emily: Wonderful. Thank you.

Lauren: You are welcome. I think that takes us to our final takeaways.

Emily: You're up first.

Lauren: I feel like we said this before, but my tongue in cheek final takeaway is stay delusional.

Emily: All right. Yeah.

Lauren: And, and not in, not in a way that's [00:34:00] harmful to where you're pushing something, pushing a harmful narrative or something that hurts other people. But if it's being delusional in the context of, 'this cabinet's really mysterious and I'm going to like create mystery around me,' why not add a little fun and some color into your life?

Emily: Create joy if you're not finding it already.

Lauren: Yeah. Stay delusional. Have fun. What about you?

Emily: I think my final takeaway is going to be on learning to recognize and accept the things that are out of your control. This is something that I personally struggle with. But, not letting that sap your energy.

Catherine is so worried about Isabella and Captain Tilney, she's also putting more energy than she should into being disappointed about Northanger Abbey. And that's not a decision that she made, it doesn't actually affect her. So yeah, I think that's what I'm taking from this.

Lauren: That is an excellent, very mature takeaway.

Emily: Good.

Lauren: Okay. Last thing we have to do is just our tarot card.

Emily: It's your turn to pull.

Lauren: Yay. Okay, our next card is the Ten of Clubs.

Emily: The Ten of Clubs is Hard Work. She who reads such a large stack of books has worked hard for her knowledge and success.

Lauren: The best thing about this card is the illustration on it is a stack of books, and one of the books with its spine facing outward is The Mysteries of Udolpho.

Emily: They knew what we were doing.

Lauren: They knew.[00:36:00]

Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading chapters 22-24 of Northanger Abbey through the lens of hard work.

Emily: To read our show notes and a transcript of this episode, check out our website reclaimingjanepod.com, where you can also find the fullback catalog and links to our social media.

Lauren: If you'd like to support us and gain access to exclusive content, you can join our Patreon at Reclaiming Jane Pod.

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: Next project, we just go and read through every book that's been referenced in an Austen novel.

Lauren: Oh my God. We'd never run out of material.

Emily: No, we never run.

Lauren: Great.