Northanger Abbey 7-9: “Material Girl”

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We have almost as much to say as John Thorpe does. Catherine's social circle is expanding with characters new and old – plus we'll take you on a shopping spree, a desert vacation, and an extremely targeted new campaign.

Transcript

Reclaiming Jane Season 6 Episode 3

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 7 through 9 of Northanger Abbey through the theme of material wealth.

Emily: As a preface to this episode, I just want you guys to know that as I was reading, I got, I was not even done yet, but I had to send Lauren a text. It was like, "look, I've only had John Thorpe for two chapters and I would already like to return him. Please and thank you."

Lauren: There is a unified dislike of John Thorpe. I think the other important text to read was, "I have almost as much to say as he does."

Emily: I have a lot to like, personally, I have a lot to say in this episode, so I don't know if it's going to be particularly long, but it will definitely be enthusiastic.

Lauren: I'm very excited.

Emily: I'm glad, I am too.

Lauren: Hopefully the many things that we have to say are more entertaining than what John Thorpe has to say.

It will, unfortunately. Still be one sided just because of the nature of this medium that we've chosen. However, you all have chosen to listen to us. Poor Catherine did not have the ability to choose.

Emily: As far as we're aware, you are not a captive audience. if you are, that's unfortunately not our problem.

So good luck with that.

Lauren: Please tell whatever friend or family member that forced you to listen to the podcast that maybe it's just not your thing. And that's okay. We still love you.

Emily: Well, I guess we should go ahead and recap fast so that we can get into all our stuff.

Lauren: Yes, we should.

Emily: And I believe it's me up first [00:02:00] this time.

Lauren: I think so. Okay. 30 seconds on the clock. Ready?

Emily: Ready.

Lauren: On your mark, get set. Go.

Emily: As Catherine and Isabella are leaving the pump room in pursuit of two strange gentlemen, John Thorpe and James Morland literally drive into the story. later that night, everybody all goes to a dance together, where who should appear but Mr. Tilney and his sister, but Catherine unfortunately has no chance to reconnect with him. And then the next day, John, James, and Isabella all show up to take Catherine for a ride out of the city, and she finally decides she doesn't like John Thorpe, and then she learns a little more about Tilney's family background.

Lauren: The end.

Emily: Yay!

Lauren: Perfect timing.

Emily: Are you ready to tackle this recap?

Lauren: I think so.

Emily: Okie doke. 3, 2, 1.

Lauren: Catherine and Isabella are leaving the pump room in pursuit of two people who Isabella 100 percent does not care about when they meet John Thorpe and Catherine's brother, whose name I just forgot, Henry, yeah, and Isabella is really enamored with Henry, Henry's equally enamored with Isabella, Catherine is not enamored with John Thorpe.

At all. But she's stuck with him as the four of them engage in multiple social engagements throughout the next day. She sees Henry Tilney. She's unfortunately not able to reconnect with him. And Catherine really hates John Thorpe.

Emily: Okay. Catherine's brother's name is James. I'm sorry to break it to you.

Lauren: It was just gone from my brain.

Emily: Henry was a solid guess, you know.

Lauren: It's Henry Tilney. And I was like, we're going to roll with it. I can't remember.

Emily: There's only so many names in these novels.

Lauren: You know, we can't win them all.

Emily: We can't.

Lauren: That's how it goes.

Emily: Aside from that, it was a pretty good recap, I think.

Lauren: You know, in case you guys needed more proof yet again that we don't plan these recaps out, there you go.

So we have a couple new characters introduced in these three chapters.

Emily: We do. And the chapters are also very deeply [00:04:00] entwined with our theme of material wealth.

Lauren: Mm hmm. Which I love.

Emily: So I feel like this is one of these times where we're going to end up talking about it throughout our discussion of the chapters rather than like breaking it out, which is cool.

I love when we get to do that.

Lauren: Same.

Emily: So at the end of the last section, Isabella and Catherine had made their way out of the pump room in pursuit of these 2 gentlemen, just like for shits and giggles.

Lauren: Isabella is trying to convince Catherine she actually does not care if these two men notice them or not.

Like, 'I'm not going to look at them. I'm not going to give them the satisfaction.' But as soon as they leave, she has somewhere in that same direction that she would like to go. And Catherine says, 'Oh, well, if we leave right now, we're going to overtake them. You don't mind?' And Isabella's like, 'Why should I care?'

That's, of course, the entire point. But she'll never admit to that.

Emily: But as they're leaving, a carriage drives up very rudely. And Isabella even says something like, Oh, these odious gigs, and then realizes that it's It's their brothers. And immediately her tune changes.

Lauren: I can admit to having similar reactions before where I get annoyed with someone.

Like there was a time literally a couple weeks ago where I honked at somebody at a red light because they hadn't moved and then realized it was my friend driving the car.

Emily: It's always very funny when that happens to me.

Lauren: It is. And I didn't realize it until I got home because they texted me like, why did you honk at me?

I was like, I didn't realize it was you. And also you weren't moving.

Emily: Oh, but yes. So now we have two new characters who we've heard a little about. James Morland is one of Catherine's older brothers. He seems like what you would expect of an older brother. He's been off. And so they're like close enough as siblings, but not besties, the way like Fanny Price and William are. and then John Thorpe is also here.

Lauren: And you could not call him and Isabella close, that's for sure. He seems to want nothing more than to find new ways to insult his sisters.

Emily: And his mother and [00:06:00] everyone else.

Lauren: Everyone in his company except for himself.

Emily: Yeah, pretty much. He is so self absorbed and he is so obsessed with material items. Like, the first conversation we get out of him is about how he acquired the gig they rode up in and is like, showing off his horse and talking about like, how it, it can't go below ten miles an hour, basically, which is like wild.

Okay.

Lauren: And the best thing about it too, is that he's making all of these claims about, He has one of the best things on the market, blah, blah, blah, look at this wonderful thing that he owns, except for he has a gig and not a curricle and a curricle is faster and more expensive and more prestigious. And so the excellent footnote in the copy that I have says, "despite John Thorpe's constant boasting, his choice of vehicle indicates that he, in fact, has very limited financial resources since he buys a gig secondhand from a fellow student."

Emily: I'm so glad you had that context because my copy only gives footnotes for like the most random things that I feel like shouldn't need to be explained. I didn't get anything useful like that. So thank you.

Lauren: Yeah. It goes on to say, "he boasts that the accoutrements make it as good as new and as good as a curricle. The 50 guineas he pays for the gig indicates that it was neither the prestigious bargain he boasts of nor overpriced since Felton lists a standard chair back gig at 57 pounds." So, he paid about the exact correct price. He didn't drive down the price like he's saying he did. He didn't get a fantastic bargain.

He paid a fair price for, like, the equivalent of a

Emily: Toyota. I was just about to say, he went and bought a year old Toyota Corolla and is like, this is top of the line.

Lauren: Treating the Toyota like a Ferrari.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: Please calm down.

Emily: I'm glad that both of our brains went to that comparison.

Lauren: Yes.

Emily: Yeah. He is absolutely insufferable. I do not like John [00:08:00] Thorpe.

Lauren: And neither does Catherine, but she is trying to convince herself that he does, or that she does rather, because she is listening to her brother sing this man's praises because he and John Thorpe are friends. Isabella isn't even... Really saying anything terrible about her brother.

And so since these two people whose opinion she holds in high esteem are saying good things about him, Catherine is ignoring the sense that she has of, 'I actually really don't like this person' and is trying to say, 'okay, well, maybe I do find him agreeable because these people think he's great. So I do too. I guess.'

Emily: I have some other things to say about that later, but listeners, I have a whole presentation prepared for later on a topic near and dear to my heart that I've been texting Lauren about for the last, like, 12 hours. I've become obsessed with it. But we'll get to that later because I don't want to interrupt, our chapter discussion.

Lauren: Oh, the other thing with, John Thorpe and that ridiculous horse of his is that he is fighting with Catherine's brother over how far it is that they've gone.

Emily: Which seems like easily verifiable information.

Lauren: It is 100 percent easily verifiable. And so John Thorpe is originally saying that they've gone 25 miles and Catherine's brother is saying, no, that's incorrect.

We went 23. It was not 25. And John Thorpe's like, 'look at the horse, blah, blah, blah. Do you think he would have been this worked? If he'd only gone 23 miles, he's surely gone 25 in this amount of time.' And then give it another page and a half. And later in the conversation, and he's telling Catherine about the ride that they want to take.

And he says that he's going to drive her down-- or drive her up the hill tomorrow. And Catherine's like, 'oh, well, won't your horse want rest?' And he says, 'rest? He's only come three and 20 miles today.' Oh, so it was 23. I thought it was 25. What is the truth?

Emily: What is the truth? We'll never get the truth out of John Thorpe.

Lauren: Except on accident when he doesn't realize that he's telling the truth.

Emily: Once he's lost the plot of what his [00:10:00] original lie was, then you get it. Yeah, he seems like definitely one of those people who, not even seems like, he is one of those people who just embellishes everything to make himself seem better, and we see it consistently throughout these three chapters. All the trials he's been through were just a little more demanding than he wants to own up to.

And all of the solutions were completely his idea. And just, he's Absolutely absurd. I do not like him at all.

Lauren: He is wonderful and perfect. And there could never be any possible reason that he could be wrong about something.

Emily: He's never done anything wrong in his life.

Lauren: James Morland knows this and he loves him.

John Thorpe then also goes on to denigrate Catherine's love of novels. We're back to this 'novel as a silly female pursuit' again. And the footnote I wrote in my book was, 'men denigrating women's interests since the dawn of time,' because he is insistent upon the fact that he would not like Udolpho because Catherine suggests it.

And she's like, Oh, well, have you read such and such a thing? And he goes, "Oh, Lord, not I. I never read novels. I have something else to do." And she goes, you know, "I really think you'd like it. If you were to read it, it's so very interesting." And he said, "not I, Faith. No, if I read any, it should be Mrs. Radcliffe's. Her novels are amusing enough. They're worth reading. Some fun in nature and them." And Catherine's like... Udolpho was written by Mrs. Radcliffe.

Emily: This is such a piece of work. And truly, this is a timeless example of a person. I definitely know multiple people who are like this.

Lauren: 100%.

It's the same energy as like, Oh, you like anime? Name this obscure character in this show that no one's ever watched before. Why?!

Emily: You're a fan of this band? Name of five of their albums.

Lauren: Right, exactly.

Emily: Because all of their interests are the most correct.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: Yeah. All of these tendencies of [00:12:00] his do not unfortunately make for a pleasant experience for Catherine at the dance they go to later.

She was very relieved earlier in the day that he had engaged her for a set, quite early. So, you know, she wouldn't have to go through the awkwardness of being unengaged. But then right before the dances start, he disappears off to talk about gambling with somebody else that he knows and just like leaves her sitting there awkwardly.

Poor Isabella, who's supposed to dance with James, is like trying to put it off. So that Catherine doesn't have to sit there by herself, but James is apparently really impatient and wants to get up and dance. So they go and Catherine's just awkwardly there and is very self conscious of the fact that like, not, not to use the phrase, but not like these other girls who haven't been asked to dance, she has been.

And they just don't know.

Lauren: It's like, now I look like the rest of these losers.

Emily: Yeah, she says, "to be disgraced in the eye of the world, to wear the appearance of infamy while her heart is all purity, her actions all innocence, and the misconduct of another the true source of her debasement, is one of those circumstances which peculiarly belong to the heroine's life and her fortitude under it what particularly dignifies her character. Catherine had fortitude, too. She suffered, but no murmur passed her lips."

Girl, you are sitting down at a dinner table at a dance.

Lauren: She's suffering.

Emily: She's suffering. This just feels like when my cat cries at me for dinner half an hour early. It's like, you are fine.

Lauren: Mother, I haven't been fed. It's been 84 years.

I'm starving.

Emily: I don't recall the taste of food.

Lauren: Same level of dramatics.

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: Catherine's just a yowling cat.

Emily: But silently.

Lauren: But silently. On the inside.

Emily: Mm hmm. This, this book is... I'm having a lot more fun than I anticipated with this book, because Austen is just leaning into the absurdities.

Lauren: It's a joy. [00:14:00] And right after Catherine is, you know, absorbing all the suffering that she's doing, who does she see but Mr. Tilney!

Emily: Mr. Tilney is back!

Lauren: Mr. Tilney is back, except for she's a little bit too rational and she misses another opportunity for true suffering, because she immediately clocks the woman he's with as his sister, and she completely misses the opportunity to think that he's married and lost to her forever.

Emily: Luckily, she is correct, and it is actually his sister, and later finds out that he is not married either. But still, that was, that was a very quick conclusion to jump to, but, I mean, she has already written this story in her head, that Mr. Tilney is the one for her, and therefore, If it's going to work out, as it inevitably must, he can't be attached, that would ruin it.

Lauren: And be fine.

The rationale of she misses the opportunity to immediately think him married and lost to her forever, it reminds me of the miscommunication trope, but particularly applied to like, telenovelas and kdramas. You see someone with no explanation and you immediately believe like, oh, The love of my life is married or he's with someone else or blah, blah, blah.

And then you run away from the scene dramatically and you get hit by a car. And it was his sister the whole time.

Emily: Jane Austen, you really missed an opportunity there. There could have been another odious gig.

Lauren: Catherine was really missing her chance to be the wronged heroine here. She should have just taken the K drama logic of if you see the man you love with another woman, clearly he's with someone else, and everything is now, it's just gone.

Emily: Maybe it's because she was already wallowing in being wronged in another way, and so that had taken it up, and she's like, no, no, no, this can't, not all of this can go wrong.

Lauren: Something has to be right for me today.

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: I love that it says, you know, from these circumstances, so he's never mentioned a wife before.

He's not talked like the married men who she's used to. He had acknowledged his sister before. And it says, "from these circumstances sprang the instant conclusion of his sister's now being by his side, and therefore, instead of turning of a death-like paleness and falling in a fit on Mrs. [00:16:00] Allen's bosom, Catherine sat erect, in the perfect use of her senses and with cheeks only a little redder than usual."

Emily: It's just so funny. Unfortunately, the delight of only viewing Mr. Tilney again is not enough to make up for the annoyance of the rest of her evening, because the next chapter opens with The biggest mood. It says, "the progress of Catherine's unhappiness from the events of the evening was as follows. It appeared first in a general dissatisfaction with everybody about her while she remained in the rooms, which speedily brought on considerable weariness and a violent desire to go home.

This, on arriving in Pulteney Street took the direction of extraordinary hunger, and when that was appeased, changed into an earnest longing to be in bed. Such was the extreme point of her distress."

Lauren: Mood.

Emily: I'm tired. I want to go home. And then you're ravenous. And you're like, Nope. Sleep. That's it.

Lauren: Yep.

Emily: I understand you viscerally, Catherine.

Lauren: I want to go home. I want to eat French fries. Then I want to go to sleep.

Emily: Because you had high expectations for the event and it didn't go the way you wanted and you just do not have the capability of dealing with it in the moment. You just want to go home. And have some french fries and go to bed.

Lauren: That's it!

Emily: That's it. Her life is so hard.

Lauren: But the injustice is not over because then she is forced to spend the day with John Thorpe. With, of course, Isabella and her brother, but mostly with John Thorpe.

Emily: It's really just with John Thorpe, because Isabella and James are in another carriage that apparently they went through all kind of rigmarole to secure, but Catherine had been sitting there idly thinking to herself, well, she'd like to see Miss Tilney again and sort of get the lay of the land on her.

So she's reading and thinking how she's going to go to the pump room at a certain point, and then John Thorpe shows up and is like, 'come on, let's go.' She's like, 'what are you talking about?' Like, we had plans to go driving today, and James and Isabella are downstairs, so like, get ready, let's [00:18:00] leave. She's deeply irritated about this.

Lauren: She's like, oh, you were serious when you said I was going to take you for a drive. I didn't think that was for real.

Emily: And then he just continues talking about himself the entire time.

Lauren: The worst. And Mrs. Allen is no help. She's just like, oh, do what you want to do.

Emily: Completely misses the cue that Catherine is looking for an excuse to get out of this.

Lauren: Completely went over her head.

Emily: You've always got to be on watch for your friends who are like, don't you need me right now though? Like, didn't we have a plan to do something? Your job in that moment is to come up with a plan that you've had for the last week.

Lauren: Right. Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. But yeah, Catherine just, she doesn't really know what to make of John Thorpe.

His mannerisms and the way he approaches things are just deeply confusing to her. He's just, he's kind of a weird guy. Like, when they're getting in the carriage, he's, what does he say, "You will not be frightened, Miss Morland, if my horse should dance about a little at first setting off. He will most likely give a plunge or two, and perhaps take the rest for a minute, but he will soon know his master. He is full of spirits, playful as can be, but there is no vice in him."

And then when the horse does no such thing, John Thorpe gives himself all the credit for the peculiarly judicious manner in which he had then held the reins and the singular discernment and dexterity with which he had directed his whip.

He's like, he's trying to make out like he's this big macho man to Catherine. And then when the horse doesn't Cooperate with what he had said, being a horse. He's like, oh yeah, it was all me.

Lauren: I could just get it under control. Don't worry, baby. You didn't even realize he was about to go buck wild. And I kept it, kept it gentle.

Emily: Yeah. And this is where Catherine's like, okay, sure.

Lauren: I guess.

Emily: And then her confusion only grows when he's talking about how terrible this carriage is that they had to rent for [00:20:00] James and Isabella, and how, like, they're guaranteed to break down and be thrown out of the carriage, and this freaks Catherine out a little bit, because poor sweet little 17 year old, and she believes that he has a better grasp of the mechanics of a carriage than she does, and so she expresses this concern, and he's like, oh no, they'll be fine, it's basically as good as new.

Like, with those things, they can go 20 years beyond their, you know, expiration date, basically. And she's just like, what is happening?

Lauren: Yeah, nothing makes any sense. And he's also on the topic of material wealth again. So after, you know, there's been a moment of silence for a little bit, and then he also opens with a cringy line of, "Old Allen is as rich as a Jew, is not he?"

Which I also just marked as, oh yikes. Fitting coming from a character who we're obviously supposed to dislike, but still just like, SHEESH.

Emily: Oh! Yeah, this is where my edition did actually have a useful comment basically saying like, John's antisemitism is definitely just like, playing into the rest of his larger character.

Just like, yeah, this is a person who does not give a shit about like, actually thinking about other people.

Lauren: No.

Emily: Or why that is an absolutely wild line to use.

Lauren: The prejudice is just building on why we're not supposed to like this character.

Emily: Exactly.

Lauren: And she does not understand because she is not antisemitic.

She's like, what are you talking about? And he goes, "old Allen, the man that you're with." And she goes, "Oh, no, Yeah, I mean, he is very rich, I believe." And so he continues asking her, like, oh, well, "he has no children at all?" She says, no, not any. And then John Thorpe says, "A famous thing for his next heirs. He's your godfather, is not he?"

So trying to discern, so if he doesn't have any children and he's incredibly wealthy, where is that wealth going to go when he dies? And if he's your godfather, is some of that going to be passed on to you? And are you somebody who I should be connecting myself with if you're going to come into a bunch of money?

Emily: He is so transparent about it.

But Catherine doesn't pick up on it.

Lauren: Not at all. [00:22:00] Poor thing. And she's like, "Oh, well, he's not my godfather." "No, but you're always very much with them." "Yes. Very much." "Aye, that's what I meant." Okay. No, it wasn't.

Emily: It was not.

Lauren: That's not what you meant. But yeah, just a bunch of just questions back and forth and not actually to get to know Catherine at all, or to actually engage in conversation because conversation is an art and there's, there's no give and take, there's no back and forth. It's just John Thorpe incessantly quizzing Catherine about things that she doesn't really grasp why he's asking her these things, all in pursuit of either making himself feel bigger and more self important or finding out ways in which he can continue to create a level of self importance for himself.

Emily: He's all about exploiting the resources at his disposal. And right now he's trying to suss out whether Catherine should be a resource at his disposal.

Lauren: Exactly. Trash.

Emily: Absolute trash. Throw the whole man away.

Lauren: Whole man garbage disposal.

Emily: Hit him with your car.

Somehow though, Catherine gets through this ride and by the end of it, has sufficiently determined that she does not like John Thorpe, despite Isabella and her brother basically saying, Oh, of course you're going to like him. He's such an agreeable guy. But finally, after having to listen, presumably for a couple of hours, to just all of this word vomit about his own obsessions with material wealth, she's like, No, I think I don't like him.

Lauren: I've decided. And finally, when they get home, there's another thing where it was just a perfect example of material wealth in this section as well, because Catherine's giving a recap of, you know, what was going on, how the day was to Mrs. Allen, and then Mrs. Allen is in turn telling her about what she got up to that day.

And Catherine asks, "Did you see anybody else of our acquaintance?" And Mrs. Allen said, "Oh, yes, we agreed to take a turn in [00:24:00] the Crescent. And there we met Mrs. Hughes and Mr. and Miss Tilney walking with her." So Catherine's like, God, I really wanted to see Miss Tilney. And if I'd stayed home, I would have been able to.

So Catherine's asking for additional information about what's going on. Mrs. Allen doesn't remember any detail except for the things that are related to wealth. So she's saying, Oh, you know, I can't recollect what part of the country they come from, "but they are very good kind of people and very rich. Mrs. Tilney was a Miss Drummond and she and Mrs. Hughes were school fellows and Miss Drummond had a very large fortune. And when she married, her father gave her 20, 000 pounds and 500 to buy wedding clothes."

Emily: Insane.

Lauren: Number one, insane amount of money. Number two, these are the details you remember.

Emily: Yeah. So telling.

Perfectly in line with Mrs. Allen's character.

Lauren: 100%. Yeah. Does she remember anything about their personality, about their qualities, about their backstory? No, no. But I do remember exactly how much she was given for her wedding clothes.

Emily: And then, when Catherine's asking further about it, Mrs. Allen's trying to remember whether their parents are alive, and then she comes to the conclusion that, oh, yes, Mrs. Tilney must have died because Miss Tilney was wearing a set of pearls that had been set aside for her upon her mother's death. It's like, that's the line of logic you have to rely on?

Lauren: Not any kind of human empathy for a daughter who lost her mother. No, empathy, no, okay, none whatsoever. Just the fact that she has Just some pearls that she only could have gotten if her mother had passed away.

That's how you realize that her mother's gone.

Emily: This is such a book.

Lauren: What a piece of work. Both the book and the character in two completely different senses of the phrase. And so we come to the end of chapters seven through nine. We got a little bit more meat in these chapters than we did the first six.

Emily: Definitely. Yeah. Definitely more meat. And, Yeah, it also tipped me off to the thing that I, I would like to give my TED talk about now.

Lauren: Please begin.

Emily: Yeah, so, so we went through so many social [00:26:00] interactions in these three chapters that there is a moment in, in chapter nine with, with John Thorpe, where he's doing his weird little back and forth and Catherine says that "she knew not how to reconcile two such very different accounts of the same thing."

And I made a note, 'this is what it feels like listening to neurotypicals,' cause. Hi. Hello. I'm autistic, if you didn't know. And then like I sat and sat there and thought about it for a minute. It was like, wait, hang on, hang on. And started trolling back through the book. So my argument is that Catherine Morland is autistic.

So we have that, that tip off moment. Then I started looking closer. So, so here are my arguments. First, she definitely has like a special interest in, or a hyper fixation on, Gothic novels. We can see that she frames all her own experiences through the lens of being a fictional heroine. Now, you could say that this is just like a narrative framing, but because we're usually in a third person limited point of view, and we only get insight to Catherine, I think it's a strong enough correlation to say that she's thinking of her own life like this.

Second, she adheres very strictly to, overtly stated social scripts, even when they seem kind of arbitrary, like when she's very relieved at John having asked her quite early to dance so she doesn't have to worry about finding another partner. The misunderstanding of these very casually made plans as being set engagements, which I do to myself all the time.

Like for, for Lauren's birthday, my best friend's birthday earlier this year, she mentioned, oh yeah, this is what I'm going to do for my birthday. And I was leaving thinking, wow, I hope I get an invitation. Like, what? What? So, Catherine, I completely understand you hearing John Thorpe's one off comment about, oh, I'm going to take you driving tomorrow and not putting that in your mental calendar.

Lauren: For reference, me explaining the plans to Emily was the invitation because there is no universe in which Emily's not invited to my 30th birthday. [00:28:00]

Emily: Yeah, so I read that. It was just like, oh yeah, I relate. All right. So after that. As I said, the confusion over John Thorpe's apparent contradictions, and then in the next sort of section, her very logical puzzling out, of his real meaning about the relative safety of the carriage that James and Isabella are in, because she goes through step by step, is like, 'well, He says this, but because of this, it must actually be this,' and just goes through one point at a time to figure out what he's probably actually trying to say.

She has an immediate, very close relationship with Isabella, who is helping her navigate this social arena of Bath. But she is very unaware of, and seems kind of unable to perform, these sort of stereotypical friendship activities, like teasing each other over a crush. That just goes right over her head.

she also accepts on others' word that John Thorpe must be agreeable to her, despite her own initial feelings, because she trusts that they have a better understanding of how the society works. and it takes her until the end of chapter 9 to be like, no, I actually don't like him. Because she just assumes that other people know better than her on that particular point of personal interaction. And then finally, I have that she will notice people's actions towards one another on a surface level, but then completely misses their connotations. Like, having to be told, basically, that James likes Isabella. And she also misses other unspoken implications, like Isabella hinting at her crush, that Catherine just doesn't bother to follow up on because she doesn't understand what she's talking about.

So that is my TED Talk. Catherine Morland is autistic.

Lauren: I 100 percent see it. I also realized as you were talking, do you think Isabella is her ADHD counterpart?

Emily: Yes, absolutely.

Lauren: I feel like even in her speech patterns, jumping from thought to thought, you can make an argument for that.

Emily: So yeah, disclaimer, I'm not legitimately trying to [00:30:00] diagnose Catherine Morland, a fictional character as autistic.

I'm not trying to say anything about Jane Austen's intentions, but I recognize a lot of things. Also, I've been reading Unmasking Autism, and so I'm extremely aware of all these traits right now. I think she has a very distinct set of characteristics that are extremely similar to a person who is autistic.

Lauren: I think that's a strong argument. I'm convinced.

Emily: Thank you. Yes. All right. I've got one person on board.

Lauren: I'm sure you'll have more by the end of this episode.

Emily: I hope so.

Lauren: I wonder if I really want to Google to see if anybody else has discussed this in either fan circles or like academia. I'm sure it's out there, right?

Or maybe not.

Emily: It might not be. I don't know. I mean, especially because this is going to be a little bit of a tangent, but especially because the literature on Non stereotypical neurodivergence and this, maybe not especially, but definitely autism is so recent, like the last couple of years we're starting to say, Oh, maybe it's not just elementary age white boys who have autism.

Maybe it's all these other people and they have other coping strategies that mean that they have been looked over. So, it's, if there is anything, it's probably very recent.

Lauren: That is very true. And I think I was more thinking, not academia, but fan circles, and attributing that to, like, the recent discussions now that it's becoming more into the mainstream of people headcanoning certain characters as autistic because they similarly see characteristics in the character that they see in themselves and say, oh, wait a second, they're just like me.

Emily: Exactly.

Lauren: But I don't know how widespread that would be in the Jane Austen fandom.

Emily: I don't know. So yeah, that was, that was my little side tangent and that is just the truth to me now.

Lauren: I support it.

Emily: Thank you. Thank you for letting me stand on my soapbox for a few minutes.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Emily: What's this podcast for if we can't make soapboxes for ourselves?

Lauren: Do you want to [00:32:00] continue on your soapbox with history or do we want to trade places and then come back to history?

Emily: Oh, do we want to get really wild and mix it up for the first time ever?

Lauren: Oh, I don't know. That goes against the structure I have in my head. And now I actually don't know if I like that.

Emily: No, now we've got two neurodivergent people who are like, wait, we can't change this.

Lauren: It's been too long. I can't go back now.

Emily: It's okay. I'm perfectly happy to just keep my momentum going and talk about history.

Lauren: Go for it. Please, please tell us the history topic you have for today. We get a two for one special from Emily on this episode.

Emily: Yes, we do. So material wealth, I really latched onto. And I want to talk about what shopping might have looked like and some of the structures around that. So this is the early days of the Industrial Revolution. So there's a wider variety of goods available to everyday people than there really ever had been before.

A lot of these goods are sort of, you know, accessories, things that are easily pre made, home goods, things like that. There was some ready made clothing that was marketed, but a lot of it was still just custom made. and also remember that this was all hand sewn because sewing machines were very early in their development and mostly for more industrial purposes like sewing leather and canvas and stuff.

So yeah, when it comes to clothes, professionals could make new or remake old clothes according to whatever the trend of the season was. there were also secondhand clothing markets, especially in metro areas like London, but that was mostly limited to the lower classes. So our middle and upper class, cast of characters would probably not be, possibly contributing to it, but not benefiting from it.

Ready mades in terms of clothing and accessories included things like hat bases for millinery, gloves, handkerchiefs, stockings, and some shoes, although there were a lot of shoes that were still custom made. The shopping experience was also [00:34:00] changing a little bit for a variety of reasons. One of them was that new storefront designs were being built with plate glass windows, which were getting more common and more accessible.

So you could just go window shopping down the street and goods were being very attractively displayed for people to look at. You didn't have to go into the shop, ask for something, be given it. And then in some cases. if the shop were particularly badly lit, you might have to actually take it out into the street to look at it.

You could just walk right past and see what was on offer at a particular store. A lot of shops would be catering to a specific set of goods, a particular category. We did not have a Regency Walmart where you could get, like, food and clothes and housewares and books and craft supplies and tools all in the same place.

No. That, like, huge department store kind of thing didn't occur until later in the Victorian period. Some places were starting to expand the sort of things that they were offering, but definitely not to that degree. Most places were specializing in stuff like dressmaking, millinery. blacksmithing tools, stuff like that.

You wouldn't have everything under one roof. The middle and upper classes, like during the broader Georgian period, they were very frequently shopping on credit. So you would open an account with an individual business and then whatever your debts were could just be settled later. But towards the end of the Regency period, this was really causing major issues for especially small businesses who just couldn't stay afloat if those debts weren't covered in a reasonable period of time.

So there were merchants who were trading only in ready money, which was basically just cash only. Which makes sense.

Lauren: Yep.

Emily: Cash payments were usually made in coins, because banknotes [00:36:00] existed, but these standardized denominations, like a ten pound note, were relatively recent, and they functioned more like personal checks than today's bills, so getting your banknote not authorized, but getting it paid essentially relied on the financial health of the institution that it came from, and like, the amount of funds available in the person's account.

So, Coins and cash were definitely the preferred method of payment.

Lauren: I can see why.

Emily: Mm hmm. But yeah, and then that continued to change through the Victorian period until we end up with, you know, standard national currency and different forms of, of, purchasing on credit. so yeah, that's a little look at how they, they were shopping, how they were acquiring and dispensing their material wealth in the period.

Lauren: Thank you. I especially love the little note about the beginnings of window shopping, because that's one of those things where you don't think of it as having a beginning, but of course it does.

Emily: Absolutely.

Lauren: And so it's interesting to hear about, oh, this was a conscious decision to say, we're going to start changing how we display our wares to entice people to come into the shop because that wasn't always a thing, but you don't necessarily think about, What it would have been like before.

Emily: I'm sure there's a whole offshoot of architectural history that we can get into there.

But you're right. Yeah, the availability of new materials and plate glass being more readily available. Yeah. Yeah. That, that whole nascent industrial revolution period is just so fascinating with everything to do. I mean, really with everything, but like trade especially.

Lauren: So interesting. This is why historians are people with very niche special interests, like, let me tell you about this thing!

I swear it's important. And it has implications for so many other things. I can't. Yeah. It was really cool. Thank you. [00:38:00]

Emily: No. I'm fascinated to know what you've got for pop culture today.

Lauren: So how much have you... let me backtrack. I will explain why this is my pop culture connection. John Thorpe and all of his irritating smugness very much reminds me of a tech bro in the Bay Area, as someone who is trying to seem wealthier than he actually is, knows everything about every topic-- he believes -- and wants you to believe the same thing. Disclaimer, not everybody's like this, blah blah blah. I'm very well aware, I have friends who live in the Bay Area who are lovely, but the stereotype is what is in my brain at this moment. As I was reading John Thorpe, and as I'm thinking about tech bros, I'm thinking about a massive event that just ended not too long ago called Burning Man.

Emily: Oh boy.

Lauren: How, how familiar are you with the Burning Man discourse over the last couple of weeks?

Emily: I've, I've seen enough. I know The broad strokes of what was going on.

Lauren: So for the uninitiated, if you're not sure what Burning Man is, which I was not really, I was under the impression it was a music festival.

I have been told that is incorrect. It's not a music festival. according to the actual website or organization itself, it is not a festival. It's an annual experiment in temporary community guided by radical self expression, radical self reliance, and the rest of the core ten principles of our culture.

The Sparknotes version of that, it's a bunch of rich tech bros who go out and Mad Max cosplay and go play in the desert for like a week, is really like what it's become. It's not what it always was.

Emily: I was going to say from, from what I've seen. It that's a relatively recent, development, but it's a significant development.

Lauren: It's a [00:40:00] significant development that's happened like really over the past five years or so. so it was a good article in wired.com. It said, "in the past five years, Burning Man has gained a reputation for being a playground for billionaires and influencers, filled with luxury RVs and private air conditioned domes with open bars. This latest wallop," which I will get into in a second, "could pull it back from the brink of full Coachellafication and into its radical community focused roots."

So really at its core, like Burners, people who go to Burning Man all the time, if you were part of like the original Burning Man community building wave, it's meant to be a place where you can like, express yourself outside of the structures and constriction of like normal society.

So normal society rules don't apply. You get to decide how you want to express yourself, how you want to build community and like, create an alternative way of living for a week. And that was something that really like, spoke to people and drew them out to the desert.

And then it's become this like weirdly commodified thing where you get the best experience if you have material wealth to make it a comfortable and great experience for yourself. So you still have to buy a ticket at the base. It's like 575. But then on top of that, you have to bring all your materials out to the desert for your camp. And the camping thing is still a little bit confusing to me.

So i'm not 100 percent sure. What the different campsites are. Some of them are collective. Sometimes it's just people in an RV. So I'm not 100 percent clear on what that is, but you have to get. So if you're going to be in a tent, you have to buy those materials. If you're going to be in an RV, you have to pay for all of that.

If you're part of a communal tent or campsite, rather, You have to contribute to that. So there's like on top of the baseline ticket, which is 575, like at its cheapest, and you can buy like more expensive ones that get you access to better placement or more electricity or whatever. It's like 1, 800 and up to like get everything.

Emily: Which still like is not unreasonable for a once a year event, like an average middle class [00:42:00] person could plan for that.

And achieve it. Which is why it's not inherently a billionaire thing.

Lauren: But. But then you have all these people who are treating it as like their playground, pretty much. And so there's also a temporary airport for all these private jets that are coming in. It's supposed to be a leave no trace event, but then there's this huge carbon impact.

So there were protesters at the beginning of Burning Man 2023, who were saying, this is no longer a leave no trace event. You're coming to the desert, you're leaving all this stuff behind, all these people who are coming in from god knows where in the country flying in their private jets are adding more carbon into the atmosphere.

This is the exact opposite of what Burning Man is supposed to be. And then this year it poured because there was a tropical storm that went through before. And then also a massive thunderstorm that came in in the middle of the event, turning the entire playa into mud and a dried up lakefront into what looked like a literal lake.

And the thing that really connected the fiasco of Burning Man to like the Tech Bro archetype that I connected to John Thorpe is one of the principles of Burning Man is radical self reliance, which number one to me goes against the other ethos they have of like community building. Those two seem completely at odds to me.

Number two, feels like it is like straight out of the conservative House of Lords playbook of 'our radical community community building is going to be built upon radical self reliance. Every man for themselves, you do what you need to do. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks, you bring what you need to bring to survive out here for a week.

And it's, it's up to you to make this experience what you need it to be for yourself.'

Emily: Feels at a certain point, a little more Lord of the Flies than like free love commune.

Lauren: Yeah. It was so interesting to me reading about the transformation of Burning Man from [00:44:00] something that was meant to be like a free love, free self expression, come and be who you want to be for a week, into, in recent years, this uncomfortable event where you were really only, only going to get like the experience that you come for, if you're willing or able to shell out even more money. Or just the general culture of Burning Man is being ruined by people like John Thorpe who come in with no regard for the actual like community ethos of the event.

And instead want to lean into that, like radical self reliance or the display of material wealth in an event and a space that's meant to be counterculture to the display of wealth that happens around us literally all the time. And it was, it was interesting to me that I could find that kind of juxtaposition between the two.

I just, I knew next to nothing about Burning Man before this week. I knew it was an event that happened in the desert. I knew a bunch of people from the West Coast like to go. I kind of associated it with a hippie type of vibe. And I really thought it was a music festival. I did not know.

Emily: This is a fascinating connection, but I absolutely see it.

Because the attitude that John Thorpe has towards prioritizing material possessions and his own self-importance definitely lines up with the kind of people who really emphasize that self-reliance thing when really self-reliance doesn't exist for them, because most of them have generational wealth.

and all of the things that they are bragging about have been created for them by other people. And yeah, it's all, it's all very ironic.

Lauren: It's all a farce. Some, some notable moments from Burning Man 2023 that I just wanted to share to close out, Diplo, the world famous DJ was there this year, along with Chris Rock, the comedian, and they apparently had to escape Burning Man [00:46:00] because you couldn't get out when it rained because there was a shelter in place order because they were trying to tell people you will get stuck if you try to leave. So don't drive your vehicles, it's going to get stuck. Of course, people did not listen. And so now there are vehicles literally caked into the dirt in the desert. So definitely leaving a trace. I don't think that was the art installation that they paid for, but that's what they got.

And Diplo and Chris Rock hiked six miles to escape from Burning Man. And were picked up by a fan with a truck.

Emily: What?

Lauren: And Diplo apparently was chronicling the entire thing on Instagram. So yeah, that's another connection to John Thorpe, because I knew about it from social media tweets, but the article I was also reading said that Diplo is also widely considered to be one of the most annoying people.

I was like, ah, yeah, there's John Thorpe.

And then the last thing was one of the upsides, quote unquote, of this year was that private jet traffic was way down freeing up space at the temporary airport because there were fewer people who were coming in on their private jets to go be Mad Max for a week in the desert.

Emily: What an absolutely wild connection, but so perfectly timed it.

Lauren: Yeah, it was very fortuitous timing. I wasn't sure at first what I wanted my pop culture connection to be, and then the deeper I got into Burning Man 2023, I was like, oh, no, this needs to be a topic of discussion.

Emily: So don't be a John Thorpe, guys.

Lauren: Don't be a John Thorpe. Don't lean into the radical self reliance. Maybe lean into the radical community building aspect of it.

Emily: That I can get behind.

Lauren: Yeah, I don't understand how those two values are meant to coexist, but maybe I'm not supposed to.

Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for that connection.

Lauren: You're so welcome.

Emily: This has been such a fun episode.

Lauren: I've had a great time.

Emily: Me too.

Lauren: Does that take us to final takeaways?

Emily: I think it does. You're up first.

Lauren: I mean, I think the first thing that [00:48:00] comes to mind is the most basic thing. It's not a very complex or intellectual takeaway, but just that money and wealth are not everything.

Emily: Solid takeaway.

Lauren: It's, hey, you know what, sometimes the most basic are the truths that persist because they're true.

Emily: I guess. Money will never actually be a substitute for personality.

Lauren: No. Or intelligence. Or class. Yeah. What about you? What's your final takeaway?

Emily: I think I'm gonna go real simple and say that my takeaway from this section is actually just that Catherine Morland is autistic.

I'm sticking with that.

Lauren: That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Emily: Please come talk to me about it on social media.

Lauren: I really want to start a discussion about this because I feel like it would be a really good one. I'm fascinated to see what comes out of this. Please tweet us, be in our Instagram comments, let's talk about it.

Emily: Also, I'd like to make a formal apology to the people who were yelling at me while listening to the last episode about me getting the final scene wrong.

It was Emma Thompson and Joni Mitchell, I'm sorry. I don't know where my brain was, it's not a reflection of who I am.

Lauren: People were yelling at you?

Emily: I heard from one of my friends yesterday, she was like, I was listening to this in the car and I was saying no! So yes, I want to apologize to everyone I upset by being incorrect.

I recognize the error of my ways.

Lauren: I accept your apology.

Emily: Thank you. Yours is the only one that really matters. Well, shall we go ahead and pull our tarot?

Lauren: We shall. Okay, our next card is the King of Hearts. It's a very pensive looking man.

Emily: Ooh. The King of Hearts is emotional control.

Lauren: Oh!

Emily: What seems like aloofness is only a natural reserve. Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice proves to be generous and caring.

Lauren: I love it!

Emily: After the rollercoaster of material wealth in this section, [00:50:00] I'm intrigued to see what emotional control brings us next time.

Lauren: I feel like, given who our heroine is, we'll have much to discuss when it comes to emotional control.

Emily: So much.

Look, especially if we lean into the autistic thing, there'll be a lot.

Lauren: We've got plenty of material. We haven't even started yet. I'm already confident.

Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading chapters 10 through 12 of Northanger Abbey through the lens of emotional control.

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

Lauren: If you'd like to support us and get access to exclusive content, 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: We'll see you next time nerds.

Emily: Fun fact, the day that we are recording is the 177th anniversary of Elias Howe's American patent for a lock stitch sewing machine, which was granted in 1846. I just saw a random Tumblr post right before I came up to record. I was like, Oh, perfect.

Lauren: I was going to ask, how did you find that out?

Emily: That is not the information that I have at the top of my mind.

It was a complete coincidence, but it fit perfectly.