Persuasion 13-15: “Seeing Is Believing”

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? Join us in following Anne from old haunts to new neighborhoods while she grapples with her own perceptions and those of everyone around her (but especially the other Elliots). Plus, for your entertainment, a bit about Bath and an impromptu book review!

Transcript

Reclaiming Jane S5E5 | Persuasion 13-15: “Seeing Is Believing?”

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 13 through 15 of Persuasion through the lens of perception.

Emily: Perception was such a good theme for this section.

Lauren: It was perfect.

Emily: From the jump just all kinds of perception from every corner. Like it was so good.

Lauren: And it worked out that this was, a quieter section compared to last episode where there were 10,000 events that we needed to relate and discuss. And there's not as much action happening here, but there's a lot of introspection and discussion, which makes it so perfect for the theme of today.

Emily: Absolutely. you are recapping first today. Do you wanna go ahead and jump into that?

Lauren: You know, let's just, let's get it done.

Emily: All right. Are you ready?

Lauren: Ready.

Emily: 3, 2, 1, go.

Lauren: Okay. Louisa is on the mend slowly but surely, so they can start to release a little bit of anxiety about that. Captain Benwick is apparently a little bit interested in Anne and that's much of a topic of discussion.

They think he's going to come to Kellynch Hall, but he never actually materializes. Wentworth, however, does and asks about Anne, but you know, she wasn't there to receive that. Lady Russell and Anne go to Bath. Mr. Elliot is there, he's re ingratiated himself with Anne's family and Anne is a little bit suspicious about this, but also his manners are very charming and it's interesting.

Emily: Very nice.

Lauren: Thank you. I feel like there are things that I'm missing, and then hopefully you can just go ahead and fill those on in.

Emily: We're always missing [00:02:00] stuff. That's kind of the point of having the 30 seconds.

Lauren: It is the point, oh, I almost just set this for five minutes. That's not what this is.

Emily: I would finish talking then just be like waiting and waiting and waiting.

Lauren: Lauren, you gotta start your countdown. What's happening? Okay, Emily?

Emily: Mm-hmm.

Lauren: Are you ready to recap three chapters of Persuasion in 30 seconds?

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: All right. On your mark, Get set. Go.

Emily: Louisa is doing pretty well in Lyme and she's been attended by most of the family who are becoming best friends with the Harvilles.

Anne moves on from Upper Cross to Kellynch Hall with Lady Russell and they get to hang out with my favorite couple, the Cro-- Crofts. There's another little Christmas excursion to Upper Cross where she hears that Captain Benwick is apparently still thinking about her, but then the dreaded removal to Bath arrives.

Sir Walter and Elizabeth are surprisingly cordial to her. and then it turns out that Mr. Elliot has been around and has been forgiven.

Lauren: The end.

Emily: All right. That wasn't too bad.

Lauren: I loved that dramatic ending.

Emily: You've gotta end on a, a dramatic note.

Lauren: You do.

Emily: Mm-hmm. It brings a little something to the experience.

Lauren: Just a little pizzazz.

Emily: Mm-hmm.

Lauren: Let's start from the beginning with Louisa being on the mend and, some of the, the party's anxieties beginning to be absolved a bit.

Emily: Yeah. So they do actually call it a concussion.

Lauren: Yeah, there's a little bit of hubbub of who's going to go to Louisa, who's going to stay in Lyme with her, who's going to be in Upper Cross.

but since it seems like Louisa's going to be fine, things eventually settle. They all go to see Louisa and just make sure that they can be in her vicinity as she recovers, but that means that Anne is left on her own, which is both a good thing and a bad thing for Anne. On the one hand, she doesn't really mind the solitude because it's Anne.

She's our textbook introvert. But on the other hand, you know, she was starting to get used to being surrounded by conversation and people, and they've all left her behind.

Emily: It also means that she has plenty of time to contemplate as she [00:04:00] loves to do, and thinks about things that might happen in the near future once Louisa is recovered and you know, continues to torture herself with the idea that Wentworth is set on Louisa because he has stayed in Lyme and has been very attentive, which I think is just like being a decent person, and he probably feels a little responsible for her injury.

But Anne, of course, falls into this just horrendous spiral of thinking that, "there could not be a doubt, to her mind, there was none of what would follow Louisa's recovery a few months hence, and the room now so deserted, occupied, but by her silent, pensive self at Uppercross might be filled again with all that was happy and gay, all that was glowing and bright and prosperous love. All that was most unlike Anne Elliot."

Lauren: Just to add a little bit of atmosphere to this, I would just like to point out that Jane Austen specifically says that Anne is staring out of a rainy window as she's thinking about this.

Emily: All around me are familiar faces...

Lauren: Anne is literally doing the thing you do when you're a kid, when you pretend you're in a sad music video looking out the car window at the rain.

Emily: All she needs is a Walkman.

Like, yes, she's, she's very unhappy in her pensiveness. Her spirit is brightened a little bit by being in company with Lady Russell again, who does come to retrieve her as planned and bring her back to Kellynch Lodge.

Lauren: And Lady Russell also has, some thoughts of her own about if Anne is correct about Wentworth's attention to Louisa, but for her it's more of a, 'I was right about him being the wrong choice for my Anne because if he had had the presence of mind to know that Anne is a prize before, and now he's settled and he's content with Louisa, then he really was not the person for Anne to begin with anyway, because how do you downgrade like that?'

Emily: Yeah, I obviously [00:06:00] highlighted the section where she says, "internally, her heart reveled in angry pleasure, in pleased contempt, that the man who at 23 had seemed to understand somewhat of the value of an Anne Elliot, should eight years afterwards be charmed by a Louisa Musgrove."

And what can you say to that except, ma'am, you're the one who talked her out of accepting him!

Lauren: Yep.

Emily: This is on you.

Lauren: Yep.

Emily: Lady Russell is just brimming over with irony in this whole section. I cannot get over it.

Lauren: I was like, he could have been a good match for Anne. He did think he was a good match for Anne. Anne thought he was a good match for Anne. And you said no.

Now that he has actually risen in social status and perception, he would've been a better partner for Anne by your standards. And you are still thinking poorly of him because of who you think he's attached himself to. But even if, you know, that were truly the case, and both Anne and Lady Russell were correct, what does she want him to do?

She told him not to renew his his application to Anne. So what is he supposed to do with that?

Emily: Fortunately, being at Kellynch Lodge with Lady Russell does give Anne the opportunity to see Kellynch Hall again, her former home until now, as well as, as I said, my favorite couple the Crofts. I just love them so much.

But Anne is of the opinion that, the current tenants of Kellynch Hall are something of an improvement on the former, which is kind of harsh on her family, but she likes the personalities of the Crofts. She likes the way that they manage the house and that they treat all of the tenants of the area, and that kind of makes her look even more poorly on the way her father and her family had acted.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: While they were in residence.

Lauren: She really thinks that the only person who could be a credit to the house is her mother. And she feels like she belongs more in this house, even when her family's not there. She feels more of a welcomed member of the [00:08:00] household, with the Crofts and Lady Russell than she did with her immediate family, which is so sad. It says a lot about what that family dynamic is like.

Emily: Absolutely.

Lauren: She does find out while she's in Kellynch Hall, that Captain Wentworth had been at Kellynch just the day before and had inquired after her. "He had been in Kellynch the day before, the first time since the accident, had brought Anne the last note, which she had not been able to trace the exact steps of, had stayed a few hours and then returned again to Lyme and without any present intention of quitting it anymore," which, you know, does hurt a little bit to hear that he's just going to continue staying in Lyme.

He came to Kellynch for a little bit, but now in Anne's eyes he's going back to his beleaguered lady love. However, it does say that "he had inquired after her, she found, particularly, had expressed his hope of Ms. Elliot's not being the worst for her exertions, and had spoken of those exertions as great.

This was handsome and gave her more pleasure than almost anything else she could have done."

Emily: Anne girl, you are hopeless.

Lauren: It-- she is picking up like the little scraps of Wentworth that she can get and like, it is as though she has a mental treasure box like Harriet in Emma.

Emily: That's exactly what it is.

Lauren: It's like, oh, here is like the piece of plaster that he cut off and played with.

Here is the time that he paid me a compliment I wasn't even there to hear, but I know that it exists. Girl. You are so head over heels. It's ridiculous.

Emily: But he's, he doesn't feel that way about her. This is, you know, he's, he's just being polite. It doesn't mean anything that he went out of his way to make sure that she had the same news from Lyme that everyone else did, knowing that the Musgroves wouldn't be on top of their communications.

Lauren: Mm-hmm. He didn't think of her particularly at all. Yeah, but the Crofts and Lady Russell get to chat, Lady Russell and Mrs. Croft in particular are very happy with one another. They get along quite well, which makes Anne happy as well because she really respects both of those women and enjoys them.

So it's lovely for her to see the two of them getting along.

Emily: And she [00:10:00] personally is very charmed by Admiral Croft, who is just like, he's very thoughtful about her and. You know, it, it, some things kind of go over his head. Like it says that it takes him a little while to remember when she's visiting that like, oh, right, this was her house.

But then he's very solicitous about, like, showing her the things that, that they've changed and basically being like, I hope you're not upset about this, but like, I think I've actually done a really good job when he's just, he's just so happy.

Lauren: Like, Anne, lemme show you around! Oh wait.

Emily: But then they, they do make the very generous offer that's basically like you can come and wander around the house anytime you want. Like you're welcome to, to come and make whatever use of it you will.

Lauren: Which is nice considering that they don't have to do that. It is weird because it is her house, but for all intents and purposes, it's theirs for the time being.

So they don't have to let her have free reign at the house at all.

Emily: Yeah, she feels uncomfortable about it. She appreciates the generosity of the offer, but is also very happy to be able to decline it.

Lauren: And decline it with a good excuse and not have to come up with some reason for, oh no, I can't. And have them press the issue.

Emily: I think even if Admiral Croft, out of the goodness of his heart had tried to press it, Mrs. Croft seems perceptive enough to me. Ha ha.

Lauren: See what you did there.

Emily: Yeah. That she would've given Anne an out regardless.

Lauren: Agreed. And then we move on to people who do not have Anne's best interests at heart, because Mary just cannot let her sister have anything good ever.

Emily: What is Mary's deal?

Lauren: She's jealous and she's insecure. Anytime somebody pays attention to anybody else, she feels like it's taking attention away from her.

Emily: Yeah. The Musgrove family finally returns to Upper Cross and Mary expresses all of her opinions about Lyme in that classic Elliot way, as we will see again later in this section.[00:12:00]

and Anne of course asks politely after Captain Benwick and "Mary's face was clouded directly." She does not like Captain Benwick for no apparent reason. She tells Lady Russell later that like, he doesn't have very gentlemanly manners and everyone else is like, what are you talking about?

I think it's just because he asked after Anne. And he didn't devote every moment to entertaining Mary, and instead talked about like the books that he was reading on Anne's recommendation. Which Charles Musgrove thinks it's delightful.

Lauren: Right.

Emily: He definitely ships it.

Lauren: No, he thinks it's adorable. He's like, oh no, Anne, Captain Benwick is asking about you, and Mary said, no, he wasn't. I never heard him mention Anne's name, and Charles is saying, well, he may not have always said her name directly, but he's been talking about the books that she recommended and saying how much he's looking forward to being able to discuss them with her. Mary's like, no. Well, that can't, that can't be right.

Emily: Oh, you know what? This is absolutely insecurity about the fact that her now husband asked her sister first.

Lauren: Ooh.

Emily: Because this is the thing with Wentworth all over again where he shows up and Mary comes back and says, oh, he was trash talking you.

Lauren: Yeah, you're right. Huh? Yeah, she's def, I mean, she's jealous and insecure just in general, but there's definitely a specific type of insecurity when it comes to Anne.

Emily: Yeah. There's something very particular about the way that she acts about Anne getting potential, like romantic attention.

Lauren: Yep.

Emily: And none of it is coming from Charles. He is like, he's completely devoted to his slightly silly wife, but she just can't deal with that reminder, I guess.

That's very interesting. I'm gonna keep that in mind.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. She's got issues. She's gotta deal with that.

Emily: Oh yes.

Lauren: I can say she's so irritated with the fact or even the mere idea that Captain Benwick might pay more attention to Anne than he does to her, that she lets it color her entire perception of him as a person and then also how she talks about him to other people.

And that's like getting into the theme discussion. So I don't wanna delve too too much into it.

Emily: No, no, we can. [00:14:00] We can go for it now. We don't have to separate them out.

Lauren: This is true because she has such a different perception of Captain Benwick than literally everyone else, that it's so evident in the conversation that they're having with Lady Russell over-- Lady Russell, Mary is determined that she will not like him and says so. Adamantly. Many times.

Lady Russell's trying to say, I haven't met him, so I will make a determination on whether or not I like him when I meet him. And you know, there's much discussion over whether or not he'll come to Kellynch Hall because it seems as though he would be motivated to do so to talk to Anne, but he's shy.

So there's some debate going on there, but Mary is saying, 'He's not really Anne's acquaintance, he's more of my acquaintance because I've been the one who's spoken to him every single day for the last two weeks,' after she's just said he doesn't really talk at all. But now all of a sudden, since it's been said that he could have been Anne's acquaintance, he has to be hers instead.

She doesn't even like him that much, but she has to claim that for herself. And her husband tries to say to Lady Russell, 'you're not going to find fault with him.' Mary says, 'you're not gonna find anything very agreeable in him. He's the dullest person who's ever lived.'

Anne says, "I think Lady Russell would like him. I think she'd be so much pleased with his mind that she would very soon see no deficiency in his manner." Charles agrees. He says, 'you know, he's just Lady Russell's sort. Give him a book and he'll read all day long.' And Mary's like, yeah, he will read all day long and he'll do nothing else. He won't even talk to you.

They're, they're relating what they see as positive aspects of Captain Benwick. Like he's a learned man. He enjoys reading. He's very pensive, he's intelligent. He likes having these deep conversations. Mary sees that as, 'he's not paying any attention to me. He's not speaking to me. He's off in his own world, just reading a book, doing whatever. He's so rude. He's so dull, he's so boring.'

Girl.

Emily: And out of this whole argument, we get another choice piece of irony from Lady Russell who says, "upon my word, I should not have supposed that my opinion of anyone could have admitted of such difference of conjecture, steady, and matter of fact, as I may call myself, [00:16:00] I have really a curiosity to see the person who can give occasion to such directly opposite notions."

Lauren: Ma'am, he just called at Kellynch Hall like two days ago.

Emily: He was just there.

Lauren: He was just here. If only she would determine not to judge other people.

Emily: Mm-hmm. But finally, after a week, Captain Benwick doesn't appear. She decides that he wasn't worth it anyway.

Lauren: No. Which fine, whatever. Not worth the interest. She, she and Anne spend a week not saying anything about it, but always wondering if that knock at the door is going to be Captain Benwick.

And every time it's not, she becomes more disinterested and then she's like, ah, I'm not even gonna worry about it anymore. Fun's over. It's no longer drama.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: And then Christmas eventually rolls around. They have a cute little gathering and Louisa is getting better. The kids are going back to school. It seems as though things are going to go back to normal. Captain Wentworth has not returned. He's gone to see his brother, so he's also no longer in Lyme, though he has not rejoined the party at Upper Cross or at Kellynch Hall. But that also means that it's now time for the dreaded removal to Bath, which Anne has really been trying to ignore.

Emily: Yeah. After that happy little diversion at Christmas with the Musgroves and with the Harville children, the idea of going to Bath to this city with her family, who has not been particularly pleasant to her, it just, like you said, dreaded.

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Emily: For very good reason.

Lauren: And we also get another good piece of like the difference in perception of Bath from Lady Russell and from Anne.

So Lady Russell is thinking that she doesn't mind the noise of Bath so much. So she's remarking to herself about the dash of other carriages, the heavy rumble of carts and drays, the bawling of newsmen. You know, all this noise that accompanies coming to Bath and it says that "she made no complaint. These were noises which belonged to the winter pleasures. Her spirits rose under their influence, and like Mrs. Musgrove, she was feeling though, not saying that after being long in the country, nothing could be so good for her as a little [00:18:00] quiet cheerfulness."

Anne, on the other hand, does not share those feelings. "She persisted in a very determined, though very silent disinclination for Bath. Caught the first dim view of the extensive buildings smoking in rain without any wish of seeing them better. Felt their progress through the streets to be, however disagreeable, yet too rapid, for who would be glad to see her when she arrived?"

So Lady Russell's coming into Bath like, 'oh, the hustle and bustle of a city. It's noise and I, you know, I actually welcome the noise. It's such a difference from the country. It feels like happy and you know, there's just energy in Bath. I'm so excited to be here,' Anne it's going through the streets of Bath saying, like, 'this is the worst place I've ever been. Everything is dingy, it's raining. I hate it here. I don't wanna be here. I wanna leave immediately. I wanna leave. I wanna go home.'

Emily: But in Bath, she is. And with the people there, she must put up.

Lauren: And what, what a group they are because we are treated once again to just the ridiculous self-involved nature of her father and her older sister.

Emily: Truly, it is the Sir Walter show.

Lauren: Oh my God.

Emily: He gives all of those opinions about how all of the women in Bath are so ugly and none of the men are particularly good looking either. Like. You need to stop please.

Lauren: And they barely leave space for Anne to talk to them about things that have been going on back home.

It says that they leave some space for her to tell them how much everyone back home misses them, but she has nothing to say about that because no one at home really misses them. So then they, they move on from that topic of conversation and they begin talking about themselves because why would they ask Anne anything about herself at all?

She can have nothing to report.

Emily: Cannot deal with them.

Lauren: Also, Mrs. Clay is there being a sidekick to Elizabeth, but you know what else is new?

Emily: Yeah. It says "Mrs. Clay was very pleasant and very smiling, but her courtesies and smiles were more a matter of course." So Anne is like, I don't like you. You don't like me. Let's [00:20:00] not pretend, ma'am. However, the good humor of Elizabeth and Sir Walter is better than she was hoping for.

Lauren: It is a plus. It does mean that she's received a bit more warmly than she was expecting, and part of that good humor is because there's been someone coming to their door and flattering them quite consistently, which is a really good way to get into their good graces.

Emily: Oh, yeah. Mr. Elliot has been around and is, like you said, back in their good graces. He has been forgiven. Everything has been explained about the little misunderstanding before, apparently. This other woman that he married, it was because she was rich and in love with him. So like, you know...

Lauren: what was he supposed to do?

Emily: Yeah. He had no choice.

Lauren: And he wasn't ignoring them. He thought that they were mad at him and he just thought it was gonna be too indelicate to press the issue. So, better to just stay away.

Emily: Which, like, honestly, I do kind of feel that.

Lauren: Like, yeah, I did kind of mess up that whole marriage proposal we had going on. I'm gonna just not talk to you.

Emily: That is also probably how I would respond to something like that.

Lauren: Just fade into the woodwork.

Emily: Yeah. Basically.

Lauren: I'm not here. I don't exist.

Emily: No, I'm just gonna disappear now.

Lauren: Goodbye!

Emily: But because he has been so effusive in his apologies and his regret and his always waiting on them and him being a rather fine figure.

They're like, Hmm, he's fine. Now we're good. We like to see him.

Lauren: Oh, but Mr. Elliot does not think that he's aged well, or they, they just that, you know, the years have been as kind to him as someone like Elizabeth would say. Cuz he says something to the effect of, oh yeah, Mr. Elliot told me that I hadn't aged a day.

Clearly flattering him because yes, Sir Walter has aged. He's like, I wish I could say the same about him, but I couldn't repay the compliment.

Emily: This man has never heard of tact in his life. He wouldn't know it if it bit him in the ass.

Lauren: No.

Emily: Also, going back a little bit to, the changes at Kellynch Hall, Admiral Croft talks about how there were just so many mirrors in the dressing room.

Like, 'they made me really uncomfortable. I had to get rid of all of them.'

Lauren: But [00:22:00] you are a person who likes to look at himself a normal amount. the person who is renting this house to you is not that type of person.

Emily: He would be Narcissus if he could, he would just gaze at his own reflection until he turned into a flower.

I don't know.

Lauren: You know, he's upgraded from a river.

Emily: He's, he's just, he's so absurd. Like he's the caricature of the self-involved vain man.

Lauren: It is truly, truly ridiculous, and there's no one there to keep him in check because Anne's not been there. And so Elizabeth is just going to continue to feed into his delusions.

Mrs. Clay is gonna laugh and smile at literally anything anybody in that house says. And Mr. Elliot has been there just blowing his head up every day. So he is, his narcissistic tendencies have only gotten worse in Bath. He's not had any kind of character or moral growth at all.

Emily: Yeah, it is interesting that bit about Mr. Elliot though and how he's been there just flattering always. Because he does come by on the same evening that Anne arrives.

Lauren: At 10:00 PM!

Emily: At 10:00 PM! That is very late. That was way too late. And in their conversation, Anne is kind of convinced by him. She's like, okay, this, this guy is pretty reasonable. It says, "within 10 minutes, his tone, his expressions, his choice of subject, his knowing where to stop. It was all the operation of a sensible, discerning mind." And that very particular phrase, "his knowing where to stop." I was like, Ooh, Anne, honey, you've had problems with this, haven't you?

Lauren: Mm-hmm. He knows how to actually make space for his conversation partner. He knows how to include everyone in the room and not speak just to one person for too long.

Emily: I don't know if it's necessarily a, well, okay. I guess sensible discerning mind could still be an apt description, but it's also one that is very aware of the social graces and how to turn them to his advantage. I don't wanna say cunning cuz we don't know enough about him to make that kind of implication.

But yeah, he definitely knows how these things work. [00:24:00]

Lauren: Yeah. And like with an understanding of social dynamics comes an understanding of how to use those to your advantage. Whatever he's up to, he clearly knows that like, benign or not, complimenting Sir Walter and Elizabeth is going to get him in their good graces.

Emily: So that is our section. It was not quite as eventful as the previous one, but it was very rich.

Lauren: It was, we learned a lot in this section. It's a little quiet, but we have some really good information and we set up a good new plot line with the arrival of Mr. Elliot and the removal to Bath.

Emily: Can't wait to see where this goes.

Lauren: The plot thickens.

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: And we kind of started touching on places where we saw perception, but there were so many different ways that perception showed up here. I'm really curious to hear what you marked.

Emily: Yeah, I mean mostly, what struck me was all of the competing perceptions, especially when it comes to things like Captain Benwick or Mr. Elliot, where different people have different opinions and they try to justify those in different ways, and it's very fascinating to see like where their priorities lie and what aspects they value in a person. Plus things like Lady Russell and her apparent lack of perception sometimes.

Lauren: For such a smart woman, she lacks a little bit of self-perception, shall we say?

Emily: We all have our le-- our weak spots.

Lauren: You know, we can't be perfect. Yeah. I think of the characters in this section. Even Anne, who we can usually trust to be the one who is most apt in her perception is a little, you know, she has her weak spot when it comes to Wentworth as well, where she's determined to interpret everything he does as more favorable to other people than it is to her just because she can't allow herself to believe that he holds her in any kind of regard, that's too painful a thing to consider.

And so even the rational, sensible, Anne has some lapses in her perception in this section too. Usually just when it comes to Wentworth, I think for most other things, she's pretty spot on and she's still, you know, [00:26:00] jury's still out on Mr. Elliot, but she is picking up on things that her father and her sister are not.

Emily: Definitely, I think looking at this section, through this theme, we get a lot on the imperfection of perception and how no one ever has the full picture.

Lauren: Yeah, there's, I think, a really interesting conversation to be had about like what the truth is because someone's, someone's perception to them is, is the truth depending on how removed a view they have of their own perception of things.

Sometimes people perceive things and they say, 'the way I see it is this' with an understanding of, this might not be the absolute truth, but this is the way that I'm seeing it. For others, they don't have that kind of context within their own minds, so the way they see it is just a truth, but that does not make a thing true.

But then you get to the philosophical question of, well then what does make a thing true? Because if what is happening in your own mind isn't true? Then what is, who gets to decide what truth is?

Emily: Yeah. This was just a chock full of great examples of how and why we perceive things the way we do and the ways that perceptions different from reality.

So it's a really fascinating little cognitive study without. Outright being that.

Lauren: Yeah. And we even get a lot of the points of view of different characters too in this section about perception. And sometimes it's a direct view into their head just because of the way the narration kind of shifts into the minds of other characters, if only for a line or so.

And other times we get a sense of whether they're thinking through dialogue like with Mary and her, her irrational dislike of Captain Benwick. We can see what her perception is in contrast to the perception of others around her.

Emily: Yeah. If, if they're an Elliot who is not Anne, they will tell you what their perception is.

Lauren: Ad nauseum. Without prompting.

Emily: No guessing necessary there.

Lauren: No.

Emily: Anne is the only one who knows how to keep her mouth shut.

Lauren: She's the only one with any degree of tact.

Emily: Oh, seriously. [00:28:00]

Lauren: That ends our theme discussion. What's our historical context for today?

Emily: Let's talk about Bath.

Lauren: Ooh, yay. Let's do it.

Emily: You know, I was overdue for my chance to talk about the history of another city.

I haven't done it since Portsmouth in Mansfield Park because, you know, we just, we, we get a lot of like generic fictionalized places in Jane Austen. So anytime we're in a concrete, historical location, like, yes, I wanna know what's going on here.

So Bath is located in southwest England in Somerset, and there is evidence of human activity back to the Stone Age, as there is with a lot of England. Like it was. Their human population's pretty old. The original city of Aquae Sulis and Temple to Sulis Minerva was founded by the Romans in the first century AD around some natural hot springs that are actually the only officially hot springs in England. Fun fact, I guess.

Lauren: Cool.

Emily: That whole temple though, is kind of a, a classic example of that, like Roman religious synchrotism where they show up and go, "Hey, that deity is kind of similar to this one that we've got. So they're probably the same one, right?"

Sulis was originally a deity of local Celtic Polytheists who just kind of got lumped in with Minerva because Romans. Also, a little archeological and epigraphic fun fact. there's a cursed tablet that was unearthed from the spring that is possibly the only written record of the Protonic language.

Lauren: Huh.

Emily: Which is super cool. Just my, my little linguistic nerd moment casual was like, Hey, I didn't expect that.

Lauren: Look, language!

Emily: I know. So there was a Roman temple founded around the hot springs, and then in the seventh century the Christian Religious Center around Bath Abbey was established, which was supposedly according to a Victorian historian.

So like, take that with a big handful of [00:30:00] salts. supposedly the city during that period was known as aka Manchester or Aching Man's City because of the association with hot Springs and healing. And so the Ill would seek it out for its curative properties, such as they may be. But again, Victorians are saying this, they're not really known for citing their sources, so I can't confirm that.

The current name of Bath comes from the Anglo-Saxon name a lot like Portsmouth did. It was Bathon or Bathum, or Bathon, all of which boils down to at the Baths. So it's literally just Bath. It's always been Bath as long as some version of English has been naming it. After the dissolution of the religious establishments by Henry VII which I talked about in Emma, I think there was a sort of spa revival during the Elizabethan era.

And so it started attracting, more of the gentility and the nobility. But then in the 17th century, a Dr. Thomas Guido wrote about its curative properties. So that started attracting a lot more attention. There were royal visits by Queen Anne in the late 17th and early 18th century, and then in the very early 18th century and spanning kind of the first half of it.

This master of ceremonies, Beau Nash, really took it on himself to elevate the city's fashionable profile and. Sort of almost incidentally, kind of eroded barriers there between nobility and the genteel, but not aristocratic classes. By just bringing them into close proximity to one another and, you know, constant interaction will kind of cross those boundaries.

But those factors elevating its popularity meant that throughout the 18th century, the population [00:32:00] grew from like a 3000 person sort of medieval walled city into over 30,000 residents, which led directly to a huge building boom in the Georgian period to accommodate both permanent residents and all of the visitors that were coming.

It was really sort of the epitome of like a Neoclassical and Palladian landscape with all of these design elements being brought to bear on not just like a single estate or one building, but an entire city. So some of the features and focus elements that we talked about back in Mansfield Park with like landscape design was being put towards like city planning essentially.

So some of the major figures for this, were the architects, John Wood, the Elder, and John Wood, the younger. So they had a lot of influence in that family as well as Robert Adam, Thomas Baldwin and John Palmer. And actually one of the places designed by Robert Adam. Putney Bridge is one of the only bridges in Europe that supports shops across its entire span, like the Ponte Veo in Florence, which is super interesting. Like I wanna go and see these places. Cause that's just such a cool feat of engineering as well as being like an incredible visual spectacle.

But the social life is really what kept Bath alive and attracted people to it during the Georgian period, although outside the sort of matchmaking season of May to September, the permanent residents tended to be like the elderly and in firm.

So unfortunately the Elliots did not move to Bath in a very fashionable season. and during the Napoleonic Wars, the city was starting to decline in popularity a little bit because the sort of curative fad had become salt water and sea bathing, like the John [00:34:00] Knightleys took up in Emma. So unfortunately Bath was on a little bit of a wane, but obviously that does not stop the Elliots from taking advantage of whatever cache.

Bath might still hold at the end of the Georgian period.

Lauren: I love that. And it's so very like the Elliots to just be a little bit behind what's really trendy and try and act as though they, they, they knew all along, but also it's cool because we're here.

Emily: Exactly.

Lauren: Thank you. That was perfect.

Emily: I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I always have fun reading about city histories.

Lauren: That was, one of the cities I got the chance to visit when I was studying abroad and I only got to be there for a day. We just took a day trip over to Bath, but it was so much fun. And, in modern times, the Jane Austen Center is in Bath, so would recommend, any Austen fan who happens to find themselves in England or in Bath, go check that out.

It's really cool.

Emily: There's also a fashion museum, so I think we just need to take a trip to Bath is what needs to happen.

Lauren: Yep. I support this.

Emily: Well, that wraps my history. What do you have for pop culture and perception today?

Lauren: So I just finished a book that Emily got me for Christmas that is also related to this podcast.

It is Pride and Protest by Nikki Payne, who's lovely. Hey Nikki, if you're listening. And I was thinking about perception and pop culture, and it feels a little bit like cheating to relate my pop culture connection to a book that's based off a Jane Austen novel. And then I decided that actually that just makes it even more related to the podcast, so I'm gonna roll with it.

Emily: Also, we make the rules.

Lauren: We make the rules. I can do what I want. So I was thinking about how perception is such a big thing in both Pride and Prejudice and in Pride and Protest as well, in which the two protagonists have very incorrect perceptions of one another upon first meeting. But what cracked me up in Pride and Protest is just how incorrect they get each other on first glance. And for those who aren't familiar with the book Pride and Protest, it's a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, but [00:36:00] a diverse retelling specifically. So it's set in the DC area. Darcy or Dorsey is the son of this like very wealthy family where the mother was a philanthropist and the father was a very successful businessman and so Dorsey ends up taking over as CEO of this company.

but he's also a. An adopted Filipino man into a white family, so he has that additional like, context and baggage for how he interacts with other people, both in his social circle and without. And then Liza's part of a black family who lives in a neighborhood in DC that Darcy's company wants to develop.

And she is a radio DJ. She has a kind of like boundary pushing show and is also a very enthusiastic, like activist and uses her voice loudly and without any kind of apology. So that makes that first meeting and mistaken perception so much sweeter because she's going to an event to protest Dorsey's company because she doesn't want them gentrifying her neighborhood and it is glorious.

So I was thinking about how perceptions of people can be so hilariously off base and incorrect to the point where you can hate someone upon first meeting and then end up falling in love with them because actually they're your perfect counterpart. And then I was thinking about how in dual point of view romance novels specifically, you really get to see those differences in perception play out in such a fun and interesting way because you can see how perception really depends on the person's situation because you read a situation from one character's point of view, and then often get to read the other character's interpretation of it and see how they do not match at all because nine times outta 10 they don't. Because that is where the conflict ends, the tension and the plot of the book resides if they understood each other perfectly, why are we here?

And in Persuasion especially, you can see that in this section, characters have different perceptions of personalities and of people [00:38:00] or of motives. And it just reminded me back to that philosophical conversations of how subjective truth is and how subjective perception is, and how quickly that can be changed when we get new information or when we receive new information about a person, how we can ignore that because our perception is telling us one story that this new information does not connect with. And so even though we're given the the means to change what we think about someone else, or to reevaluate our opinions with new information that might be objective, our subjective perception is preventing us from doing that and from seeing people or situations in a different light.

So thinking about that in relation to Pride and Protest, in relation to Persuasion, but then also just in real life of questioning, like, okay, so where do, I might have a blind spot for my own perception where I think I have a good read on whatever it is, and I'm very confident in that.

But actually maybe I, I don't, maybe I need to take in other opinions or other information because I'm taking my perception as truth when it's not truth. It's just my opinion. And that's my pop culture connection for today.

Emily: Very nice.

Lauren: Everyone go buy Pride and Protest by Nikki Payne. It is lovely. I think we have come to final takeaways.

Emily: I think we have.

Lauren: I recapped first.

Emily: Yep. So it is me.

Lauren: It is indeed.

Emily: I think I'm just gonna reiterate what I said earlier about. the imperfection of perception. We can't ever know something perfectly and we've gotta be able to take that into account for our own sake and for others sakes.

Lauren: You took mine. That's very rude.

Haha. I guess on a unrelated note, my takeaway would be to stay curious rather than remaining in your own perception of things. And to ask questions.

Emily: I like that. Yeah. Be the anti Sir Walter.

Lauren: Be the anti Sir Walter, be interested [00:40:00] in perspectives other than your own.

Emily: Please, for the love of God.

Lauren: And maybe something other than your own reflection while you're at it.

Emily: All right. Our card for next time is the two of Hearts, which is illustrated with some nice little. Desserts.

Lauren: The two of hearts is also temperance, and that is moderation is our theme. And the illustration refers to 'an elaborate dinner consists of many dishes for each course, but restraint is key to contentment.'

Emily: Having just arrived in Bath with the Elliots, I feel like that's going to be a hell of a theme.

Lauren: Let's see what moderation is or is not present in these next three chapters.

Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading chapter 16 through 18 of Persuasion with a focus on moderation.

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, 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.[00:42:00]

Emily: Going back to Plato and the cave.

Lauren: Anyway, back to,philosophy 101. We're just gonna answer that question on Reclaiming Jane.

Emily: Yeah, if anyone could do it, we could.

Lauren: We have the philosophical minds to tackle the greatest question of the ages in the next 10 minutes. Are you ready? Here we go.

Emily: We watched The Good Place. We could do this.

Lauren: Yeah, we can totally do it. That's philosophy disguised as a sitcom.

Emily: Yeah.