Persuasion 22-24: “Be Prepared”
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We stretched it out as long as we could, and we still weren’t prepared for this book to end. Join us for the final chapters of Persuasion, some overdue historical questions, and deliciously painful fiction tropes.
Show Notes
Surprise! You didn’t think we’d forget to link you to all of that delicious fan fiction goodness, did you?
Honestly, if you did, that’s probably fair given our track record, but this time we did not.
For your reading pleasure, for those of you who have made their way to our website…behold, a relic of fandom history. (Also, Lauren misquoted, it was on Trickster and not LiveJournal. An even older fandom relic. They did have a LiveJournal community, though.)
Hurt/Comfort: A Confession and A Celebration
So You Wanna Write A Slash Sex Scene: Have You Done Your Homework? (obviously NSFW)
My God, Spock, You’re A Woman!
Happy reading, nerds.
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane S5E8 | Persuasion 22-24: “Be Prepared”
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 22 through 24 of Persuasion through the lens of preparation.
Emily: I can't believe we finished the book.
Lauren: We made it to the end!
Emily: We made it to the end. I've finally read Persuasion now.
Lauren: Oh my gosh. Welcome to Pain.
Emily: Oh, but it's so good.
Lauren: It hurts so good.
Emily: We've had this conversation through this entire book, but I really like books that put me in pain. I'm a big fan. I like fiction to hurt me.
Lauren: Only a little masochistic.
Emily: Just a little bit.
Lauren: A tad.
Emily: And, and only through fiction. Not in real life, please.
Lauren: Yeah, no. No, no. I am so glad that we finally get to discuss this book in its entirety. We'll have another episode to do, like a deep dive into Persuasion as a whole. We're gonna just focus this episode, of course, on these last three chapters of the book.
But oh my goodness, I'm so glad you now understand why Persuasion is one of my favorite Austen novels.
Emily: I fully understand. I cannot wait to get into every version now. Like, as much fun as we've had with the other books, I'm just like, I, I need more of this. I think this is the first one that I finished and been like, no, I'm not done, actually.
Lauren: Bring on the adaptations, bring on the fanfic, bring it on. I wanna see more.
Emily: I do fully intend to turn around and reread this all in one go instead of being stretched across like four or five months. Cuz I wanna experience it as I would normally experience a book, which is in a very compressed timeline.
I'm a fast reader. Doing this podcast has been [00:02:00] a weird experience for me.
Lauren: Yeah, true. Yeah. I think Persuasion still offers a lot to both of us, so we should talk about what these final three chapters have to offer. Which means that we need to recap.
Emily: You're up first.
Lauren: I am up first.
Emily: Lauren, are you ready to recap our last three chapters of Persuasion ?
Lauren: I think so.
Emily: All right. 3, 2, 1, go.
Lauren: Anne is intending to tell Lady Russell about everything that she's just learned, but she's distracted by the fact that the Msugroves show up and that kind of throws off all of her plans. she does go to a place with the Musgroves like, the next day. So it's been a day.
She hasn't done anything. She's in a room with Captain Harville and Captain Wentworth and she and Harville have a conversation while Wentworth is writing a letter and it turns out that they had this conversation where Wentworth figures out that Anne is still in love with him and he confesses his love to her in a letter and it's the best line I've ever heard in literature.
And Anne and Wentworth end up together and they all live happily after the end.
Emily: You had two seconds left.
Lauren: I didn't have anything else to say that could fit in two seconds.
Emily: Fair enough.
Lauren: Okay, are you ready to recap chapters 22 through 24 of Persuasion?
Emily: I'm ready to do my best.
Lauren: Okay, fantastic cuz that was not my best.
Emily: Can't win 'em all.
Lauren: Three, two, one, go.
Emily: Anne goes home from Mrs. Smith's to think and she is distressed when Mr. Elliot shows up, but it turns out he's going outta town for a few days. Thank God. She decides she can put off telling Lady Russell. The Musgroves and Captain Harville show up in Bath unexpectedly.
And Anne ends up spending like most of her time with them because they actually like her. Wentworth slips her a letter, and it turns out he is still in love with her. So they finally talk. It turns out they're all still in love. They work everything out. Mr. Elliot and Mrs. Clay both fade in the background and they get to have their happily ever after.
Lauren: Done. Perfect.
Emily: Thank you.
Lauren: That was well done.
Emily: Yay.
Lauren: Where do we even start?
Emily: Oh, where do we even start?
Lauren: I feel like we can't go to the letter directly, which is what I really want to do, so I guess. Okay. Let's, let's narrow our focus to chapter 22 for a hot second, because chapter 23 is where all the fun happens.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, chapter 22 is still pretty consequential.
Lauren: It [00:04:00] is.
Emily: So Anne goes home from Mrs. Smith's. She's going to think about all the things that she's heard. She obviously intends to tell Lady Russell about Mr. Elliot and his wrongdoings and his character, but she decides that she can kind of like put it off till the next day.
You know, no one's running out to try and get married to Mr. Elliot right now. So she's like, it's. It'll be fine.
Lauren: No worries. It's gonna be, it can wait for 24 hours.
Emily: Yeah, basically. But then she, she goes home and, there's a conversation between Elizabeth and Mrs. Clay about how Elizabeth is basically still expecting Mr. Elliot to ask her to marry him. which again, like by the expectations of their class and that period would make sense. But most everybody else sees that he's after Anne.
Lauren: And Mrs. Clay is really trying to avoid looking at Anne while this conversation is happening. And Anne is also thinking about how Mrs. Clay is a really good actress for being able to engage in this conversation with Elizabeth, knowing that Mr. Elliot marrying either Elliot sister completely ruins any design she has on Sir Walter.
Emily: It's, it's very awkward all around.
Lauren: Yeah. Not the most comfortable of situations for anybody other than Elizabeth, who of course has no clue.
Emily: Of course.
Lauren: Oblivious and wrapped up in herself as usual.
Emily: Mm-hmm. But Mr. Elliot does come by at a certain point and Anne is not happy to see him. He still thinks that everything is hunky dory.
Lauren: And he has been intent on seeing Anne because he came by that morning where Anne had very purposely made herself scarce because she knew he would be there and managed to get himself invited back for the evening.
And you know, Elizabeth and Mrs. Clay are talking about, you know, he was really angling so hard for that invitation and it really couldn't have been avoided, but they're happy that he's going to come back. They don't feel like he was being overly manipulative. They're more just like, oh, he likes our company so much, of course, he wanted to come back. And I think, you know, he may have also had somebody else who he wanted to see. Like of course he wanted to see Anne! [00:06:00] Jesus.
Obviously. so he comes back in the evening. This is his second visit to the Elliots because he is determined to see Anne, but he's also a little bit confused because Anne is not the same bubbly person she was the last time he spoke to her.
He keeps trying to like, incite some kind of curiosity in her so that she'll ask him like, 'well, who was the person who was being so complimentary to me all those years ago?' But he doesn't know that Anne already knows. So any of his attempts to get her to ask fail, and she just does not feel like pretending like she's super happy to be engaged in conversation with him.
So he's a little bit thrown off his game like, wait, hold on a second. I thought that I kind of had this girl in the bag. And now she's not responding to anything I'm trying to do.
Emily: Yeah. Cuz before she had kind of gotten sick of his shit, but didn't know the specifics of his history. Now she knows that, she's like, no, I'm done.
We're not playing this game anymore.
Lauren: No. And he also says something about, oh, you know, she must need the, the privacy of a crowded room to really like excite her vanity or something like that. Like if she knows that other people can hear the conversation, she's not going to really be as carefree as she would be otherwise. Like, no, she just doesn't like you.
Emily: Yeah. Tell me you don't know Anne Elliot without telling me you don't know Anne Elliot.
Lauren: It's just-- she just doesn't like you, dude. That's not, that's not the case.
Emily: Yeah. Fortunately, he does come with the news that he is going out of town for a couple of days to see some other friends, and Anne is greatly relieved that she will be rid of him for that time.
Lauren: She's like, thank God that gives me a little bit more time to talk to Lady Russell. I won't have to worry about avoiding him. Everything's great. Everything is fine. And then there's another curve ball thrown at her.
Emily: The Musgroves are in town.
Lauren: Surprise!
Emily: Mary and Charles just like show up. It's, it's very funny when they arrive that Sir Walter and Elizabeth, as soon as they realize that they're not trying to stay at their house, they're so much [00:08:00] warmer towards them.
Like that's. That's your sister and brother-in-law.
Lauren: Not a lick of hospitality at all.
Emily: Not a single bone in their bodies.
Lauren: Which then extends to Elizabeth trying to get out of inviting them all to dinner because she knows propriety demands that she should invite them all to dinner the following day because now they're in town.
They're family, you know, they're within their social circle. She can't deny these people. But then she realizes that if she invites 'em all to dinner, the Musgroves will see how the Elliot family has been diminished in Bath where they don't have the same number of servants, it's not the level of grandeur that they would expect, and heaven forbid that a family who should know that their station is so far below the Elliots should see how the family has been so diminished.
And so she finally settles on, okay, evening party. Less of a production. They're not going to figure out that we don't have the level of staff that we probably should have. And then I am not going to be rude, even though she is being rude because she really should be inviting them to dinner.
Emily: But she logics it away because there's some other person of presumably comparable standing who like, didn't invite her own sister when to dinner when she came to town.
So Elizabeth's like, this is fine, whatever. And it doesn't seem like anyone really comments on it. I'm sure Anne, more than anyone, is aware of the propriety of not inviting your family to dinner.
Lauren: No one really says anything about it until the next chapter in a different conversation where they're like, ah, it's just an evening party.
Like, honestly, who really cares?
Emily: That was very funny.
Lauren: It's not like she invited us to dinner. I mean, we'll go, but like. It's not a big deal.
Emily: But yeah. Mary and Charles have come. Mrs. Musgrove. Henrietta also came to shop for wedding clothes for herself and her sister. it's all, you know, it's all coming up roses. It's lovely. Captain Harville has also come, which Anne's happy about cuz she likes him. She likes all of the Musgroves and they all like her. They treat her like a beloved part of the family.
Lauren: Yep. And when she's with them, everything-- conversation is flowing, it's easy. People are, you know, having a good time.
The moment you throw Sir Walter and [00:10:00] Elizabeth into the mix, the vibes are off. The whole social dynamic of the group changes immediately.
Emily: It's that scene of Pride and Prejudice where the Netherfield gang walks into the Meryton assembly and everything goes silent.
Lauren: Like, oh, the vibe killers are here.
Emily: Yep.
Lauren: You guys, we can't have fun anymore. Now we have to pay attention to how we're behaving.
Emily: But they're not there for very long. Basically long enough to say hello, extend their invitation to the evening party, leave their card with the Musgroves, and then Elizabeth leaves one very particularly with Captain Wentworth, which is interesting.
Lauren: Yes. And Captain Wentworth is not thrilled about this. And this is another instance where Anne understands him and understands his emotions and what he's thinking better than the other people in the room, which would be unsurprising in any case, but especially unsurprising when it comes to how Mary Musgrove reads the situation versus Anne.
So Anne is watching Captain Wentworth. She knows that he must feel all the past slight of her family and is trying to decide what to do about this invitation and is staring at it like, 'Hmm, I'm not really thrilled about it. But also I could see Anne, but also I hate these people.' And you know, going back and forth in his brain and then Mary stage whispers like, 'oh my gosh, did you see that Elizabeth specifically gave Wentworth an invitation? He's so happy about it. He can't even put the card down.'
And Anne and Wentworth look at each other and she says there's like a, this brief moment where his like mouth looks very contemptuous and then he turns away. So like Anne can't see how annoyed he is, but they both know that he's like, 'girl, I hate your family. I hate them so much.'
Emily: It's so good. I mean, it's just a, like, continuation of what we've seen through the whole novel of their connection, like they know each other so intimately that they can guess what the other is thinking and like, share those looks even though they haven't been [00:12:00] close for eight years.
Lauren: And even after like eight, eight and a half years of separation and being thrown back into one another's company, they have not been spending a lot of time together one-on-one, but they're still able to understand what the other is thinking through a glance across a room.
And everything is understood despite the fact that they still feel very estranged from one another.
Emily: It's just, it's so good the way Austen evokes that. Like we were really, really close once, and that connection was never completely severed. When it's been so long since you've seen someone, but you used to know them like the back of your hand and you're thrown back together and you're just like, I still know you.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. Anyway. Moving on to just continue hurting even more. But this now, now we get some comfort.
Emily: Now we get some comfort because the next day Anne goes back and she and Captain Harville have a little conversation. He has been asked by Benwick to basically have re-set a miniature portrait that Benwick had had done for Harville's sister Fanny.
When they were engaged, while Fannie was still alive. And Harville is having some feelings about this. Understandably, he has lost a beloved sister and is a little conflicted about that sister's fiance having apparently moved on pretty quickly. And already being engaged to marry another girl. So he talks to Anne about this and they have a conversation about basically like the duration of affections and sort of, you know, period typical gender essentialism about like, oh, well women are like this and men are like that and women have the tenderer feelings.
But still, you know, they sort of settle on the like, well, we're both going to be biased towards our own set. And basically there's no like, superiority in one way of being over another, at least [00:14:00] in the, the very particular context they're talking about.
Lauren: But while they're having this conversation, Captain Wentworth is also in the room because he has been engaged to write this letter to, Captain Benwick to kind of get this whole portrait situation sorted out.
And so while Harville and Anne are having this conversation by the window, Captain Wentworth is, you know, scribbling away at his paper. But Anne, being as constantly aware of Wentworth and his behavior as she is, notices that, you know, after certain expressions, Wentworth is... seems to be listening very hard, but she's thinking to herself, 'there's no way he can actually hear me from his position in the room.'
And at one point he drops his pen because of whatever has, whatever he's heard and whatever he's interpreting. Because as Anne is having this discussion about the duration of romantic affection from men versus women, she is saying specifically, like, 'I don't think that women really are able to let things go the way that men can. You have occupations and adventures and you venture out into the world, and it gives you a lot more opportunity to get over someone in activity alone, if not in meeting someone else. But women are at home just nursing these feelings forever, and it makes it impossible for us to really get over anyone because all we have to do is just sit and continue nursing those feelings.'
And so, you know that Wentworth's ear is just like growing to the size of his entire head? Like, I'm sorry, you said, what about about women not getting over people? Does that include you? Hello? Just, just, just, just a question. I just wanna know.
Emily: But he and Harville eventually get up and step out for their errand, and they're not planning to be gone for very long, evidently.
But they've just stepped out of the room, Anne has gone nearer to the writing desk, and Wentworth quickly comes back in saying, 'oh, I've forgotten my gloves.' He goes back over to the desk, gets the gloves, pulls out another letter from underneath some papers, and like, sneaky slides it over to Anne. It has her [00:16:00] name on it.
She immediately sits down and reads it because obviously.
Lauren: Would you like to do the honors?
Emily: Oh, should I read the whole thing?
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: Okay. I would love to do the honors. I would be delighted.
Lauren: There is no abridging Captain Wentworth's letter. The whole thing must be read in its entirety.
Emily: All right.
"I can listen no longer in silence.
I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.
I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath, for you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these 10 days could I have read your feelings as I think you must have penetrated mine.
I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men.
Believe it to be most fervent, most un deviating in Frederick Wentworth. I must go, uncertain of my fate, but I shall return hither or follow your party as soon as possible. A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."
Lauren: Screaming.
Emily: So good! Half agony, half hope.
Lauren: Welcome to my favorite lines in all of literature.
Emily: You pierce my soul.
Lauren: I can't. This is what reduces me to, like, I am no longer a critic. I'm not an academic. I am just a fan girl in a puddle on the floor.
Emily: Right? God. Can you imagine [00:18:00] reading this for the first time? In what year was it published? 1817.
Lauren: I read this book for the first time at 20, and my standards have been raised ever since.
Emily: As they should be.
Lauren: Write me a love letter or leave me alone.
Emily: Absolutely incredible. And like, it's just, I, I have a particular soft spot for, like epistolary anything. I love using the medium of diagetic writing to get at character. And this is just, so good. Like, he's so earnest, he's so open about understanding Anne and wanting her to understand him.
Lauren: It's, it's so good. It's so good.
Emily: It's so good.
Lauren: And I love too that this letter comes as a result of like, Anne asserting her feelings and her opinions, because we've watched her be unable to do so for so many different things in the book, of either deciding not to say anything or you know, being in conversation with someone, but just deciding to acquiesce and not say anything because it's really not a big deal.
And she's not in an argument with Captain Harville at all, but they are going back and forth and she's holding her ground because she feels really deeply about this and she's able to like, marry her feelings and her intent and you know, be able to voice her opinions in a decided manner where she's not going to be influenced by what the other person is saying.
Which also holds so much weight for Anne and her character and like the lessons that she needs to learn over the course of the book called Persuasion.
Emily: I think it's also really significant that they are in the company of the Musgroves and not her family. Because it's possible that she would have had this kind of conversation, you know, sort of off to the side with Captain Harville in the Elliots' home.
But she's in a place where she's surrounded by people that she is comfortable with, people who value her, even if it's not always shown perfectly. People who are very vocal about wanting her around and wanting her to be happy.
Lauren: Everything is perfect.
Emily: Everything is [00:20:00] perfect. It's so good.
Lauren: Just, I can't.
Emily: So Anne sits down, immediately reads this letter and is overcome to the point where everyone's like, girl, are you okay?
Like, do you need to go home?
Lauren: She's like, actually, yes I do. I would like to be left alone immediately so I can walk home by myself because she knows that Wentworth will be out on the street somewhere and this is her chance to say something to him.
Emily: Unfortunately, her brother-in-law is too chivalrous to be completely put off.
He's like, you know what? I was going to go out and see this guy about some really cool gun that he had, I don't know.
Lauren: Whatever.
Emily: Whatever, whatever. Sure, Charles. but he insists on walking her home because Charles is a nice person and they're going down the street and Anne is just like, 'How, how quickly can I get rid of him?'
She is like looking around everywhere and knowing that Wentworth is gonna be somewhere around. At last he appears. And fortunately, he is a trustworthy person and Charles is like, so do you mind if I go leave this? They're like, no, no, no. Go ahead.
Lauren: Please go talk to that man about whatever gun he has. I don't care.
Leave me alone.
Emily: Get lost. But they're finally alone. Anne in that first glance, had communicated as much as she could, basically saying like, 'don't you dare turn around and never speak to me again.' Like, 'I have things to say to you.' And so they're able to walk together and talk, Anne obviously does not immediately go home.
They go find like a little park and just walk and walk and walk and have this whole conversation and everything comes out. Their mutual confession saying that neither of them has ever thought of anyone but the other in the entire eight and a half years they've been separated. It's just so wonderful and so full of feeling.
Lauren: And Wentworth admits to the fact he says, I thought that I had moved on.
He goes, I really have not thought of anyone but you, but that isn't to say that I was conscious of that for the entire eight and a half years because he [00:22:00] says, you know, I was really hurt, I was upset, I was mad. And so I told myself that I had moved on and I had gotten over it, but I really, I never did.
And I knew that immediately when I'd seen you again. Yeah.
Emily: I think he also says something about, essentially unconsciously comparing every other potential partner to her. Because he's-- he knew that he had already found the person that was perfect for him, and no one else could possibly live up to that in his mind.
So even if he thought he had moved on from Anne Elliot, she's always been the standard.
Lauren: Yep. And so Anne is finally able to be happy without feeling like there's something hanging over her head to remove that happiness. Because any other time in the book where she's had like some semblance of like happiness or contentment, there's always a worry in the back of her mind of, how long is this going to last?
But this, this can't be taken away from her. Now, the words have been said. In that in between space when she had received a letter but not spoken to Wentworth yet, there was still a possibility that it might go awry. Maybe he might misinterpret a look, or she might not see him, and they might continue to be stuck in this mutual, but separate understanding.
But now that they've had this conversation, they can't be separated anymore, like, her happiness is secured.
Emily: There's also a great little line from Wentworth right at the end of that chapter where basically he's talking about how he's happier than he is ever been, ever could be, and says, "I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve."
It's just, it's so amazing to watch this conversation play out between two people who are fully conscious and acknowledging to one another that they messed up. In various ways. They're both like, yeah, we made huge mistakes. We shouldn't have done that, but they're able to reconcile now after speaking these things.
They're not trying to shove it under the rug that the events of the last eight and a half years didn't happen. But they're being so like [00:24:00] mature and adult about it. It's amazing.
Lauren: They acknowledge the hurt that they caused one another and, like you said, rather than just sweeping it under the rug, they bring it out into the open, but are able to forgive one another for it and forgive themselves for the mistakes that they made rather than continuing to beat themselves up about it.
Yeah, it's just like a really great example of emotional maturity and how that level of like, emotional communication really sets the relationship up for success, because had they just let those resentments dwell and they had said, you know, 'we both have feelings for one another,' but they don't discuss the last eight and a half years.
This relationship does not get off on a good foot.
Emily: But they addressed it right up front.
Lauren: Flawless. Flawless.
Emily: And then the final chapter is like four pages long.
Lauren: It's just denoument, it doesn't matter. Everybody gets married. They live happily ever after. Mr. Elliot goes off somewhere with Mrs. Clay because he also like, randomly came back to Bath.
He said he had been leaving at that party before Wentworth and Anne had this fateful conversation. Mary is looking out the window and she says, oh, there's Mr. Elliot down there, and Anne is trying not to look at Captain Wentworth. Captain Wentworth is trying not to look at Anne, and Anne's like, 'no, that's not possible. He said he was leaving from Bath,' and then also goes, 'oh no, that intimates that I have more knowledge of his coming and going than other people do. And that also like gives some sense of closeness between the two of us, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid.'
And Mary will not let it go and she keeps saying, 'no, that's Mr. Elliot. He's talking to Mrs. Clay. I know what my cousin looks like. That's him down there.'
Emily: Girl, you have never met him.
Lauren: She-- never, but she's Mary. And so she keeps trying to get Anne to come to the window. Anne finally, to shut her up, is like, oh my God, fine. I will come look out the window. And sure enough, there he is speaking to Mrs. Clay and Anne's like, 'that's weird. Didn't he just say he was gonna be... hmm. Okay. Anyway. Yeah, that is Mr. Elliot. I'm gonna go back and sit down now, but she doesn't really know what was going on. And then it turns out in the last chapter, Mr. Elliot was like, [00:26:00] listen, I'm making sure that my future is secured one way or another.
And he has gone off with Mrs. Clay to some other part of London. More importantly that Mrs. Clay is no longer in the household of Sir Walter and Elizabeth. He and Mrs. Clay are not married. the narration--
Emily: she's under his protection.
Lauren: Under his protection and the narration does intimate that Mrs. Clay may have decided to shift her designs from Sir Walter to Sir William, but they're not married yet.
Mrs. Clay may still have the last laugh, though. She could still be Lady Elliot one day. She could still be Lady Elliot one day.
Emily: But you know. If the persistency pays off, then hmm.
Lauren: You know what girl? Secure the bag.
Emily: Mm-hmm. They kind of deserve each other.
Lauren: They kinda do.
Emily: I, I don't wanna say that Mrs. Clay deserves everything we know about Mr. Elliot, but they're, you know, both scheming for their own ends. So.
Lauren: I feel like if you are going to be calculated in what you want your life to be, be with somebody else who's calculating what they want their life to be. And then you can just be happy and devising your perfectly calculated life together.
Emily: There we go.
Lauren: The end.
Emily: That will not be Anne's life though, because she is happy as a sailor's wife.
Lauren: And I think it's very important too that in that last couple lines of the book, she's not saying she'll be happy as a captain's wife. It specifically says sailor, like the rank does not matter. She's happy that she's gonna be Captain Wentworth's wife and a sailor's wife.
And this is all she ever wants.
Emily: I love it so much.
Lauren: Everything is perfect. Yes, everybody should read Persuasion. If you have not been reading along with us and you're using this podcast as your introduction into Persuasion. I love this. This is what it is meant for. You also should read it.
Emily: Please go read it.
Lauren: Please read the book. I didn't even know where to talk about preparation because I feel like I just wanna continue gushing about Anne and Wentworth for forever.
Emily: I know, right?
Lauren: I was unprepared for the emotional backhand I got from these three chapters.
Emily: Honestly, same.
Lauren: That's my preparation note. I read the book before and I was still unprepared.
The book said, [00:28:00] oh, you thought you remembered? No, you did not. Let me hit you across the face again with how good it is.
Emily: Do we have things to talk about in terms of preparation though?
Lauren: I think the one thing that comes to mind is how prepared Mr. Elliot was to secure his future through any means necessary.
Emily: Interesting.
Lauren: Okay. plan A of marry a rich girl unconnected to the family I dislike, that didn't work. Okay. plan B. Make sure that Sir Walter does not marry this random Mrs. Clay so he can't have a son and replace me. Oh. Plan C! Or rather plan like B, sub A, whatever. Like marry Anne Elliot and make sure Sir Walter does not marry Mrs. Clay. Okay. plan D, take Mrs. Clay away from the Elliots. He's like, I don't care how it happens, but I will be receiving this living and I will be content and I really don't care who I step on to get there. It's gonna happen. He's the most prepared character in this whole book. For better or for worse.
Emily: We can give him that.
Lauren: We can give him that. He's a conniving little brat, but he is prepared. And then I wonder if there's any kind of preparation with like Anne and Wentworth that we can discuss.
Emily: Yeah, that's what I was kind of angling towards. I think in terms of the theme is both of them having to prepare themselves to confront each other. Confront is kind of a strong word for that, but I mean, that's what it is. They're, they're going to have to confront what happened, the mistakes that they made between one another and how they're going to reconcile that. So yeah, even if we don't see it explicitly. There's definitely a lot of internal preparation going on, and we even kind of see in Wentworth's letter as he's writing, him preparing himself for whatever this fate is going to be, depending on how Anne responds.
Lauren: Yeah, that's what I was thinking was like the emotional preparation. So there's that, what you just [00:30:00] said of Wentworth preparing himself for a response, so kind of really hoping that he's going to get a positive response, but also mentally preparing himself for rejection just in case he's misreading this whole situation, but also how both of them need to be emotionally prepared in order to have this catharsis and this moment of reconnection and reunion.
Because had they tried this when Wentworth was still in the throes of like hurt and pain, earlier on in their estrangement, I, I don't know that I would've had the same outcome. if you try and repair the relationship before either party has done, like the deep work of reconciling with like, here are the mistakes that I made, here's how I felt hurt, I'm now coming to the table like, ready to forgive and like work through this as a unit rather than it being a tit for tat you hurt me and now I'm going to try and hurt you. None of this works. So they both have to have done like that inner emotional work for them to be able to reconnect and reunite.
Emily: Yeah. There is a mention by Wentworth of a point where like the wars had been ended roughly two, maybe two and a half years after their initial split. And he says if at that point I had...done this, if I had come to you and confessed my feelings again, would you have accepted me? And Anne, basically, she, I think she literally just says, would I?
And that's enough to convey that, 'yes, absolutely.' But all that really seems to convey in the moment is that like, they haven't stopped caring for each other. I wonder how it would've turned out if they had actually gone for that so much earlier, six years earlier, without, the especially the very particular way that they were reintroduced to each other.
Lauren: Yeah. I don't know that it has the same outcome. I think there's a possibility where they try and reconnect or reunite, but there's still too much resentment and it falls apart all over again.
Emily: Mm-hmm. The wound is still too [00:32:00] fresh maybe.
Lauren: Yeah. and you know, maybe that's not the case. Maybe they would've rekindled that engagement and it would've been happily ever after six years earlier.
Or maybe they get married and then they, you know, now they have to hash all this stuff out that they haven't really talked about. You know, who knows.
Emily: Yeah. And you know, the fact that Wentworth didn't approach her again at that time, I think, says that he wasn't prepared to go through that.
Lauren: Exactly. Because had he been prepared to say, come what may, I'm in love with Anne Elliot, I'm going to go try this again. He would've done it. But clearly he wasn't.
Emily: If he wanted to, he would!
Lauren: If he wanted to, he would.
Emily: We got there eventually.
Lauren: Listen, that is my guiding principle.
Emily: All right. So there was more of preparation in this section than I think I initially noticed.
Lauren: We just had to uncover it in conversation.
Emily: Mm-hmm. I mean, obviously the front load of emotion here is, oh my God, this is so good.
Lauren: Yeah, we just didn't wanna talk about preparation because we wanted to squee over the letter. And honestly, I think that's valid.
Emily: Like we're, we're both fan girls at heart. That's our background. That's where we come from.
Lauren: That's how this whole podcast got started.
Emily: Truly.
Lauren: Okay. Shall we move on to your historical topic, or do we have more that we want to dissect and just yell about?
Emily: I mean, we're gonna continue yelling one way or another.
Lauren: This is very true. Okay.
Emily: But I sure can talk about history.
Lauren: Please do.
Emily: So, I'm kind of going back to the very beginning of this, but a thread that's been woven throughout in multiple ways.
I wanna know what the hell a baronet actually is. What does this mean?
Lauren: Oh, good. Because every time I read it, even though I know it's nobility, my brain reads it as bayonet.
Emily: Well, it doesn't have a, okay. It has a little bit to do with weaponry, I guess, if you finesse it a little bit.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: All right. So the term Baronet is first recorded in England in 1328, but the institution that we're really looking at right now was created by King James the First in 1611. James' Baronets were gentlemen in good standing who had an [00:34:00] income of at least a thousand pounds a year who would be required to support 30 soldiers for three years. So really a baronetcy was created to bring some money into the crown and, you know, pay for its military.
Lauren: It's the crown subsidizing the military.
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Using its citizens.
Emily: Exactly. It's like, hey, you can be a baronet. Oh, but you gotta pay for these soldiers.
Lauren: Yeah. Here's the carrot of social status. Come get the carrot.
Emily: That's what it is.
Lauren: Pay for my stuff, please.
Emily: Mm-hmm. Between 1611, those first sort of, I guess we could call 'em a modern baronetcy.
Between 1611 and 1962 when there was a count done, there were more than 3,400 baronetcies created. Not just people who had been baronet. But specific named positions
Lauren: Jesus.
Emily: Created. Yeah. Today there are only about 1200 existing and about 200 of those are held by people who are actual peers. Because a baronetcy does not confer peerage, you are not a noble.
Lauren: Oh, interesting.
Emily: If you are a peer of the realm, it is by some other title. If you're just a baronet, you're still technically a commoner.
Lauren: Oh, dang. That's a raw deal.
Emily: I know, right. But there are some rights that a baronet actually does have. So in terms of rank, they're directly below the younger sons of peers.
So peers are the upper nobility, baronets are kind of the top of the heap in the low, I don't wanna call it lower nobility, cuz they're, they're not nobles, they're not peers, but--
Lauren: they're like high ranked commoners?
Emily: Is, is essentially, that's the highest rank you can have as a commoner, I guess. If this is incorrect, I apologize to listeners who know more than I do.
Lauren: We're American, we don't do that here.
Emily: Yep. The second main right, that a baronet would have is that the eldest son had a right of knighthood, but this is actually revoked in 1827. But [00:36:00] at the time that Austen was writing, if Sir Walter had had a son, he would've been Sir, whatever his name would be. And then finally, as a heroic badge, they could use, a visual element called the Red Hand of Ulster, which is literally a red hand.
I don't know. I would love to know more about Heraldry. but that's gonna have to be a future hyper fixation. We'll get to that someday. Yeah. This is still a commoner title. You're not a peer just by appearing a baronet, but it is hereditary. So while a knighthood only applies to the actual recipient like Sir William Lucas from Pride and Prejudice, a baronetcy typically descends through the direct male line of the person who was created baronet.
There have only been four Baronesses. Three of those were only in the 20th century, but the first one was actually in 1635.
Lauren: Wow.
Emily: Yeah. And she was actually the first person like to be created that title, so she originated the title for that line.
Lauren: Neat.
Emily: Which is pretty cool. So, the inheritance, although it typically goes through the direct male line, can be specified through special remainders to include or exclude certain people.
Lauren: Interesting.
Emily: Yeah. So you can legally say like, 'Hey, I don't want this specific son to ever be baronet,' and I guess you could make that work somehow. I also, discovered that there is a Wikipedia list of fictional Baronets and Austen created two.
Lauren: Absolutely.
Emily: Obviously Sir Walter Elliot, but there's also Sir Thomas Bertram from Mansfield Park.
So that's just a little bit about this title that has proven so consequential to especially the events of the latter half of the book with the appearance of Mr. William Elliot.
Lauren: Fantastic. Thank you so much.
Emily: You're so welcome.
Lauren: Needed context.
Emily: Right? Sorry it took till the very end. [00:38:00]
Lauren: It's all good. We got there eventually.
That was perfect. Thank you.
Emily: What do you have for pop culture today?
Lauren: Hmm.
Oh, that's a good sign. so it was fitting that we started off this episode saying how good Persuasion hurts because my pop culture connection is the hurt/comfort trope.
Emily: Oh, perfect. Is that why you also sent me that TikTok earlier?
Lauren: No, the TikTok actually inspired the pop culture connection.
Emily: Oh, perfect.
Lauren: I sent Emily a TikTok this morning of somebody using,TikTok filters to decide what fan fiction they were going to read next, and this poor soul was given Call of Duty hurt/comfort, fan fiction.
Emily: Look there, there is a reason that I, I have one particular friend who, we mutually inflict really terrible fics on each other.
I don't think either of us actually reads them, but when we come across particular things, we're just like, I need to show you that this exists.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: This knowledge needs to be shared.
Lauren: Exactly. So that was what inspired my pop culture connection. It was just, it was luck, but it also worked out really well.
so once again, as usual, for those of you who are not terminally online the way that both of us are in very different ways, the hurt/comfort trope is exactly what it sounds like. An easy definition is, this trope occurs when a regular character is damaged either emotionally or physically, and another character, usually a partner or love interest of some sort, has to comfort them.
It also has like come to mean in certain situations that you're just going to be destroyed, but then you will be comforted towards the end. you may be hurt for 80,000 words of a 90,000 word fic, but there will be that comfort at the end.
Emily: Those are some of my favorites. This is one of my favorite tropes to read. As we've said, I'm a masochist when it comes to fiction.
Lauren: It, it really was perfect when you said that earlier and I couldn't say anything about what my eventual pop culture topic was going to be.
Before I dive into what really just made my whole day as far as like, finding something related to hurt/comfort that I [00:40:00] wanted to talk about.
There were also some really good quotes from a Reddit thread asking about why do people like hurt/comfort? So I thought I would bring some of those into the conversation. I think the question was like, what do you like most about hurt/comfort?
Somebody said when a seemingly invincible character just breaks down in front of the comforting one.
Yes, I love that so much. I think because I am the strong friend and I like to be comforted sometimes, too. So it is nice to see like, when the invincible strong person finally just breaks, and then there is somebody there to say like, you also deserve comfort. You don't have to be the one comforting everybody else.
Yes, inject it. I agree with you, random Reddit commenter.
Other people said, "when it takes time for the characters to confide their pains to one another, and they really struggle through their fear and pride in revealing anything." Anne and Captain Wentworth, hello. Just continual hurt until they finally break down and confide in one another about what they feel, and they get to finally have some sort of relief from the pain they're unintentionally inflicting on one another by just not speaking.
And then the third one was, "it gives depth to the characters. They're meant to be imperfect, raw, and feel real to the reader." So you're not excluded from seeing like, a Mary Sue character in hurt/comfort fics, but it's going to be a lot less common because the entire point of that trope-- it's not just in fan fiction, it's in regular like published fiction as well.
But the entire point is that the characters are meant to be imperfect and flawed because that is where the hurt part of the hurt/comfort comes from. And so you do sometimes get more depth to your characters because they have to be three dimensional in order for that hurt/comfort to really pay off the way you want it to.
Okay. And then, the thing that really just made my whole day is when I was looking up hurt/comfort. I found an essay called "Hurt/Comfort, A Confession and A Celebration," by someone called Renae, just the first name as a username. This came [00:42:00] from, mind you, an entire fan, fan fiction symposium that was hosted online on Live Journal from 1999 to 2006.
Emily: Absolutely incredible.
Lauren: It is the best thing I've ever seen in my entire life, and I'm so glad I found it.
Emily: This is, I think this is historiography. We're doing field history right now.
Lauren: Yes. This-- history of fan fiction and fandom online. Did you know there was a whole Fanfic symposium on Live Journal? Because I did not.
And I was on fanfiction sites. Not in 1999, but probably starting like 2004? I wasn't there. Anyway. One of the benefits to hurt/comfort that this person said in their essay, which I thought was just really beautifully put, was that. "It is enjoyable to hurt a fictional character when you are the author who is writing hurt/comfort.
People want to see it. Clever TV advertisers always play up the peril or hurt to a favorite main character in the previews to an episode because they know it will draw the viewers to the character involved. It's sort of the opposite of Gladiator-- bleed, and they will love you for it. Why? Because the first step to love is identification, and nothing makes us identify or feel with another person as immediately as empathy for their pain.
It's instinctive. It's the root for the highest of human virtues, compassion, and the lowest of human evils, sadism. In hurt/comfort, one can shade into another, and it's okay because no real people are being hurt in the making of this fic. When we hurt our favorite hero, we're hurting ourselves, and yet we're also coping with that hurt, comforting it, and saving ourselves in the nick of time from worse.
We get to play all three sides of the equation: victim, tormentor, and rescuer. Some people go so far in the hurt that you feel repelled," and then she names the infamous ex sentinel writer Sharon, for instance, who has removed her stories from the net. I don't, I don't know what fandom this is, but I wanna know the tea.
"but for my money, it's better if we work out these things on paper than if we let them bleed, so to speak, over into our real lives. That doesn't create good fiction, but like journal writing, perhaps it serves another purpose. And like journals, some of them can be good for others to [00:44:00] read afterwards."
Emily: This is, this is one of those conversations that I'm continually having and that I love having about fiction is that like, it's so important because it gives you a safe place to explore things. That's part of the reason that I like hurt/comfort so much, and I think it, it calls back to something we talked about a few episodes ago, the concept of something not being necessarily relatable but resonant.
So if you're able to feel hurt, if you're able to feel grief, if you're able to feel distress through fiction, and then especially when you bring in the the particular trope of hurt/comfort, if you're then able to feel catharsis from that. It's so valuable because you don't have to experience these things necessarily in real life.
It can be used as a way to cope with feeling that in real life, it can be used in sort of an anticipatory way as well if you want to. Especially like for teenagers, I. If you're, if you're trying to grasp the world and the full depth of emotion that humans are capable of, but you don't have these particular experiences, fiction, and particularly fan fiction, is a really valuable way to do that. I have a lot of feelings about this.
Lauren: That's good. That's what this is for.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I read a lot of hurt/comfort. I have written a significant amount of hurt/comfort and no, I will still not share my AO3 handle, please. And thank you.
Lauren: I didn't even know what it is, guys.
I was never really a hurt/comfort person, I think, because I did not want to go through the angst to, to get to the payoff. But I think also I've gained a greater appreciation for it. Like Persuasion is one of my favorite books, and it is the definition of hurt/comfort. So I, I have moved into more of an appreciation for it, I think, like as my tastes have shifted and I've gotten older. [00:46:00] I am forever a fan of like a good, fluffy romance novel. That's always going to be my bread and butter. But then also for balance, sometimes it is really great just to have that catharsis of a good hurt/comfort moment in whether it's a published book or in a fan fiction, just like in the media that I consume.
I think having that outlet to feel that type of emotion or pain separate from your own life is really healthy and really helpful.
Emily: Yeah, and I, I think especially like approaching it from the direction of hurt/comfort can also be a good segue into larger conversations that are being had right now about fiction and the uses of fiction and some particular puritanical tendencies that pop up, you know, in perpetual cycles in fandoms, I'm not even gonna say online fandoms, just surrounding fiction where people reduce the experience of engaging with fiction and media to like, 'oh, you read this because you like this or because you are this way.' and the people I interact with make a lot of jokes about this. Like, 'oh yeah, I like this villain because I think that everything they've done is perfectly morally acceptable and there's nothing more to say about that.'
but being able to talk about the nuance in things like enjoying hurt/comfort, I think is also a good way to expand that conversation into like, actually I don't like, I don't think that this character is a good person. Like I know they have done bad things. I'm still enjoying them. They're fictional!
Lauren: Right.
But as, as my final brief tangent slash wrap up, I would love to read you some of the titles of the other essays that were in this fan fiction symposium.
Emily: Please do.
Lauren: Because it made my entire life, this is a very, very brief selection. It is only four, and I really had to work to only select four out of seven years of essay titles.
Emily: Oh my gosh.
Lauren: Because I did read all of the titles. I did [00:48:00] not read every essay, of course, because when would I have done that? But, anyway, one of them was, "My God, Spock. You're a Woman," by Rachel Shave. That was from 1999, mind you. So I'm loving the trans representation and gender bending as early as 1999.
Emily: We love it. And earlier, you know.
Lauren: Listen, fandom has been ahead of the curve in this for many different topics. Like, okay, y'all may be having this conversation now, but fangirls have been having this conversation for decades. Yeah. So I'm glad you've caught up.
Emily: Unless you're a fandom historian, which is a thing that does exist. Unless you're a fandom historian, whatever you think about fandom and how long certain things have go been going on, just like expand that significantly back in time.
Mm. Mm-hmm. Like longer than you would think.
Lauren: Pre-internet. Star Trek fan fiction magazines. Anyway.
Emily: continue.
Lauren: There was also "In Defense of PWP," by the, by Themiris.
Emily: Would you like to explain what PWP is?
Lauren: Porn with plot.
Emily: Although it could be either porn with plot or porn without plot.
Lauren: Who knows? This was 2000, so I don't know what the fandom temperature was at that point in time.
Emily: Fair enough.
Lauren: It could go either way, honestly. Another one was "Naming OCs, A Rant."
Emily: Man. I've seen some bad OC names.
Lauren: I'm sure that's where this person was coming from too.
Emily: I also have a lot of thoughts about OCs, but I will leave that-- OCs being original characters.
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: For those not terminally online.
Lauren: Thank you for that definition.
Emily: You're welcome.
Lauren: And then, we'll also have to define like, one term from this as well, but the final one, which just like chef's kiss. So Good. "so you wanna write a slash sex scene? Have you done your homework?"
Emily: I, I will maintain. There needs to be some more homework done in certain areas of fandom.
Lauren: Listen, this person has a point because sometimes people are writing about things they clearly have no idea about, and it just, it takes you out of the story completely. and the one term that needs to be defined in that is slash fan fiction is usually like, gay fan fiction with men specifically, and it comes from the slash from like, M/M, that's where the slash comes from.
And that could [00:50:00] be like woman slash woman or whatever, but 9.9 times outta 10 slash fan fiction is gay fan fiction involving men.
Emily: I think there's a, probably a lot psychologically to be said about the tendency towards gay male fan fiction, but we do not have the time or space for that.
Lauren: That was also an essay in the symposium!
Emily: Yes. Oh. Fandom people out here doing the academic work. I love to see it.
Lauren: It just, this made my entire day. I was like, these are my people. Yes.
Emily: Alright. We should actually wrap up this episode because we are still talking about Persuasion.
Lauren: Are we?
Emily: Yes. Or at least we need to because we need to do final, final takeaways.
Lauren: We do. Okay.
Emily: And, and get ourselves mentally prepared to be finished with this book because we only have one more Persuasion episode left.
Lauren: I reject your reality and substitute my own.
Emily: Okay. Fair enough. But like we still need final takeaways.
Lauren: Okay. Who goes first for final takeaways? I never know.
Emily: You recapped first so I take away first.
Lauren: Oh, excellent. Emily. Please give us your final takeaways for just these final three chapters of Persuasion. We're not doing the entire book, just these three chapters.
Emily: Mm-hmm. All right. Leaning on our theme of preparation and looking at the very long time it took for Wentworth and Anne to come back around to their relationship.
I'm gonna say my final takeaway is that there's not necessarily a deadline on being prepared for something like this, you can't just say, 'at this point, I will have moved past it,' or, 'I will be ready to talk about it.' Like that's just not how emotions work in humans, unfortunately. It would be much more convenient if it were, but I think, I think that's my final takeaway.
Sometimes it can take you eight and a half years to become reacquainted with, and then get up your courage to talk to the person that you [00:52:00] dumped.
Lauren: Oops.
Emily: Yep. And what is your final takeaway from just these chapters?
Lauren: I think it's that there's no right way to love or move on from loving someone. So Captain Harville obviously feels some type of way about Captain Benwick moving on from his sister Fanny and deciding to marry Louisa.
But that doesn't mean that his love for Fanny was any less valid or real. And he can,, and ostensibly does, love both women, just in different ways. And that doesn't take anything away from the way that Captain Wentworth and Anne experience love, in which they don't feel like there is another person for them, and they just want to love that person.
Like there is no right or wrong way. Like your, your love for someone is not less valid because you loved somebody else first. And you are also completely valid in choosing not to move on and love anyone else and just focusing your emotions on that one person. I think there is no, there's no right way to love or fall out of love with, with someone.
There just is how you experience it.
Emily: That's really good.
Lauren: Thank you.
Emily: Well, I was gonna say, let's pull our tarot, but we will not have a theme until we start Northanger Abbey, later this summer.
Lauren: Dun dun dun. Oh my gosh.
Emily: We only have one left after this.
Lauren: No!
Emily: But let's not focus too hard on that because we still have our wrap up episode.
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: For Persuasion, where we will get to play Advising Austen.
Lauren: And we have another Six Degrees of Jane Austen episode.
Emily: I can't wait. So in two weeks we will have our all Persuasion episode. We'll give our final thoughts, we'll have general discussion. We'll scream a little bit more, I am absolutely certain.
When that episode goes up, we will start taking suggestions on social media as usual for your outlandish topics that you would like to see connected to Austen. And then of course, if you are a patron at any level, you will be able to vote on which topics you want to [00:54:00] actually see in the episode. So go ahead and get those in.
Lauren: You get to shape what we talk about.
Emily: Yes, it's, you know, phenomenal cosmic power, et cetera, et cetera.
Lauren: Itty bitty living space.
Emily: But also there will be a season sticker for Persuasion available to $5 and $10 patrons. So if you're interested in that, Sign up before we start Northanger Abbey.
Lauren: And we will be doing Persuasion adaptations.
Emily: Absolutely.
Lauren: Don't you worry.
Emily: Yes, we will. So, yeah, follow us on social media. of course, if you want updates on all of these things, I can't wait.
Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll have a retrospective of the entire novel of Persuasion and we'll finally be able to discuss the book from front to back.
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 ya next time, nerds.
Emily: A lot of my favorite fictional characters have committed war crimes.
Lauren: I was literally just about to [00:56:00] say those are all the people who comment, 'small bean' over just a person who's a mass murderer.
Emily: Yes, baby girl?
Lauren: It's not a small bean. This man murdered 3000 people.
Emily: Precious cinnamon roll. Too pure, too good for this world.
Lauren: @Loki fan girls.