Persuasion: The End
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Despite our best efforts, we've made it to the end of Persuasion. This time we're sharing our final thoughts and the traditional tipsy advice for certain characters.
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane S5E9
[00:00:00]
Emily: This is Reclaiming Jane, an Austen podcast for fans on the margins.
Lauren: I'm Lauren Wethers.
Emily: And I'm Emily Davis Hale.
Lauren: And today, we're wrapping up Persuasion and giving questionable advice to a few select characters.
Emily: What can we even say about Persuasion besides just like, screaming into our mics for the next 20 minutes?
Lauren: One of Austen's greatest works. The love of my life.
Emily: Hands down.
Lauren: Beautifully written.
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: I love it so much. That's it. That's my episode.
Emily: You know, I concur. So I think we're good.
Lauren: That's it.
Emily: Bye guys.
Lauren: Thanks for coming. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Reclaiming Jane.
Emily: I should have just cut together from the last episode every single time we just like let out a heavy, heavy sigh or squeed about it or said the same stock phrase of praise.
Lauren: We honestly should have made last episode a video episode because if you could have only seen the reactions we were holding back, so we did not blow out our microphones with screaming. I'm sure that would've been probably the most entertaining episode we've ever released.
Emily: If we could do like one live show concept, it would just be like, show up in an open space and hear us scream at the top of our lungs about Persuasion.
Lauren: That's it. The end. I would be satisfied, but I think I would, I would love to at least start this episode with your thoughts, because this was your first time reading Persuasion. So did it... What expectations did you have when you first started this book?
Emily: What expectations did I have? From what I knew about Persuasion, I knew that there was like a long overdue love story in it.
People reuniting. But I didn't really know the specifics. So I expected, I guess, a little bit of the same energy we get from like, Lizzie and Darcy reuniting and reconciling. It was not that. It exceeded all of my expectations because it was just a completely different book from all of the others [00:02:00] in ways that I'm not sure I can articulate right now, but I might find the words later in the episode.
Lauren: That's very fair.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. And I guess, yeah, what... overall impressions, those were your expectations. Overall impressions, other than the, the general flailing we've already expressed.
Emily: Overall impressions, I definitely agree with everyone who talks about this being a particularly mature Austen novel. You definitely feel that the protagonist is, older and at a different stage in her life than other Austen heroines.
Which is a really interesting feeling because it just gives the book a very different vibe than a lot of the others, because Anne's not necessarily trying to figure out who she is and where she fits in the world. She's got a pretty good idea of where she is and where she would like to be as well.
So she feels like she's had a, a longer period of development before the start of the novel than the others have, which makes a lot of sense because she's several years older than all of the rest of them.
Lauren: It's not a coming of age. She is of age.
Emily: Yes, absolutely.
Lauren: And she has been.
Emily: Mm-hmm. It's a, it's a reclamation of her life and not a new discovery.
Lauren: Mm-hmm. And I think that's part of why I've also heard that for a lot of Austen fans, like, Pride and Prejudice is your first favorite Austen novel. And then as you get older, Persuasion becomes your favorite Austen novel. And I think it is because with age, you get that added perspective to where her story becomes that much more powerful and.
For Anne, you know, she's having this reclamation at 27, but that's something that you can relate to at any age of feeling as though there's an aspect of your identity or your life that you are going to reclaim as your own and to take in a different direction. And that's something that I [00:04:00] think when you have lived for a certain amount of time for other people, that hits a lot harder than it can at a younger age. Not always, you know, sometimes you're able to really relate to that really heavily at a young age, but I think with the perspective of adulthood, you're able to relate to that a lot more.
Emily: Absolutely. And I really feel that idea of, you know, Pride and Prejudice being the first, Persuasion being the second, because I read Pride and Prejudice when I was like 14, 15, and that, you know, headlong dive into really strong emotion, whatever it may be, that's perfectly poised for a teenager or a very young adult to get into. But then once you've gotten a little bit older and you hear like, 'Anne hasn't spoken to this person in eight years,' you can feel what eight years means as an adult.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Whereas if I had read that at 14 or 15, it'd be like, 'eight years? I was a kid then.' Like there's, there's, at least for me, there was nothing that I could have been longing for for that period of time.
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: But now I can vision it and it's coming back to this, not relatable, but resonant. You can feel those eight years of whatever it may be, just like as a pang.
Lauren: Yeah. And it's, it's just so I know, I know I keep saying beautifully written, but it just, the emotions are so resonant and permeate the book in such a way that you, it's just like this really beautifully melancholic read and I don't know, I think I'll probably keep coming back to this at certain points throughout my life, whether happy or sad, yearning or not.
Just, just to come back to this, like, wonderfully contained story.
Emily: Definitely. And it's such a relatively short book compared to the ones that we've read already. And, but it accomplishes so much emotionally and narratively [00:06:00] on a very small scale, but still one that is important to the characters involved.
That it feels like it has more, like, impact per capita, basically, like every page has to do more work than the ones that are twice as long.
Lauren: Exactly, and I think that there is a lot to be said for the strength in concise writing specifically, especially because like you said, each page has to do a lot more work and it also means that you choose each word with a lot more precision and care.
So everything is there with intention. There's not a lot of fluff, there's not a lot of extraneous information. Like everything is there to serve a purpose for either the plot or for character development or for just your general understanding of the story?
Emily: Yeah, we don't have. Quite as much development of those secondary threads like we do with, you know, Jane and Bingley or Harriet Smith.
It's all very focused around Anne's story and I can really appreciate that.
Lauren: I think another detail that I think is important is this is the last novel that Jane Austen wrote, and we talk about this as like the more mature Jane Austen novel and something that you can relate to as adults. And part of that is because it is the most adult novel that she wrote, and it was something that she was able to imbue the perspective that she had at that point in her life, having rejected a proposal, having, you know lived through what it's like to turn down something and then, you know, we can only guess at what her mental state or emotions may have been from letters to Cassandra, specifically, her sister, or whatever scraps of her writing remain.
But even if she wasn't particularly torn up about it, it's easy to imagine that she might have been wondering what if? Even if it was a good decision for her and she was very content with it. That's a natural thing to wonder like, well, what would've happened if I had made this other decision and my life had gone in a [00:08:00] different direction?
Emily: Absolutely. It's so easy to get caught up in those threads of like, even if something that I had no control over had gone differently, what might my life look like?
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: It can be a really interesting exercise. It can also be an absolute spiral, so, you know, don't indulge too much.
Lauren: Proceed with caution.
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Maybe just create really great art instead.
Emily: Yeah. You know what, props to you, Jane, you channeled that feeling into one of the best books I've ever read.
Lauren: Yep. Yeah, I think when people talk about like, classics or like, the canon in Western literature or in Anglophone literature, I usually side eye that because number one, who gets to decide what the classics are, number two.
Let's talk about why the classics are mostly white and mostly male. But this is one of the things that I will fight for inclusion into classics and canon because I, I think it deserves to be there rather than just being included just because that's what you do, or because it speaks to like, a very specific straight white male perspective.
Like, this is genuinely something that's resonant that I think that people can get a lot of value out of.
Emily: Yeah, because the core of the story as it is with a lot of Austen, and as we've talked about extensively before, it's a pretty universal concept. You have made a decision that you regret. What if you could go back and rectify it years later?
While still acknowledging everything that could have happened in that interim.
Lauren: Or you think that you have a a choice to rectify it, but you have to watch your mistake interact with someone else.
Emily: Yeah. Ouch.
Lauren: You're, you're constantly reminded of the mistake that you made because it's in front of you in all of your social interactions.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: And you have to live with that.
Emily: But even beyond the love story, even beyond Anne and Wentworth, it's a really interesting look, secondarily, at family dynamics.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: [00:10:00] I loved the comparisons and they weren't directly made on the page. Actually, sometimes they were directly made on the page, between the way Anne was treated within her home, within her own biological family, her immediate family, her father and her sister, versus the way she is warmly welcomed and appreciated among the Musgroves, as well as the relationship with Lady Russell. All of those different dynamics were just, it was so fascinating to see those explored as like a secondary thread to this love story.
Lauren: Yeah. I think it's like the closest we'd get to chosen family in like, a traditional, like Austen or Regency novel. Where clearly Anne is not able to like, choose an alternate family in the way that we usually think of when we're thinking about the chosen family trope. But she is able to make those comparisons for herself and then make decisions about where she would like to spend the majority of her time.
So she cannot actively say, 'I don't want to associate with my father and my sister anymore. I'm going no contact,' and like, dip out the way that people might do in 2023. But she can say you know, 'to the extent that I'm able to, I'm going to spend the day with Lady Russell today,' or, 'I'm going to walk down to spend time with a friend who actually wants to hear what I have to say, rather than spending time with my father and my sister who think of me more as a nuisance than an actual companion.'
And you know, even with the Musgroves, it's the Musgroves minus Mary cuz Mary doesn't care about her either.
Emily: That's true. Well, Mary's still her biological family.
Lauren: Correct, yeah.
Emily: I think the Musgraves technically are too, aren't they cousins?
Lauren: I don't know. They're all kind of related.
Emily: Yeah. You know, it's a small world being minor nobility, upper gentry.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: In the regency world in England.
Lauren: Yeah. Once you get up to that social sphere, your, your world becomes a lot smaller.
Emily: It really does. Even if you dine with four and 20 families in the neighborhood.
Lauren: I mean... [00:12:00]
Emily: sorry, Mrs. Bennet, that's still a small world.
Lauren: Like that's not, that's not very big.
Emily: Well, how was this experience of reading in tandem and in discussion different for you from when you've read Persuasion before?
Lauren: Hmm. When I first read Persuasion, I was 20.
And so I, I thought at the time that I had the adult perspective to appreciate Persuasion because I was 20 and I thought, I was like, 'I'm a grown woman,' which like legally, sure, but also, I was a child.
Emily: Brains don't stop developing until 25, people.
Lauren: I was like, I, I thought I knew everything. I did not. So I think now I actually get to appreciate it with like the, the actual adult perspective at 30 that I did not really have when I was 20, to be able to like, feel the weight of eight years as an adult the way that I couldn't at 20, because similar thing, eight years ago I was 12. There was nothing that I wanted from like 12 to 20. Not a, not a mistake that I made, or a person who I had said no to in seventh grade who I was still thinking about at 20.
Like that just-- that life experience wasn't there. And so I really enjoyed being able to come back to it as an adult with that added perspective for both the romantic portion of it, but then also looking at the family dynamics, because I think that that is something that most of us pay more attention to as adults because we tend to have more control over what we want our interactions to be with our family as adults.
And so reading those family dynamics as an adult as well, I think gave me an added enjoyment to the book, not because I necessarily saw anything of my own family in the book, but just because I saw things that I had seen with friends or like, family dynamics that I had seen elsewhere that I could relate to on the page.
And then also just understand more [00:14:00] of how your perception of your family or the people around you shifts as you age. Like even with Anne's relationship with Lady Russell, where as a young woman, she placed a lot of weight on what Lady Russell said, and this is somebody who she really trusted. And so, okay, yes, what Lady Russell for me-- wants from me must be the best thing for me.
And then as an adult, she can change that perspective and say, okay, I still really love and respect you, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know what's best for me. I do. And that I could really relate to.
Emily: Yeah. It'll be really interesting to, I know I'm gonna continue reading this through the years, but like at 40, at 50, how differently will this book read? What's gonna stand out to me next time?
Lauren: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that was, that was my biggest shift, was just the additional perspective I had reading this a decade later from when I had first picked up the book, I think. So much of it just hits harder.
Emily: It does pretty-- hit pretty hard.
Lauren: Yeah. I mean, I think, I'm trying to think if, if I have changed my rankings. Cause it's always been like a one and two with Persuasion being a very close second.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: And I think that's still the case, just because the things that you read for the first time as a child always hold like that extra emotional heft.
Emily: Yeah. The nostalgia is weighted in favor of that piece.
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: That's exactly my struggle with Pride and Prejudice versus Persuasion.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Is I-- Pride and Prejudice will always have been my first love.
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: But I really appreciate just the mastery of Persuasion.
Lauren: Yeah. Just like the sentence level craft, if nothing else, is just so perfect.
Emily: It's absolutely amazing. Like, no shade to Darcy's speeches, but Wentworth's letter is unparalleled.
Lauren: I will never get over it, ever in my life.
Emily: Impossible.
Lauren: It's a, it's impossible. It's impossible.
Emily: Challenge level, impossible.
Lauren: Okay, so we know what our one and two are. Now that you [00:16:00] read almost every Austen novel, what is, where do you stand? What are your rankings?
Emily: I think. So Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion,
Lauren: mm-hmm.
Emily: Are like almost ranked for first for the reasons that we just discussed. You know, Pride and Prejudice gets weighted higher because I've known it for longer.
I think Emma is third because it was just so delightful. Sense and Sensibility and then, sorry, Mansfield Park, but you come in last.
Lauren: Yeah. I think we have the same rankings, actually. I think, depending on my mood, Sense and Sensibility and Emma trade places.
Emily: Yeah, that's fair.
Lauren: But Emma's just so funny.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: That it, it tends to edge out for number three.
Emily: Emma really leans into that love to hate sensibility that we've only gotten with like, individual characters in other books, but that's just like the whole thing. It's like, this is absolutely absurd.
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: None of this matters. Like it matters, but it doesn't really matter.
Lauren: It really doesn't.
Emily: It's just, it's such a romp.
Lauren: And I think Emma is different enough from me as a character that it's more enjoyable for me to read her.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Whereas I see so much of myself in Elinor that I'm like, I live this. I don't really need to read it.
Emily: Maybe we take a step back from that. Like, I can appreciate your story, but doesn't need to be front of mind.
Lauren: No, that's, that's my everyday life. I'm really, I'm good. I already have oldest daughter syndrome.
Emily: Oh, I think we forgot at the top of the episode to announce our drink of choice because we traditionally do this episode a little bit tipsy.
Lauren: This is true. We are sipping on a lime cucumber gose beer from Urban South, which is a local brewery to New Orleans. So if you like tart beers, it's like, it's technically, it's a, it's a sour, it's a sour German style wheat ale with sea salt, key lime, and fresh cucumber juice.
Emily: Very much recommend as a nice summer sip.
Lauren: Hashtag not sponsored.
Emily: Hashtag not sponsored.
Lauren: It's actually really not.
Emily: Do you think we could get breweries to [00:18:00] sponsor our Jane Austen podcast?
Lauren: Oh my God. Why did we not think of this before? It would never work, but like, what a good idea.
Emily: I don't know. I feel like Urban South would be into it.
Lauren: They might.
Emily: All right. In that case, I guess we move on to the next stage of our wrap up.
Lauren: Yes. Okay. So we had some killer themes for this book.
Emily: The tarot cards pulled it out for this season.
Lauren: Listen, I don't know what kind of energy we had on the tarot cards, but once we finally stopped pulling cards we'd already done.
We had, we had some great selections.
Emily: That was like, that was like a comedy bit where we--
Lauren: it was bad.
Emily: Where we pulled like six in a row that we had already done.
Lauren: Oh my god. And then we finally wised up and just put all the cards we had already done in a certain section of the box. We have four degrees between the two of us? About to be five?
Emily: Four and three quarters?
Lauren: Like four and three.
And we, it took us this long. To just say, oh, maybe we should group together all the tarot cards we've already done and put them un-- like Lord. Anyway, so once we did that, we had some great themes. And just to refresh everyone's memory of what we were able to cover this season, we discussed death, security, contemplation, completion, perception, moderation, generosity and preparation.
So we'll let that percolate for a moment. And then what, what was your favorite theme to read through this season?
Emily: I think my favorite was death.
Lauren: Mm.
Emily: Because that was just such. Like a punch of a way to start a book like this, and we found so much both in the text and between the lines to talk about. It was so unexpectedly fun.
Lauren: Yeah, that was actually really perfect.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: It's like you had the death of Anne's mother to start off, with the death of Anne and Wentworth's relationship.
Just, we, we had so many different ways to connect death to the pages. It was, it was so good.
Emily: What was your favorite?
Lauren: I think [00:20:00] I'm gonna go with perception. There's so much that you can discuss with regards to what characters' perceptions of one another are, there was just, there was a lot to dig into with perception. And then I also realized after the fact, part of the reason I like discussing perception so much is because that is clearly something that is like a running theme for me that I'm interested in.
Because I went back and I realized that one of my term papers in the Austen class that I took was 'Perception in Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey.' so clearly this is just a topic that I have like a longstanding interest in, because I wrote an entire paper on how Jane Austen writes about perception and what message she might have been trying to send in two completely different works of hers.
So I think I'm going to go with perception both because of what we were able to do in the episode and because clearly this has been a decade long interest of mine.
Emily: It's a sticking point.
Lauren: It's a sticking point. Yeah.
Emily: But like conceptually perception is really fascinating to think about. That's also a thing that I can think about for way too long.
Thank God I'm not a philosopher.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah. No, exactly. I think we did like, dive into philosophy a little bit into that episode. What's real, what's not, you know, who knows who decides reality? Humans haven't been trying to answer that question for thousands of years.
Emily: Yeah. That isn't literally the foundation of several fields.
Lauren: No. So yeah, I think I would say perception is, is my favorite.
Emily: Really, there's n-- I mean, there's never a wrong answer, but for this one, there was really no wrong answer.
Lauren: No.
Emily: They were so good.
Lauren: Yeah. And, and like every time we pull something, I'm excited, but there are some that I can more readily see a connection than others.
And there were a couple this time where I was like, okay, I mean, Sure. I guess we'll see how we can connect it to the section and then every time we were able to find some great way to have a conversation.
Emily: Sometimes it took us a minute, even like talking it out, but sometimes that is just how it happens.
If you don't immediately see it on the page and you're only giving it a single read [00:22:00] through and trying to make notes, it can be a little difficult.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: But then once you let it, like ferment a little bit and you start getting into conversation with someone. That's why I'm so glad that this is a two person podcast.
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: And not just one of us sitting on our own trying to like talk through that. Partly because one person podcasts, sorry, but like, unless they're scripted. No.
Lauren: Not your cup of tea.
Emily: Yeah. But also because you can bounce ideas off of one another.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: And I always, always develop my lines of thinking between the beginning and the end of just recording an episode.
Lauren: Yep. Yeah, it works because we're in dialogue with one another.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: A hundred percent.
Emily: Not to use academic language, but--
Lauren: Oh God. Yeah.
Emily: We're literally in dialogue with one another. We're sitting here talking across the table.
Lauren: That was all I meant. I haven't been in a classroom in god knows how long and it's been drilled into me. It's very irritating.
Emily: English major.
Lauren: I know, I can't get away. But speaking of the liberal arts, we had multiple historical topics that you introduced into our conversation, into our dialogue, if you will. So as a refresher, those were Memento mori, remember, you will die. Naval prizes, domestic music.
So the music that people like Anne are playing for the people around them. Romantic poetry, the history of Bath. Gowland's lotion.
Emily: That one was very specific.
Lauren: But it was needed. Language education, specifically, why were young ladies learning things like Italian? And what on earth is a baronet?
Emily: I think my favorite of those was the romantic poetry.
Lauren: Mm.
Emily: Because I had like a very skim over the surface knowledge, but didn't really have a sense of who would actually be reading these things? I definitely didn't know that Lord Byron was so runaway popular that the first like 10,000 copies printed of this one poem had just sold out in one day. Like, that's unbelievable.
That's pop star [00:24:00] status. Yeah, so it was really cool. To learn that very particular kind of context of, oh, this was deeply popular. This isn't just something that's been handed down as like a prestige thing.
Did you have a favorite of these?
Lauren: Gowland's lotion.
Emily: Okay. That was a fast answer.
Lauren: Just cause it's so funny. Like, I think there were, there were so many good ones. Like, I remember really enjoying the discussion of Memento mori. That was really great. I am also just like, fascinated by like language education in general. So I liked our discussion of private education as well and what that would've looked like for like ladies of certain classes, but also just, "people, gonna people" is really what that history topic came down to.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: And I was just so amused by the fact that like, no matter, no matter what, number one there was going to be in like Western society, someone trying to sell you something and convince you that something is wrong with you to sell you something, and number two, there will be some kind of like, fad beauty product and it's, it's just, it is so funny to me that whether it is 1813 or 2023, there will be the equivalent of like a beauty guru or somebody telling you what to do to be or to feel beautiful and selling you snake oil. And you know, honestly, like the, the conning nature of humans is just endlessly entertaining.
Emily: We did get sort of related to this, an extremely funny and very regency coded scam email, basically asking to like sponsor us with whatever this like, energy or focus product was.
They literally called it an elixir. It was like, Do they listen to the podcast?
Lauren: It's the philosopher's stone.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: It will make you rich.
Emily: Mm-hmm. But yeah, people have just always been pulling that. They're like, Hey, I can make some money outta this.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Forget the [00:26:00] moral consequences.
Lauren: Yeah, that'll be fine.
Yeah, I think, I think that was my favorite, just for pure entertainment value.
Emily: Absolutely valid.
Lauren: Like no matter what century you put us in, humans are humans. All right. And then our last retrospective-- pop culture connections.
So we had White Lotus and character death. Security and romantic connections, so feeling secure within like your romantic relationships. Best movies about heartbreak or lost love. The unfinished business trope. Pride and Protest, the Pride and Prejudice adaptation by Nikki Payne. Conservatism and Downton Abbey.
I don't know what I was on when I took that one, but we had that. Taylor Swift lyrics and then the Hurt/Comfort trope to wrap things up.
Emily: Probably predictably, I think Hurt/Comfort was my favorite of those.
Lauren: Shocker.
Emily: I love getting into extended conversations about fan fiction. I'm not gonna apologize for that.
Lauren: Nope.
Emily: What was yours?
Lauren: And we could have extended that conversation so much further. We had to cut ourselves off on that one.
Emily: I'm, I think I edited out a couple of minutes of that.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah. I think my favorite one was Taylor Swift lyrics to characters. I had so much fun with that.
Emily: That was delightful.
Lauren: And that was when I had specifically decided, I was like, okay, well I'm going to ignore the pop, like our theme connection. Cause I think that was where I kept getting stuck was I kept feeling like my pop culture connection had to relate to the theme. And sometimes I could do that well, and then other times I was like, I'm I, my brain's just not finding the connection here.
If you give me more time, I'll probably be able to think about it, but it's just not happening. And that was just so much fun to do. And I think I could, I could continue finding songs for each character, ad nauseum forever. So that was my favorite, I think.
Emily: If you ever feel like making more playlists...
Lauren: you know, Emily has asked for an Anne/Wentworth playlist.
It may pop up on our social media at some point. [00:28:00] Stay tuned, because I honestly, with my Spotify activity, I could, I could make up one real quickly so it might appear.
Emily: No promises, but keep your eyes peeled.
Lauren: No promises, but also keep an eye on our Twitter accounts. It just might show up. You never know.
Emily: All right. If that wraps up our review of topics from the season, shall we give some advice?
Lauren: It's not exactly slightly tipsy advice because beer doesn't really get us that tipsy, but we can give advice.
Emily: It's advice while drinking.
Lauren: It's, yeah. All right. Who would we like to give advice to first?
Shall we do Sir Walter?
Emily: Let's do Sir Walter!
Lauren: What advice do we have for, for that character?
Emily: Cut down on the number of mirrors in your house. Be less obsessed with appearance because it's really not everything. It's actually very little.
Lauren: And you're well past the age where you should be worried about your appearance, anyway, my dude. Let it go. It's okay.
Emily: Please, for everyone's sake, let it go.
Lauren: If Anne has lost her bloom, you most certainly have.
Emily: Not with the power of Gowland's lotion!
Lauren: It's like, well, you know, Mr. Elliot says, I look great. So...
Emily: and he has no ulterior motives.
Lauren: None at all. What other advice do I have for Sir Walter? Read something other than the pages of your family history, especially not just the same page over and over and over again.
Perhaps expand your horizons a little bit, you know read a single stanza of poetry. I'm sure Anne could recommend some to you.
Emily: I was gonna say, I bet someone can get him a copy of Lord Byron.
Lauren: I wouldn't be shocked if he had like, been procuring books of poetry just because they looked good in his library or because everybody you know, because you know that he would follow trends and because everybody else was buying a copy of Lord Byron, he also bought a copy of it, put it in the library, and never opened it ever again.
Emily: He's like one of those [00:30:00] BookTokers that has like shelves and shelves and shelves full of perfectly pristine hardback first editions. I don't wanna cast dispersions on BookTokers. I don't know that much about them, so I don't want to assume that none of those books have been cracked open.
Sir Walter's have not been touched.
Lauren: No. And they're also organized by color and not by series, which is just my personal ick. He likes it for the aesthetic version or the aesthetic reasons, because he likes the gradient of the books and he does not know which book goes with which series because he's never actually read them.
Emily: That feels like such an accurate read on his character. Yeah, sure. I'll spend thousands of pounds on books... read them? Why would I do that? If I opened them, it would crack the spine.
Lauren: And I look studious by having them. So honestly, this is a win-win.
Emily: Incredible.
There's really nothing to do for this man. He's gonna live his life the way he wants to.
Lauren: He's beyond saving. If Lady Russell can't help him...
Emily: no one can.
Lauren: No one can.
Yeah. I think, I think in that vein, we, we should see what advice we can give to Miss Elizabeth because maybe she, maybe she can be saved.
Emily: You know, it's not too late for Elizabeth.
Lauren: It's not too late... yet.
Emily: Yeah. I don't have a lot of confidence in her desire to find a husband who might bring out a better side of her.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: But, you know, hope isn't lost. Maybe it'll happen.
Lauren: And she's not really working that hard at it.
Emily: She's really not. Yeah, she's she's definitely following in, in Sir Walter's footsteps.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: She's just the next generation down of his, all his tendencies.
Lauren: I think I, my advice to her would be to think beyond the next social engagement. I don't really think she has that much forethought. So she's starting to realize like, oh shit, I'm 30, I should do something. Mm-hmm. But it, it has taken her to that point to really have a realization of uhoh, my life cannot continue like this forever.
Emily: I really want Elizabeth to break out of her echo chamber, and especially the situations where she's just being a [00:32:00] sycophant.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: To people like the Dalrymples. Like there's more out there, sweetie.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: You can do so much better on every front.
Lauren: In Pride and Prejudice, there's a thought that if Kitty's just in better company and she's taken away from Lydia, she can maybe shape up and be a little less silly.
I think Elizabeth, when removed from the influence of her father, maybe has a chance of like, changing a little bit. I, I don't think her whole mentality is going to shift. I think that's pretty well set in stone, but she might be convinced to be a bit more, I don't know. Empathetic, maybe, and I think maybe she could be convinced to have a, a bit more, to take more care in planning for her future rather than spending willy-nilly and not really thinking about what is going to happen outside of like, the next social season.
Emily: Yeah. I think there's still a slim ray of hope for Elizabeth.
Lauren: It's very slim. It's there.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Just like, itty bitty.
Emily: Vanishing quickly.
Lauren: Very.
Emily: All right. Who's next?
Lauren: Mary?
Emily: I don't know if we can help Mary. In, in a different way from Elizabeth and Sir Walter, she's very just kind of stuck where she is.
She has a, what seems like a pretty reasonable husband. And, you know, the Musgroves are a decent, could be a decent influence, but she doesn't wanna be influenced.
Lauren: And she's got a good life. So like it's working for her. But yeah.
Emily: Maybe concern yourself less with the activities of the people around you. Because she's always so concerned about missing out on social engagements.
Lauren: Yeah. And I think I would also say, actually, listen to Anne. Because you, you certainly request her presence to be around all the time just for your own personal gratification, but actually listen to her when you ask for her advice, because she's trying to help you.
And you might actually find that your life improves a little bit. [00:34:00]
Emily: I'm also gonna assume that Mary is the kind of person who never learned to wash dishes, and I'm gonna advise her to wash a dish once in a while. I think that would be good for her.
Lauren: Do any of them know how to wash a dish?
Emily: Probably not, but she just like, she has that vibe of a person who's like, you have to wash dishes??
Lauren: They're not just magically clean?
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: What do you mean? I don't understand?
Emily: Well, yeah, I think Mary should wash dishes.
Lauren: Yeah. Wash the silver spoon in your mouth.
Emily: Oh my God, seriously.
Lauren: Oh my God. That would be entertaining. Watch any of the people in the social circles of any Austen novel. Try to perform a chore.
Emily: New game show.
Lauren: New game show. Watch Lydia Bennet attempt to do laundry.
Emily: Actually, I would love to see this YouTube skit.
All right, we've got Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and Mary.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: So those are the other Elliots.
Lauren: Yep.
Mr. Elliot?
Emily: Mr. Elliot, get out of town. That's my advice. Stop being a douche bag.
Lauren: Oh gosh.
Emily: Leave Anne alone.
Lauren: Leave her alone. Leave Anne Elliot alone.
What is even genuine advice to give that man? He wouldn't take any advice.
Emily: No, not at all.
Lauren: He would never listen.
Emily: Even more than the others. Like he would be belligerent about being given advice.
Lauren: Privately. To your face, he'd be like, Thank you so much, Emily, for those kind words. I'll certainly keep it in consideration.
Yeah, I don't know what genuine advice I would give to him?
Emily: Value the lives and beings of other people.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: He wouldn't take it.
Lauren: But it would be genuine advice.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: See past yourself and your own ends and keep other people in consideration for once.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: The end.
Emily: Not the kind of advice we need to give to Wentworth.
Lauren: No. Poor baby.
Oh gosh. What advice do we give to Wentworth?
Emily: I don't know, [00:36:00] because I, I can't even say that he did anything wrong because Anne rejected him and he kept his distance.
Lauren: Yeah, I don't know that I, well wait. I guess we don't necessarily have to give him advice because he did something wrong.
Emily: That's true. Cherish that woman, God dammit.
Lauren: Right, exactly. Like you, you have her. Now keep her.
Emily: You got eight years to make up for, sir.
Lauren: Yeah. I guess maybe as far as like, book actions,
Spend less time with Louisa, I guess once you figure out that she's not actually who you want?
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: But even that, like...
Emily: I can't blame him.
Lauren: Yeah, it was, it was fine. and if you think that that other door is closed, then why not be with somebody who like at least makes you a little happy. Mm-hmm. So yeah, I guess my advice would be to future Wentworth.
You now have Anne Elliot. Make sure you do whatever you can to stay within her good graces. You've been given a second chance, don't mess it up.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, he's surrounded himself by pretty good people and he's also a good friend to them. So I think he should just, he should continue on that trajectory.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Not saying that he can't change his social circle at all, but you know. He seems to be a decent judge of character.
Lauren: Ooh, I think my other piece of advice would be like, next time you're, whenever you are on a ship or you're out doing whatever, write a lot of letters to Anne.
Emily: Write so many letters to Anne.
Lauren: Write so many letters to Anne.
Emily: Write the-- A number of letters that a postman will be deeply irritated to deliver.
Lauren: Just, oh my God, it's another one. This man must really love his freaking wife.
Just write Anne all the letters. That's my advice.
Emily: I concur.
I think that now brings us to our heroine, dear Anne Elliot Wentworth.
Lauren: Sweet baby Anne. Aww, Anne Elliot Wentworth. Oh, cute.
Emily: What advice are we going to give her?
I think I just want her to continue this trend of listening to her own instincts [00:38:00] and actually paying attention to her desires and not pushing them aside in favor of what other people want for her.
Lauren: Yeah, I was gonna say it's okay to put your own happiness first and not to be afraid to like, be a little selfish sometimes.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: Lord knows the rest of your family has no issue with that. And every once in a while it's okay to like take a little, a little baby pinch of that and apply it to your own life.
Emily: No. She's got a good head on her shoulders. Even when she is putting herself first, she's not being reckless.
Lauren: Yeah. I think my advice to Anne is do things for yourself. And, and be unapologetic about it.
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: That, that's an important coda.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Do things for yourself and be unapologetic about doing things for yourself.
Emily: I feel like Wentworth will support that.
Lauren: And you know, I think so too, and I think he probably could also use that advice sometimes.
I think he was better about that than Anne, but they're both the kind of like, selfless people where they could stand to hear that more than once.
Emily: Definitely.
Lauren: Any other closing, closing pieces of advice for Anne?
Emily: That's all I got. That's all she needs.
Lauren: Yeah. Listen to, to Wentworth and not to your family.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: But she would do that anyway.
Emily: Yeah. Seriously.
Lauren: She doesn't need us to tell her that.
Emily: Sorry, that man is reasonable. Everyone else related to her is not.
Lauren: No, not at all.
Emily: Also hang out with the Crofts. They're wonderful.
Lauren: Oh my gosh. Yeah.
And think you're great family. Yes. And they're her family. Like for real.
Emily: Yay.
Lauren: Oh, she got good family. Look at that.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: I love when things work out that way in fiction and in real life.
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Lauren: Oh no, I don't wanna be done. Think of something else to talk about.
Emily: Well, we do have our last book spanning takeaways.
I don't know if I really have like a lesson to take away from it, but like, The, the sense that lingers with me is like the, [00:40:00] the weight of time.
Lauren: Mm.
Emily: I just like, I feel it throughout the book and I think that's gonna stay with me.
Lauren: The weight of time in what sense?
Emily: The way that particular events can spiral out into different threads over years and years, and the longer time passes, the more threads can be spawned off of that one event. I'm edging dangerously close to like, multiverse theory here. But anyway!
Lauren: New pop culture connection, across the spider verse.
Emily: Let's do it.
Lauren: Oh my God, Anne and Wentworth were a canon event.
Emily: I cannot interfere.
Lauren: They have to break up. I'm sorry. It has to happen this way. We can't tell her to just accept him and be done. It's a canon event. We can't do anything.
If you haven't seen it, Across the Spiderverse, go see it, and then you'll understand.
Emily: Please go see it. It's amazing.
Lauren: I think my final takeaway would be similar to what my advice would be for Anne. to trust in and be confident in your own intuition. I mean, there are so many different takeaways from Persuasion, but I think that's one of the overarching things that I think will stick with me, of knowing when people are giving you advice with your best interests at heart, and how to receive that and hear it, and then do what is right for you.
And knowing how to listen to that internal voice or that just internal sense of like, your gut feeling of this is right, or this is wrong. And trusting that it's okay to follow that because you have like the confidence and trust in yourself to know that you're making the right choice.
Emily: I think that's a really good takeaway for Persuasion because that comes through way more strongly in this book than in any of the others we've read so far.
Lauren: You don't have to let yourself be persuaded by other people.
We've made it full circle. I couldn't resist. I'm sorry. [00:42:00]
Emily: Well, I think that brings us to the conclusion of Persuasion.
Lauren: No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. There's another, there's actually like another five chapters that I've just hidden from you this the whole time. We actually have to keep going.
Emily: Secret epilogue.
Lauren: Secret. Yeah, secret epilogue. It was like found in Jane Austen's papers after she died, and I just got it off of like jstor.
Emily: Perfect. Let's go. One episode per chapter.
Lauren: It's why it wasn't in your, in your published edition. We like literally just discovered these five chapters like a week ago. It's kind of been blowing up in like Austen Academia.
I don't know where you've been.
Emily: Not in Austen, academia.
Well, that does wrap up Persuasion for us, unfortunately, although it will be incorporated as a potential connection when we do six degrees of Austen for our next episode.
Lauren: Send us those outlandish, outrageous topics that you'd like us to connect to Jane Austen, please.
Emily: We will be taking your suggestions from social media for a couple of days after this episode airs, and then we will be compiling them and sending them off to our patrons for voting because they are the ones who decide which topics we actually cover in the episode. So if you wanna be a part of that, you can always sign up for our Patreon.
All of our tiers are eligible for voting. If you sign up at a $5 tier or higher, you will also get an exclusive Persuasion sticker for this season.
Lauren: And patrons will get all of our thoughts on the Persuasion adaptations that we watch.
Emily: I cannot wait.
Lauren: Oh, I really wanna know what you think of the Netflix adaptation of Persuasion.
I am dying. You have no idea how annoyed I've been that I can't discuss this in full detail with you.
Emily: All right. We need to put this on our calendars now.
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: All right. But everybody look out for scheduling for those things. If you're interested again, in voting or in getting a sticker, definitely check out our Patreon reclaiming Jane pod.
As basically all of our stuff [00:44:00] is, and send us your wild and crazy suggestions for topics.
Lauren: Make it as out there as possible. And just, yeah, just don't give us the Supreme Court again. I don't wanna think about them.
Emily: Yeah, no thanks.
Lauren: We already did that.
Emily: Hard pass.
Lauren: Ix-Nay on Supreme Court.
Emily: Other than that, we revel in absurdity. So throw it at us.
Lauren: Lay it on me. Let's go.
Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be connecting the most outlandish topics you suggest to Austen novels in our six degrees of Jane Austen segment.
Emily: To read our show notes and a transcript of this episode, check out our website, reclaiming jane pod.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: We'll see you next time, nerds.
Emily: Farewell Persuasion, we love you.
Lauren: Bye.
Oh wait, I do know two people from the 504th who started a new brewery in the CBD okay. And And one of them, one of them happens to be like an actual very big champion of the podcast. Every time we do something, he puts it in the 504th group chat. Like, oh my God, you guys look at what Lauren's doing.
We should ask.
Emily: We should absolutely ask. That would be one of the least expected collaborations, but I think it could be very fun.
Lauren: I think that'd be really fun. I'm gonna make a mental note. Text Alex. Let's see what we can do.