Pride and Prejudice 1-5: “First Impressions”

Welcome to a new season and a new book! In this first episode on Pride & Prejudice, hosts Emily and Lauren are joined (and judged) by Molly and Becca, the creators and co-hosts of Pod and Prejudice. Also included: ladylike behavior, special treatment, and teenage phases we'd rather forget.

Links to topics discussed in this episode:

Gender roles in the 19th century

The "not like other girls" phenomenon

Find Pod and Prejudice on their website, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Anchor | Breaker | Castbox | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Radio Public

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Show Notes

Welcome to Season 2!

We are so excited to begin this new book and new journey with you all. (Our excitement is only slightly dampened by the echo-y audio issues we had during our Pod & Prejudice interview — our apologies for that; and please read the transcript instead if it becomes an issue for you. There is no echo in the second half!)

We adore Pod and Prejudice and were so grateful that Molly & Becca agreed to join us to kick off our reading of Pride and Prejudice. They are so much fun and our conversation felt like we’d already been friends before we even started. Truly a podcast team up made in Austen heaven. Be sure to check out their podcast if you haven’t already — just don’t spoil any of Sense and Sensibility for Molly if you interact with them on social media. ;)

Pride and Prejudice is our favorite Austen novel, so we cannot wait to dive into it this season and read it with new eyes. If you’re new here, welcome. If you’ve been around, welcome back! We hope you enjoy our latest excursion in to Jane Austen’s work.

Transcript

Reclaiming Jane Season 2, Episode 1 | Pride and Prejudice 1-5: “First Impressions”

[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 kicking off Pride and Prejudice by reading chapters one through five, with a focus on femininity.

Pod & Prejudice Introduction

Emily: Welcome back to season two of Reclaiming Jane. We are so excited to get started on a new book and especially because we get to inaugurate it with special guests, we have the ladies from Pod and Prejudice, Molly and Becca.

Molly: Hi.

Becca: Hello. It's so nice to meet you, ish.

Emily: So much for joining us.

Molly: We're so excited to be here.

Lauren: So we'd said before that this felt like it was a collaboration that was meant to be, so I'm happy that we were able to make this happen, especially for our very first episode of Pride and Prejudice. This will be so perfect.

Becca: Yeah. This is very exciting for us as well. We've been in a Sense and Sensibility recording moment and Sense and Sensibility is personally, my favorite Jane Austen book, but it is also the drama. And so reading the first few chapters of Pride and Prejudice, I was like, oh yeah, this starts off way lighter.

Lauren: Oh, it really does. And our podcasts have also kind of switched places in a way, which is also why I feel like this is so perfect that you just finished Pride and Prejudice, and are moving on to Sense and Sensibility.

We just finished our journey in Sense and Sensibility, which we are going to be sure not to spoil for Molly throughout the course of the podcast, and then moved on to Pride and Prejudice. So it feels well-timed.

Becca:  Yes, for your listeners who might not know Molly and I have a podcast where together we discuss Jane Austen.

The twist being [00:02:00] that Molly has not read her books before. And I have been reading her books since high school and watching the movies since well before that. So Molly is about a quarter of the way through Sense and Sensibility and confused.

Molly:  I'm very, very confused. But so reading Pride and Prejudice again now, like going back and reading the first five chapters, I was like, wow. I was, so I was confused at the beginning of this book too. And now I'm reading it, I'm like, oh, Ooh, I'm in on a secret.

Emily: Yeah, Pride and Prejudice. It's been a while since I've read it and it really just dives right in like there's no peace. There's no getting acquainted with the characters and the setting the way there was in Sense and Sensibility.

But I guess we'll have to save that commentary. Because there are things that we have to do first.

Thirty-Second Recaps (with a winner!)

Lauren: Yes. So we had asked Molly and Becca to start us off by being judges of our inaugural thirty-second recaps for Pride and Prejudice. So for once, we will actually have a winner of the recap, not determined by one of us. So no pressure, but it's up to y'all to decide who did a better job of recapping these first five chapters of the book.

Hopefully, while we remember how to speak English and we don't lose every bit of language from our minds, as soon as we begin.

Molly: Can't wait. Very excited.

Becca: We will strive to be as impartial as possible.

Emily: All right, Lauren, are you ready?

Lauren:  Ready as I'll ever be.

Emily: Okay. Three, two, one, go.

Lauren: The illustrious Mr. Bingley has moved into Netherfield Park.

Mrs. Bennet really wants her husband to go and meet him and he keeps teasing her and he's like, no, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. And then goes and holds it over her head for like another day. Yeah. They finally meet him at this ball slash assembly. He brought his sisters, he also brought Mr. Darcy, who everyone thinks is hot. And then he turns out to be really rude. And now he's no longer hot anymore. Mr. Darcy insults Elizabeth. Elizabeth decides that she no longer likes him. And [00:04:00] Mr. Bingley is totally besotted with Jane who's the prettiest sister of all time.

Emily: There we go.

Becca: Great job.

Molly: Very good.

Emily: Okay. Before we get too off track, I guess I should go.

Lauren: Okay. Ready?

Emily: Yep. Yep.

Lauren:  Three, two, one, go.

Emily: We are introduced to the Bennet family, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters. They're very excited because a gentleman of great fortune has just moved into their neighborhood at Netherfield park, they are excited to meet him, which they finally do at a local ball where he brings his two sisters, his brother-in-law and his friend Darcy. Bingley is wonderful.

Darcy is stuck up. Everyone has opinions about it. That's it.

I could see, I could see the countdown going!

Molly: Very good. Both of you did very well.

Becca: Yeah. It's going to be hard.

Molly: Yeah. I'm debating. What is the criteria for judging? Like, are we going based on like, vibe or are we going based on, did you get everything that happens?

Emily: I think vibes.

Molly: Okay. Vibes, vibes. Becca, what are your thoughts?

Emily: We don’t do quantitative analysis here.

Molly: Yeah. Yeah.

Becca: This is going to be very arbitrary because I think you guys both did a great job, but Lauren used the word besotted, so I have to give it to her.

Molly: Yeah. I was unfortunately also going to give it to Lauren based on the use of the word illustrious.

[Editor’s note: Lauren doesn’t have a reaction here, but she was silently cheering over Zoom.]

Emily: That's, you know, it's a fair decision.

Molly: Yeah. But, but also she went first and therefore, like, you know…

Emily: It was more off the cuff.

Molly: Yeah. But you both got everything for the most part that happens.

The Bennets Play Favorites

Emily: Yeah. So the biggest, the biggest [00:06:00] thing really is being introduced to the major players in Pride and Prejudice.

So. Right off the bat. We need Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Bennet. And we begin our introductions to their five daughters who are Jane, Lizzie, Mary, Catherine, and Lydia.

Becca: Yes. I always find this first chapter striking. I specifically remember thinking this when Molly and I read it together. I remember thinking very specifically that.

It's interesting. We don't learn anything about Lizzie in this chapter. She's only mentioned once and then like, there's no mention of Mr. Darcy. So the first chapter of the book is scene-setting. Just the two parents. That's how it opens.

Emily: Yeah. And I think that kind of sets our framework narratively because we're sort of coming into it with the perspective of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet with Mrs. Bennet being kind of rightfully obsessed with getting her daughters married so that they have someone to take care of them when she and Mr. Bennet are gone. And then Mr. Bennet being a little more reluctant to jump on that train.

Molly: It was interesting though, reading it again for the second time and seeing how they think about their daughters right off the cuff, because, uh, Mrs. Bennet.

I mean, the way that she talks about her daughters was kind of absurd. Like Mr. Bennet was like, “oh, like he can have any of the daughters that he wants, but I'm going to give a special recommendation for Lizzie.” And so we know that she's his favorite and then she's like, “Lizzie is not special.” Okay. Like off the bat and then she's like, “Lydia is great. Like we're going to put Lydia forward.”

It's like she's 15 and wild.

Lauren:  We can already see that they just get along better because their personalities are more similar or it's like, she can't be objective. And how she's like rating her [00:08:00] daughters like, “well, Lydia and I are the exact same. And so clearly Lydia's the one who we're going to...but also Jane is super pretty. So Jane and Lydia, and then the other three, I don't know.”

Becca: I mean, justice for Mary!

Molly:  Justice for Mary!

Emily: Justice for Mary. I was also really struck by just the level of flirting, there was between the Bennet parents, like damn. Okay. Mr. Bennet's got some game.

Molly: Yeah. Yes. I was thinking about that this whole time.

I know that some people think that Mr. Bennet is a villain. We've had guests on our show who believed that Mr. Bennet was a villain.

Becca: We also have had guests that think that they hate each other.

Molly:  Yeah. Yeah. And I thought at first, when I first read this, I was looking cause I have my. My original copy here. I couldn't find it when I was rereading this yesterday.

So I read a different copy that I have, but then I found this with my notes in it just now. And it is like, what if like, is he being sarcastic? I can't tell. But no, it's hot. That's what it is.

Becca: Also, we, we can't fully analyze this chapter without Miss Austen's first biting line of the book.

Lauren: One of the best opening lines of all time.

Becca: Yes, please recite it.

Emily (from memory):  “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Molly: Bravo.

Becca: Excellent.

Lauren:  Got the cadence down and everything.

Molly: There are like quips throughout the entire first page that are in that same tone. That I didn't, I don't think I noticed the first time reading it, like when she says that doesn't he want to know who let Netherfield Park and he's like, no.

But you want to tell me, and then it goes, just a line on its own: “That was invitation enough.”

Emily: Yeah.

Oh man. Just, just that exchange. It reminds me so much of the conversations that I'll have with my husband sometimes it's like, do you want to hear something terrible? No…but, yes.

[00:10:00] Lauren: You're going to tell me anyway. The question was just a way for me to tell you this terrible thing. Yeah. And then also with him, like hyping her up when she's talking about going to see Mr. Bingley and he's like, “oh, well, I can't send you because he's going to fall in love with you because you're just so beautiful.”

Like, okay! Smooth!

Becca: Yes! I mean, he does have five daughters, that happened somehow.

Molly: True. And they're not that far apart in age.

Becca: There was a busy couple of years for Mr. and Mrs. Bennet.

Lauren: Oh, yes. I mean, there's not that much else to do over in Longbourne. You got to find some way to occupy your time.

Two Eligible Bachelors Walk Into A Ball

Emily: So we finally get to actually hear about Mr. Bing —

Well, not so much. Mr. Bennet goes and introduces himself to Mr. Bingley. But of course does not bring back the kind of information that Mrs. Bennet and all of her daughters want. This is another thing that kind of struck me, is that again, there's nothing singling out like Lizzie as being special or different from her sisters.

It indicates that all of them are kind of clamoring for information. They want to know what's going on. So they may have different motives behind that, but they're all engaging in the same kind of, you know, silly, tittering, “oh, but is he cute?” conversation.

Molly: Yeah, I remember reading it the first time. And in these first couple of chapters, I didn't yet, I wasn't able yet to single Lizzie out as like the main character, because really.

So far, she's not, I mean, even as we progress, like she's still just one of the daughters, like one of the people that things are happening to.

Becca: Yeah, I agree.

Emily: Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

Becca: Just going to say again, the whole thing, the first two chapters of this book really sell [00:12:00] Bingley as the main prize at the end of the book, which is he's a wonderful curly fry.

I'll say that much.

Molly:  Bingley is a prize, okay.

Lauren: I will say I was re-listening to your first episode and was who was it? Who was saying like justice for Bingley. Like I think, I think Becca, you were telling Molly that everyone wants to be with Mr. Darcy, but people should also want to be with Mr. Bingley.

Becca: Yes. As it says in chapter three, and I'm sure we will get there very soon. He's very sweet, very handsome, very friendly. Those are qualities that we should all want in a man.

Molly: Right? Yeah. And I think that like this is the scene, when we, this might be jumping ahead a little bit, but in comparison with Darcy, when everyone's like, he's like when Darcy walks in the room and they're like, he's so hot.

And they're like, but he's brooding and angsty. And they're like, that's the guy, but like Bingley is there being like dancing with everyone and having a great time and like, why are we not all obsessed with him?

Becca: Well, that is what happens in these chapters is about, we will let you, the hosts of this podcast, take it from here to take us into the next chapter.

Emily: Well, no, you're right. You're absolutely right. When, when Bingley and Darcy and Miss Bingley and Mr. and Mrs. Hurst all arrive at the Meryton ball. Everyone immediately is like, okay, Bingley is cute, but who the hell is this guy? But then throughout the course of the evening, Bingley is just so friendly.

So eager to please so complimentary towards everyone and Darcy only dances once with either with each of Bingley's sisters and then just kind of like broods in a corner, which, you know, I get, that's how I am at parties, too. But just that behavior. [00:14:00] It seems like aside from the one, you know, slight to Elizabeth he's not actually insulting anybody, at least not outright.

They may read an insult into the fact that he's not dancing with any of their young ladies. But just these, these disparate behaviors in the space of one evening, turn Darcy from this mysterious hunk into like, just leave already.

Lauren: Yeah. And they also only care about him because they've heard that he has 10,000 pounds a year because the gossip mills have been, had been on there, on the move.

Since he, since Mr. Bingley removed to London and everybody was depressed because he just got here and now they've been deprived of their new plaything. And they've been trying to figure out, you know, like, “wait, how many people? He's bringing back a whole harem. He's bringing back like a whole carriage of women!”

And then it's just, you know, like his two sisters and some other people. But like amidst, all that gossip, they also heard that Darcy has 10,000 pounds a year and now he's interesting. But then once he proves to be an unpleasant sort of fellow, that interest fades away.

Becca: I see, I was going to say douche canoe, but.

Emily: You're not wrong.

Becca: Yes. Yeah. I mean, you could read his, his behavior in the party in a lot of different ways as shyness, introverted behavior, lack of social skills, but the truth is like what, however, he's acting at this party. All these women were walking up, like, who is this? And then walking away, going, never mind.

Molly: You know, it's interesting. And I feel like we've talked about a lot on our podcast and like on other shows that we've guested on that this like first line that he insults Lizzie with the, she is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me. Like there's so much contention as to whether it is meant to insult or just him being [00:16:00] awkward and trying to deflect, or like, what is it? And a lot of my perceptions of that since watching these like adaptations have been colored by the adaptations but just reading it. When I first read it, I thought it was like, so mean, and this time reading it, I was like, he's clearly feeling so uncomfortable and trying to get away from this man telling him to dance, but this girl was standing right behind him.

And he's just saying like, “she's pretty, I don't want to dance. Please.”

Emily: Yeah. It feels very much like, you know, all of the people of this ball deciding, well, his, his 10,000 pounds is not worth his behavior. He's saying, you know, “the potential pleasure of dancing with an average, pretty girl is not worth the abject misery of having to stand up with a stranger.”

Lauren: I think the rude part comes in where it's very clear that Elizabeth can hear him because there's so many other things you can overhear at a ball, just nothing is private. Everyone's going to know everything that you said instead of just saying like, “yeah, no, I'm good.” It's like, “no, she's not handsome enough to tempt me.”

Yeah, she's right there. You don't have to insult her looks, you can just say you don't want to dance. Yeah. Yeah.

Becca: That's what I was going to say, to be fair to Lizzie in this moment, he basically goes to Bingley and it was like, “I don't want to dance with anyone you're dancing with the only hot girl,” and Bingley is like, “what about that girl?Right there. She's hot.” And he's like, “yeah, she's, she's a six. I would only put out for like an eight.” So to be fair to Lizzie, it's not a great move on Darcy's part, but he clearly, he is grumpy. Like we've all said things that are meaner than they should have been when we are in a bad mood.

First Impressions Aren’t Always Right

Lauren:  Hey, who amongst us has not been socially awkward at a party and just not wanted to speak to anyone. Yeah, but [00:18:00] Darcy is a poor, awkward mess at this ball and makes a terrible first impression on everyone. And so much, so much of this, like first section is first impressions, which fits so much with like the theme of the book of first impressions and, you know, previous titles and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But it's the first impressions that we as the readers get of the characters. It's the first impressions of Mr. Bingley. It's Mr. Bingley and his party making first impressions of the town, the town getting their first impressions of them. That's the whole theme. And what we see play out in each chapter is people figuring out and sussing out, like, what do I think of this person?

So we get a switch and like the, I think it's the fifth chapter where we're now. From like Bingley and Darcy's point of view where they're kind of rehashing the ball afterward and they're having their own discussions of like, what did we, what did we think of these people at this town?

Molly: It was so interesting to me that the entire ball and all of this stuff that happened at the ball was in one chapter.

And most of this book is honestly like one event happens. And then the next three chapters are people talking about the event that happened.

Becca: And that's what we have here very clearly. Cause like you have the chapter where Jane and Lizzie are discussing the ball and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are discussing the ball and being, we endorsed here discussing the ball all rehashing the same events from different perspectives.

Lauren: And you can see. One of the things I love is that you can start to see the similarities between like Jane and Bingley and Elizabeth and Darcy, even as like Lizzie and Darcy are being set up as polar opposites, you have Jane and Bingley saying, “oh, weren't these people so lovely and agreeable, and I just had the best time.”

And then you have Elizabeth and Darcy, like “yeah, you think that about literally everyone, I'm not impressed.” Very, Shania Twain. That don't impress me much.

Becca: One of the better lines from Lizzie in this chapter is, “you have liked stupider people” [00:20:00] about Bingley.

Molly:  Iconic. Iconic.

Emily: That's such a like sister BFF thing.

“I feel like you've done worse before.”

Molly: Yeah. I loved getting to see their relationships. So we get to see, one, how Bingley and Jane are similar and how Darcy and Lizzie are similar. But also we get to see the relationship between Jane and Lizzie and the relationship between Bingley and Darcy and Jane Austen explains, like, here's how they’re friends, because I feel like a lot of the time reading this book, I'm like, why are Bingley and Darcy friends with each other? It doesn't make sense. But Jane Austen actually explains it pretty clearly in this chapter. She's like Bingley respects Darcy's opinion. Darcy likes that Bingley is friendly. They hang out, it works.

Lauren:  The grumpy one and the sunshine one.

Molly: Yeah, you got to have friendship, both sides of the coin.

Lauren: What else were they discussing at this ball? Oh, we also have Mary trying to give her reasoned opinion on what pride is, which it just cracks me up that we get that from her.

Molly: It's so, funny. And also like, I mean, this is the pivotal, this is the crux of what the book is about.

And Mary says it and no one listens.

Emily: Mr. Bennet’s character moment was being like, him asking for Mary's opinion on something else and saying, “oh, you know, you read such large books and you take so many excerpts from them. Like, you must have an opinion on this, right.” And then she just doesn't have anything to say. Yeah, but yeah, offering this pretty solid observation on the differences between pride and vanity and how one is self-centered and one is externally focused and then everyone is just like Mary, come on.

Becca: It's interesting that this is such a prevalent line in the book and frankly Mary is the least expanded upon Bennet girl, [00:22:00] probably, maybe Kitty, but still, this isn't a line coming from Jane or Lizzie or even Charlotte Lucas, it's coming from middle child Mary.

Molly:  My favorite Bennet sister.

Lauren: And now we mentioned Charlotte Lucas.

Like we even get more detail about Charlotte immediately than we do about like Mary and Kitty, because Charlotte is introduced with her age because that's going to be like a character trait and like a focus moving forward. But we didn't even get that from the Bennet sisters. We don't know how old they are immediately, but because Charlotte's an old maid at 27, it's like, “Charlotte Lucas, who was 27 and Elizabeth's friend,” that immediate character detail that's just thrown in there.

Emily: And what is it about the age of 27 that Jane Austen's just like, you're fucked, man.

Becca: It's too much. It's too relatable. I spent 27 in my house and only leaving with a mask on. So like that was, that was just a line I played to myself every morning. I was like, yep, this is, this is my life.

Lauren:  I think we moved away from Mary and pride.

And you had something that you wanted to look up and I think I diverted that from talking.

Emily: I was looking at the, the quote that we were talking about just so everyone can have the context. So it goes,

“Pride,” observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, “is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, but the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

And then she is unceremoniously interrupted by this younger Lucas boy. And the whole thing is just dropped completely.

Becca: It's a very profound moment. I mean, do you guys ever watch [00:24:00] Parks and Rec?

Emily: Yes.

Becca: We love that show. It's so Jerry Gergich. Yeah.

Lauren: Oh, it is. Oh my God. You're so right.

Emily: Jerry Bennet!

Becca: Everyone's like, shut up, Mary!

Lauren:  Mary secretly has like the best insights and like —

Molly: —and what I thought was funny about this quote is that like, it is so profound, but she's like, ‘from everything that I've read.’ Like, it's not from your own experience, it's from books.

So that's why people dismiss her.

Lauren: Oh, Mary, it's not an original thought, but she's just an amalgamation of all the books that she's ever read and all the writers’ thoughts that they have and have put into their own work. And she just kind of absorbs all of that and then regurgitates it. And it sounds really smart, but if you asked her to form her own opinion on something, which Mr. Bennet did a couple chapters earlier, she's mute.

Final Thoughts With Pod & Prejudice

Emily: Well, I think that about wraps up summarizing and going over the actual events of these five chapters. Is there anything else that anybody wants to add that we missed?

Molly: My favorite part of these chapters is the youngest Lucas child who says that if he was as rich as Mr. Darcy, he would, he wouldn't care if he was proud or what, however he behaves, he would just get a pack of foxhounds and a bottle of wine a day. And then Mrs. Bennet says that's too much wine. And he said, no. And then they fought about it and that's just how the chapters end. And I love that.

Becca: Reiterating what I said at the beginning, I'm always struck by how the book starts. And echoing something Molly said about how quick the ball goes by, so much happens in these first five chapters that forms the way the rest of the book goes, which takes place over the course of a year, or in this case over the course of a few weeks. And you see that this [00:26:00] town is so formed by all these expectations about marriage.

This family is so driven to get these women married. And we're told from the perspective, not of our protagonist, Lizzie, but of everyone else around her, including even the scene at the ball. Jane Austen basically says everyone loved Darcy, then everyone hated Darcy. I think it's an interesting way to start the story.

I think it's a funny way to start the story. This is a very funny book and I think it kind of does center the book around the impressions of other people we get instead of who they actually really are.

Lauren:  There's so much of this book, that centers on perception and whose perception you can trust, if you can trust your own perception.

And if not, then, like how you suss out truth. What do you, how do you create meaning if you can't trust your own perception or the perception of others? And I love that this is such like a funny romp of a book, but it's also beneath the surface tackling some really deep questions about like, what does it mean to trust your own intuition or not?

Emily: We're going to get super philosophical.

Lauren: I wrote a paper about this in undergrad. So it's at the top of my mind because I'm a nerd.

Becca: It's a great topic with this book. It's a really good way to explore our own perceptions of what's happening in the world.

Lauren: Yeah. Very smart. Molly, were there other things that stood out to you reading this it's for a second or third time?

I didn't know if you had a chance to go back and revisit these chapters after y'all finished your first readthrough of Pride and Prejudice.

Molly: Yeah. So it's been two years. Reading it this time. I was struck by how fast it all moves because these are things that stick with us through the whole book. I was struck by how clear the characters actually are from the beginning.

I mean, I feel like I spent a lot of time. Trying to figure out like who's who, and, and I think [00:28:00] that in now having read all of Pride and Prejudice and part of Sense and Sensibility actually like going into Sense and Sensibility was easier to read than Pride and Prejudice was, and I was like, “is that because I'm getting better at reading Jane Austen or is it just like a better book?”

And I went back and read this and I was like, “oh, I'm getting better at reading Jane Austen.” Cause it's actually so funny and like I was having a great time rereading these. So thank you for giving me a reason to, maybe I'll reread the whole thing.

Becca: Sense and Sensibility first! Got to go into the drama.

Molly: Yes, the drama.

Lauren: I’m happy that we were able to give you the chance to at least read the first five chapters of Pride and Prejudice. And then maybe during a break or when you've already finished Sense and Sensibility you can go back and finish the whole thing.

Molly: Yeah.

Emily:  Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was really fun.

And although I am crushed to have lost our recap contest, it was, it was a fair judgment.

So, if you are interested in hearing more Pod and Prejudice, Becca, Molly, where can we find you guys?

Becca:  You can check out our podcast, Pod and Prejudice. Season one is us covering in Pride and Prejudice. Plus some movie adaptations. Season two, which we're working on right now, is us reading Sense and Sensibility.

Molly: You can find that wherever you get your podcasts.

Becca: You can email us at podandprejudice@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. All of which are just Pod and Prejudice, you can also visit our website at podandprejudice.com.

Lauren: Thank you all so much. This has been so lovely.

Becca: Thank you so much for having us on and enjoy the rest of this.

It's a very fun book.

Femininity in Pride and Prejudice

Lauren: Thank you once again, to Pod and Prejudice for joining us for our initial recap and [00:30:00] discussion of these first five chapters of Pride and Prejudice, we were super happy that they were able to join us.

Emily:  It was great, even, even though I lost the recap, but that's fine. Lauren's better at them anyway.

Lauren:  I was just about to say, I will wear the heavy crown of recap queen with a solemn responsibility.

Emily: Yeah, sure. You'll take, you'll take the acknowledgement of your superiority with grace!

Lauren: I am a Taurus after all, you know, I am never wrong.

Emily: So while we were going through all of the events of these first five chapters, there were plenty of things that we can pull out to discuss the topic of femininity.

Lauren: Yes. And I'm excited that we get to use this to guide our first reading of Pride and Prejudice. This is a book that both of us have read before. So this won't be the same, like spoiler free slash plot agnostic discussion as season one, because we both read it before.

Emily: We will attempt  not to spoil because we do hope that there are people who are reading along with us for their first time.

But yeah, definitely not plot agnostic. As you say.

Lauren: Where, where did femininity stand out to you to begin with?

Emily: Well, the first thing was in the very first chapter when Mrs. Bennet is talking about the relative advantages that each of her daughters have and her heavy, heavy focus on beauty, physical attractiveness, and the importance of that in, in her assessment of femininity.

And what makes a young lady attractive as a bride?

Lauren: I was thinking about that in a different light, but also looking at Mrs. Bennet's discussion. And I was thinking of how femininity is so tied to beauty, and then how you can sometimes be perceived as less feminine as you age, because your beauty is perceived to be fading [00:32:00] because Mr. Bennet is talking about, you know, I see no occasion for that. And for that, he means visiting Mr. Bingley, as soon as he's settled in his new place. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better for you are as handsome as any of them. Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party. And Mrs. Bennet demurs and says, my dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown up daughters, she ought to give overthinking of her own beauty.

Emily: Yeah. So that really brought me to thinking about what do they consider beautiful. And we talked about this a little bit, I believe at the beginning of our previous season when we were looking at gender, but what, what were beauty expectations? I don't want to call them standards because things were kind of disseminated differently. But yeah, that, that kind of carried me into my historical research with, okay.

She's talking about how beautiful her daughters are. What, what does that mean for their physical appearances? So the biggest things seem to be a pale complexion because of course they're in England and being healthily, plump, or curvy, really hallmarks of being wealthy enough to avoid outdoor physical labor.

So you're not exposed to the sun. You're not, you know, building up those horrible manly muscles. And then it's accented by the use of, you know, really delicate, light colored clothing, which, you know, would be very easily ruined. It also indicates that you have the kind of servants or other kind of labor.

At your disposal to, you know, wash those super delicate cottons and things like that and keep them pristine. So yeah, physical beauty really seems to come down to distancing yourself from unladylike work.

Lauren: And making sure that it's evident that you're a lady of leisure.

[00:34:00] Emily: Exactly.

Lauren:  And one of the things that I think is interesting too, is that we don't ever actually get physical descriptions of any of the Bennet sisters.

Emily: Yeah, I don't think so.

Lauren: Other than the fact that Jane is beautiful. It-- Jane Austen doesn't decide to describe to us, ‘here is the way in which Jane is beautiful.’ She leaves it up to your imagination and interpretation, but we don't get that for any of the Bennet sisters.

Emily: Yeah. We get a much better idea of their personalities than what they actually look like.

And of course we can't trust Mrs. Bennet's judgment because she's so biased. They're her daughters, which, you know, I'm sure any, any caring mother would be biased towards their own children's attractiveness.

Lauren: I would hope so.

Emily: But, yeah. So like, like you said, that the idea of feminine beauty is supposed to sort of indicate that they are engaged just in ladylike pursuits and not having to make their own economic way and things like that.

And from the things that I read about Regency femininity, the kind of top priority of being a well-bred and feminine lady was pleasantness, basically, to those around you. So being beautiful, being physically attractive, having both a sense of fashion and the means to acquire fashionable items. One thing that also comes up in these chapters is the idea of a good humor and a sincerity, and then the ability to engage in sort of little delightful entertainments.

So it's, it's almost being like. A decorative piece is the highest goal you can have as a young woman of the Gentry class.

Lauren:  I'm glad you mentioned being pleasant to people around you specifically, because I feel like that plays into so much of Jane's desirability and that perception of her femininity is that she [00:36:00] is genuinely pleasant to everyone and it's not evident that she's just being nice because she knows that's socially acceptable and expected of her to be nice. She is just genuinely a really nice and caring person.

Emily: We even get the sense this early on that Caroline Bingley and Mrs. Hurst are just sort of polite in company because they have to be, but they're kind of catty otherwise, you know, they let their real judgments come out around the people that in their inner circle.

Whereas Jane is already shown to be just sweet across the board.

Lauren: The epitome of what a young lady should be.

Something else that also stood out to me was the way Mrs. Bennet finds out information, but also communicates is also tied with femininity because gossip was all women had. To find things out.

And so she's forever finding things out by gossiping, by speaking to Mrs. Lucas, or by speaking to whoever to discover either information about the person who has finally rented Netherfield or finding out information about other people's daughters or potential love matches or whatever, you know, all of it is through gossip, which is demonized because gossip is just something that silly women do, but that's how silly women find power and information is through gossip.

Emily: Yeah, one of the lines that I highlighted in chapter five was “Lady Lucas was a very good kind of woman, not too clever to be a valuable neighbor to Mrs. Bennet.” And yeah, that's another thing that seems to come up when you look into conceptions of femininity in the Regency period and in most periods, honestly, even up to today is that question of women's intelligence, because it's been traditionally, at least in the modernized Western world. You don't want women to be too smart, just enough to [00:38:00] be a witty, conversational partner and to liven up the party. But women being too intellectual being too educated is not desirable. I mean, there were even quote unquote doctors in the Victorian period saying that, oh, you know, if, if your daughter studies too much, then her ovaries are just going to shrivel up.

That is not true.

Lauren: I mean, but how depressing though, that we have finally moved away from that kind of false biology, but that that's still embedded in society and that, you know, if you're too smart, then now you're suddenly less desirable and men claim to want a smart woman, but they don't actually want someone who's more intelligent than they are, because then that messes with pride and ego and vanity.

Emily: Yeah. They frame it as, oh, a woman who's smarter than you is intimidating, but really it's just. They want to feel like they're top of the heap and they can't do that. If they know their female partner is more intelligent, more educated.

Lauren:  Right.

Emily: Which is just, that's not how any of this works.

Lauren: Straight women, find yourself a man who values your intelligence and isn't annoyed by it.

Emily: Yeah. We even see these kinds of parameters coming through in Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's assessments of their own children with, you know, Jane is beautiful and she's sweet and friendly. Lizzie is witty, but not as beautiful as her sister. Mary. I don't think gets any kind of physical description. I mean, none of us get a physical description, but there's, there's no indication of how she compares to her sisters.

Lauren: They don't care about that poor girl.

Emily: Yeah. It is made fairly clear that she's kind of like the little dour book worm of the family who is just always has her nose in something, but also. One thing that comes up in relation to Mary is the comment that she was introduced as being the most accomplished girl in the neighborhood [00:40:00] and accomplishments are another thing that definitely contribute to what the bounds of feminine it'd be were.

So accomplishments are essentially. The skills that you acquire typically prior to marriage. And there were actually references to some jokes by Jane Austen and others that, you know, oh, even the most accomplished girl by a year or two after her marriage will have completely forgotten how to do everything.

But again, these are all very delicate sort of decorative things. Painting drawing, playing musical instruments, reading both in solitude and aloud with others, embroidery of course, small sort of calm little games. And then things like dancing and visiting friends that are a little more social, but still very decorous.

Lauren: Very proper.

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: Nothing too assertive. Nothing too studious. You know, you, you can go as far as learning European languages, but, you know, that's kind of just a show off that you can do that.

Lauren: And also, like you said, all of those are decorative in a way, you know, like you can entertain the party by playing the piano and singing beautifully or reading a passage aloud, or literally decorate the home with your paintings or your embroidery.

It's all to add some kind of aesthetic enjoyment.

Emily: Yeah. And of course I'm not trying to devalue any of these things. They're lovely. They all require skill.

Lauren: We are making this podcast because we are both, bookworms clearly not trying to devalue reading.

Emily: Yeah. Genuine skills that require a lot of work to develop and maintain.

So they are genuinely, you know, worthy of praise and respect, but still they represented kind of a boundary for these well bred gentle [00:42:00] women because they, they were, you know, quiet tasks that could be done in the home, they're not strenuous. And they also don't present too much of an opportunity for women to be economically independent because supporting yourself as a woman?

Lauren: What?

Emily:  Not feminine, not cool.

Lauren: Also very difficult.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: Rewinding for just a moment and thinking of Mrs. Bennet. Again, Jane Austen's characterization of her is not very complimentary. So Mrs. Bennet is clearly somebody who goes above and beyond where she doesn't need to, is overdramatic in many things, but she is --

Emily: Kin to Mrs. Jennings?

Lauren:  Very much so. I was thinking that, I'm glad you picked up on it. She is justified in her desire to get her five daughters married, but in that initial chapter, especially when she's pestering her husband about going to visit this eligible bachelor, who could make sure that one of their daughters potentially has like a comfortable life and isn't kicked out and destitute, she's seen as like desperate or nagging and she is kind of those things, but she also has a point. Like either Mr. Bennet goes to meet this person or they're going to fall behind because somebody else will, because they're all pragmatic enough to realize that this is an eligible bachelor. He'll probably marry somebody. And it might as well be one of the daughters who's already here.

Emily: Yeah. She may come off as overbearing and maybe even a little silly--

Lauren: --and she is --

Emily: -- but, at the, at the root of it. I mean, she is being very pragmatic. There is this one, exceptionally eligible bachelor, and there's a whole lot of eligible ladies in the area. So, you know, somebody’s going to get him, it better be one of ours.

Lauren: Not romantic, but very pragmatic, which is what they needed to be.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: I feel like romance is considered inherently feminine, but they're not allowed romance in the same way that we are today.

In that you have to be a lot more pragmatic or logical in the way that you [00:44:00] approach marriage and not just rely entirely on romance because that wouldn't necessarily get you where you're wanting to go in life. If you rely solely on romantic attraction to another person and don't keep all of those social rules and regulations in mind.

Emily: Yeah. A lot of that I think has to do with how much more acceptable it is these days for women to contribute economically to a household or to be totally independent, you know, it's, it's feasible for us to support ourselves. And so it's not the end all be all to snag a rich man. Thank goodness. Cause most of them seem like douches.

Lauren: I feel like all the romance novels where the naive 20 something is romanced by a billionaire, really just put like a gold veneer over the reality of what that would actually look like. First of all, by making the person 25 and not 55.

Emily: It's like, oh, you really just inherited that. You've never worked in your life.

Pop Culture Connection

Since we seem to be sort of in transition, moving from historical context to the shape of the world today. Do you have a pop culture connection for us today?

Lauren:  Yeah, I do. And the thing that I was thinking of for these five chapters was the hashtag not like other girls trope.

Emily: Oh, that's a good one.

Lauren: Also known as, if you're not familiar with it.

If you've listened to the song “You Belong With Me” by Taylor Swift. That is the entire premise of the song. Like she wears high heels. I wear sneakers. She's cheer captain I'm in the bleachers. Very much that type of denigrating, traditional femininity and things that are considered traditionally feminine, that those girls participate in and then setting yourself apart from that, by saying, you're not like those other girls, because you don't participate in that definition of femininity and that makes you inherently better.

Also could have been found by any teenage girl running a fandom blog on Tumblr [00:46:00] between 2011 to 2014.

Emily: Yeah. Was definitely for a blessedly brief time, but nonetheless I was not like other girls.

Lauren:  I also fell prey to that. So I also want to like, make sure I'm, I'm critiquing the trope and not the people who participate in it because misogyny makes victims of us all in different ways.

Like, I also definitely had my moments of, “I'm not like those other girls who like wear pink and do what I don't,” I don't know. I stayed away from pink for the longest time for no reason. Pink looks good on me. Why would I deny myself pink for so long?

Emily: Yeah, I mean, and it never really was about positioning yourself against other individual girls.

It was positioning yourself in opposition to what wider. Western, especially American society wanted to frame desirable femininity as.

Lauren: Right. And I, why I was thinking of it was because I think sometimes when people read pride and prejudice, they project that onto Elizabeth Bennet very often, especially because she's portrayed as somebody who likes reading.

She's put in contrast to Jane who is a good feminine epitome of like all things Regency femininity, which we've already talked about. And she and Jane are kind of put in contrast to one another. And although Jane Austen, doesn't denigrate Jane nor do fans of Pride and Prejudice. I definitely see people making those comparisons of how, how and why Lizzie is superior to Jane specifically because of the qualities that people can relate to, that they see in her and making that same, not like other girls argument, like, oh, well, Elizabeth is different because she's smart and she's special and what have you, but never does it say that Jane isn't smart, she just leans more into the traditional idea of what a perfect woman should be or act like.

Emily: Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with being feminine, right? I mean, so many of us have gone through, you know, the trials and tribulations of [00:48:00] what is gender presentation and what do I want mine to be and wrestling with how we have conflated presentation with gender roles. It's rough. And I feel for all the girls and non girls who have gone through that, Not like other girls phase, because it's tough.

Especially in the teenage years, desperately, if subconsciously, seeking solidarity with people of the same gender, people who understand the experiences you're going through, you're discouraged because even as society has outlined, so strictly what good femininity is, it disparages it simultaneously because we hype up masculinity as.

You know the ideal, but also we tell women it's bad if you're that, but no matter what you do, it's bad.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. And I also feel like certain expressions of masculinity are valued in some women and then discouraged in others. So like, I think specifically of how, even though Venus and Serena Williams can go out in outfits that are considered feminine, they'll still be called men because they're muscular.

And because they're black and dark-skinned black women in particular. And how that impacts my own relationship with femininity because black women are usually, especially dark-skinned black women, are inherently seen as more masculine because of the history of how race was constructed in the US. And so while being sporty and being tough and muscular is like sometimes praised in white women where it's like, oh, she can hang with the boys.

She's one of them. When a black woman does it. Now all of a sudden it's oh, well she's too manly. She's too masculine. And now she's no longer desirable, even though it's the exact same behavior, just in a different package.

Emily: Yeah. For as complicated as that spectrum of masculine-feminine is it just gets even more complex and impossible to navigate when you bring in issues of not only [00:50:00] racism, but colorism.

Lauren: And I think that's an under-analyzed aspect of femininity and masculinity and how it's presented in the US in particular, because I think we've started to have the conversation about how it differs by race, and then don't necessarily go another step further to think about how proximity to whiteness also means proximity to femininity in women in particular, not necessarily in men, but sometimes… actually, no, I take it back.

Yeah, proximity to whiteness is more proximity to femininity in black men as well because lighter skin black men are usually seen as more sensitive or more emotional. And that's a stereotype within the black community as well. Like, “oh, that's light-skinned behavior.” What's how did that, how did that become a thing?

Emily: There are just so many facets to it that we don't even think about that it's just subconscious. It's been embedded in the undercurrent of society for so long that we don't even know how to identify it much less, draw it out and analyze it.

Lauren: Right. I think that way of constructing femininity in both Regency England and the US is what made me think of that.

Not like other girls trope for how you can still kind of hear some of that same rhetoric that's pushed in the 21st century coming from a book in the 19th century. That has been me on my soap box. And that is my pop culture connection for today.

Emily: It's a good soap box.

Lauren: Thank you.

Emily: We've definitely seen some excellent breakdowns of that particular, not like other girls phenomenon there, I believe was a YouTube essay done by Sarah Zed.

That was really in depth and really talked about it. Not only just as a larger phenomenon, but from an individual perspective too, from another person who was very swept up in it. Yeah. So we'll definitely have to link that in the description because it's great. I enjoyed it.

Lauren: Yay.

Final Takeaways

Emily: All right. You summarized [00:52:00] first. So I guess I'm up for takeaways.

Lauren: Yes. Emily, what is your final takeaway from Pride and Prejudice chapters one through five?

Emily: I think what I got was the importance of first impressions, really. I mean, that may seem like a cop out because that was the book's original title, but I mean, really these five chapters put such an emphasis on meeting someone for the first time, the assessment that you make of them.

And then how so much of your opinion is formed off of what might be a very, very brief encounter. Lauren. What's your final takeaway?

Lauren: Well, you stole mine. So now I need to think of something else.

Emily: It's revenge for you winning the recap.

Lauren: Similar to yours, but in a different vein. My final takeaway is to consider multiple sources of information before deciding on the truth.

Thinking specifically of how we were talking about how there is one big event and then three chapters of people talking about that event. And we get different perspectives each time we hear somebody else talk about it and thinking in the vein of not being able to rely on your first impressions, not being able to rely on just your own perception either of events or how things happened. And a reminder that there is your story, my story, and then the truth.

Emily: I think that's great. And I can't wait to see how that particular insight pans out through the rest of the book.

Lauren: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll look at chapters six through 10 of Pride and Prejudice through the lens of masculinity.

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

Lauren: If you'd like to support us and help us create more content you can join our Patreon @ReclaimingJanePod or leave us a review on iTunes.

Emily: Reclaiming [00:54:00] Jane is produced and co-hosted by Lauren Wethers and Emily Davis-Hale. Our music is by LaTasha Bundy and our show art is by Emily Davis-Hale.

Lauren:  See you next time.

Becca: Grumpy one soft for the sunshine one could have been a different book, could have been Darcy and Bingley.

Lauren: Where's that fanfiction. I feel like I ask that every podcast. That has to exist somewhere in AO3, right? Somebody has already written it.

Becca: Absolutely a hundred percent. That is, that is some necessary literature to read.

I'll say that much.

Emily: And if it doesn't exist yet, it's going on my growing list of fics that I would love to write, but will never write.

Becca: Listen, if you do get around to writing it, just submit it right to our podcast email, because we will read it live on our podcast.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Emily: Oh my God.

Lauren: I would pay money for that. I would pay good money.