Pride and Prejudice 11-15: “Best Frenemies”
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What makes a friend? Co-hosting BFFs Lauren and Emily look at interpersonal relationships in the Bennetsphere. Also included: Mean Girls, ulterior motives, and George Wickham has entered the chat.
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
Why Mean Girls is the perfect teen movie
Show Notes
If we have to suffer then SO DO YOU. Enjoy having this song stuck in your head for the rest of eternity.
No, in all honesty, being able to discuss friendship with your best friend is such a joy. So much fun, in fact, that you forget you’re meant to be discussing Pride and Prejudice and instead just end up discussing friendship in general for a good chunk of time. At least it was on theme?
Deep, “platonic life partner” level friendship is something we’re lucky to have, and the theme of this episode allowed us to actually talk about and verbalize ways in which that shows up in our lives. To whoever is listening (or reading), we hope this inspires you to hug the (vaccinated) friends who live nearby.
And we will never tell you that you can’t sit with us.
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Season 2, Episode 3 | Pride and Prejudice 11-15: “Best Frenemies”
[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 reading chapters 11 through 15 of Pride and Prejudice with a focus on friendship.
A Terrible Song & 30-Second Recaps
Emily: You know what's been stuck in my head all week in anticipation of this episode?
Lauren: What?
Emily: F is friends who do stuff together…
Lauren: God, how did I not think of that?
Emily: I don't know. I started humming it on like Tuesday and have not stopped since.
Lauren: Oh my goodness. Okay. I'm glad that's one of the things that you didn't text me about because I would have joined you in your misery. And I'm honestly glad that I missed out on that.
Emily: We can minimize it now. Maybe. No, no, no. It'll just be stuck in both of our heads for the next week.
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: That's how it goes.
Lauren: Thanks so much.
Emily: You're so welcome.
Lauren: We were friends.
Emily: We are!
Lauren: I thought you cared about me.
Emily: No. I've just, this has been a long con just to get that song stuck in your head at this exact moment.
Lauren: 10 years, just pretending to be my friend. So you can get a song from SpongeBob stuck in my head. And you know what, honestly, I have to give you props for that.
Emily: Yeah. Thanks. I think it's deserving of some respect.
Lauren: Oh my goodness.
Emily: I feel like this episode, perhaps just as much as sexuality last season, has the potential to get very chaotic.
Lauren: I'm here for it. I feel like we should just embrace the chaos.
[00:02:00] I'm excited. I feel like we have so many good things to talk about. I'm glad that we, that we chose friendship for this section, because I feel like there's so many different ways that we can take that theme in our conversations. I'm like, ooh, we have much to discuss, much to talk about.
Emily: Yes. So speaking of things to talk about and devolving into chaos, Lauren, would you start us off on recapping?
Lauren: I will indeed.
Emily: Ready?
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: 3, 2, 1, go.
Lauren: Okay. Elizabeth and Jane are having their last couple of days at Netherfield with the Bingleys, Caroline Bingley is ready to get Elizabeth up out of her house. She's trying to get attention from Darcy and it's not working because he is still like very partial to Elizabeth.
They go home. Mr. Collins, their cousin who is going to receive the estate when their father passes away, is on his way. He is a ridiculous man. He wants to marry one of the sisters, at first, he's like, oh, I'm absolutely in love with Jane, but he can't have Jane because she will soon be engaged. So he goes for Elizabeth instead.
And also Mr. Wickham has arrived in town.
Emily: Beautifully timed. Well done.
Lauren: Thank you. I'm actually very proud of that one.
Emily: It was excellent.
Lauren: Emily.
Emily: Lauren.
Lauren: Are you ready to deliver your 30-second recap?
Emily: I am prepared or not prepared, prepared, but you know, well, I've read the section.
Lauren: "I did the assignment."
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: I did the homework.
Okay. 3, 2, 1. Bake!
Emily (though laughter): Lauren!
Lauren: Sorry, I'll start it over.
Emily: Thank you.
Lauren: You lost a precious four seconds.
Emily: And it was not my fault!
Lauren: Okay. Sorry. Okay. 3, 2, 1. Go!
Emily: Jane is feeling recovered from her illness and so much to Mrs. Bennet's chagrin. She and Lizzy return from Netherfield and rejoin the Bennet family at Longbourne. And they are shortly informed that Mr. Collins, their [00:04:00] cousin, who is set to inherit the estate, is on his way to make amends and maybe find a wife among the Bennet daughters. They all take a walk into Meryton unfortunately accompanied by Mr. Collins, who is annoying everyone and discover there's a new man in town.
Initial Reactions: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies
Lauren: Done. Shall we start off with talking about the, the frenemies that we have at Netherfield?
Emily: Oh my goodness. We really do have some frenemies here. Caroline Bingley. She's so two-faced. We mentioned last time. She tries to throw Lizzy under the bus for tearing down other women while she-- that's what she's doing. But it's very explicit in this section. Jane Austen's talking about how affectionate Caroline and Louisa are towards Jane, but how much Caroline just hates Lizzy.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: As you said, she just wants her out of her house.
Lauren: It's, she's very jealous because she can see that even as Darcy is telling himself that he is no longer going to be paying Lizzy any more special attention because he finds himself in danger. Even as he's trying to create that self-restraint for himself, it's still apparent to Caroline that he's paying Lizzy more attention than she thinks that Lizzy deserves.
And it is driving her up the wall.
Emily: At the very beginning of chapter 11, as they're describing Jane sort of beginning to rejoin the party. It says that “she was welcomed by her two friends, the Bingley sisters with many professions of pleasure and Elizabeth had never seen them so agreeable.” And then at the start of the next paragraph, “but when the gentlemen entered, Jane was no longer the first object,” because Caroline Bingley immediately snaps to Darcy.
She has him in her sights and is not about to let go, especially not to a nobody like Elizabeth Bennet.
Lauren: He was like, as soon as Darcy walked in, Caroline Bingley was like [00:06:00] “target acquired.” Like locked in.
Emily: It comes off as very Mean Girls, not to jump too early into, you know, referencing pop culture, but yeah, being superficially polite, but then working off of ulterior motives and being perfectly willing to sometimes literally throw people under buses.
Lauren: You know, you gotta do what you got to do. It's the animal kingdom out here. Yeah. Caroline is a woman who knows what she wants. What she wants is Mr. Darcy. And she is not about to lose out on the prize that she thinks she's owed to this random country bumpkin in her eyes. Who isn't even that pretty.
Emily: Whereas in terms of like birth and status, Lizzy probably is… Their family would be better established in terms of longevity, she was born into a, a gentle family, whereas the Bingley's are just jumped up merchants.
Lauren: So maybe that's also part of Caroline's... maybe that's part of her deal, part of her issue. Yeah. Especially because she's with Darcy all the time, who's old money. And so she constantly has a comparison of here's what I want to be, but I'm prevented from being, because my family has only just now attained this wealth.
Emily: Man, that dimension didn't even occur to me, but that's, that's pretty spot on. And that can absolutely be part of it.
Lauren: I can imagine that if you are always insecure about your own standings, then you'll forever take those insecurities out on other people, which makes her the definition of a frenemy in these chapters, her dislike of Elizabeth gets in the way of her relationship with Jane sometimes.
And it even says at one point, because when Lizzy and Jane are trying to go back to Longbourne. And they announce that they're going to go back and they ask if they can borrow the carriage. Of course, you know, the Bingleys and Darcy have to go through the politeness of, oh no, I insist you absolutely must stay another day, blah, blah, blah.
And then it [00:08:00] says that Caroline was at once, like she regretted delaying their departure because now Elizabeth was still here.
Emily: Yeah. I have the quote, as soon as you started on that, that line of thought, I found it, it says, “Miss Bingley was then sorry that she had proposed the delay, for her jealousy and dislike of one sister much exceeded her affection for the other.”
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: But then on exactly the other end of the spectrum. I feel like that's where Bingley and Darcy sit, because they could be horribly conscious of that potential class divide, but instead, they're just sort of ribbing each other, or at least Bingley is ribbing and Darcy knows that it's meant in good fun.
When they're talking about the idea of Bingley hosting a ball at Netherfield. Caroline sort of smugly points out that, well, maybe not everyone here would enjoy a ball, trying to get herself into Darcy's good graces. Bingley says he can go to bed beforehand if he wants, I'm having a ball anyway.
Lauren: I don't care.
Emily: Like, yeah, that's friendship.
Lauren: If you want to be miserable and alone. You can do that on your own time, but I am having fun.
It also shows that Bingley might be like the... the nice friend in the pairing with him and with Darcy, but also knows his sister and kind of can match her tit for tat and match her wit.
Emily: Or lack thereof.
Lauren: Or, or lack thereof. In the continuation of that scene, Caroline's still trying to impress Darcy with her sensibilities or lack thereof as it were, because it's really not working in her favor because Darcy can tell she's not as intellectual as she claims to be.
And she says, you know, I should like balls infinitely better if they were carried on in a different manner, but there was something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would certainly be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day. And Bingley replies much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a ball.
Emily: And then she gets mad and stands up and starts walking around.
Lauren: Because she knows [00:10:00] like in her mind, okay. I've lost the intellectual way of winning over Darcy, but I look good. So if I get up and I start moving. Then maybe that will gain his attention, but it still doesn't work because the only time he looks up from his book is when she asks Elizabeth to join her and then he pays attention.
Emily: And then she goes on to try and leverage the history of her relationship with Darcy. So basically just the fact that they've known each other longer, and is trying to punish him for making this comment, They could only be walking around the room if they had secrets or if they wanted him to admire their figures.
Yeah. So, so Caroline's trying to like...
Lauren: trying to prove some intimacy.
Emily: Yes, exactly. Trying to prove some kind of intimacy, but again, Lizzy wins out because they start talking about defects of characters. Darcy admits to his pride, to temper and not being able to forgive easily and right towards the end of chapter 11, Lizzy says, “your defect is a propensity to hate everybody,” and Darcy replies,
“And yours is willfully to misunderstand them.” With a smile, he says this. So even as Caroline is trying to prove that she knows Darcy better than Lizzy, Lizzy takes the jabs that, that Caroline throws and even the comments that Darcy throws not necessarily in a mean-spirited way. And they're still able to have this, like the witty repartee.
Lauren: Yeah, Elizabeth and Darcy are having a capital M moment. And Caroline has been left out of the conversation.
Emily: Caroline's a terrible friend.
Lauren: She really is, because even when she has someone who she ostensibly cares about in Jane, she still will let her dislike of someone else outweigh her affection for the person who's meant to be a friend to her.
So even when there's not [00:12:00] the issue of jealousy or insecurity, like those character flaws still make her a bad friend to the people who she cares about. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have like Lizzy and Jane who are super tight and are friends as well as sisters, which, I feel like... Because I'm lucky enough to have a good sibling relationship, those-- friend and sibling are synonymous in my mind, but that's definitely not always the case, as we can see with the other Bennet sisters, because she's not necessarily friends with all of her sisters, but she's certainly friends with Jane.
Mr. Collins the… Pick Up Artist?
Emily: Shall we talk about Mr. Collins, who has come looking to curry favor, but not necessarily to form friendship?
Lauren: Yes. And you know, one of the things that's interesting in our first introduction to him is that I had forgotten that there was bad blood between his father and Mr. Bennet. I forgot about that completely. So when we're even introduced to him, it's through the lens of a friendship gone wrong because Mrs. Bennet mentioned something like, oh, why is he even going to bother pretending like he likes us, because we know that you and his father didn't get along. And Mr. Bennet's like, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, I'll read you the letter where he acknowledges that. And so maybe. Like, this'll be fine, but he's reading the whole thing in the lens of, oh, this man is ridiculous and I'm going to have some fun.
Emily: Yeah. There was a line later, in Mr. Collins' visit where it says something like, oh, he was exactly as absurd as Mr. Bennet had hoped. But yeah. Mr. Collins definitely is looking to mend bridges, but aside from planning to take one of the Bennet daughters as a wife, he doesn't really seem to come with overt goodwill, or really trying to, despite his protestations, make amends.
So he says that he wants to make amends, but his view of that is, well, I'll marry one of your daughters.
Lauren: And Mrs. Bennet is actually on point here. And I love her quote because it fits so perfectly with our theme. Right before Mr. Bennet reads the letter in response to Mr. Bennet saying, you may perhaps be a little softened by his manner of expressing himself.
She says, “no, that [00:14:00] I am sure I shall not. And I think it was very impertinent of him to write to you at all. And very hypocritical. I hate such false friends. Why could not he keep quarrelling on with you as his father did before him?”
Emily: She just wants to stick to the status quo.
Lauren: She does. And honestly, she's not wrong.
He doesn't actually want to be friends. So why are you pretending? Just continue hating each other. You're going to get the house anyway. Why do we have to go through pretending as though we like each other, when we have this awkward situation right in front of us, we don't like each other. You're going to get the house, leave us alone, go away.
It's like, yeah, she's got a point.
Emily: Yeah, she does.
But then of course she is very quickly swayed upon finding out that he wants to marry one of her daughters.
Lauren: Yeah, she changes her tune in like 12 hours.
Emily: Very quick about-face.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: As soon as he makes it clear that he's interested.
Lauren: Yeah. That description is also hilarious because he, of course, is at first fixed on Jane because she's the oldest and it's proper to, you know, have the oldest daughter be married first.
The Bennets clearly don't really care about that because you know, all of the daughters are out in society at the same time. The horror, but technically like your oldest daughter should be married first and see it's like, okay, well she's the prettiest and the oldest. So that'll do. And then when he's having that little conversation with Mrs. Bennet, where she's slyly dropping hints, like wink, wink, she'll probably be engaged to that super-rich person down the road, wink, wink, pick somebody else. Then he goes, oh, okay, well, Elizabeth is the next oldest. And the next prettiest. She'll do.
Emily: No scruples whatsoever about any kind of interpersonal connection.
Lauren: No.
Emily: It's literally just, he's decided that this is his duty and this is the right thing to do. So he's going to marry one of them. That's as far as his reasoning goes and he does not see a purpose in extending it any further than that or trying to get to know any of them.
Lauren: Nope. Not at all. He is so unaware.
That he wouldn't even realize that what he's doing could be seen as crass [00:16:00] or bereft of emotion or anything like that. He's just like, no, this is emotional because it's compassionate. So why would I not like go and help out this family?
Emily: He doesn't do anything to recommend himself in terms of authenticity when he starts talking about how much he enjoyed arranging and paying these little compliments to ladies and being very pleased with himself about telling his patroness, the right honorable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, that her daughter should be a Duchess. And he's just... no insight whatsoever.
Absolutely. No, self-awareness that like, dude, you're just, you just outed yourself as a pick-up artist.
Lauren: Like everything, he knows about interactions with other people comes from like a book or what somebody else has told him to do. But like whatever his perception is of being right, and proper has just all been gleaned from other people and from other teachings and not from any genuine relationship with other people, it's not like.
I know what Lady Catherine likes. And I will do that because I want to make her happy. And even, and even that would be like transactional in a way, because she's bankrolling his entire life. And so it wouldn't necessarily be completely pure intentions, but instead it's, this is what women want apparently. So I think when people say like, men think if I can put kindness coins in, sex comes out? I was nice to you, so now we get to be together. Is that how that works? Like.
Emily: It's so calculating really it's literally just, he's taken whatever description of this is the right thing to do and given that no consideration whatsoever, just all right, somebody said, I should do this. So I've got to go and do this now. And if I complete the formula correctly, I will get the right answer.
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: One that I want.
Lauren: You know, I am so glad that we have Friendship as the [00:18:00] theme for this, because there's just so many different examples of good friendships and poor friendships. And this is such an excellent example of what not to do when establishing friendships. You know, the age-old advice is just to be yourself, but I'm not even sure he knows what that is.
Emily: I don't think he's ever heard the word introspection in his life.
Lauren: No, that would require him closing his mouth for more than five minutes at a time and being alone with his thoughts, which he also does not do, because one of the reasons that he's walking with the girls to Meryton is that Mr. Bennet wants him out of his library, because Mr. Bennet had tried to go back to his sanctuary, to his safe space with his books. And Mr. Collins followed him saying that he was going to take a look at like one of his folios or something like that, but actually was just yammering on at length about nothing and Mr. Bennet, who was thinking, oh, this guy is going to be hilarious.
I'm going to be able to have some fun with him is now sick of the entire thing and just wants him out of his hair.
Emily: Yeah. In that. Mr. Collins and Miss Bingley have some kind of similarity that oh, they'll, they'll pretend to have some interest in the thing that this other person is doing and then just talk their ear off while the other person's actually trying to get something done, right? Yeah. It's it's all, like you said, Transactional.
History and Concepts of Friendship
One of the things that came up when I was looking into history is the sort of ancient, philosophical, the Aristotelian concept of relationships having different kinds of foundations. So you can have a relationship where that interaction brings you some kind of pleasure, could be a relationship based on attraction to the other person's virtue.
But these would fall into, I think this third category of utilitarian relationships. He's trying to develop these ties basically, just so that he can get the greatest benefit out of it. But it's not that kind of mutual beneficence or mutual respect. It's just, [00:20:00] okay. What's, what's going to raise the stakes in my favor.
Lauren: Yep. What will help me get ahead in what I want to do.
Emily: Which is not what friendship is!
Lauren: No. And if you have a friend where you're getting those vibes, they are not your friend and you should cut them out.
Emily: Yeah. I ended up reading a lot about like developmental psychology and evolutionary ideas of basically why we have friendships in the first place.
And it seems like support is the biggest thing. You get emotional support, you get social support, you know, in times of need your, your friends can help you out, but when you go into it with that kind of goal-oriented mentality, that's really not friendship. That's just trying to take advantage of somebody.
Lauren: Yeah. You mentioned there's, you know, like an evolutionary benefit or reason why humans have friends.
And I feel like that was thrown into such sharp relief over the past, like year and a half with COVID about how we need people and we need those social interactions. And for people who were isolated either with only one other person or on their own, it was made especially difficult because those interactions that we need to be emotionally and mentally healthy as people were now physically dangerous, even though we needed them for like other aspects of our health.
Emily: I mean, I'm about as introverted as a person can get, but I was lucky enough to be quarantined with two other people. So my husband and our roommate, and even I hit several points. It was like basically sitting by the door with the dog, like waiting for David to come home. I'm like, hi, I need a hug. I just need like physical contact.
Yeah. It seems to have hit everybody. Just how much we really rely on those direct interactions, especially of friends.
Lauren: Yeah. I think we have a better appreciation of how important genuine friendships and bonds are amongst people, but we [00:22:00] have a better understanding of why that's important, both for our wellbeing and overall happiness.
And also because. You know, for the simple joy of just having the happiness of having friends in your life, like friends make you happy, good friends do. You know, the friends that are in it for transactional things are probably not actually your friends. If they make you feel like crap or that they only want something from you, time to reevaluate that friendship. Or if they're cutting down your sister at every turn and...
Emily: Jane, please ditch Caroline.
Lauren: She's not a real friend, honey. I promise.
Emily: Although thinking about Caroline, that is kind of interesting to think about her friendship with Jane, because it would seem like she's not gaining anything by being friends with Jane. So I would think that maybe initially it was sort of like, oh, another young woman who's around my age, also unmarried and who seems to have, you know, good sense, good taste.
Basically this, this kind of factor of like proximity that is kind of the root of many friendships, that form, it's just, okay. You're nearby. We share a lot of characteristics. If you're two kids playing on the same playground at the same time, every weekday, like, yeah. You're just automatically going to be friends.
Modern Day Friendship
Lauren: Yeah. That's exactly what I was going to say. It's that it's a friendship of convenience for them and why it's a lot easier to make friends in school than it is like as an adult, because in school you have the repetition of, I see these same people every single day. I know I see this person in this class and this person in this class and why, if there's not anything more to the friendship, other than you're the only person I like in this class of 30 people.
So we're going to hang out. If you don't have that connection anymore. And that was the strongest thing that your friendship was built on. Then you might grow apart, which is natural and fine, but in adulthood you have to create those spaces for repetition and proximity, because if you don't [00:24:00] necessarily want to be best buds with the people who you work with, you have to work to find those friendships elsewhere.
Emily: That was another thing that I found when you mentioned the frequency of interacting. There's so many different, like psychological models of friendship and like social networks and stuff like that, but one of them was basically like a list of sort of these key contributing factors to establishing like a really strong and long lasting friendship.
That's a little more modern than Aristotle. But yeah, frequency of interaction is one of the main things, the duration of the connection. So how long have you been friends? Because typically it'll deepen over that time, having mutual knowledge of each other's goals, which is something. That didn't even occur to me, but yeah, like if you know what your friends want out of life, that's probably a good thing.
Some level of physical intimacy, although that is very cultural. I think. Self-disclosure so telling people about yourself and then also being familiar with the rest of their social network.
Lauren: Oh yeah. That does make sense.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: You know how sometimes people will make jokes about like, oh my gosh, is this the next step in our friendship.
Have we taken it to the next level? Where it's like, oh, do you want to come and hang out? I'm going to a park with some other friends on Saturday. Would you like to come? And being accepted into that social circle makes you feel closer to that friend. Or at least introduced to the social circle, if not, you know, welcomed into it.
Emily: Yeah. It's so weird. The kind of boundaries that we draw between different circles of friends, because. I have a bunch of friends in my academic department, but they don't necessarily interact with my friends from like undergrad. They don't really interact with my husband because they don't overlap in a lot of direct interaction contexts.
But all of these people are very near and dear to me.
Lauren: It was always funny to me when, well, not funny but interesting because it didn't have friend groups like this, where it was one set friend group where we all hang. [00:26:00] And everyone is friends with everyone because like I had multiple friend groups that I floated between and I would see like on , television or in movies or in books like, oh yeah.
Well, the group of people is all going to go to whatever, or we're all going to hang out and if one person isn't there, then it's weird. And I'm like, I don't have like, just a group like that. And it was always a friend who's bopping over here with like, okay, I have this friend group over here and had this friend group over here and this one over here, usually based around like different interests.
And sometimes there would be crossover and overlap in between like the groups that I was bopping between. But yeah, not always.
Emily: Yeah. I'm thinking about like high school. I had A couple of different, main, small groups that I would hang out with, but there's always one or two people who sort of overlapped between them.
Not just me. I mean, we were all in the same, very small academic program anyway. So obviously we had something in common, but yeah, the idea of having just one group that's completely exclusive of anyone else is really weird.
Lauren: Yeah. And sometimes I wondered, I was like, is this only a movie thing? Or do people have this in real life?
Cause I feel like within the same social context, it's odd to me to only have one friend group. Like if you only have one college friend group, cause it makes sense to have your college friends and your high school friends, because those are two different environments and two different phases of your life.
Usually not always, but only having one set like college friend group was interesting to me. Yeah. So I was like, how do you only have, are you guys closer? Am I doing something wrong? Like...
Emily: Have I failed at friendship? yeah. I mean, cause. I mean, we were largely part of the same friend group in college, but there was like one subset of people that like, I would go watch Dr.
Who with, and then there was the other group that hung out on Fridays and watched Say Yes to the Dress.
Lauren: Bride Day Friday!
Emily: Bride Day Friday. And within that there were individual people, of course, that I was closer to than others. I mean, I've lived with you for three different [00:28:00] years, but then there were others who I was very aware, like, yeah.
Okay. I'm friends with this one person, but I wouldn't text them out of the blue and say, Hey, do you want to go get brunch with me?
Lauren: Right, there's levels to the intimacy, I guess. And like, even within the friend group that we shared, There were definitely people who I only hung out with if we were hanging out as a group. I liked them.
It wasn't like there was something where it's like, oh, well, I don't get along with this person. So I prefer not to spend time with them. We just weren't that close. We could hang out in a group, but if you put us one-on-one, we would probably run out of stuff to say in half an hour. And it would just be weird.
Emily: It's so odd how you can have so many interests and so many people in common, but not necessarily get so close to, to one of those people.
Lauren: Which I guess just, you know, how personalities work, some people click and some people don't.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: Thinking about like high school friend groups, everyone had like different groups that overlap based on interests.
So like somebody would have band friends and somebody else would have their friends from this activity that I'm not in. And I also had similar things, but in my core group of people, I feel like I could create like three different trios that one friend was always a part of, it was really funny. I could hang out with these three people and this person's there.
I can hang out with these three people and this person is there. I didn't even realize that until college. I was like, oh yeah. If I break down this group of five people into three different trios, it's me and this other person, every single time they just create, you just bring in a different friend for each one.
Emily: Yeah. There's that one person that you just kind of stick to? It's like, yes, we come as a unit.
Lauren: It is us, again! Hello.
Emily: I mean, that's why people thought we were dating in college!
Lauren: For years. And after college.
Emily: And after college. Yup.
Lauren: Yeah, we definitely maybe took the unit thing a little bit too far.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: But what is too far? We enjoy each other's company.
Emily: It was mostly because I was an introvert. And so when I went anywhere, it was usually, you were also there.
Lauren: Yeah. Even with that, it was just like, I had taught myself how to be the extroverted [00:30:00] introvert, which is also why it worked well. When, because of the two of us, I'm a lot more likely to say, oh, let's go do blah, blah, blah.
Or I know someone who's doing whatever, whatever do you want to come with me, but would also come back and just be like, okay, great. We have a mutual understanding not to speak for like the next two hours. And no one's going to be bothered by it because we both just need to be quiet.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, that's a kind of intimacy and understanding that I think a lot of people don't quite get is the ability to be upfront about things that you're concerned might come off the wrong way.
And that, that comes up a lot as a sticking point, not just in friendships, but in romantic and sexual relationships. Something starts to bother you, but you don't want to say anything. And so the friction continues and gets worse and then results in a blow-up. But if you're close enough to a person that you can have that kind of honesty, I think that also just deepens the intimacy of friendship.
Lauren: Yeah. I agree.
Emily: It's being able to say, Hey, I trust you enough to say this thing. I might be worried that you won't react well to it, but you know, still trust that person to see where you're coming from and be able to temper their own reaction to it I guess.
Lauren: Yeah. That makes sense. And also no knowing them well enough and having the kind of intimacy to know how to express that in a way that will get the peace that you want, you know, where it's like, I, I know if I deliver my message in this way, they might be hurt.
I'm still going to get my point across without like couching it or trying not to be as honest as I can be, but I also know, you know, maybe if I use this tone of voice, instead of this tone of voice, my message is going to be received a lot better because I understand how they think.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, if you walk up to your partner and say, Hey , could you do the dishes that's going to come across much differently than, oh, would you mind doing the dishes tonight?
Lauren: Now it's a confrontation instead of a [00:32:00] request.
Emily: Right. Yeah. And it's not about like avoiding confrontation or anything it's being able to, I guess, sort of regulate or modulate, that kind of interaction so that it's clear what's getting across. And I mean, sometimes you just, sometimes it's just not possible.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: There's always going to be some kind of friction in any relationship.
Lauren: I think also being cognizant of that is also a sign of a mature friendship as well. Like knowing that conflict or friction, isn't the end of a good relationship. It's something that we can work through. A fight or a disagreement isn't indicative of the fact that you can't be good friends or you can't have a good relationship, that it doesn't mean that you're no longer friends.
It is just something that happens between two people, because no people are 100% alike. You're inevitably going to have some friction or some disagreements. It's just a matter of how you handle them. That's actually a sign of like the health of your relationship, not the fact that they exist.
Emily: There are no perfect fit relationships, either platonic or romantic or sexual or anything like that.
You know, this isn't Shel Silverstein. Unfortunately. They can't just find a missing piece and you fit together and everything goes perfectly. You know, we're, we're all shaped differently and some of us have spots that match, but none of them are perfect. Nobody has a one-to-one with one other person.
Lauren: Right.
Which is why like having a variety of friendships is important because you get something different from each relationship and you're fulfilled within all of them. And not just the one friend who has to be your be all end all.
Emily: Actually, I was talking with a doctor the other day who asked about my social support network.
And I had said like, oh yeah, I live with my husband, but she very specifically asked, okay. Beyond your husband, what does your support network look like? Are you close with your family. Do you speak with, do you have other friends in the area? And that's something that I don't [00:34:00] see talked about that much. We tend to romanticize the idea of your one romantic partner being the end-all be-all.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: And you never need anything beyond that. That's bleak, honestly.
Lauren: And also not true.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: Or sustainable or possible, even. If you really only have your one person who you're interacting with and you don't have those other relationships, it's probably a sign of an abusive relationship that's systematically cut you off from your other relationships to the point where you only have them to rely on because then they have power over you.
It's not good. You're supposed to have other people outside of your romantic relationship. Have friends, have families!
Emily: Have friends, have family, have chosen family. You do not have to like your biological family or adopted family or whatever. Yeah. You, you need a support network. And that by its nature is more than just one person.
Lauren: Circling all the way back to where we started.
Humans are social animals. We need multiple relationships and multiple areas of support. And I hope to whoever's listening that you have good friends.
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Who can be your support network, whether that's like your chosen family or romantic partner or partners, or your actual platonic friends. Like, I hope you have a good network of people because we all need that.
Emily: We all deserve that.
Lauren: Yeah. It's the little things too I'm thinking about. When I recently went to visit a friend who I've been friends with since like day one of our freshman year of high school. And I got in right before the dinner hour and we had already planned like, oh, we're going to do stir fry.
And so we're going to make dinner and blah, blah, blah. And I get in the car and she goes, you're probably hungry, aren't you? And I was like, oh my God. Yes, I ate lunch. But I knew we weren't going to eat dinner until later. And she goes, yeah, I know. I brought you a snack and I also have some water for you. Thank you.
It's the little things where she knew. Lauren's going to be hungry as soon as she gets off the plane. She's probably going to say something about being hungry as soon as she gets in the car, I'm just going to bring her a snack for the ride home.
Emily: It's like, when you text me about going to [00:36:00] an event or something and say, it's okay if you just want to stay home.
Or, I mean, a couple of months back, we were going to hang out, but then it was just the end of a long day at the end of a long week. We're like, we can, we can love each other enough not to try. Stay social and awake.
Lauren: Not to force a hangout. Today, our friendship care will be not hanging out because neither of us has the energy to do that right now.
Emily: We would just sit on our phones and while that can be very fun, in some circumstances now... But yeah, knowing each other well enough to recognize each other's limits and boundaries, even when one person may not see that they're reaching a limit themselves. And yeah, that's something that my husband does for me a lot.
And that you also do for me a lot is like, Hey, I can tell that you're tired of being here. Why don't we head out soon?
Lauren: Or this is frustrating you, so do you want to give it to me because you're reaching a peak and I don't think you want to do this anymore.
Emily: Yeah. And I mean, those are things where I, I won't realize until someone has said, "Hey, you need to step away" that I'm about to snap.
But these are people with whom I have formed a strong intimacy and who can recognize when I'm getting to that point and who know that I'll listen to them when they say, Hey, stop it.
Lauren: Maybe let's take a break. Yeah. Agreed.
Pop Culture Connection: Mean Girls of Netherfield
Emily: Well, now that, now that we've drifted from Pride and Prejudice, and talked so much about like how all of this works in the modern-day, would you like to talk about a pop culture connection?
Lauren: I would. And believe it or not, you actually already hinted at it when we were talking about Netherfield. What I wanted to do was actually a little activity. If you wouldn't mind.
Emily: I would be delighted.
Lauren: I would like to talk about the Mean Girls of Netherfield. I have four of the roles cast already, but I'm hoping to get your insight on who else you would cast in [00:38:00] a Regency-era Mean Girls using the cast of Pride and Prejudice.
Emily: I absolutely love this concept.
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: So what is, what's your foundation?
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: What do you have so far?
Lauren: Foundation that I have would be, of course, Caroline Bingley is Regina George. I feel like that was an obvious choice. Mrs. Hurst is Gretchen, but that one is debatable. We can work with that a little bit. And then Elizabeth, as Cady Heron and I debated who I was going to put as Cady, but because I feel like Mr. Darcy has to be Aaron Samuels. Elizabeth also has to be Cady.
Emily: That makes sense.
Lauren: So those are my four. So I'm interested to see who else you would cast in this Mean Girls adaptation. And for people listening, I sincerely hope that you have seen the seminal classic of our time. And if you have not, we will put a link in the description to the character list of Mean Girls.
So you know what we're talking about.
Emily: It is iconic, but you know, if, if you, weren't also a middle schooler in 2004, it might not have had quite the same impact on you. But I love this. Yes. Regina George being Caroline Bingley is obvious. I think Mrs. Hurst as Gretchen works. Mr. Hurst has to be Karen.
Lauren: Oh my God. Yes. So perfect.
Emily: This is why we have to collaborate on these things.
Lauren: Yeah, he is 100% the type of person where it's just like, you know, intellectual pursuits are just not for him and that's fine. It's just not who he is as a person. Who would you choose for Damien and Janice?
Emily: Yeah, that's a lot harder.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: Because I can't really see Jane being either of them. If she were one of them, it would be Damien.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Because Janice is kind of the mastermind there and that's just not Jane.
Lauren: You know, I could see Lydia as a Janice character. When you said mastermind, I feel like Lydia would be not their character [00:40:00] arcs don't correspond in any way, but like personality-wise, I could see Lydia coming up with a plan.
Emily: Oh wait, no Wickham. Wickham is Janice.
Lauren: Ooh, say more. I see where you're going, I think, but I want to make sure that we're on the same page.
Emily: Deliberately trying to take down the, I guess the, the mean girl sphere, because Wickham wouldn't give a shit about Caroline Bingley, but because of the association with Darcy, that might work.
Yeah. Maybe, but also, okay. I don't know if I can include Wickham because we haven't gotten to him yet.
Lauren: We, he was very briefly mentioned, and we know from this--
Emily: his name has entered the text.
Lauren: His name has entered the text and we know that there is something weird between, between him and Darcy, because they go white or go red, depending on who you're looking at.
And they're very uncomfortable. So there's some bad blood there we know.
Emily: Yep. Wickham as Janice would work better if Darcy were Regina, but Darcy doesn't have that kind of calculation.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Which is why I agree with him being Aaron Samuels.
Lauren: He's just, he's just there.
Emily: He looks sexy with his hair pushed back.
Lauren: He looks sexy with his hair pushed back.
And both Regina and Cady are really into him.
Emily: That's pretty much the extent of that.
Lauren: You know? Yeah. I feel like Janice is also hard to cast because she does some messed-up things in the movie, but it's still a sympathetic character. You just can't think about her character motivations too hard, because then she looks more like a villain ruining this other girl's life.
Emily: Well, if either Lydia or Wickham are Janice, then does that mean that the other has to be Kevin?
Lauren: Kevin G!
Emily: Actually, I feel like Lydia fits that pretty well. Aside from the whole like math nerd thing.
Lauren: Yeah, I agree. Kevin G is always running after other women. Lydia's is always running after uniformed men. I could see it. That works actually.
No, I know who [00:42:00] Jane is. Jane is the girl who gets up on stage and is like, I just wish we could all be friends. Like we all were in middle school.
Emily: Jane, who doesn't even go there.
Oh, who would Bingley be though?
Lauren: Ooh. I don't know who Bingley would be, but Mrs. Bennet is Regina George's mother.
I'm not a regular mom. I'm a cool mom.
Emily: You guys need snacks?
Lauren: A condom? Let me know!
Emily: I think Mr. Bennet would be the, the principal. I can't remember his name right now.
Lauren: Oh yeah. I don't remember his name.
Emily: Just like totally resigned to the mess that his life has become.
Lauren: Yup. The chaos created by all the women around him and partially his own neglect.
Yeah. You know, that honestly fits a lot. Ooh, do we have an analog for Tina Fey's character?
Emily: I was just thinking about that.
Lauren: I don't know that there's a good analog for her in the Pride and Prejudice cast of characters.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. If we started making amalgams of various people, like maybe we could fit things better, but, I, I'm satisfied with, with where we have this right now.
Lauren: I agree. Did we ever find the spot for Bingley or is he just going to be cast aside in this, in this recast?
Emily: I think he's, he's just a Hottie.
Lauren: Yeah. Random hottie, number one, who is one of Aaron Samuels' friends. Yeah. He could be cast as an extra in the background that if you know, you know.
Thank you for participating in this pop culture activity.
Emily: You are so welcome.
Lauren: Cause having the theme of friendship and then opening up with a frenemy of Caroline was just too good an opportunity to pass up.
Final Takeaways
Shall we do final takeaways?
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: Okay. Emily, what is your final takeaway?
Emily: Friendship is a complex thing that has a lot of different facets contributing to it. It's not something that you can just earn by doing a few favors.
It's a very individualized thing. What's your final take away?
Lauren: Very similar. Friendship. Shouldn't [00:44:00] be transactional. Friendship should be genuine. Just thinking of how Caroline and Mr. Collins operate and using that as a perfect example of what not to do.
Emily: How not to be a friend.
Lauren: How not to be a friend by Caroline Bingley and William Collins.
thank you for joining us for this episode of reclaiming Jane. Next time, we'll look at chapters 16 through 20 of Pride and Prejudice through the lens of war.
Emily: To read a full transcript of this episode check out our website, reclaimingJanepod.com where you can also find show notes, our full back catalog and links to 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 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.
Emily: F is for friends who do stuff together.
Lauren: I have left that from my brain!
Emily: U is for you and me.
Lauren: Also, that doesn't even make any sense. “I had left that from my brain.” That had left my brain is what I was trying to say. I think I was trying to say I had pushed that from my brain or that had left my brain and I was just pushing the two together.
Emily: Just, just so disoriented and distressed by the re-emergence of the song.
Lauren: Don't do it.
Emily: But a true friend will remind you of that song anywhere and [00:46:00] any time at all.
Lauren: No.
Emily: Down here in the deep blue sea.