Pride and Prejudice 16-20: War (What Is It Good For?)
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Absolutely nothing! In this episode, Lauren and Emily talk about wars both literal and metaphorical. Also included: proposals, celebrity feuds, and the mortifying ordeal of (your family) being known.
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Season 2, Episode 3 | Pride and Prejudice 16-20: “War (What Is It Good For?)”
[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 16 through 20 of Pride and Prejudice, with a focus on war.
A Humble Request for Audience Participation
Emily: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Like Fs for friends last week. I've been, I've had that stuck in my head the whole time I've been prepping.
Lauren: Absolutely nothing. Say it again.
Okay. So. This will be a little bit more of an interesting episode because our theme doesn't necessarily show up explicitly in the text. We're going to read it into the chapters that we chose for today, but it means that we get to be really creative about where we see the theme of war in these five chapters of Pride and Prejudice.
And I still feel like there's a lot that we can dig into to create, even though it's not explicitly said or talked about.
Emily: Yeah. And it's for me going to be more of an opportunity than we've had in the last couple of episodes to say, Hey, here's the historical context. This is what was going on in the world at the time.
Lauren: Beautiful. Love it.
Emily: I'm, I'm excited about it. Well, I don't know if excited is the word, but there, there's stuff to talk about.
Lauren: The anticipation is high. Anyway, war, what is it good for?
Emily: Absolutely nothing. [00:02:00] Except as a theme and our discussion of Jane Austen. Yes, we can make anything good for something.
Lauren: We really can. We've managed to create a whole discussion about race with zero discussion of race on any page of sense and sensibility. So this will be easy.
Emily: We should do some kind of bonus, like. I dunno, pick a completely like joke topic.
Lauren: Yes. Okay. New challenge.
Emily: Well, we'll play six degrees of Jane Austen. Give us an absolutely absurd topic and we will connect it to Pride and Prejudice.
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: New segment?
Lauren: Yes. That's. Let's include that after Advising Austen, that'll be a wrap-up. See if we can connect it or not. We're serious. If you're listening, give us something that seems absolutely ridiculous that we can not connect. And we're going to put that in our last Pride and Prejudice episode to see if we can bring it back to Jane Austen in some way I'm talking, like, give us talk about BTS as a theme and see how we can relate it to Jane Austen.
Emily: We've already done that though! That was our first episode.
Lauren: Oh, yeah, shit!
Emily: See, we have a track record already.
Lauren: Something more outlandish than that.
Emily: More outlandish than K-pop.
Lauren: Yes. We're going to crowdsource this.
Emily: Yes.
Thirty-Second Recaps
Lauren: But--
Emily: it's going to be great --
Lauren: --before we get to that. Shall we recap these past five chapters?
Emily: Yes. So much happened in these chapters.
Lauren: Really did.
Emily: And I have to go first. So I'm trying to get back into my habit of meditating. I'm going to use these techniques now to focus and bring myself into the present. Remember the things that I read like five hours ago.
Lauren: Okay. We have a lot to cover in 30 seconds.
Emily: We sure do.
Lauren: Are you prepared?
Emily: As much as I can be.
Lauren: I believe in you. Okay. All right. 3, 2, 1 go.
Emily: So Mr. Collins is still there. Lizzie learns more about Wickham's backstory. The Bingley's finally throw their ball at Netherfield and people are introduced and there's a lot of embarrassment on all sides, but Wickham is not there. And then Mr. Collins [00:04:00] proposes to Lizzy and she turns him down to his disbelief.
And. There's just, yeah, lots, lots of embarrassment and backstory.
Lauren: Done.
Emily: Okay. That was not great, but you know what?
Lauren: There was so much to cover that I honestly don't know. I mean, chapter 18 on its own. The third chapter that we read for today, was just hefty.
Emily: Yup. Okay. Lauren, are you ready?
Lauren: No.
Emily: You have the advantages of going second.
Lauren: This is true. Thank God.
Emily: And three. Two. One. Go.
Lauren: Okay. Lizzy is starting to create some kind of romantic attraction towards Wickham who tells her this whole sob story about how he was. Related or not related, but was close to the senior Mr. Darcy. And then he died and he was supposed to get a living and he didn't get it.
And he's like very upset about it. The Bingleys throw their ball, there's lots of embarrassment on the behalf of the Bennets. Elizabeth, losing her mind. She dances with Darcy. It's weird. Mr. Collins proposes to Lizzy. She loses her mind again. She says, no, her mother is ticked. And also Mr. Darcy has something weird going on, lurking in the background.
It was not my best, but we made it.
Discussing the ~Drama~
Emily: That's okay, as we said before, there was so much that happened. So we open with the Bennet sisters and Mr. Collins attending this supper party thrown by the Phillips's that was brought up at the very end of last section. And they've invited a bunch of the officers, including Mr. Wickham, who Lizzie takes full advantage of the opportunity to get to know a little bit more, but their conversation turns in ways that she was not really expecting, even though it was clear from the very first interaction where the Bennets, were talking to Wickham and Bingley and Darcy came by and there's that moment of, oh shit.
Something's up between these two with Wickham and Darcy. I don't think Elizabeth at all expected what the thing between them would actually be.
[00:06:00] Lauren: Yeah. And in the narration, it mentions that Elizabeth really wanted to ask what the deal was, but didn't want to be so improper as to actually do it because she doesn't really know this man.
She's just met him, they're in the company of other people. So she has at least, you know, enough propriety about her, not to be like, Hey, it seems like there's some drama going on. I know we just met, but can you divulge all that information to me? But she doesn't have to, because Wickham is the one who begins the topic of conversation, you know, he asks how far Netherfield was from Meryton, and then after asking that said, by the way, how long has Mr Darcy been here? And so since he's opened the conversation, Elizabeth jumps at it and she's like, great. So what is your opinion of Mr. Darcy? What is everything that's happening? Because she already has that distaste. She is very open to hearing all of the crap Wickham will speak about Darcy.
Emily: And he is very willing to tell her. He keeps trying to not soften it, but pretend like he's not going to talk shit about Darcy. And then goes on and talks lots of shit about Darcy.
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: So what happened according to Wickham is that he was the son of the elder Mr. Darcy's steward.
He was raised in very close proximity with the current Mr. Darcy. The elder Mr. Darcy saw Wickham as a favorite and had unofficially promised to grant him one of the livings that was in his control. So as we talked about, in sense and sensibility, these large landholders kind of have the power over who gets to become clergy on their land. So that, that was the situation that the elder Mr. Darcy had said, you can have this when it's available. But after the elder, Mr. Darcy's death, current Darcy, according to Wickham, just said no, and Wickham makes some kind of noises about, oh, you know, he thought that I was too extravagant or something [00:08:00] like that.
But how do we feel about this explanation?
Lauren: I am not confident in it. First of all, he begins this whole thing by saying, I have no right to give my opinion as to his being agreeable or otherwise, and then proceeds to give his opinion at length about him being disagreeable.
Emily: He keeps saying, oh, I can't, I can't judge I'm too biased. And then judging.
Lauren: Exactly. Like, oh, well I couldn't possibly give my opinion on whether or not Darcy is agreeable or not. And then proceeds to say how much of a horrible person he is for not giving him the living that he believes was due to him by the wishes of Darcy's father. Says that he would never speak ill of Darcy in company, and then proceeds to speak ill of Darcy in company.
Emily: Although thinking about it, I guess, really, he is not directly saying those things, but he is laying out the story in such a way that it brings the listener, in this case, Elizabeth, to certain conclusions that he wants and he does nothing to dissuade those conclusions at all.
Lauren: Right. And is just very good about using manipulative language. So for example, he compliments Darcy in a way that is still speaking poorly of his qualities. Says, yeah, he's a very proud man. And you'll probably hear people say that he's such a doting brother to his sister, but it's just because he doesn't want the family's reputation to be ruined.
So heading off what Elizabeth would hear praise-wise of Darcy and giving an explanation for it before she can even hear somebody else's positive opinion.
Emily: And at the same time implying that Darcy himself is manipulative because he acts certain ways in higher class company to make himself look good.
Lauren: Yeah. You know, it makes you wonder. Why would he be volunteering all of this information?
Emily: This is a lot of very personal stuff, really. This is the first time he's had a conversation with Elizabeth and yet he's like, here is my tragic backstory.
Man. I [00:10:00] was with, not really friends, but in a group chat with someone who kept like eluding to horrible things that had happened in their past, and then shaking it off with like, oh, ha ha.
But that's my tragic backstory. Like let's move on. And all of the rest of us were just like, really? That's what I feel like, Wickham is doing. Oh, ha ha, that's my tragic backstory.
Lauren: You could be a little less obvious in your cries for attention. Just a little bit. And he's using such flowery language. I think it's difficult to tell when you're not used to the language of the 19th century, but compared to the way that Elizabeth and other people speak, Wickham is being very grandiose and blah, blah, blah. And using literary conventions, which implies that this is a speech that he's given before, that he's rehearsed and not a man just having a conversation with somebody else and saying, oh yeah, this is what happened. And it was really upsetting, but here I am now. I landed on my feet.
Now I'm an officer. It's very much like, let me deliver the soliloquy about how I have been. Please listen, and be my audience.
Emily: Going back to grandiosity, Mr. Collins.
Lauren: Oh, goodness. Yeah, that was also what I was thinking.
Emily: He is so obsessed with Lady Catherine. I don't think there's even anything new at this moment that we can say about him. When we get further into the section. Yes. We can find some other things to say, but he's, he's just so, so obsessed.
Lauren: Yeah. Mr. Collins is also at the same separate gathering that Elizabeth and Wickham are at where they're having this conversation, but he... it's just talking at length about subjects that no one cares about and has--
Emily: He never stops talking and has absolutely no situational awareness.
None whatsoever.
Lauren: None. The poor people who he's in conversation with.
Emily: So moving on from this initial supper party, our next big event is the Netherfield ball.
Lauren: The long-awaited ball. And Elizabeth was really hoping to see Mr. Wickham at said ball. And Wickham had said before, I won't be chased away by Mr. Darcy.
He's going to have to be the [00:12:00] one to turn away from me. And yet Mr. Wickham is nowhere to be found. He's been mysteriously called away to the town, very conveniently. And does not appear.
Emily: And Elizabeth is disappointed, partly because she wanted to see and to dance with Wickham, but also, you know, in the back of her head, she was kind of going fight, fight, fight.
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: She wants to see the showdown.
Lauren: I heard there was drama? Hello, I'm here.
Emily: She does not want to be the center of drama, but she does want drama.
Lauren: Exactly. Like me. I love drama when it's not mine. I just want to be a spectator. Let me watch.
Emily: Yup. So the ball, Mr. Collins is really making overtures to Elizabeth now, making it very clear that he's interested and claims her hand for several dances. Which seems to be a little bit of a controversy because clergymen, they're not Baptist, but they're not supposed to be getting down and partying.
Lauren: It's also partially Elizabeth's fault because she brought it up as a joke because she doesn't think he's actually going to go to said ball because of this.
And she's like, oh, Mr. Collins, are you going to go to the ball? Ha ha. LOL. And he says, actually, yeah, I am going, would you do in the honor of dancing the first dances with me and she's like, oh shit, I didn't think!
Emily: She fucked around. And she found out!
Lauren: And that's when she starts to figure out that he's been paying so much attention to me because he wants to propose, oh, this is not good.
I don't want to do that.
Emily: Mr. Collins is really the center of awkwardness at this ball. He, once again, talks incessantly while they're dancing. And then finds out, unfortunately for everyone involved, that Mr. Darcy is the nephew of lady Catherine de Bourgh. And so of course, Mr. Collins decides immediately that he is bound to go and introduce himself, defining all the common rules of propriety.
Lauren: It is such a social faux pas.
Emily: Such a social faux pas. They have not been introduced. He is not waiting [00:14:00] for a mutual acquaintance to introduce them. And he's also taking the initiative himself where properly it would be incumbent on Mr. Darcy as the social superior to undertake that introduction. Mr. Collins says, fuck that.
And he goes and introduces himself. And I mean, you just get the sense of everyone just standing around and staring at him like what the fuck is going on.
Lauren: This whole ball is just a series of embarrassing moments for Elizabeth. She watches Mr. Collins, impertinently introduce himself to Mr. Darcy. Mary's over on the piano singing terribly.
And then her father further embarrasses both of them by like calling across the room, like, Hey, you've delighted us long enough. Instead of going over and speaking to her, which also is too blunt and then embarrasses Mary and then other people are looking at them. So he didn't make things better. Her mother is speaking at length and loudly about how Mr. Bingley and Jane are definitely going to be married. And this is such an advantage marriage because he's so rich and surely the rest of my daughters will now be thrown into the paths of other rich men. And Elizabeth is looking at her mom and then looking at Darcy. And looking at her mom and looking at Darcy and going, mom, please be quiet.
I beg you, please just lower your voice. And she's like, I will not I've had wine and I'm going to talk about my daughter's going to get married to a rich man and Darcy's just standing there like, Hmm. Interesting.
Emily: And then of course there's the slightly more private embarrassment. I don't know if embarrassment would be the right word, but yet another awkward moment where Caroline Bingley comes up to Elizabeth and is like, I heard you were talking to Mr. Wickham, everything he says is a lie. I don't know the details, but Darcy is not to blame.
Lauren: And also is really classist about it too. Like I just thought that I should let you know that he's actually the son of the late Mr. Darcy's steward. So I would be careful about who you consort with or something along those lines.
Like, did you know, you're speaking with somebody who's beneath us all. And [00:16:00] Elizabeth was like yeah, he told me that when we first met, so that's not really a revelation.
Emily: Here's the line she says, I pity you, Miss Eliza for this discovery of your favorite’s guilt, but really, considering his descent, one could not expect much better.
And Elizabeth responds, his guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the same for, I have heard you accuse him of nothing worse than of being the son of Mr. Darcy's steward. So there's issues there.
Lauren: And lest we forget, Elizabeth and Darcy dance together.
Emily: They did. That was another section that I highlighted for its hilarity because of course they begin the dance, just not speaking because Darcy doesn't speak.
And so Elizabeth decides. You know what, instead of ignoring him while we dance as punishment, it would be so much worse if I made him talk. I read that and immediately had to stop and write down. Like Elizabeth is thinking, oh, I'm punishing him. And Darcy's thinking she wants to talk to me.
Lauren: They're on two completely different paths right now.
And he even says at one point, cause she goes, well, you know, for some people, not speaking while dancing is better. And he goes, are you saying that on my account or on yours? She's like, well, both of us, but it is not for both of them.
Emily: Yeah. She keeps saying these things that she clearly intends to be very cutting and Darcy also thinks that they're very witty, but he's just amused and straight up thinks that she's flirting with him.
Because she says things like I've always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds we are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak. Unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb. Lizzie, you're flirting with the man.
Please stop.
Lauren: You think you're negging, but you're not.
Emily: If you want to insult him, maybe stop doing it while saying, oh, we're exactly the same. Like he's taking this as being self-deprecating humor.
Lauren: Self burns! Those are rare.
Emily: It's just, it's just such a [00:18:00] disaster on every count, except for the fact that Jane and Bingley spend the whole time gossiping with each other.
Lauren: It's also like Darcy doesn't dance with people. And also because he's of a higher social rank, he gets like a better spot in the dance line. And so everyone's looking at them because not only is a Darcy dancing B he's dancing with Elizabeth and C, there's an advantageous spot in the room for everyone to look at them.
So everyone can see that they're like having this moment on the dance floor and then Sir Lucas comes up to them and says, oh, Mr. Darcy you're such a great dancer and your partner is also a great dancer. I hope we get to see more of this in the future after a certain happy event comes to pass and looks at Jane and Bingley.
And then the narration says that Darcy's face is like, he's had a realization when Sir Lucas says that and looks over at Jane and Bingley, who of course are in their own little world. And you can see the cogs turning in his mind. Oh, my friend is serious.
Emily: And then he has to go and sit at supper across from Mrs. Bennet, who spends the entire time talking about how Jane and Bingley are about to get married. So this is definitely where darcy is like, ohhhhh. Oh, that might happen.
Lauren: He clearly didn't think it was a possibility until now and now it's clicking.
And then we go to...
Emily: yet another disaster.
Lauren: Mr. Collins, cornering Lizzie after breakfast and earnestly asking for her hand in marriage. And similar to how Wickham has this woe is me soliloquy planned out. Mr. Collins is using a lot of flowery, romantic language to basically give a business proposal.
Emily: Yeah. Okay. So my marginalia on this is that Mr. Collins proposes the way teenagers write their first research paper.
Lauren: Oh my God.
Emily: This is what I am going to write about in this paper.
First, I'm going to write about this topic. Second, I'm going to write about this topic. Third, I'm going to write about this topic. Here are the reasons that these are all important. I have told you the reasons. And so now I think that you should marry me. It's just like, it's not even that it's blunt or [00:20:00] straightforward, like it's that it feels so formulaic.
And we've seen in previous scenes that this is really sort of how his social mind works. Like, all right, I'm going to lay out these reasons. And because I see the logic in them, everyone else is going to see the logic as well. And then it will all turn out the way I want it to. Unfortunately for him...
Lauren: It does not work that way.
Emily: It does not.
Lauren: Elizabeth is having none of it and tells him multiple times. No, I don't want to marry you. No, I don't want to marry you. And he thinks that she's being modest and that this is a sign of wonderful modesty in a woman is to refuse because, you know, how could I possibly accept the first proposal?
And Elizabeth is like, uh, no. That is not what's happening. I legitimately do not want to marry you. Please do not ask me again because you'll get the same answer and I will not change it.
Emily: Unfortunately, everything he knows about female behavior, he apparently learned from like Regency Cosmo. It's like, oh no, you're just being demure and elegant because you don't want to seem too eager.
And Elizabeth is like,
Lauren: the hell I am!
Emily: Please, god, no.
Lauren: I would rather die. Do not do that to me.
Emily: He spends like one page, at least in my edition proposing. And then the next, what, like 10 pages are Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet trying to convince Mr. Collins. No, she's actually refusing him. Mrs. Bennet is beside herself that Lizzie would ever think to refuse an offer of marriage, especially because, you know, Mr. Collins is well enough placed. And they even say that Lizzie's her least favorite of her daughters. So she was like, Hey, look, it's a man who's willing to marry you. Would you just go already?
Lauren: And it's the man who's going to inherit the house, which means that if Mr. Bennet dies before all of the sisters are married, because Elizabeth would be married to the man of the house, they could still like, have some relation to it and, you know, maybe find a home there, but they wouldn't be as unceremoniously thrown out as they would be if you were married to somebody not related to them. But no.
[00:22:00] Emily: Nope. And then of course we have the funniest moment.
Mrs. Bennet has gone in search of Mr. Bennet to convince Lizzie that she has to marry Mr. Collins. And Mrs. Bennet says that if Lizzie doesn't marry Mr. Collins, she will never see her again. And so Mr. Bennet, he says an unhappy alternative is before you Elizabeth, from this day, you must be a stranger to one of your parents.
Your mother will never see you again, if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again, if you do. And it's followed up basically saying that's not what Mrs. Bennet expected. She thought that her husband was going to back her up.
Lauren: And he did no such thing. And then she goes into more histrionics.
In the midst of which Charlotte Lucas shows up and Lydia and kitty like, oh my God, you came here at the perfect time. The whole house is freaking out. Mr. Collins proposed to Elizabeth. She won't have him. Now he's saying that he's annoyed that she's saying no, and it's just all a mess.
Emily: Yeah. Charlotte shows up and within five minutes has heard everyone's side of the story.
Lauren: Because even Mrs. Bennet is like Charlotte, you've got to help me talk some sense into your friend, cause she's not listening to me. And maybe she'll listen to you.
Messy.
Emily: Everything about this section is just messy.
Lauren: I think those are all the key events.
Historical Context: Britain Goes Global
Emily: Yeah. I was going to say, speaking of messes, let's talk about the Regency military context.
Good. Lord. So of course, one of the first places I go when looking for history stuff is Wikipedia because it's useful. And I'm not trying to write peer-reviewed articles here. The Wikipedia page, just for the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, which is just between 1789 and 1815 has 23 campaigns.
That Great Britain was involved in.
Lauren: Oh dear God.
Emily: From Southeast Asia to the Americas right back to Europe. Oh my God. It was absolutely absurd. So when Jane Austen is writing this, even in [00:24:00] the initial drafts in the 1790s, this whole England France thing has been going on. This is a seriously imperialistic period for England.
They've just lost their initial American colonies in the war for independence. So the United States is still like, kind of flipping the bird at them. They're also fighting for dominance over trade relations in India, in Australia, in Indonesia, in the Caribbean, in west Africa and south America.
There's also multiple Irish rebellions that have happened. It's just, oh my God. It's so much. And of course, when we sort of hear about these things nowadays, you know, in the history class or whatever, it's always presented very much as being like, ah, England is just protecting the interests of Europe at large or whatever.
No, this is, this is the Dawn of the British empire, functionally in the Napoleonic wars. England is going global.
Lauren: And that's why there's always some militia or some kind of military presence in every Jane Austen book.
Emily: Because they were very prominent. That was something that took me a minute to kind of suss out because it's not just straightforward there is the military, the way we have, like in the United States today. Not that I know how that works either. So they did have a professional army. Like that's your career is you're a soldier, but it was a relatively small, even for the time in comparison to other standing armies of other European powers.
They relied really heavily on the Navy, which is not surprising, you know, they're an island, a lot of their interests that they were protecting were maritime.
Lauren: If you're trying to colonize the globe, you're going to need a couple ships.
Emily: Yeah, exactly. The British east India company, of course, is a huge player in all of this, which is, I mean, functionally a paramilitary force.
So that's kind [00:26:00] of the regular army people are sort of straightforwardly recruited kind of like. The US military does today. Sometimes they were press-ganged into it instead when they were like, Hey, we need more soldiers. You're a soldier now. Welcome aboard. Generally the regular army, the professional soldiers were from the lower classes.
They would often join, not necessarily from nationalistic intent, but also for economic reasons. It was a secure income. It definitely was not as lucrative as a lot of other professional trades could be. But when you were a professional soldier, it was expected that part of your income would be from loot, basically, on campaign.
When you prevail, you get to take what you want, I guess.
Lauren: Ooh. Don't like that.
Emily: Yeah, not that we've really stopped doing that, but so that's the regular army, but there are also militias. Which from what I could see is kind of comparable to the draft in the United States conscription. So in times of war, there would be certain martial law enacted to build up their ranks.
But in addition to that, there are volunteers. So they're sort of, part-time almost like a reserve. They're exempt from the militia ballot. They're already kind of marked down as having done some kind of service. And so they're not in danger of being conscripted and it's a much less disciplinary life than being in the regular army.
But then on top of that, you also have officers who can gain that status one of two ways, either you can purchase a commission and enter the military as an officer, or you can be promoted and earn that status. Either way, the status of being an officer confers, an assumption of gentility. So either you had the money [00:28:00] to purchase a commission, or you have verified yourself as being a man of good character, which goes back to what we talked about both earlier in this season and previously with sense and sensibility in terms of morality and masculinity and what makes.
Gentlemen.
Lauren: One of the things I learned from this annotated edition of Pride and Prejudice was that the militia was less prestigious than the regular army kind of alluding to what you were saying before. And that it was a lot easier for you to become an officer in the militia because you didn't have to purchase a commission.
Commissions were free, which is why Wickham is in the militia because Wickham doesn't have any money. Wickham also wants to have some kind of social status. And so he could be an officer in the militia, which is like, not as socially prestigious. It's not going to get you that same level of clout, but you at least still have the genteel label.
And they were always looking for officers because it wasn't prestigious. So most of the gentility aren't going to go to the militia. They're going to go to the regular army and they're going to purchase themselves a commission because they can. And so going into the militia and being an officer is like second string, pretty much like, okay.
We all know that your commission was free. So it's not...
Emily: you didn't buy a commission. How gauche.
Lauren: It's not exactly evidence of your superior social standing to be an officer in the militia. Anybody could do that.
Emily: Certainly I have glossed over a hell of a lot of material here. Of course, I am not a military historian. Generally, that's not one of the things about history that interests me. So I'm sure someone will find the time and wherewithal to correct me on whatever I've gotten wrong. But I certainly learned a lot.
Lauren: We include historical context, but this is not a history podcast. But if you have other things that you think are interesting that you'd like to share, let us know.
Finding War in Pride and Prejudice
But I, I find it really interesting how war is in the background of every Jane Austen novel. Like it's sometimes addressed [00:30:00] more explicitly, but it's always there like lurking off-page.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, just because of the time in which it was written and because they're all set in the contemporary period, there's always some kind of work going on for Jane Austen's entire lifetime functionally.
Cause she was born in 1775.
Lauren: That's got to have such a huge psychological effect on the population when your country is constantly at war. I mean of its own making, but it's still constantly at war.
Emily: I mean, we could say the same now. There's been, what is it like 20 years since the American revolution that the United States has not been at war?
Whether or not it's been officially declared war. So yeah, our entire lifetimes, the U S has been at war. There's been foreign conflicts the entire time.
Lauren: That's bleak.
Emily: It is, it's very bleak. That's another thing I could go on a tangent on, but that's even--
Lauren: that's a different podcast.
Emily: That's a different podcast entirely.
Like maybe one day I can have my textile history rant, but we're going to stay out of contemporary US politics.
Lauren: Yeah. That's for the best. But I do think even though actual physical war is technically off of the page, we see a lot of interpersonal war in these five chapters. So we have like, The silent war between Darcy and Wickham.
We have the war between like the Bingley sisters and the Bennet sisters. And there's all this like interpersonal conflict that's happening that I feel like we can relate to the theme really well. But I was thinking about it specifically in terms of war because of today anyway, but I probably still would have termed Elizabeth and Darcy's conversations verbal sparring is what I wrote down. When we're thinking about like both how war shows up in their language, but also how war showed up in the theme I was thinking about that where they're like, again, throwing jabs back and forth. At least from Elizabeth's perspective, Darcy's just trying to engage in the conversation.
He's not trying to like win anything. He's just trying to figure out what's going on. But Elizabeth thinks that she's like throwing, like these punches left and right. Like boom, uppercut boom [00:32:00] point, Elizabeth. It's just not...
Emily: See yet again, this is why Darcy is an honorary queer, cause he just doesn't know what's going on. He likes this girl and he's like, yeah. Okay.
Lauren: I'm trying to follow your conversation. I don't really understand what's happening here.
Emily: That also in terms of Mrs. Bennet nagging, Lizzie to say yes to Mr. Collins, I characterized it in my notes as being a war of attrition, just trying to wear her down.
Lauren: And also like those, like the mental battles between Caroline Bingley and Elizabeth, where Caroline is clearly trying to make Elizabeth feel small.
So that. She feels better about herself, but also so that Elizabeth will know her place. Because Caroline can clearly see the attachment that's forming which she doesn't want to acknowledge or allow to happen. Like, for example, when she's coming over to Elizabeth to talk about Mr. Wickham and saying, you know, I hate to be the one to deliver this bad news to you.
Emily: Do you? Cause you look like you're enjoying it.
Lauren: No, she's having the time of her life. Like, Ooh, another opportunity to bring Elizabeth down. Or even earlier in the section where they finally get the official invitation to the ball, both Mrs. Hurst and Ms. Bingley, they've come over to deliver this invitation and they make a point, strategically.
To pay attention to Jane and to speak to her about how much they've missed her company and completely ice out any other Bennet, including Elizabeth, because they want to make it very evident that Jane is the only one who's worth any of their attention.
Emily: They're making their target clear.
Lauren: And that's without even talking about the biggest war of all between Darcy and Wickham.
Emily: Yeah. That is a long standing conflict, it would seem.
Lauren: Yes.
Pop Culture Connection: Celebrity Feuds
Emily: So Lauren, did you have any particular pop culture connection. I'm curious to hear what you were thinking about in terms of modern times for this.
Lauren: So I kind of struggled with this a little bit because we can talk about like representations of war in pop culture or war in general, but that's quite depressing.
And I don't really feel like doing that. So instead [00:34:00] thinking in the vein of interpersonal war and the idea of Darcy and Wickham's ongoing campaign or war. I wanted to ask you what your favorite celebrity feud was. Thinking about what those wars look like in between people and instead relating that into something that we can talk about in pop culture that's far less depressing and a little bit more entertaining to discuss.
Emily: Unfortunately, you've asked entirely the wrong person.
Lauren: That's okay. Because I have an example to start off with.
Emily: Oh, thank God.
Lauren: You can think about it for a little bit.
Emily: Okay, what is your favorite interpersonal celebrity war?
Lauren: Okay. I had a couple that I found entertaining.
One is Brandy and Monica, the two R and B singers. They have a song called The Boy Is Mine where they're going back and forth and arguing over whose man it really is, which-- don't fight over a man, but that's beside the point. And in real life, they also had bad blood behind the scenes. And there's one performance that I think it's at the BET awards where you can tell that both of them are heated and they're having to perform this song.
And it ends up being a great performance because there's so much like hate between the two of them that you can really have that back and forth that the duet requires. And there's a clip that just shows a closeup of Brandy's face. And it looks like she may have been crying, but they're probably tears of rage.
And she's just staring at Monica, like if looks could kill and that I find entertaining. And then my second one is the iconic Taylor and Kanye feud that gave us 10 years of pop culture moments from this one moment at the MTV VMA.
Emily: An iconic meme.
Lauren: Honestly. Imma let you finish, but like --
Emily: Beyonce had the best album of all time.
Lauren: Just like one, one moment. That was maybe a minute. And we got so much content from that. We had albums, we [00:36:00] had celebrity feuds. We had Kim Kardashian allegedly exposing Taylor Swift as a snake via her Snapchat. And then years later having it come out that she had only included part of the conversation. So Kim Kardashian was the real snake the whole time, so much, so much.
Emily: I mean that feeds into even more of these sort of military metaphors with concepts of alliances.
Lauren: Yeah. Whose side are you on? Are you team Kanye or are you team Taylor?
Emily: And espionage.
Lauren: Yeah. Of her secretly recording this conversation, which also low-key could have been illegal because I think I remember people saying that California is a two party consent state and Taylor did not give them consent to be recorded this phone call, but whatever that's beyond the topic of this conversation. Yeah, going undercover to get dirt on the enemy and get that Intel.
And then sending their army of Twitter stans after one another, sending the Swifties after Kanye, not like that works, he didn't care. Sending the Kim Kardashian fans after Taylor, like they flooded her Instagram comments with snake emojis. We have a whole reputation album off it. She was so upset about it, that she created a whole album about her reputation.
And then incorporated the snake motif into all of the marketing for that album. Literally one moment of pop culture. That's my favorite celebrity feud of all time. It was so stupid. We got so much content. We were fed.
Emily: You've given so much and yet I still cannot think of anything. Well, I can, I can kind of think of some things, but they don't fit quite.
Lauren: Share them anyway.
Emily: Okay. For some reason when you're talking about Kim and Taylor, what came to my mind was Black Swan.
Lauren: Oh, you know what? I've never actually watched that movie.
Emily: Really?
Lauren: I know, I'm so behind.
Emily: Wow, a pop culture thing that I saw before Lauren, it's amazing!
Lauren: It has ballet, that doesn't count.
Emily: Well, basically the, I guess interpersonal [00:38:00] conflict primarily comes out between these two dancers who are cast as the leads in Swan Lake, which, in the movie all comes out in like, you know, creepy, real life ways.
And there's like a lesbian sex scene and like delusions and hallucinations and all kinds of like crazy psychological shit.
Lauren: I think those are all the Tumblr GIFs that I saw.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that was very interpersonal, like waging war on one, another creating alliances, feigning alliances, dealing with other connections, because like Natalie Portman's character is being like oppressed by her own mother and things like that and all kinds of shit.
And it's also, I don't think I've seen it since was originally in theaters in 2012 or whatever. So I'm sure I've forgotten a lot about it, but yeah. So for some reason that was, that was all I could think of was Black Swan.
Lauren: I'll take it. Yeah. Thank you. I find it fascinating to see those type of interpersonal relationships play out both in real life and in fiction.
And also, I mean, any celebrity feud also has elements of fiction. We're only seeing what they want us to see. So none of it is complete truth. It's nine times out of 10, mostly manufactured for the public to dissect and obsess over and be entertained by. I'm certainly entertained even while knowing that it's mostly fiction.
Emily: Yeah. And there has to be some element of construction of stories, not just for publicity sake among celebrities, but. Actual military conflict too.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Because otherwise there is no justification for it.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: I'm anti-war. Surprise!
Lauren: Yeah. All of that is to say that I think one of the reasons I'm so fascinated by pop culture is because there's so much we can learn from it.
And even in the constructed nature of like celebrity feuds, I feel like there's just a lot that we can learn from how people [00:40:00] react to it, how they decided to construct that in the first place, because the message that they're trying to create also says a lot about the public that they're trying to reach, because they're going to construct it in a way that people will respond to.
So how have they chosen to frame this feud?
Emily: Yeah, I like that we're able to take this interpersonal smaller scale, to look at this because that's definitely how anything related to war plays out in Jane Austen's works, is it's on a very personal level.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. And I think some interpersonal fights or disagreements really do feel like war when you're in them.
And you can be locked in that dispute with another person in a way that's just as figuratively bloodthirsty as an actual physical conflict.
Emily: It can have similar tolls as well. You can walk away with actual psychological trauma from interpersonal conflict. Just as much as if you had been on a battlefield.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: PTSD is real.
Lauren: Amen. What an uplifting note to end on!
Emily: I know, right.
Lauren: We were doing so well.
Emily: Look, our theme for today is war. It was not going to be, you know, sunshine and daisies.
Lauren: I honestly think that we did a much better job of keeping this light-hearted than I thought we would. I thought this is going to be real depressing.
Emily: Surprisingly less depressing than expected. You know, sometimes we get way darker than we anticipate. And sometimes we talk about war and we laugh about it.
Lauren: I'm so sorry.
Emily: Hey, if people have gotten this far in their journey with Reclaiming Jane, they should have some idea of what we're like.
Lauren: This is very true.
Final Takeaways
Emily: Shall we wrap up with final thoughts?
Lauren: Yes. We shall.
Emily: Would you like to start off our final takeaways?
Lauren: Yeah. So right now I'm teaching a summer course to high schoolers about reconstructing civility.
And how do you have disagreements with people? And I think [00:42:00] my takeaway is that we shouldn't frame interpersonal conflict as war and should instead think about how we can have a conversations where the end goal is understanding the other person better. You don't have to agree. But to have a conversation where you're not trying to win it, but you're trying to understand something.
That's it. What about you? What's your final takeaway?
Emily: On the opposite end of the war spectrum we've talked about. My final takeaway, I think is that there's a lot more happening on a large scale that influences our personal lives than we realize, which I mean, we saw just talking about you know, the extent of the Napoleonic wars and then realizing.
Our own country has actually been at war throughout our entire lifetimes. And it just becomes background noise. We end up taking conflict for granted just because it feels like it's ever present.
Lauren: I like that we have two very different, but similar takeaways.
Emily: Yeah. Sometimes we sit here and go, well, you took my takeaway word for word.
Lauren: That really does happen sometimes and then I'm sitting here. Like, oh no, now I have to think of something else. I had that prepared...
Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll look at chapters 21 through 25 of Pride and Prejudice through the lens of colonialism.
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 our social media.
Lauren: If you'd like to support us and help us create even more content, [00:44:00] 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: Actually, one thing that I found really interesting that was more related to things that I'm typically interested in history was that recruitment for the regular professional army in Scotland had recently increased hugely because the weaving trade collapsed. Because of industrialization. Yeah. So all of these Scottish male weavers are suddenly out of work.
They're like, well, shit, I guess I'm going to join the army.
Lauren: Wow. The more, you know.
Emily: Yeah. Fun facts. That's something I get to pull out at parties now.
Lauren: And that's something that's like... weaving has become so gendered too. That my, I was confused at first because I still see that as something that women do.
And I was like, why would the weaving trade collapsing turn into like a higher military.
Emily: Oh, I could go on a whole other tangent about gendering of textile work, but I will spare everyone that.
Lauren: I was like, I had to catch myself. I was like, oh, that was my own assumption. Why did I assume that women were doing that? That's not right.
Emily: It's gone back and forth. Yeah.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: Yeah. So at that time men were dominating and then the industrial revolution happened and it was no longer a cottage industry. We're learning about all sorts of things today, right?