Pride and Prejudice 21-25: “Settle Down”
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Who are we to shy away from notoriously expansive (pun intended) topics? Lauren and Emily dive into colonialism. Also included: strategic alliances, Coca-Col(onialism) Freestyle, and Love Island.
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Transcript
Reclaiming Jane S2E5 | Pride and Prejudice 21-25: “Settle Down”
[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 21 through 25 of Pride and Prejudice with a focus on colonialism.
Lauren hums the last few notes of the introductory song.
Emily: No, Lauren, I put that in, in editing. We don't have to sing it ourselves. There's a reason for that. I don't think our listeners want us to sing it ourselves.
Lauren: No, of, of my many talents, singing is unfortunately not one of them.
Emily: It's not one of mine, either.
Lauren: I was not blessed with the ability to carry a tune. That's okay.
Emily: It doesn't stop me from singing, but I'm not good at it.
Lauren: My shower has been witness to many concerts. My world tour begins next week. We will be visiting --
Emily: The world shower tour? My car has seen abominations untold.
Lauren: Oh yes.
Emily: Hopefully they will remain untold.
Lauren: But yes, colonialism. What a topic for today that we've chosen.
Emily: Truly.
Lauren: That appears exactly nowhere in this section. Explicitly, anyway.
Emily: Right. Explicitly.
Lauren: Right. It's always there lurking in the background. Last time, we were able to make war into somewhat of a lighthearted episode, despite the fact that we were literally discussing war. I'm wondering if we'll be able to do the same [00:02:00] with colonialism. It might go down a dark path.
It might be like light-hearted critique. I don't know.
Emily: I feel like lighthearted critique is, is where it's going to go. Obviously there's going to be critique.
Thirty Second Recaps
Lauren: All right. Well, shall we, shall we start thinking about Britain and the Regency Era and recapping these, these five chapters?
Emily: Let's do that. You are up first for this episode, madame, are you ready?
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Okay. That was brimming with confidence. I love it. Okay. Three, two, one, go.
Lauren: Yeah. Okay. The Bingley's have left the building. They've gone back to town. Jane gets a letter from Miss Bingley explaining everything and is convinced that none of them care about her anymore. Elizabeth will— not that they don't care about her anymore.
Elizabeth thinks that. Jane's like, oh, they'll come back and maybe it'll be fine. I'm not explaining this very well. This recap is crap. Charlotte is the one who gets a proposal from Mr. Collins. Mrs. Bennet loses her mind. Elizabeth doesn't have much faith in Charlotte either. And also the Gardiners, who are Elizabeth's aunt and uncle, have returned.
Emily: Okay.
Lauren: Okay. Emily, are you prepared to do a better recap than I just did?
Emily: Absolutely.
Lauren: Wonderful. Great.
Emily: You set a very low bar. Thank you.
Lauren: Okay. 3, 2, 1 go.
Emily: Mr. Collins has left off his proposal to Elizabeth, much to her relief. The Bingley's however, along with Mr. Darcy have fled the countryside. So everyone is in an uproar even more so when Mr. Collins goes and proposes to Charlotte Lucas, who has encouraged him to do so. So everyone just has gossip galore, which they are happy to share with aunt and uncle Gardiner when they come to Longbourn for Christmas.
Lauren: Beautiful. Thank you.
Emily: You're welcome.
General Reactions — Charlotte’s Scheming
Lauren: Now, shall we talk about. I mean Mr. Collins and Charlotte, first of all, I feel like that has to be the first topic of conversation.
Emily: At the end [00:04:00] of the last section, they had finally convinced Mr. Collins, that Elizabeth's rejection was actually a sincere rejection. She did not want to marry him. And he finds solace in the attentions of Miss Charlotte Lucas.
Lauren: Who is quite calculating. She realizes that she only has a few days because he's supposed to be leaving on Saturday.
Emily: Yeah. Charlotte is ruthlessly pragmatic. You know, we like to think of Lizzie as being the one with the most sense, the best head on her shoulders, but really Charlotte is possibly the single character with the most clear-sighted view on what her life actually is as a woman of her standing of her class and with her prospects.
And when she sees an opportunity in Mr. Collins, she basically in the space of what is it? Three days? Encourages him to the point that she gets that proposal and immediately says, yes, and has no pretensions whatsoever about what her life with Mr. Collins is going to be. She's fully aware that he's an unpleasant man, that it's not going to be a love match by any means, but she's secure.
And that's what matters to her. And honestly, I have to admire her for it.
Lauren: Yeah, she is under no illusions of what her life would be like without him either, because she knows she's already 27, which is, you know, edging out of that eligibility frame for marriage, for women in that time period. She's not very pretty.
And she doesn't have a ton of fortune to bring with her to a marriage because she has so many siblings and she's a woman. So the fortune is not going to fall into her lap. So she's running out of time and she's running out of options. She has an option that will give her a decent life and she figures, you know, okay, well, if I can figure out how to live with this man, and also [00:06:00] encourage his affections then I have a way out.
And she finds it.
Emily: Yeah, I think honestly, Charlotte is the least naive of anyone. Even Lizzie is almost hopelessly romantic. She wants to have some measure of affection with someone before she agrees to marry them. But Charlotte, none of that. Just absolutely ruthless.
Lauren: Yeah. The passage I felt like was really exemplary of all of that was right after Mr. Collins has proposed and they've gone and told her family. It says, "Charlotte herself was tolerably composed. She had gained her point and had time to consider of it. Her reflections were in general satisfactory. Mr. Collins, to be sure was neither sensible nor agreeable, his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary, but still, he would be her husband." Like, yeah, this guy sucks and he doesn't love me. And I don't love him either, but this'll work. So I'm going to make it work.
Emily: Yeah. And that same passage continues onward right there with exactly what we said before, "without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object. It was the only honorable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune. And however, uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want." Charlotte knows this, and she has no illusion. And she's done, frankly, what is best for her. So, yeah, I'm, I definitely going on was a little annoyed at Lizzie refusing to see past her own dislike of Mr. Collins to the very real concerns that Charlotte has for her own future.
Lauren: Right. And partially I think because Lizzie is seven years younger, so she's 20 and Charlotte is 27. She still has like the time and the space to be dismissive of that. And she maybe would have a more favorable view of her friend had they been the same age and Elizabeth was also facing, "oh, I'm going to age out of being eligible," but she's not, she's 20 rather than 27. So to her, it's still abstract. She has some maturing to do still.
[00:08:00] Emily: Definitely. So continuing on that topic, but also bringing in the first place that I saw, some thematic connection to colonialism was when Mrs. Bennet is once again, lamenting the entails of Longbourn away from her own daughters. This is at the very end of chapter 23, where she's complaining that basically, oh, Charlotte Lucas of all people is going to replace me as mistress of this house. Saying I cannot bear to think that they should have all this estate.
How could anyone have the conscience to entail away an estate from one's own daughters and the irony of it struck me specifically because of our theme of colonialism here, her distress at, oh, I can't believe that we would just give this away to somebody else. Like, oh no. Can you imagine how terrible it must be to have your home and your legacy stripped and handed away to a virtual stranger.
Lauren: I wonder what that's like.
Emily: Within the context of the thriving British empire at this point in history it smacks of irony. Just a little.
Lauren: It does. It does indeed. I think I wrote down Mrs. Bennet is viewing Charlotte as though she's Fanny from Sense and Sensibility. That as soon as Mr. Bennet dies, Charlotte's going to pack her bags like "It is I. I have come to claim my rightful home. Everybody get out." That doesn't seem to be Charlotte's character, but Mrs. Bennet is convinced.
Emily: Yeah, but I mean, at the same time, in the light of the fact that within three days of Lizzie's rejection, Charlotte got Mr. Collins to propose. I also can't really blame Mrs. Bennet for having that perspective on it. Like, obviously she was being a little hysterical about it, but. If, when the time came and Mr. Bennet died, that were in the best interests of Charlotte and her family, she may very well, kick Mrs. Bennet out. Like we, we would like to think that no, she has [00:10:00] enough care for other people and certainly she hasn't done anything to suggest that she would be cruel.
Lauren: I feel like she's shrewd, but she's not cruel.
Emily: That's exactly it.
Lauren: Like I'm going to do what's best for me. And you might not like it.
Emily: It's just pragmatic.
Lauren: No one else is going to look out for me. I have to. Which also is a colonialist idea because it's a very individualistic culture and other cultures are not necessarily built that way. They're built around collectivism and people taking care of one another. And that is not what we see in British society. I got mine, sorry.
Emily: It's not my fault your daughter rejected him.
Lauren: It's not my fault you're poor. Stop being poor!
Jane Gets Dumped
Emily: So Charlotte's engagement to Mr. Collins is one of what I think are the two main events in this section. The other being the Netherfield gang absconding to London.
Lauren: Yeah. They have upped and left and only send word to Jane about it once they've already left the building and are en route to London and the whole letter from Caroline Bingley to Jane is basically just extolling the virtues of Georgiana Darcy and saying she's so wonderful. And she's so sweet. And I hope I get to write to you with good news about Georgiana and my brother soon, hint, hint, wink, wink, and otherwise, you know, there's plenty of women in London for him to fall in love with. Just being so rude about it.
Emily: And poor Jane is really in contrast to Charlotte. So hopelessly naive, and can only think the best of Caroline and of Bingley and just refuses to believe that any of them could have ill intentions. Right. Which I'm sure Mr. Bingley doesn't have ill intentions. I'm fully convinced that. Yeah, he just had to go to London on some kind of business and Caroline saw the opportunity and seized it and [00:12:00] decided to move everybody back to London to keep him there and away from Jane.
Lauren: And Elizabeth is the one who, after Jane has read this letter to her as the one who says, you know, I am not inclined to think poorly of Mr. Bingley. However, I would maybe question Caroline's motives for moving them in the first place. And also for telling you all of these things. And Jane, again, refuses to think ill of Caroline in any way. And you can see the difference in the way the two sisters think of other people and also kind of both of their fatal flaws coming into play because Jane thinks well of people to a fault, even when she should be less naive about how they're presenting and what they're saying to her. Whereas Elizabeth is predisposed to just think ill of everyone. And that doesn't help her much either, because then she doesn't give anybody room to change or to change her opinions of them. Like once she's decided that you suck.
You suck forever and that's not going to help her either.
Emily: Her good opinion once lost...
Lauren: is lost forever.
Emily: I mean, she was trying to fuck with Darcy, but she really is correct that they have a lot in common in terms of pride.
Lauren: Yeah. And in chapter 24 or volume two chapter one, depending on how your chapters are ordered, when Miss Bingley's second letter comes, Elizabeth actually finds herself accidentally agreeing with Darcy, though she doesn't realize it because she is talking about how she doesn't care about Caroline talking up Miss Darcy again. And she ignores that completely. And then when speaking of Bingley, Elizabeth is saying to herself, you know, "that he was really fond of Jane, she doubted no more than she had ever done. And as much as she had always been disposed to like him, she could not think without anger, hardly without contempt, on the easiness of temper that want of proper resolution, which now made him the slave of his designing friends. And led him to sacrifice his own happiness to the caprice of their inclinations."
So this is closer to appreciating the opinion of Darcy back when they were in the drawing room, when Jane was sick, about not listening to other people's opinions and instead forming [00:14:00] your own and staying resolved within them. But she doesn't realize that she's agreeing with Darcy and is actually contradicting the opinion that she herself gave all those months ago.
Yeah. I also love that we get more of like the sister relationship between Elizabeth and Jane in these chapters too. So we have plot happening, but we also get to see how they interact with one another and how much they care for one another. And especially how much Elizabeth loves Jane and even says, I think at one point I don't like many people, but I adore you.
Emily: Yeah. It's something like, I love very few people. I like even fewer.
Lauren: She's very much like her father.
Emily: Absolutely. And a lot like Darcy.
Lauren: Yup.
Emily: But poor Jane is just trying to convince herself that no one is to blame. That no one has done any wrong and that there was just a simple misunderstanding about the nature of the affection between her and Bingley.
And is trying to convince both Elizabeth and it seems herself that everything can go back to the way it was before. She'll forget Mr. Bingley, except maybe as a very pleasant man she knew once.
Lauren: And she, she even says in that, when she's trying to say that, she'll forget him. She's like, well, I'll only remember him as the most amiable man of my acquaintance.
Like Jane...
Emily: bless her heart.
Lauren: That's still a preference.
Emily: Yeah, that was another thing thematically that struck me as having parallels with colonialism. The idea that once a certain presence or a certain structure is gone, that its influence will also disappear. But if there's been any sort of impact, it can't just be erased, you know, consequences have a way of lingering whether or not in the moment you think they'll have that kind of impact.
Lauren: No, I really love that analogy. Like, I feel like that's easier for people to understand if you were really in love with someone for a [00:16:00] long time, let's say you had a partner you were with for like five years and the two of you split up suddenly. You don't stop loving them on the dot. That's not how that works. And similarly, just because an occupying presence has left the country, that doesn't mean that the effects of that occupation aren't going to be felt for a very long time, especially when said country continues to plunder resources despite leaving.
France, Haiti. Hello?
An Oral History of Britain Deciding “The World Is Mine, Actually”
Emily: Yeah, that may actually be a decent transition into the history. Because one of the things that I made notes about is differentiating between various types of colonialism, which pretty much all of them are things that Britain was engaging in, especially around this time.
Lauren: Color me shocked.
Emily: I know, right.
As we talked about in the last episode with war, Britain was entering sort of a new phase of its imperial state. I saw in some references it called the second British empire, whereas the first had sort of-- not collapsed, but its influence had shifted with the loss of the American colonies and the American revolution.
By this point, when Pride and Prejudice was being published in 1813, Britain's really ramping up into what was called afterwards the Imperial century, because they just expanded so hugely. But going back to these types of colonialism, there are certain things that we tend to think of when we hear that term, possibly the two most prevalent would be settler colonialism and exploitation colonialism.
So settler colonialism is when, you know, you have colonists from the colonial power who are moving to whatever place is being [00:18:00] colonized, setting up their own systems, things like that, which often feeds into exploitation colonialism, where they're explicitly trying to extract resources from this new place to serve their own interest.
But in addition to that, there are other sort of flavors, I guess, for lack of a better word popping into my head right now.
Lauren: Would you like cherry-flavored colonialism? Would you like vanilla?
Emily: Actually very apropos. One of them is trade colonialism, which is a rung that Britain really hit hard with east India company.
So in addition to trade colonialism, there's surrogate colonialism, national colonialism. And then finally we have internal colonialism. Yeah. It's all very complex ideas. As with most things. This could be an entire podcast on its own.
Lauren: We have a habit for doing that.
Emily: Yeah. So when it comes to colonialism, what we tend to think, especially in the context of the British empire is settling by colonial power and exploitation of native resources, whether that be natural resources or using the labor of the indigenous populations, which is also quite popular.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Yeah. As I mentioned, the sort of new wave of colonialism by England resulted in a huge expansion of their land. This is the period when the sun never sets on the British empire, they are pushing into Southeast Asia, into Australia, trying to maintain their influence in the Americas. They're expanding through the Pacific.
All kinds of things, even as they're trying to sort of rehabilitate their image back in Europe, by doing things like prohibiting the slave trade. So enslaved [00:20:00] people can't be transported on British ships, things like that. Of course, they're still making full use of that exploitation colonialism to get their labor for free anyway.
It's estimated that about 10 million square miles of land and 400 million people were co-opted into the British empire during that 19th century. After the Napoleonic wars, Britain is sort of the uncontested ruler of the seas, you know, Britannia rules the waves, and they really took advantage of that.
Lauren: Can we have Bill Wurtz do, like, a history of Britain instead of just history of the entire world? I just want to hear the Bill Wurtz, his take on Britain expanding to colonize the entire globe.
Emily: Yup. They rolled up everywhere and said open the country. Stop having it be closed.
It's probably been two years, at least since I've seen history of Japan, but it's, it's a cultural touchstone, you know.
Lauren: Why is that so funny? Open the country stop having it be closed will always make me laugh.
Emily: We know it's not funny. We know it's colonialism, but just the line.
Lauren: It's quirky colonialism.
Emily: It's quirky colonialism! It is!
Lauren: To bring it back to. The book itself. The one time we have like an officer quote unquote in the text is when they're having a family dinner and Mrs. Bennet has invited other people over because you know, her brother and her sister-in-law are in town. And you have to, you know, it's an occasion she must entertain. And Wickham is one of the people who's been invited.
And Mrs. Gardiner is kind of looking at him and looking at Lizzie and looking at how he chooses to sit next to her, and going... Interesting. But yeah, that's the only time where we actually have like a military presence, because we're so concerned with Charlotte and Mr. Collins and then the Netherfield gang up and leaving town that we really don't see much of the militia who is still in town [00:22:00] until the very last chapter of the section.
They're just always there in the background.
Emily: Lurking. Waiting to do a colonialism.
Lauren: They wait. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like we can easily create ways to kind of read the theme into the text, but this one was a little bit more difficult to do just because of the, the topic.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, yeah. We know it's there, but it's, it's just so backgrounded that it doesn't really come in in any explicit ways.
Lauren: Which is also a function of colonialism.
Emily: Absolutely. We can assume, you know, their Christmas dinner that they're laying out that absolutely would have products of British imperialism on the table, but, you know, we don't see things like that on the page.
Lauren: That's by design. You don't want to see the horrors that brought the things that you enjoy to your front door, nor do you want to think that you participate in that type of thing.
Because we all view ourselves as good and moral people and realizing that we might be engaging in something that goes against our morals is really uncomfortable. Colonialism and things of that nature tend to stay in the background of polite society because nobody wants to look right at it.
Emily: Yeah. Once that habit is so ingrained, it comes to a point where often we don't even realize that the life we live is made possible by colonialism.
I mean, we sitting here are very aware of it because we're sitting in the United States, which is. Colonialism all the way down.
Lauren: I'm sitting as a black person in the United States. Not supposed to be here.
Emily: Yeah. So in the Regency it probably would have been approached and understood differently because certain things would still be, you know, novelties.
You're still very aware of certain spices, you know, coming from India or whatever, and things being expensive because they are the products of, you know, someplace on the other side of the world. And that's definitely changed with the way that industrialism has [00:24:00] affected the world.
Lauren: You just go to the supermarket. You don't think about all of the steps that your chocolate bar had to go through in order for it to end up at the checkout line.
Yeah.
Emily: Vanilla and cinnamon, aren't being hawked as, you know, exotic goods. They're just things that you have in your kitchen cabinets.
Lauren: They've been made mundane.
Emily: All our lives are infused with the effects of colonialism.
And then, as now, there would be things that you just don't think about. It's just unconscious.
Lauren: Yeah. And we say that as a statement of fact, not as like a, a moral censure of anyone that's--
Emily: It's not judgment.
Colonialism & Love Island UK: Pop Culture Connection
Lauren: Yeah, not judgment. Just description. Similarly, I think my, my pop culture connection was like a little bit tenuous, I suppose. It makes sense. I just don't know that it has a direct analogy. We'll see how well it connects.
Emily: Yeah. Tell me about it.
Lauren: I was thinking about... related to our previous conversation about how Charlotte is teetering on the edge of being undesirable and no longer being eligible for marriage and connecting that to the politics of desirability and how we see that today.
So more of like a present culture rather than pop culture, but there is a later pop culture connection, and there's a really good quote on the politics of desirability from Audre Lorde. Yeah. Anything Audre Lorde said was fantastic to begin with, but this was particularly relevant. It says, “Those of us who stand outside the circle of the society's definition of acceptable women, those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference. Those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older. No, that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular, and sometimes reviled and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structure is in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish and is learning how to take our differences and make them straight.”
The crux of the politics of desirability is that narratives about beauty, intelligence and kindness are mostly centralized on white [00:26:00] people in Western society, which is a direct result of colonialism.
Emily: Absolutely.
Lauren: And I was thinking about how that rends people who are black or older or darker-skinned, or what have you, if they don't conform to specific white ideals of beauty that you're then undesirable, similar to how Charlotte's age and lack of fortune makes her undesirable in Regency society, neither of which she can control, but to a lesser extent, than, you know being born of a different race, that's considered less desirable. And it's been in the back of my mind because I've been watching Love Island UK.
There's a point to this. I promise. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with the brand of trash television that I love to hate, not even hate, I just enjoy it. I won't even pretend at this point. It's a reality television show. It's been parodied by SNL and now has a United States equivalent over here.
That basically puts like 10 hot, straight single people in a Villa for like eight weeks during the summertime. And the end goal is for them to remain in a couple for the entire eight weeks. You don't have to stay with the same person, but you have to be coupled up in order to stay in the Villa, past a recoupling.
And the end prize is like 50,000 pounds or something like that. So because you have to be in a couple in order to remain in the Villa, there's lots of politics of desirability that are happening because when you are initially coupled up, it's based off of looks alone. So there'll be five women who are already in the villa.
And then they can choose to set forward for each man who enters the Villa for if they'd like to be coupled up with him. But it's men who choose so they can choose somebody who steps forward and indicates their interest, or they can choose a person who has not stepped forward at all, because they don't think that they would be interested in him, but it doesn't matter.
He can look at you and say like, oh, I think you're really hot. And I'm going to choose you. You know, the power balance balances was switched throughout the season. Sometimes women choose, sometimes men choose, but that initial coupling is always the men choosing when they enter the Villa. And every time without fail, if there is a darker skinned black woman, who's standing there, she's [00:28:00] always picked last because nine times out of 10, they will go for, you know, the blonde and fair-skinned white woman before they choose a black woman.
Who's equally stunning, if not more so, but you know, beauty's in the eye of the beholder. Everybody has different things, but that's the point. Is that they'll get away with saying, oh, it's just a preference. He just prefers blondes. He just prefers whatever, ignoring that there's a systemic reason that season after season, regardless of whether it's love island, Australia or UK or whatever, people who look a certain way are often picked last or…
You understand that there are more innate danger of being single because they might be in a couple at one point. So maybe they've coupled up with someone who perhaps is just playing a game to stay in the Villa and will feign an interest in them. And then as soon as somebody who's more stereotypically desirable walks in that person is now at risk because they're not seen as actual valid competition.
They're a placeholder. And that's been playing out specifically in this latest season of Love Island UK, because they keep bringing in almost exclusively blonde white women, not even brunettes, gingers, any other kind of hair type representation, nothing. Blondes. That's it. One of the other Islanders in the Villa is this naturally beautiful person.
And all of the Islanders keep commenting on like, oh, Kaz has so much energy. She has such a great personality. We're all friends with her in the Villa. And yet somehow she's never actually seen as an object of desire, which doesn't make any sense to me, but this is still a colonial beauty standard that persists to this day.
This is what British or Western society has said is beautiful based on what ethnically European people look like to the detriment of anyone who doesn't fit that. And your desirability is-- it takes a hit from that. Your marriageability changes. Like, more black women remain unmarried compared to women of other ethnicities and demographics.
It changes everything.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, that definitely ties into colonialism [00:30:00] and especially, I think the idea of commodification of seeing certain traits as not necessarily desirable, but as a thing to have to collect. So the whole concept of goods or of people being seen as exotic and because they don't resemble anything that's available in whatever the colonial society is, you know, if we're talking.
Regency England. It's a lot of pale white people. And so anyone with a darker skin tone than, you know, skim milk is automatically exotic and perhaps not desirable in the sense that you're talking about as a, wanting to be coupled with them romantically. But they're a novelty. And so their value then becomes that of a novelty.
Something that you can go and gawk at, you know, like sideshows at a circus rather than being valued for the fact that they're human beings and deserve the same respect that everyone does, regardless of what they look like, where they're from, their level of education or intelligence, what resources they may have access to, we all should be afforded the same basic level of, of respect, regardless of any of that.
But because under colonial systems, certain people and certain traits are associated with being commodities of a certain place. They become just another thing to trade in.
Lauren: Yeah. And I feel like you see that today too. People fetishizing certain races, especially where it's like, I'm curious and I'm sexually attracted to you, but I will never see you as like a legitimate life partner. There's still that exoticization, fetishization that happens with [00:32:00] anyone who's not white.
Emily: Right. Yeah. You have been socialized to associate certain features with certain groups. So for example, the fetishization of Asian women, especially Chinese, Japanese, Korean women, who, regardless of what their actual individual personality is, are seen as a whole, by certain kinds of people as being quiet as being submissive, as being docile and they're desired for those assumed traits rather than, you know, just being actual human beings who are worthy of the same love and respect and not based on arbitrary traits that have been pasted onto the whole group.
Lauren: Yeah. But it strikes me every time I watch that show and, or , it strikes me every time and watch the season of love island to the point where I just stopped. And I've started watching love island us instead. And I'll just catch up on the recaps of what's happening with love island UK, because it's just so blatant to the point where my least favorite person this season, he keeps telling this stunning girl, who's coupled up with who he does not deserve. She is too good for him. And he keeps saying, if another blonde girl comes in, then I'll get to know her. You know, like if another leggy blonde comes in, like, do you care about personality at all? When it comes to compatibility? Charlotte Lucas feeling and being undesirable just reminded me of all of those politics playing out in almost real-time on love island UK.
Do you have anything else colonialism-related that you want to chat about for this episode? Makes it sound very mundane.
Emily: There are, there are many things that I could say about colonialism, but you know, I think that'll do it for a single episode of a podcast that has many other themes.
Lauren: Just maybe.
Emily: Yeah.
Final Takeaways
Lauren: All right. Shall we do final takeaways?
[00:34:00] Emily: Yes. And it's me up first. I think my final takeaway centers around Charlotte's decision to marry Mr. Collins. Okay. And the way Elizabeth reacted, it's a very pragmatic decision, but Lizzie can't see that despite how close she is to Charlotte and how much she presumably knows about Charlotte's situation.
I think my final takeaway is that no matter what our personal relationship with a person is, we can't always understand in intimate detail why they may have made a decision, whether we agree with it or not. I don't know if that's even a halfway decent takeaway.
Lauren: There's no like ratings of takeaways. You get what you get from it. I think that's perfectly valid. A reminder not to judge is always timely, I think.
Emily: I feel like a lot of my takeaways just roll right back around to stop judging people! Leave Britney alone! So do you have a more coherent, final takeaway than me?
Lauren: No, we should be kind to people who make decisions based on the option society has given to them. Because they're doing the best with what they can, and it might not be the decision that we would have made, or from the outside, it might look as though they are settling or accepting less or making a poor choice, but sometimes if they feel like what they can do is work with what they have. That's a decision that we have to respect.
Emily: I think that ties in really well to the theme of colonialism too. And the effects that that can have on, as you say, the options available to us because of society.
Lauren: Somehow, we got a coherent thought out.
Emily: Somehow. Hallelujah.
Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming [00:36:00] Jane. Next time, we'll look at chapters 26 through 30 of Pride and Prejudice, through the lens of family.
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 gain access to exclusive content, you can join our Patreon @ReclaimingJanePod.
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 will see you next time.
There's like three couples that I know of who were still together. I think so, but I've only watched. Like two and a half seasons of this show. So I'm not an expert in love island. I'm sure the subreddit would be able to tell you many more people who have survived and whatever, but,
Emily: Yeah, they kill them all at the end of the show,
Lauren: I realized when I said "survived" it sounds a lot more dramatic than it actually needs to be.
Emily: If you're not coupled at this, by the end of the season...
Emily makes a chopping noise
Lauren: yeah. When they say you've been dumped from the Villa, what they really mean is that they're going to dump you off the side of a cliff. You're not getting any, you're not getting a first-class flight back to England.
You're just going to be dumped off the side of the cliff. You can swim home. I hope you've been training. In the infinity-edge pool that they can't be in because they can't take off their microphones and so they just stick their feet in all the time.