Pride and Prejudice 46-50: “Make the Sacrifice”

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Things are heating up for the Bennets... In this episode, Lauren and Emily break down what's going on with Lydia and how sacrifice plays into it (or doesn't). Caution is thrown to the wind, tables are turning, and yes we made Squid Game relevant to Jane Austen.

Links to topics discussed in this episode:

Eloping to Gretna Green

What is 'Squid Game' Really About? (show spoilers)

Transcript

Reclaiming Jane S2E10 | Pride and Prejudice 46-50: “Make the Sacrifice”

Emily: [00:00:00] This is Reclaiming Jane, an Austen podcast for fans on the margins.

Lauren: I am Lauren Wethers,

Emily: and I'm Emily Davis Hale.

Lauren: And today we're reading chapters 46 through 50 of Pride and Prejudice, with a focus on sacrifice.

Emily: Sacrifice is going to be such an interesting theme to talk about in this section.

Lauren: Ooh, because got real. We were just, you know, having a nice time at Pemberley

Emily: Lada. Darcy is nice. His sister's sweet. And then bam.

Lauren: Yeah, I think we have a lot of thematic connections here.

Emily: Yeah. Well let's go ahead and get into it. I have to recap first, this time.

Lauren: You got this!

Emily: Do I?

Lauren: Yes. Okay. The drama chapters of Pride and Prejudice. Are you ready?

Emily: As ready as I'll ever be.

Lauren: Okay. 3, 2, 1 go.

Emily: Lizzie receives a letter from Jane, finds out that Lydia has eloped with Wickham from Brighton. She gets her aunt and uncle. They leave back to London.

Immediately the search is on to find Lydia and Wickham. There's suggestions that they're not actually getting married, which is horrible, but eventually Mr. Bennet-- no, Uncle Gardiner finds Lydia and Wickham and they're good.

Lauren: Yep. Done.

Emily: Jesus. That was hands down the worst one I have ever done. And that's saying a lot.

Lauren: We all have bad days.

Emily: Oh, I didn't have any coffee today. That's what it was. Are you ready?

Lauren: Yes.

Emily: Three two, one, go.

Lauren: Lizzie gets a letter from Jane saying that Lydia has run off with Mr. Wickham. They think that they're going to Scotland to get married, but then they find out that they're actually not getting married and they're going to [00:02:00] London, which is a huge scandal, even bigger than them eloping in the first place.

Lizzie gathers up all of her aunt and uncle, all of them, and they go back to Longbourn and she tells Mr. Darcy, he's horrified. They find out that Lydia is in London. They try and go to like find her and Wickham and they find out that he will accept a shockingly low amount of money to marry Lydia and so something else is afoot.

Emily: Thank God, you have your head on straight today because Lord knows I didn't.

Lauren: I --there's still, there was so much that it was really difficult to fit that in the 30 seconds.

Emily: There was so much because like there's massively significant, but proportionally small events, right at the very beginning. So, let's talk about that.

Lizzie has been waiting to hear from Jane. It's been a little longer than usual. Finally she gets two letters at once and it turns out the first had been sent to the wrong place and Lizzie notes that, oh wow. Like Jane's handwriting looks horrible on that.

Lauren: No wonder it was in the wrong spot.

Emily: So she reads this letter, which informs her, that Lydia and Wickham have runaway from Brighton.

Everyone is in an uproar. According to a note that Lydia left for Mrs. Forster, they are supposed to be going to Gretna Green in Scotland, which I'll talk about a little bit more later that, that context. They're supposed to be running away to get married. And then it's discovered that they left their hired carriage and apparently have gone to London and not any further. Which is a problem. Because again, like I focused my historical research this time on like the whole issue of marriage and stuff. Because this is all so complex. And with that, without that context it gets a little hairy.

Lauren: We can see in Jane's letter to Lizzie that even the [00:04:00] optimistic Jane now has cause to worry because at first, even when she sends Lizzie the first letter that basically says, you know, this is horrible, but you know, at least they'll be married.

I never really thought that either Lydia or Wickham really had feelings for one another, but you know, whatever, this is the worst type of person that she could be marrying now that we know what we know about him, but, you know, she'll be married and blah, blah, blah. And then the next one comes and even Jane is like, oh, this is not good. This is a disaster.

Emily: Yeah, because from what investigation Colonel Forster has been able to do, it seems like they did not continue on the road to Gretna Green, but they got to London and not any farther than that.

Lauren: And that is a scandal waiting to happen.

Emily: Oh yes. So of course, just because this is Lizzie's life now, she's like throwing open the door, she's about to run out into the street after her aunt and uncle Gardiner, and there's Darcy! Just like, gives me such a visual of like a sitcom moment where you throw the door open and the person's like "hi?"

Lauren: Yup.

Emily: So Darcy is there and Lizzie is just in such a state that she's like, well, screw it. He knows better than anybody, what Wickham is. So she tells him what's going on.

Lauren: Which is also, I think, a really big character moment, because it shows, one, that she's starting to trust Darcy a little bit more. Because this is a super private, super scandalous thing that her family would not want to get out. But Darcy has already trusted her with like his family drama and secrets.

And now --

Emily: With almost an identical family drama.

Lauren: With the exact same person.

Emily: The same man!

Lauren: And Elizabeth is extending that same amount of trust in Darcy to, I mean, one, she is too distressed to really worry about anything at this point. Like she's obviously upset when Darcy comes in and he can see it on her face. Like, oh, [00:06:00] something is going on, what is happening?

I don't know what's wrong, but something is clearly wrong. Like you were not fit to go anywhere. And she confides in him and tells him, you know, lays it all out on the table. Also knowing that if he still felt some type of like contempt towards her family, that this would kind of be a nail in the coffin.

Emily: Yeah. And this chapter is kind of the first time that we're explicitly seeing her own realization, that her feelings toward Darcy have changed so much as to find him like a desirable partner. And she's just absolutely tanked that not only by sharing the details of her sister's potential ongoing scandal, but also that if Darcy were now connected with her, he would also be connected with yet another scandal with Wickham.

Lauren: And be connected with Wickham himself forever. There would be no distancing himself from Wickham. They would be brothers.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: The quote from Lizzie says, you know, "She soon observed and instantly understood it." And as anything, when we have anything from Lizzie's point of view, 'instantly understood,' we should take with a bit of a grain of salt.

She believes that she understands the meaning of Darcy's agitation and she says, "her power was sinking. Everything must sink under such a proof of family weakness, such an assurance of the deepest disgrace. She could neither wonder nor condemn, but the belief of his self conquest brought nothing consolatory to her bosom, afforded no palliation of her distress. It was, on the contrary, exactly calculated to make her understand her own wishes and never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved him as now when all love must be vain."

Emily: That is just such a powerful force of a sentence and of a realization. Like it's just so viscerally relatable. Like I, I [00:08:00] didn't realize until this exact moment when everything is completely ruined how much I wanted it.

Lauren: Yup. So now just as Darcy becomes truly, truly unattainable, Elizabeth is able to admit that she actually has feelings for him and that she cares for him. And now has to sit with that same unreciprocated love that Darcy had to earlier in the book.

Emily: How the turntables. But Mr. Darcy of course assures her of his absolute discretion. Nothing's going to get out from him, which she completely believes with reason.

Lauren: Right.

Emily: And then he has gone. So. The Gardiners come back and it's just a frenzy of trying to get back to Longbourn as quickly as they possibly can. And I completely understand that instinct of, "something terrible has happened. And even if there's nothing that I personally can do right then I want to be there."

Lauren: And Jane had asked her specifically to come back too, like at first, she was trying to be the normal self sacrificing Jane, thinking about sacrifice and saying, "I really don't want to interrupt your trip, but I clearly had to tell you what was going on, so don't feel like you have to come rushing back," and then she sends a second letter that says, "actually, no, I really need you to come back home please. Can you come back? Can our uncle specifically come back because our father needs him. Like we had just, I need you to come home as quickly as possible because this is a disaster."

Emily: And of course, Lizzie and the Gardiners are not going to deny that.

Lauren: Absolutely not.

Emily: Lizzie wants to be with her family. Mrs. Gardiner wants to support them at home at Longbourn as well. And then Mr. Gardiner has the connections and the home base in London to support what Mr. Bennet is trying to do in figuring out where the hell Wickham and Lydia are.

Lauren: Right. And I, there's some self-interest in it for the Gardiners too, not that they're only doing it out of self-interest, because they would do it anyway, but they're connected to the Bennets by blood.

Like this scandal is also going to reflect on them if they don't do something [00:10:00] to try and stop it. So. It's, it's a sacrifice, in that they're cutting the trip short, but also they would be sacrificing much more if they just stayed, put.

Emily: As they are on their way back to Longbourn. Mrs. Gardiner says to Lizzie, like, you know, when the server came to get us, he said that Mr. Darcy was here and Lizzie confirms that yes, Darcy was there when she got the letters and sort of implies that Darcy kind of knows what's going on because they had had plans to be at Pemberley that day. And Lizzie says, "I told him we should not be able to keep our engagement. That is all settled."

And Mrs. Gardiner's reaction is like, what did she tell him? How much does he know? How much does she trust him?

Lauren: Also, he was already here?

Emily: Right? No, I was, as I was finishing this chapter, I was like, wait a minute, Mr. Darcy just like showed up by himself. I mean, obviously he didn't know that Elizabeth would be by herself. But he was just like coming to visit, like they've seen each other every single day.

Lauren: And it was also asking because she was supposed to see Georgiana that day. And you know, that was part of what Elizabeth said is all settled. Like, oh, please pass like my sincerest apologies onto your sister. But he was like, don't, don't let me trouble you with vain wishes because he's also like 'aww, but I really wish you could have come to hang out with me and Georgiana!'

Emily: Disasters, the both of them. But they're back to Longbourn and everyone's in an uproar. Mr. Bennet is in London,

Lauren: but Mr. Bennet doesn't write at all. And they said that he's a notoriously bad communicator and letter writer. And even now of all times, he hasn't even written to say, yeah, no, there's no news. He's just said nothing. And it's driving them nuts.

Emily: He wrote them one letter to say that he had gotten there and that he wouldn't write again, until he had news. And of course they're like, oh, surely that's, he's not being serious about that. But no, yeah.

Lauren: He is.

Emily: Right. Back at home. Mrs. Bennet hasn't left her room since she got the news. And the other girls are kind of pissed at kitty [00:12:00] because it comes out that she had some kind of idea from Lydia of what was going to happen.

Like, I guess the last letter she had written, she kind of intimated that they might be eloping. And so she's all smug with herself that she knew something was going on, but everybody else's not quite as pleased.

Lauren: No. There's so much that it's easy to skip over it, but on the way back to Longbourn, the Gardiners are asking Elizabeth, what's the deal with this Wickham character. And Elizabeth is trying to tell them more about his character and they're like, well, but wouldn't Lydia have known that? And then Elizabeth is starting to feel the shame of not telling her family.

Emily: She's starting to feel the guilt that she had this information that potentially would have changed everyone's behavior towards Wickham. Could've prevented it all completely, if they just known what kind of person Wickham was. But she and Jane, because they, they talked this over and decided it's not worth the drama, basically.

Lauren: He's leaving anyway.

Emily: They figured he was out of their lives.

Lauren: Little did they know.

Emily: So now of course, Lizzie, especially, is blaming herself for not telling anybody else in the family about what kind of person Wickham really was.

Lauren: And is taking a lot of this shame and blame on her own shoulders.

Emily: Yeah, lots of internalized guilt.

Lauren: And again, Mrs. Gardiner is putting the pieces together in her brain, thinking, "how do you know all of this information about Mr. Wickham, but nobody else does." If only every character in this book were as smart as her aunt, honestly.

Emily: Right. Oh my God. I would love to hang out with Mrs. Gardiner, just like gossip.

Lauren: I feel like that would be a fantastic time, honestly.

Emily: So they're kind of debating among themselves what Wickham's intentions are here, whether he's intended all along to marry Lydia, whether he has no intention of marrying her, or whether they're just going to quote [00:14:00] live together for a time and then he'll abandon her.

Lauren: Live in sin.

Emily: Live in sin. I mean, that's, that's the implication of unmarried cohabitation between a man and a woman in this period, is they're getting it on.

Lauren: It's the implication now.

Emily: Yeah. But one of the biggest points that they bring them up is that it's fairly well known that Wickham's broke. Lydia doesn't have any money to her name. She doesn't stand to inherit anything significant from her father's estate.

Lauren: Right.

Emily: So what's the temptation? Wickham had already been connected with a woman who had a significant inheritance and that didn't go through-- this is Ms. King, not Georgiana!

Lauren: Right.

Emily: So he's already been kind of marked out as a gold digger. But if he's after Lydia, he's barking up the wrong tree. Everybody knows Lydia doesn't have a fortune.

Lauren: Mr. Gardiner says at one point on their trip back, he was inclined to believe Jane, who is still trying to think the best of people, and is like, he must intend to marry her because why else would he be doing this?

And Elizabeth is looking at that, like, Jane, come on. Now? Now is your time that you decide to think the best of people? But Mr. Gardiner is saying, I don't see what possible motive he has to not marry her, honestly, other than not having any money, but his thing as well is that, why would he burn a bridge with Colonel Forster?

Why would he take somebody out of the Colonel's home and ruin her? Knowing that she had friends around her and family and a support system. His argument was like, 'okay, like Lydia is a spoiled, like, wayward girl, but it's not as though she doesn't have a community or a support system or people who would come looking for her. So if you were trying to ruin her or trying to ruin a girl, just for some fun, there were easier targets. So he must intend to marry her.'

And Elizabeth is like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Emily: You don't understand.

Lauren: He does not care. And then Mary of course is being her usual dour self. So Kitty is in trouble.

Emily: God, Mary.

Lauren: Because she knew about [00:16:00] this or at least had some type of hint about it and didn't say anything to the rest of the family. Mary is taking this as another opportunity to play holier than thou. She had made a comment to which Elizabeth said nothing, because she was like, what is wrong with you?

And then because Elizabeth said nothing, Mary just continued and said, "unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful lesson, that loss of virtue in the female is irretrievable, that one false step involves her in endless ruin, that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful, and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behavior towards the undeserving of the other sex."

And it just says, Elizabeth lifted up her eyes in amazement, like you have got to be kidding.

Emily: But Mary just keeps going on.

Lauren: She doesn't care!

Emily: Yeah. We don't get any more of her direct words, but Elizabeth is like, seriously? Right now? When your youngest sister is missing and presumed ruined, and her actions will reflect back on the rest of us.? Yeah, no. Mary just will take any opportunity to go on about how bad everybody else's decisions are.

Lauren: And she and Mr. Collins are truly a match made in heaven, missed opportunity.

Emily: I was going to bring up Collins's letter next, because they're just so it's, it's in the next chapter. But my own note above this letter is literally just, "what a scab."

Lauren: Honestly!

Emily: Because Mr. Collins writes "my dear sir," directed to Mr. Bennet. "I feel myself called upon by our relationship and my situation in life to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are now suffering under, of which we were yesterday informed by a letter from Hartfordshire." so obviously Lady Lucas is gossiping to her daughter.

"The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this. And it is the more to be lamented, because there is reason to suppose, as my dear Charlotte informs me, that this licentiousness of behavior in your daughter has proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence."

Lauren: He's not wrong.

Emily: He's not wrong, but they have a missing child.

Lauren: Now is not the time.

Emily: Now is not the time. [00:18:00] And then even worse is when one, he shares that of course he has told Lady Catherine what's going on. Never misses an opportunity to gossip with Lady Catherine. And then he says, "this consideration leads me, more over, to reflect with augmented satisfaction on a certain event of last November, for had it been otherwise, I must've been involved in all your sorrow and disgrace." So basically saying, well, thank God Lizzie turned me down cause otherwise I would have looked bad out of this. And then he closes out, finally, with the advice to "throw off your unworthy child from your affection forever and leave her to reap the fruits of her own heinous offense."

Lauren: I'm really sad that we don't get to see the reactions of the characters to this letter, because what I'm picturing is Elizabeth just saying, hold me back! Hold me back!

Emily: Right? Like she is going to physically run all the way to Kent and beat him into the ground.

Lauren: Elizabeth said, these hands are rated E for everyone. When I catch you...!

Emily: And he would deserve it, honestly. What a scab.

Lauren: The worst, the worst!

Emily: Like you, you take the time and effort to write just to gloat and to say, well, you know, she probably isn't worth it any way. Just be done with her.

Lauren: It's just so self-serving and condescending and just, ugh, the worst type of letter to receive in that type of situation. No actual, genuine expressions of sympathy. No worries for Lydia who is still his cousin, that's still family.

Emily: No offers to assist in any way whatsoever.

Lauren: Doesn't try and actually fix a situation, just is like nah, better you than me. Sucks to suck. Would you like me to continue to moralize about how you were wrong and how you should've seen this coming from the beginning and also how your daughter is like an awful human being? I can provide that for you in writing.

Emily: I can only imagine that Lizzie is even more grateful that she managed to not marry him.

Lauren: They're both grateful in this situation for two very [00:20:00] different reasons, but woo, talk about a poorly made match.

Emily: A match made in hell.

Lauren: Amen to that. The other significant letter that we had to skip over so that we could talk about Mr. Collins in relation to Mary--

Emily: because he's just so egregious.

Lauren: Oh my goodness. Is we find out exactly what it was that Lydia wrote to Colonel Forster's wife, to Harriet, which is how they knew that they're going to Gretna Green. And she has written the most flippant letter, which I feel is something that we just have to read for the benefit of listeners so that people understand just how ridiculous it is.

This is how she's chosen to say that she's getting married, to one person, mind you. She's not decided to tell her family this. She only told this person who she is known for, like, not even half a year. She says, "my dear Harriet, you will laugh when you know where I am gone and I cannot help laughing myself at your surprise tomorrow morning as soon as I am missed. I'm going to Gretna Green, and if you cannot guess with who I shall think you a simpleton, for there is but one man in the world I love, and he is an angel. I should never be happy without him so think it no harm to be off. You need not send them word at Longbourn of my going, if you do not like it, for it will make the surprise the greater when I write to them and sign my name, Lydia Wickham. What a good joke it will be.

I can hardly write for laughing. Pray make my excuses to Pratt for not keeping my engagement in dancing with him tonight. Tell him I hope he will excuse me when he knows all and tell him I will dance with him at the next ball we meet with great pleasure. I shall send for my clothes when I get to Longbourn, but I wish you would tell Sally to mend a great slit in my worked muslin gown before they are packed up.

Goodbye. Give my love to Colonel Forster. I hope you'll drink to my good journey. Your affectionate friend, Lydia Bennet."

Emily: Girl, what?!

Lauren: It's basically just like LOL, guess what I did. I'm going to go to Vegas and run off and get married. Don't tell my mom, I'm just going to show her when I sent, put pictures on Instagram, that by the way, look at my ring. I got married. And also, can you fix my dress because it's been broken.

That's it!

Emily: That's literally what it is. Literally.

Lauren: That-- this is how she [00:22:00] treats the most momentous occasion of her life thus far. Like marriage is a big deal to us in the 21st century. Like imagine how much of a bigger deal it was to get married in the 19th century.

No word to your family. They don't get any say in this, they don't get to be involved. This would have been a big deal for the entire family. And she's just telling this person who she's known for a couple months, by the way, running off to get married. Isn't this hilarious. This is so funny.

Emily: It's not funny to anybody! Like I know she's only 16, but good lord.

Lauren: I know more mature 16 year olds, though.

Emily: oh yeah.

Lauren: Like honey.

Emily: The complete lack of understanding of any of the consequences of what she's doing.

Lauren: She doesn't have that foresight, it's just not in her toolbox. She just thinks about that instant gratification. That's pretty much it.

Emily: It's a disaster.

Lauren: So, which is pretty much all Elizabeth can think about too.

I mean, she says, "oh, thoughtless, Lydia," as soon as she's finished it, like, ' I cannot believe that that was your thought process to go through with this.' Like didn't spare a single thought for the rest of her family. Didn't think at all about how this is going to reflect on them. Clearly hasn't thought about how it's going to reflect on herself because she thinks this is all funny.

She thinks it's a joke.

Emily: No thought for how it would reflect on the Forsters?

Lauren: No.

Emily: That someone who was under their guardianship has disappeared to elope. Yeah. Even if the Forsters hadn't done the right thing and immediately informed Lydia's family, it would have reflected horribly on them when Lydia informed the Bennets that she'd gotten married, like the Forsters would have lost all credibility as respectable guardians.

Lauren: Right. It's a total disaster. Apparently after he read it the first time Mr. Bennet, couldn't speak for an entire 10 minutes. Mrs. Bennet, of course, the dramatic queen was violently ill and had to like go lay down. But I mean for once, for good reason, because what the hell?

Emily: For the first time her reaction seems completely reasonable.

Lauren: Yes. The whole house is an uproar and also the whole [00:24:00] town knows. You know, it's gotten out at the. Because they try not to speak in front of like the servants and other people at first, but at a certain point, it's just impossible to keep a secret. I'm sure Mrs. Bennet's wailing can be heard from miles away. So in some way or another, the news has gotten out, the entire town knows, which is how Lady Lucas could write to Charlotte, who then told Mr. Collins, who then told Lady Catherine. And so we can see how, even in the age of having to literally send a letter with a horse to get from one town to another, how quickly word can spread.

Emily: Everybody knows. Everybody's talking Wickham. All of these tradesmen in town have started saying, oh yeah, Wickham owes me money, too.

Lauren: Yep.

Emily: He apparently has gambling debts that he hasn't paid. There's all kinds of talk of how many dalliances he's had with other young ladies. And generally everybody's just real down on Wickham's reputation too, but still that is nothing compared to how even that also reflects on Lydia and then back onto the Bennets.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: She's made this horrible, horrible decision.

Lauren: And so now this man whose character they're all shit talking is going to be connected to the Bennets forever, whether or not they get married, it's always going to be a stain on Lydia's legacy and that he's always gonna be --

Emily: It'll be even worse if they don't get married.

Lauren: Exactly. And like, he's, he's always going to be connected with them in some way, shape or form. And it's this person who they're all saying is this good for nothing, gambler, a womanizer and a cheat, pretty much. Basically nothing is good about this situation.

Emily: Nothing. Absolutely nothing redeemable about this. It's going to be bad no matter the outcome.

Lauren: And for awhile, we don't know what the outcome's going to be because they still cannot find them. They are really hidden away in London and they don't know where they are at all.

Emily: Yeah. But then finally, a couple days after Mr. Bennet gets home and Mr. Gardiner has gotten to London, there is another letter.

Their uncle Gardiner has discovered where Lydia and Wickham were. He's convinced Lydia to come back [00:26:00] to his house.

Lauren: Because they are not married.

Emily: They are not married, but he has also, with Mr. Bennet's approval, made the necessary negotiations to make a marriage happen, basically. So as soon as Mr. Bennet gives the all clear for the financial particulars, they'll, they'll be married.

Lauren: And it's for a shockingly cheap amount that they have agreed to, which is suspicious to the Bennets when they read it, because it just says, you know, for Lydia's share of the inheritance and then a hundred pounds per year is what they've agreed upon. And Mr. Bennet is reading that like, Wickham is a fool if he takes her for less than 10,000 pounds.

And Elizabeth is like, how, how on earth would anybody be able to pay that amount of money, because they're doing the math with all of his outstanding debts and what Lydia would bring to the marriage. And it is not enough. And so Mr. Bennet is like, oh, I have to figure out a way to pay back Mr. Gardiner, because he must have given him an obscene amount of money to agree to this because these numbers are not right. Like there's no way this is correct.

Emily: With even what little Mr. Bennet knows of Wickham's history, and especially with what Elizabeth and Jane know, there's absolutely no way that with that little money, he would agree to marry anybody.

Lauren: No. We just watched him pursue Miss King for no reason other than the fact that she was loaded. No.

Emily: He is a known gold Digger.

Lauren: Exactly. And Lydia is a known broke bitch, so that's not... that was not true.

Emily: But at least they're going to be married. And so that might be some scrap of reputation salvaged for Lydia and for the rest of the Bennet sisters.

Of course, that's not how Mrs. Bennet sees it. She is an absolute raptures. Her daughter is going to be married. She's barely 16. It's the best thing [00:28:00] ever. In between all of her, you know, effusive ramblings about how happy she is, she's going on and on about how Lydia has to have her wedding clothes made up.

And then she's already like house hunting in the neighborhood to find them a place to live. And everybody else is like, can, can you like put the brakes on just a little bit, just a little bit.

Lauren: At one point they say that her happiness is oppressive to everyone else in the house. It's just, they are still worried, they're still stressed. And here is Mrs. Bennet at the breakfast table, just like practically singing, she's so happy and is completely at odds with the rest of the house.

Emily: Yeah. Elizabeth is like, well, I guess it turned out the best that it could, but it's still not good, especially because of what she knows of Wickham.

And she says at the end of chapter 49, "Poor Lydia's situation must at best be bad enough, but that it was no worse she had need to be thankful. She felt it so, and though, in looking forward, neither rational happiness nor worldly prosperity could be justly expected for her sister, in looking back to what they had feared only two hours ago, she felt all the advantages of what they had gained."

Lauren: It's like, you know, this is a terrible situation, but it could be worse. And the fact that it's not, for that fact, I'm grateful.

Emily: And so by the end of the section, everything's arranged for Lydia and Wickham to be married. Wickham has found a place in the regular army, which we talked about several episodes ago.

The difference between the militia and the regulars and all of that. I'm not going to try and rehash it, but it's, it's more prestigious than what he had before. It's in the north. So Mrs. Bennet's hopes of having Lydia settled very close by are all dashed, but you know what? He's got a stable job, so man, take it or leave it.

Lauren: And we also get some self-reflection from Mr. Bennet to where he's finally taking some responsibility for his [00:30:00] own behavior in not checking his daughters. And when he's speaking to Lizzie is saying like, 'no, I should have, I should have done more to prevent this from happening.'

And in this last chapter in a section chapter 50, it opens with him thinking even before this, he had wished that he had been a little bit more intelligent with his money. Like he had said that he really didn't think about saving, especially at the beginning of his marriage, because he just assumed he was going to have a son and that they would fix the entail that way. And you know, everything was going to be fine. So he was just throwing his money around pretty much and not really thinking about saving.

And Lord knows Mrs. Bennet wasn't thinking about saving money. They were both spending money as soon as they got it. And then they had five daughters. They didn't have a son.

Emily: Whoops.

Lauren: And it was too late to start saving at that point. So he was like, well, I guess I'll figure it out later. And he never figured it out.

Emily: And now it's later.

Lauren: Now it's later!

Emily: Later came sooner than expected.

Lauren: You know, it truly did. Later came and smacked him in the face. And now he has many regrets.

Emily: But yeah, I think that's the bulk of the happenings of the section. And I do want to add some context for, like, why this is so dire and what actually is going on because although our theme for the section is sacrifice, because of all of the shenanigans that are going on right now, I thought it would be really helpful to have some perspective on what these events really mean.

So the question of reputation for a young woman and what are all the particulars that they're talking about when it comes to marriage. So first off, coming into this as a modern reader, what is Gretna Green? What is going on here? So Gretna Green is a town in Scotland. This is significant because in England, at the time, there was a marriage act, Hardwick's marriage act of 1753, that was put in place to try and decrease the number of [00:32:00] rash marriages that were entered into.

So the main effect of this act were that to get married as an underage person. So someone under 21. You had to either have your parent or guardian's explicit permission to obtain a marriage license, which also costs money because you can only get it from like a Bishop or Archbishop. Or you had to engage in, what's called the reading of the banns, which is basically for three successive Sundays in your parish church, they have to announce your intent to marry so that presumably your guardian or some other interested party has the opportunity to object and to forbid the marriage from going forward.

So that's what Lydia and Wickham would have been facing. The workaround is going to Scotland because this marriage act only applied in England and Wales. It didn't apply to Scotland. In Scotland. The only requirements for marriage are that if you're a girl, you have to be minimum 12. Boys have to be minimum 14.

Lauren: What?!

Emily: These, these are the rules that have been in place since like the medieval period. So it's not common that this is happening, but that's the minimum. I mean, I think in the state of Alabama right now, like with parental permission, you can be 14 years old and get married.

Lauren: That is terrifying.

Emily: It is, truly. Anyway, so Scotland, you have to be 12 for a girl or 14 for a boy without parental permission. And you have to make your declaration in front of witnesses. And that counts as being married. It doesn't even have to be proven consummated. It doesn't have to be in front of clergy or anything like that. And so couples wishing to get married quickly and relatively cheaply would go to Scotland. Gretna Green is one of the places that kind of sticks out because it's the first village you hit crossing the border into Scotland on the main [00:34:00] road from London.

It was a very popular destination. It's basically the Vegas wedding chapel of Regency England. So that's why Lydia says they're going to Gretna Green, because they're going to elope, but then they don't make it past London, which is kind of far from Scotland. A little bit.

Lauren: Couple of hundred miles.

Emily: Couple hundred miles. Yeah. So that suggests that if they are intending to get married, they're probably going to go the route of reading the banns. Which is possible given the amount of time that's elapsed since they disappeared from Brighton, they could have, you know, settled somewhere and are trying to just kind of push it through those three weeks because they certainly don't have the money or the explicit parental permission to get an actual license.

So it's a lot, but this whole question of unmarried cohabitation in this very particular cultural and religious context, unmarried cohabitation is basically the same as, like you said before, living in sin. It implies that you're just having sex unmarried, which is completely taboo, especially for people of the Bennets' class and higher, and especially for young women.

Because all of the risk, both the moral risk and the physical risk of pregnancy falls on the young woman, she is going to carry the shame for the rest of her life. Young men, you know, they can brush it off as youthful dalliance, and...

Lauren: Sowing the wild oats.

Emily: Right. Right. But for a young woman, she would be ruined. It's entirely possible, even likely, that the girl who was involved would never be able to make a respectable marriage. It would probably reflect badly on the rest of her family as well. For one, because she's been proven to be a person who is immoral and who has [00:36:00] bad judgment and who is potentially very gullible, but also it implies some level of not being brought up properly to have those decision-making capabilities or understand the consequences or know much she was getting into.

So this is, this is why it's so incredibly dire. The potential outcomes of all of this, especially if they are unmarried, cohabitating, and if they don't have any intention of actually getting married, that is, that's a bridge too far.

Lauren: That is not done.

Emily: Not done. It would have been bad enough if they had eloped right to Gretna Green, it's even worse that they ran off and they're not married.

Lauren: Continuing to heap bad decision onto bad decision and just making everything worse. I'm trying to think of like what an equivalent scandal would be. I mean, running off to Vegas, I feel like is the best analogy, even though marriage isn't nearly the same type of social institution now, as it was then to where it would have been a ruinous thing for the entire family, if somebody was living in sin.

Emily: Yeah, you'd have to be living in a very particular community.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: For that to have the same impact in modern America.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: And this was something that I thought of as well, way back when, as the Lizzie Bennet Diaries was being announced and they were talking about modernizing Pride and Prejudice, trying to figure out okay.

What is Lydia's scandal going to be, what can someone do now, coming from like an upper middle-class family that would have ruined everybody in the same way. And I don't, I don't know that there is in general. Like I said, in particular communities with specific social or religious mores, that might be different.

Lauren: Right.

Emily: But I can't think of anything that like one of my siblings could do that would ruin the rest of my family like that.

Lauren: I think also, American culture is super [00:38:00] individualistic. Again with the same disclaimer that like in certain communities it's different, but there's not much that one sibling or one member of the family can do that will ruin everybody else's reputation, because I think we generally assume everyone is their own person.

Emily: Yeah. By undertaking any of these paths, Lydia is sacrificing her own future and the reputation of her entire family by association. So where else do we see sacrifice in the section?

Lauren: I feel like there's so many different little ways that it pops up and it, Lydia is sacrificing your reputation. I see for her a lack of sacrifice, cause it's very self-serving, all of her actions, but I do see sacrifice in like Mr. Gardiner, and going to London to try and do his best to fix the situation, you know, sacrificing his time, sacrificing his money because he's spending money on this entire endeavor.

And really thinking of the rest of his family to try and put this right as a big place where I see sacrifice. But I think as far as our main character Lizzie goes, she is sacrificing her own ideas of what her future could be, because she's realizing, one, that she's in love with Darcy.

There's another passage that we had to skip over just because there's so many things where she was like, oh, I feel like I actually really could have been happy with him. But she has to let that idea go because she's looking at it rationally and saying, there's no way. He already had reservations about my family even before this, the entire town knows, his aunt already knows. He knows for sure, because I told him because I was distraught before I left, you know, there's, there's absolutely no way he would consent to being associated with me now. And I have to let this go.

Emily: Yeah. Lizzie and Mr. Gardiner were my biggest points that felt most like sacrifice because that to me carries a connotation of intention and selflessness.

Yeah. So Mr. Gardiner, for [00:40:00] sure, because that's a relatively public sacrifice to make. I mean, he's putting down a lot of money to salvage Lydia's reputation and connecting himself unavoidably with the whole scandal. But yeah, Elizabeth has definitely also made a sacrifice there. Much quieter and known only to her really, but still, still a sacrifice. Because she's yeah, like you said, she's realizing that she really could have loved and been happy with Darcy, but that's gone.

Lauren: Because it's not even something that she can verbalize to him because it's not as though she had told him before they left that her feelings were starting to change. As far as he's aware, clearly they've been on much friendlier terms over the course of this visit. So she doesn't hate him, but he's not been given reason to believe that she's, you know, now in love with him, he just thinks, okay, you know, this was awkward, but we moved past it.

We can be polite. We can be friendly even, but that doesn't mean that like, you could just say, 'hey, remember that time I proposed to you? Would you say yes if I did it this time?' Because he's not going to sacrifice his own pride to do that. It's already been wounded once. He's not going to try and wound it again.

Emily: Especially not now that all of this with Lydia has gone down. He's not going to sacrifice his pride and his own sense of security, really to connect himself with a family. That's so visibly linked to Wickham.

Lauren: Yep. Like you said, it's a very quiet sacrifice on Elizabeth's part because the only person who she'd really be able to tell this to, she can't because it's inappropriate, it would be out of left field, how is she supposed to write to him now and say, 'Hey, by the way, I know this can never happen, but actually I really have feelings for you.'

There's no, there's no social convention in which she can do that.

I think too, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but kind of off-page we see Jane's sacrifice as well, in that she doesn't want to [00:42:00] trouble her sister or her aunt and uncle and so was trying to sacrifice her own comfort and her own...

Emily: sanity?

Lauren: Mmhmm, in favor of keeping this from them and trying to shoulder it on her own and deal with her mother and try and keep Mary and Kitty in some sort of order. And--

Emily: Jane is terminally self-sacrificing. She's the kind of person that you just, you want to grab her by the shoulders and go, please learn what self-care is.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: Because she's trying to juggle everything on her own. No one is stepping up to help her, but she also doesn't want to bother Lizzie and the Gardiners with this. Like girl, you, you need help.

Lauren: Yes.

Emily: This is major. Ask for help.

Lauren: Even in an emergency, she won't ask Lizzie for anything. Do you think that there is any sense of sacrifice on Wickham's behalf?

Emily: It's hard to say because we don't get any direct look at his actions or his thoughts right now. It's all second and third hand.

Lauren: Right.

Emily: I wouldn't think so. I would imagine this is all just completely selfish on his part, that he's just young and stupid and going after what he wants with another young and stupid person.

Lauren: Yeah. I agree with that. I'm thinking, I wonder if he has like a misguided idea of I've sacrificed my opportunity to be with somebody who has 20,000 pounds to be with this. You know what I mean? Like that type of like woe is me. I brought this upon myself, but I could have had somebody with more money and I'm sacrificing that chance for you.

Emily: Yeah. That seems like the kind of framing he would come up with after the fact. Cause God knows that's not going to be a happy marriage.

Lauren: Absolutely not.

Emily: No way, no way.

Lauren: They certainly both sacrifice their happiness. That's for sure. Whether they know it or not at this point.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: We said it in the last episode where Lydia has similar tastes to her father and that they're both similar [00:44:00] in that type of way. We've seen that the Bennets' marriage is only not actively unhappy because Mr. Bennet just doesn't feel like pushing back in his own marriage, he just kind of lets Mrs. Bennet do whatever. And so--

Emily: He's just a completely passive actor.

Lauren: Exactly. And so they're not actively antagonizing one another. I cannot see that being the case with Lydia and Wickham.

Emily: No, they're gonna be at each other's throats.

Lauren: It's-- they're going to be miserable for the rest of their lives. Because they can't, there's no divorce in Regency England. You guys are stuck together.

Emily: Divorce for adultery, basically. And no, they're just going to be miserable.

Lauren: And, you know, Lydia of course has no concept of that you know, what it made me think of was? I think it was Ella Enchanted.

There's a scene where the main character is trying to make her love, interest, believe that she's run off with somebody else. And she writes a letter basically saying, oh, when you see me next, I'm going to be married and rich. And I'm not even going to look out the window of the carriage. I'm just going to be smiling at my jewels as I pass.

And I was like, that is the type of letter that Lydia would write.

Emily: Yes, absolutely. I mean, that's just, you know, straight culture. And in some instances, for some people, that's just how some people really are. Even now.

Lauren: That is Christian girl Instagram in a nutshell. I've either made this joke before or somebody else has made that joke at my expense, asking how many different corners of the internet am I in? And the answer is all of them. I am in all the corners of the internet and I also--

Emily: Lauren is internet omniscient.

Lauren: I am everywhere. I see all things! But it's just, it's I will say only with the people whom I have direct experience with, it very much seems like this was the time at which everybody else is getting married. And this is the person who I'm dating when everybody else is getting married, so we're going to get married because that's just what you do. Yep. Okay.

Emily: I mean, yeah. It's like all the girls who go to college to get their Mrs. Degree.

Lauren: That ring by spring.

Emily: Yep.[00:46:00]

Lauren: Are there other places where we see sacrifice or do you think we've kind of touched on them all?

Emily: I think we've gotten all that I had thought about or marked out specifically.

Lauren: I think the rest of it is really just lack of sacrifice from other people. Like Mr. Collins can't sacrifice his need to be right for one second, when he writes to the Bennet family, you know.

Emily: I would like to have that man as a captive audience sometime, and just give him a piece of my mind and make him choke on it.

So I'm interested to know since last time you accidentally prepared for this theme.

Lauren: I did.

Emily: What you have for us in terms of sacrifice and pop culture.

Lauren: Have you seen or heard of Squid Games?

Emily: I have heard of it, but I know next to nothing about it. I know that it's South Korean and I know that it's not what you would expect from the title?

Lauren: No, because I certainly went into watching the show thinking that it was going to be much more lighthearted than it actually was. And then I finished the first episode. I was like, oh, I'm horrified, but I'm intrigued.

Emily: So let's hear about Squid Game.

Lauren: Okay. So this is only going to focus on the first two episodes. One, because I don't want to spoil people. So I'll be speaking in general because it's a new show. And two, because those are the only two episodes that I've watched. So I literally can't talk about the rest of the show.

But the general premise is that the squid game is like a version of a playground game that the protagonist played in South Korea as a kid.

And he is kind of this down on his luck dad, he's divorced from his wife, who's gotten remarried to a wealthier man and his daughter lives with them. So he doesn't get to see his daughter very often. He's living with his mother in like this rundown apartment, he has no money. He's forever gambling it away.

So when he does get money, It's gone immediately. He has debtors who are running after him and literally beating him up to get their money. And he can't even really pay [00:48:00] for his daughter's birthday gift. And it's just a mess. And so the title of the show and like the premise comes in when he's approached by someone who says, if you can beat me at this game, which is like another simple game that they're playing in a subway station, then I'll give you this amount of money.

And if you lose then you have to give me this amount of money and eventually changes the rules because you know, the protagonist loses and the man who's approached him says, okay, well, how about this? Instead of you having to pay me, I just get to smack you. And he's so desperate for money and to win that he just lets this man smack him around continuously until the protagonist finally wins.

And it turns out that this person has been going around from person to person, everyone who's down on their luck and desperate to recruit them for this massive game. And the game that all of these people have been brought to play, the premise is that, you know, if you can win the series of games, Then there is millions of dollars at stake or billions of won.

And the question becomes, what are you willing to sacrifice to get to that money? Because not everything is as it seems once these games begin. And so that I won't speak more about so that people don't really get spoiled. I feel like at this point, if you spend enough time on the internet, you probably know where it's going because the first episode already has been memed to death.

If you haven't and if you've avoided that, I won't say anything more so that you can go in and watch the first episode and have that same kind of experience everybody else did. But even in these first two episodes, the, one of the overarching themes was like, what will you sacrifice to get what you want? What will you sacrifice for your family?

Are you willing to sacrifice your own dignity? Are you willing to sacrifice relationships, other people? What about your morals? Like what is it that you're willing to sacrifice or give up in pursuit of this cash prize, which you may or may not want to use [00:50:00] for selfless or selfish reasons, you know, maybe it's, I've gambled too much and I'm super in debt and I needed to pay off my own debts or maybe it's because you have like a family member who you want to take care of who needs healthcare.

And so like, you need this money because you've also been careless with your own, and now you feel responsible for this person, but that was one of the things that really struck me when thinking about like what's happening in the pop culture discourse right now and how can we link that to sacrifice? And as far as I understand it, this continues throughout the rest of the series as well, really hinges on that theme of sacrifice, what are you willing to give up and why? And then what would change your answer to that question? Because if you think that this is my line, you know, this is where I'm not going to compromise my morals, or I'm not going to throw somebody else under the bus.

What happens for you to push that line? And when does it change. So I would recommend squid games. However, also would just note that it's rated TVMA for a reason, and it's not going to be all sunshine and rainbows when you watch it, which is why I've only seen two episodes because I'm going to have to watch it in small doses.

And I haven't needed stressful TV in my life lately, so I'm going to come back to it. But.

Emily: Yeah. When I first saw the phrase squid game, I had absolutely no context for the fact that it was a TV show or anything. So my first thought was, oh, people are talking about that video game that came out a few years ago, which is called Splatoon, which is literally you play as a squid and you're like...I mean, it's it's like paintball, but it's squid.

Lauren: Right.

I

Emily: was like, oh, that's nice that people are getting back into Splatoon. I was like, wait, no!

Lauren: Not that, not that at all. If you have seen any pictures of what seems to be a giant doll with cameras in her eyes, that is from Squid Game.

Emily: I don't think I've seen that. I've just seen all the people in the jumpsuits.

Lauren: Oh yeah. That too. And they like the green and white jumpsuits.

Emily: If I've seen other things from Squid Games, the, I probably have not realized.

Lauren: Yeah, so I don't have as detailed of a pop culture [00:52:00] connection as usual, because I want it to be more general. But just thinking about like that overarching question of what would you sacrifice?

So like what would Elizabeth sacrifice for her family?

Emily: And what circumstances end up changing what you would sacrifice?

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: Because Elizabeth probably at the beginning of the book would have been the kind of person who would think. Yeah. I would never sacrifice the opportunity of a happy. And a loving relationship, and yet without even really a second thought,

Lauren: she turns that down. Yeah. So I think her, her line has changed. I think it's interesting to see if Jane will ever kind of create boundaries around what she will or won't sacrifice. If Lydia even understands the meaning of the word sacrifice.

Emily: Mr. Bennet making, having regrets about what he didn't sacrifice before.

Lauren: Exactly. He wasn't willing to sacrifice his own comfort or his own instant gratification to plan for the future. And now the consequences have come and he's regretting that he didn't practice some self abnegation before. Yeah. That's that's all I got.

Emily: Well, I think we're about ready to wrap up. So shall we get into our final takeaway?

Lauren: I think we shall.

Emily: What is yours?

Lauren: Thinking about how Jane overly sacrifices and that Lydia doesn't seem to really have a sacrificial impulse in her pinky finger. I'm thinking about how to find your balance and your limits when it comes to sacrifice. And I think that my final takeaway really is that it's important to do that kind of soul searching before it's necessary to think about, what am I willing to sacrifice?

What are my personal limits? And when is sacrifice not worth it for me.? Like when do I need to reach out and ask for help? When do I need to be selfish and how some type of self care [00:54:00] and thinking about what that looks like. Cause I don't think that that's something that we necessarily think of until prompted.

Emily: Yeah. That's the kind of thing that usually doesn't come up until it's too late to really make a significant change.

Lauren: Right, right. But thinking about how things could change if we already had those boundaries in place of like, when am I okay with sacrificing and when do I have to draw the line? That's it.

What about you? What's your final takeaway?

Emily: Okay. Going back to Lizzie, not realizing until she's already sent him away that she's in love with Darcy. I think my final takeaway is of the idea that we often make sacrifices that we haven't realized. And that also kind of connects to Mr. Bennet having unwittingly sacrificed his daughter's future financial security.

Yeah. So in two different directions, but some, some sacrifices that they didn't realize until they were already done.

Right.

Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time. We'll look at chapters 51 through 55 of Pride and Prejudice through the lens of belonging.

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

Lauren: If you'd like to support us and gain access to exclusive content, you can join our Patreon @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'll see you next time.

Emily: She would be the kind of person to like knock on your door with a gaping head wound and be like, Hey, I'm so sorry. But can you dial 9 1 1 for me?

Lauren: I was literally just thinking that I was like, she could literally have lost an arm and be like, no, it's fine. Like, I can just tear off [00:56:00] part of my dress to make a tourniquet like--

Emily: Tis but a scratch!

Lauren: Really, I don't need you to worry. I'll be just, I'll be fine. I'm a little bit woozy. And I think I'm about to pass out, but like it's, it's okay. Like I can pass out over here if that's easier for you, I'll be out of the way.

Emily: I can come by later with some bleach I'll wash your cushions out.

Lauren: I'll clean it up. I'm so sorry. I had the audacity to bleed on your furniture. That's totally my fault. You can charge me for that. Yeah. She is the embodiment of sacrifice to a fault.

Emily: Yeah. If this were a Greek tragedy, that would be her fatal flaw.

Lauren: Without a doubt.