Pride and Prejudice 56-61: “Identity Crisis”

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At long last... the final section of Pride & Prejudice. Join Lauren and Emily as we discuss how identity is created. Also included: character growth, a whole bunch of letters, and why this book stands out to us.

Links to topics discussed in this episode:

The Public Universal Friend

Identity in the Age of Social Media

Show Notes

And just like that…we’re done reading Pride and Prejudice. It truly feels like we just started reading this book, even though we started our re-read back in June!

Even though it’s the Austen story we’re most familiar with (and one of our favorite stories of all time, just in general), neither of us had actually sat down to re-read this book in quite a while. It’s been such a joy to revisit this book with all of you.

We’re done with the chapter-by-chapter analysis of P&P, but not done with this book completely. (What, you thought we were just going to walk away from a story we can practically quote from memory?) Between when this episode airs and February 2nd, when we begin our analysis of Mansfield Park, we will have plenty of opportunities to fangirl discuss.

Thanks for sticking around. We love you more than Mr. Collins loves excellent boiled potatoes.

Transcript

Reclaiming Jane S2E12 | Pride and Prejudice 56-61: “Identity Crisis”

Emily: [00:00:00] 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 the final chapters of Pride and Prejudice with a focus on identity.

Emily: It's the final chapter!

Lauren: Da da da, da da da da!

Emily: I am so excited. This is frankly, my favorite section of Pride and Prejudice. This is the part of the book that sets it apart for me just in literary canon.

Lauren: Really?

Emily: Yes. This is the section that, that gives me feelings more than anything else.

Lauren: Fair enough. Fair enough. Everything you've ever wanted for the characters that you love has come to pass and we can just bask in enjoyment, plus a little bit of like...

Emily: Schadenfreude?

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: Just a little bit.

Lauren: Just a little, a little baby bit. But before we continue waxing poetic about these last chapters of Pride and Prejudice, do we want to go ahead and dive into our quick thirty second recaps?

Emily: Let's do our recaps.

Lauren: Oh, wonderful. You are up first, my friend.

Emily: I am indeed.

Lauren: I mean, given that this is your favorite section, I have the utmost confidence in your ability to recap this in 30 seconds.

Emily: I really appreciate your confidence.

Lauren: I have confidence in you every time. Are you ready?

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: 3, 2, 1 go.

Emily: Lady Catherine shows up out of the blue to accuse Lizzie of being engaged to Mr. Darcy and to try to discourage this from happening. Bingley and Jane are incandescently happy. Darcy comes back from town and actually proposes to Elizabeth.

Everyone is absolutely shocked because they thought that these two hated each other. But by the end, they are absolutely determined to be [00:02:00] perfectly happy and to live happily ever after.

Lauren: You still had seven seconds left, anything where you want to say?

Emily: No, that was it. I love this section so much. And I'm like, I know what happened.

Lauren. Are you ready?

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: 3, 2, 1 go.

Lauren: Lady Catherine arrives. The whole house is in a tizzy. She demeans Elizabeth throughout a walk as saying that she can not possibly be married to her nephew and Elizabeth throws some excellent shade. Darcy returns. They express their feelings for another, they become engaged.

The rest of the family is in a tizzy again, because how on earth are they engaged? But everyone is happy. Jane is thrilled. Bingley is thrilled. Elizabeth and Darcy are thrilled. All four of them get married on the same day, mind you, and the Gardiners are welcome at Pemberley as they should be as the favorites.

Emily: Ding ding ding ding. We ended last time on Jane and Bingley's engagement. Everyone is happy. Elizabeth is happy for them, but maybe a little sad for herself.

Lauren: It's that bittersweet thing where you're happy for your friend, but your friend also has the exact thing that you want. And it just, every time you look at them being happy, it's a reminder of what you don't have.

Emily: At least this isn't a situation where they were in love with the same person.

Lauren: That's a whole different book.

Emily: Hamilton?

Lauren: Yes.

Emily: Can you, can you imagine Elizabeth Bennet singing "Satisfied" though?

Lauren: Okay. Now I need that crossover. Wait. Okay. Whoever is listening, who can write musicals. Just, I'm just saying, put that out there.

Emily: All right. But that is not what's happening here. Lizzie is still kind of pining a little bit over Darcy. He's been in town for awhile and she's kind of starting to despair of ever really seeing him again. And then his aunt shows up. Lady Catherine just pulls up to the house.

Lauren: Which is not done. She would never condescend to just randomly arrive to the Bennets' house. From what we know of Lady Catherine's character, just in general, she would not do that. She considers it like the biggest compliment [00:04:00] ever to be invited to her house for her to look at you for two seconds. Like she's not going to show up at your house, but there she is. Unannounced and sitting rather uncomfortably in the Bennets' sitting room, because for a moment she refuses to speak to Mrs. Bennet and acknowledge her presence.

Emily: She's just, she's so rude, which is unsurprising to those of us who have read the rest of the book.

Lauren: Literally.

Emily: But she's, she's so incredibly rude, refuses to grant any kind of basic civility to Mrs. Bennet and the keeping of her household. And after a few minutes, is like, Lizzie, we need to talk.

Lauren: Do you want to go for a walk?

Emily: So the two of them walk out on the grounds, which of course Lady Catherine finds ways to insult. And then she pulls out from nowhere the apparent reason that she's come is that she's heard word that Lizzie and Darcy are engaged.

Lauren: And has immediately come to make sure that this cannot be true.

And it assumes that Lizzie of course knows the entire thing, because she thinks that Lizzie is the one who started the rumor. And so when she shows up, she's like, you know, you, you have to know why I'm here. You have to understand why I've just randomly showed up at your doorstep, and Lizzie, who has absolutely no idea what's happening, is like no, no, I do not.

Emily: Basically what happened was the Lucases of course were writing to Charlotte about Jane's engagement, and in the way of gossiping neighbors, make their idle speculation about, oh, you know, I'm sure we'll see Lizzie engaged to this other rich man soon. And that filters through Charlotte to Mr. Collins and goes from Mr. Collins to Lady Catherine because she's Darcy's aunt. It's a game of telephone before the invention of the telephone.

Lauren: And, you know, we shouldn't be surprised because we saw in earlier chapters that one, that the Lucases like to gossip. And two, that Sir William specifically had already been kind of eyeing Elizabeth and Darcy way before all of the drama actually happened between them.

So...

Emily: he was on [00:06:00] that train even before Mrs. Gardiner was.

Lauren: He was the earliest Lizzie and Darcy shipper that we had, other than Darcy himself.

Emily: Ahead of the curve.

Lauren: Ahead of the game.

Emily: But Lizzie adamantly refuses to, one, acknowledge that she could possibly have been the source of those rumors, and two, that she would ever promise anyone that she would take or not take an action.

Lady. Catherine has absolutely no stake in Lizzie's life. She has no place telling her what to do or what not to do. And Lizzie basically tells her, I'm going to do what's going to make me happy, and and screw you.

Lauren: To Elizabeth's credit, especially because we have seen how much of a temper she can have. She starts off very polite to Lady Catherine.

And then as Lady Catherine continues insulting her, eventually Elizabeth has had enough. And like you said, is basically just like, I really do not care what you've come here to say, if you really think it's impossible, you wouldn't have come all this way to come and ask it from me. And so no, we're not engaged, but I'm also not going to promise you that I will never enter into such an engagement. I'm going to do what I want. And you may leave.

Emily: Go Lizzie.

Lauren: Amen.

Emily: And so Lady Catherine does leave in a huff, of course. She doesn't deign to come back into the house. She just gets in her carriage and off she goes. But this is where, even though Lizzie has been kind of losing hope because Darcy hasn't been around, she doesn't know if he's going to come back to Netherfield.

She's, she's torn between thinking if she came all this way to have that claim refuted, maybe she knows something that I don't? But on the other hand, she's thinking to herself, well, now, if she goes to Darcy with this and lays out all of her reasons, why would he not agree with her? And so she's starting to assume that even though Darcy is due back at Netherfield in a few days, there's going to be some excuse made. He's, he's just not going to come back.

Lauren: He's going to avoid her.

Emily: But that is not the case.

Lauren: Before [00:08:00] Darcy returns though, we get a letter from Mr. Collins that Mr. Bennet thinks is hilarious. And without even realizing, just twists a knife deeper into Elizabeth's side as she's stressed about Darcy coming back or not because Mr. Collins again, in his letter to Mr. Bennet, pretty much alludes to the fact that he thinks that Elizabeth and Darcy could be getting engaged, but is like hiding that in a warning that, you know, this might be happening, but I would just let you know that if they don't want to tick off Lady Catherine, they maybe shouldn't because it hasn't been approved and it, you know, it was on his usual high and mighty thing.

Emily: But Mr. Bennet is reading this and thinks it's absolutely hilarious that this is the last possible thing anyone could expect, because the only thing he knows about the relationship between Lizzie and Darcy is that Lizzie doesn't like him because he hasn't had any updates since the Netherfield gang initially left for London, leaving everyone upset.

All he knows is that Lizzie and Darcy don't like each other. He still thinks Darcy's stuck up. He still thinks that Lizzie absolutely hates him. And so he's reading her this letter, like, look, they think you would ever like this guy and she's like, oh yeah. Yeah. That's, that's hilarious. Super funny dad.

Lauren: And he called her in specifically because he thought that she would find it funny. He was like, Lizzie, I've got a joke for you. Listen to what Mr. Collins wrote in this letter. And he's looking at her like, don't you think this is funny? Like you're not laughing. So she forces, oh, haha! God, has he been right this whole time? Have I been reading too much into everything? Maybe he doesn't like me? I don't know.

Emily: Yeah. That chapter ends with, "Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh when she would rather have cried. Her father had most cruelly mortified her by what he said of Mr. Darcy's indifference. And she could do nothing but wonder at such a want of penetration or fear that perhaps instead of his seeing too little, she might have fancied too much."

Lauren: Now [00:10:00] we're back at that, just cruel back and forth over, "I want to hope. And I think I have good reason to hope, but what if I'm just setting myself up for failure? What if I've been wrong and I've misunderstood everything?" You know.

Emily: What if it's my own delusion.

Lauren: Exactly. You know, what if it's all in my head, because there's, there's no way that this could resolve in a way that's going to make me happy.

Emily: But fortunately, rather than some letter about how Darcy can't come back to Netherfield, it's the man himself that we see next.

Lauren: He has returned and miracle of all miracles, the group decides to go for a walk, you know, Jane and Bingley, of course kind of let Elizabeth and Darcy and Kitty walk in front of them because they want to have their own private conversation. Kitty has no desire to be talking with Darcy and so she kind of also goes off ahead and Elizabeth is like, okay, this is my moment.

I have to say something.

Emily: She's going to seize her chance to make something happen. Austen refers to it as a "desperate resolution" where she decides that she can't stay silent about everything that's gone on. And so it admits that she knows what he did for Lydia.

Lauren: She's obviously not supposed to know that Darcy did anything to help Lydia at all.

And one of the reasons why he might not have wanted her to know is that if she knew how much he had done for Lydia, then she might feel obligated to marry him. And obviously he really wants her to marry him, but he wants her to do it because she wants to, and not out of a sense of obligation because that would just, that would ruin everything as, as pragmatic as we've seen Darcy to be. He does have a little bit of a romantic side.

Emily: He really does, and wastes very little time turning the conversation to that real motivation behind what he did, because it's extremely short, like two or three exchanges about what he's done for Lydia before he cuts to the, no pun intended, heart of the matter [00:12:00] and says to Elizabeth, "you are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me. So at once, my affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever."

Lauren: We don't get to see her actual response because the actual dialogue isn't written out at this point, but basically tells him that in fact, her feelings have changed and they've changed drastically so, not only would she accept his proposal, but she would be happy to do so, because now she actually returns his affections rather than, you know, cursing him out and then leaving him alone in a garden.

Emily: Yep. Yeah. And this, this chapter is the crux of why I love Pride and Prejudice because they have this very frank conversation about how they both had made so many mistakes, both in misjudging one another.

And in acting on those misjudgments, the way they did. Darcy mentions how deeply it had struck him when Elizabeth said after his initial proposal that he had been un-gentleman-like. This really hits at his sense of his own identity as a gentleman and being accused of that really seems to have prompted his behavioral change.

But Elizabeth also admits that she had judged him very quickly and very harshly and both of them admit to each other how many regrets they have about what's gone on in the past year between them. And they lay out the specific things that motivated their own changes in behavior and, and feeling. And it's, it's very rare, I think, that we get this kind of laying out of the character arc and that kind of introspection by the characters in dialogue with one another. And I just love it so much.

Lauren: One of the notes in my edition makes a really good point about how they go about that as well. And it says, you know, both Darcy and Elizabeth are admitting their past wrongs, but they do so in different ways.

She is more likely to look on it [00:14:00] calmly and laugh about it, which is completely in line with her character. Of course, you know, even though she's changed, she's still at her core, the same person, somebody who likes to have fun and to poke fun at herself and the people who she loves, and Darcy on the other hand, at which it says, "who is always tried to be so scrupulous and acting rightly and has prided himself in his success is more severe, unable to think lightheartedly about occasions when he failed in that endeavor.

He also is inclined to approach only himself rather than to call them both at fault as she does. Thus, even as both have genuinely changed in important respects, they continue to display certain characteristic traits," which is just such good writing.

Emily: It is! My repeated phrase for this entire episode is just going to be, I love it so much, but I do. I do. It's a depth of awareness that I think we see rarely portrayed with such authenticity, because this feels like a conversation that two people could actually have if, if they've reached that level of self-awareness.

Lauren: Yeah. And it's, it's really significant that Jane Austen specifically skips over like what we usually see in novels that are talking about a romantic relationship where usually we have like, romantic declaration of love is what we see in dialogue and the characters' initial reactions to that and their emotions and the resulting conversation about, you know, this, that, I thought that you thought this about me and vice versa and actually dissecting what the relationship looks like, kind of happens off the page.

And this is reversed where we don't get to see how Elizabeth responds to Darcy or, you know, it says that they have a conversation after that, but she purposely skips over it. And then instead gives us their own analysis of their own relationship in favor of that. That's just such a good stylistic choice.

And also I think, I mean, Jane Austen doesn't really put romantic conversations in her books unless she's making fun of them. And this is, this is much more her wheelhouse where her characters are being [00:16:00] analytical and a little bit ironic and sarcastic, that's, that's her bread and butter. That's where she lives.

Emily: It's amazing to watch the two of them act on all the things they've learned about one another in the past few months and reveal themselves to each other, but then also be aware of places that still might need a little work, like in the final paragraph of the chapter where Elizabeth remembered that "he had yet to learn to be laughed at and it was rather too early to begin."

So he's absolutely in her mind beyond a doubt a person that she loves, she, she wants to marry him. She's at this point, agreed to marry him, but also has, has a little moment where she kind of holds herself back because as much as she wants to bring him into that kind of familiarity and intimacy that she has with people she's very close to.

She also recognizes that he's not quite at that point yet, but we'll get there eventually.

Lauren: They have developed a good enough understanding of one another to also understand how to best interact with one another as well. And you can kind of see, she knows when to tease and poke at him to stop him from dwelling on the past and his mistakes, because she can see that he's starting to ruminate on all the things that he did wrong, but also, like you said, doesn't go too far to really tease him, only does enough just to make him laugh and get him to focus on the happy thing that's happening right in front of them, which is that they're engaged, and stop thinking about all of your past mistakes, but doesn't go so far as to tease him about something that he could still be sensitive about, which she knows that he would not respond too well at all.

Emily: She can pull him out of his head without making him self-conscious.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: Which is a talent, frankly. You've got to know someone really well to be able to pull that off.

Lauren: Agreed.

Emily: But we also found out that before he left for London, Darcy admitted to Bingley everything that he had done, that he had intentionally kept him away from Jane and that Jane had been in London. [00:18:00] So I think last episode we were talking about how we didn't know what... like how far Darcy might've gone and laying out what he had done to Bingley, but he also comments about how Bingley is just, he's just so obliging, and so warm-hearted, and so forgiving that even though Bingley was surprised, he was angry. It, it didn't take him very long to forgive Darcy. And I'm sure it helps that he's also now engaged to Jane. So that's been cleared up.

Lauren: Right. Though I do wonder if part of why Darcy disappeared for a little bit was to give Bingley some space. Like you'll forgive me eventually, but you're still really mad at me right now. So I'm going to go.

Emily: Gonna let you enjoy that newly engaged life for a minute before I show up again. But now they, they all get to be happy together.

Okay, so this is skipping ahead just a little bit, but when Bingley and Darcy come back the next day Lizzie comments on how Bingley had shaken her hand so warmly that it was really obvious that Darcy had left and immediately told Bingley the news. Anyway, so Bingley's congratulations or unspoken congratulations come the next day. But as soon as they all return to the house and Lizzie and Jane are alone, Lizzie breaks the news to Jane, who doesn't know what to do with this information.

Lauren: And this is like a test run of her telling the rest of her family. And she's a little bit worried because she realizes, oh, if Jane doesn't believe me, no one is going to believe me. This is going to be more of an uphill battle than I thought. And she already knew it would be. Her happiness was kind of tempered by the realization that now she's going to have to tell the rest of her family.

And she doesn't know how they're going to react.

Emily: Because as we saw with Mr. Bennet earlier, the only thing that anyone but Jane knows is that Lizzie hates Darcy. Jane knows a little bit more. She knows that Darcy had proposed to Lizzie months ago, [00:20:00] which the rest of the family is still in the dark about, but Lizzie does so much of this emotional work internally, which I relate to, that by the time she gets to breaking what she thinks is happy news, what she knows is happy news, because she's so happy about it. No one else is going to believe her because they don't know that she's been going through all of these character developments and changing her mind about things.

And Jane's reaction is verbatim, "you are joking, Lizzie. This cannot be. Engaged to Mr. Darcy! No, no, you shall not deceive me. I know it to be impossible."

Lauren: Not a great first reaction.

Emily: Not a great start. Yeah. And Lizzie says, in response to that, "this is a wretched beginning, indeed. My sole dependence was on you and I am sure nobody else will believe me if you do not." Lizzie, this is, this is what happens when you don't tell anybody about what's going on in your head, which again, I can relate to, I have the same problem, but that's why I can tell her.

Lauren: Do, as I say, not as I do!

Emily: Exactly.

Lauren: Sneak peek at our advice to Jane Austen characters.

Emily: Stick around for Advising Austen next episode. But eventually Lizzie is able to, through explanation and some retrospective information, convince Jane that yes, she likes Darcy. She loves Darcy. She loves him enough to spend the rest of her life with him.

Lauren: I do appreciate one joke that she makes as she's relating to Jane, you know, all that's happened. And Jane is like, okay, well you have to, when did this start? How did this happen? Blah, blah, blah. And Elizabeth goes, "it has been coming on so gradually that I hardly know when it began, but I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley," to which Jane says again, Elizabeth, be serious.

Like when did you actually begin to fall in love with this man? And technically Elizabeth is telling the truth because the interactions that they had at Pemberley started [00:22:00] to shift her regard for him, but she's joking about like, well, you know, once I saw how much money he had and how huge that house was, it was a done deal, I was sold.

Emily: But the first part of that answer really strikes me as well. When she says that it, it came on gradually. So gradually that she doesn't know when it started. At the beginning of the next chapter, she asks Mr. Darcy when he realized or what, what possibly in the first place could have made him love her. And his reply to that is, "I cannot fix on the hour or the spot or the look or the words which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun," which is just another thing that, you know, sends an arrow directly through my heart.

Lauren: That is the line that stands out to me. "I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun." I know, I literally just said that Jane Austen doesn't spend much time on like romantic things because this technically is still like a pragmatic assessment, but that is one of the most romantic things you could say.

Emily: Okay. I think that's one of the things that sets Austen's romance apart from a lot of what we think of as being classically romance, is that. It's just these little asides, almost, things that don't seem to have necessarily been given any thoughts by the characters, but betray so perfectly their internal life and how deeply they feel these things.

Lauren: And that's what makes it so good.

Emily: That's what makes it austen.

Lauren: It makes it so easy to Swoon over when it feels like just such an authentic expression of emotion that they're not even trying to be particularly romantic or to woo someone. They're just saying, you know, this is an expression of my heart.

Here you go. Here it is.

Emily: These things are so, so natural and they come off as so unplanned and so unpretentious, whereas a lot of what we get in sort of the stereotypical romance media [00:24:00] is these over the top declarations where they're trying so hard to be romantic, that this really stands out. And this really gets you where it, where it counts.

Lauren: I think sometimes we have this notion in modern day culture of like, oh, asking for permission before you get engaged is a traditional thing to do, but that wasn't necessarily the case, but you asked the daughter first, unless there were some extenuating circumstances, which Elizabeth certainly does not fall into.

And then you would go and ask for a blessing. So when Mr. Bennet initially says that he has gotten a letter from Rosings Park, for a split second, Elizabeth is wondering if Mr. Darcy is writing to him to ask for permission. And she's split between being happy that he wants to marry her. And mad that he asked her dad before he asked her.

But when they do finally ask Mr. Bennet, he's also really concerned and is stressed. Like we usually see Mr. Bennet laughing and he doesn't take anything seriously, but this is a situation where he is serious. And he's like, I do not want you to enter a marriage with somebody who you hate. Or who you can't grow to love just because, you know, it'll be a socially advantageous marriage.

If you don't love this man and if you can't be happy, then don't do it.

Emily: And this is another point where Lizzie wishes that she had moderated herself a bit more in the beginning, rather than going all out on the, "I hate Darcy train" because now everyone's convinced that she never wants to see this man's face again.

She was like, no, actually I want to see his face all the time.

Lauren: I'm head over heels in love with him.

Emily: But as with Jane, she does manage to convince Mr. Bennet in his case, this involves telling him what Darcy did for Lydia, which he starts to recover some of his humor at this and says that, oh, well, if your uncle Gardiner had laid out all of that money, I would have been obliged to repay him.

But Mr. Darcy you know, fools in love. If I tried to offer, he [00:26:00] would rebuff me anyway. So, cool. Saved me a lot of money

Lauren: Yes, I was going to have to scrimp and save to pay back your uncle Gardiner. But now that it's Darcy, who cares?

And then

Emily: Lizzie has the unenviable task of also telling her mother who is like silent for minutes at a time.

And then immediately snaps around from hating Darcy to being perfectly effusive about how charming and handsome and tall he is and how rich is he is going to be, because of course, and also slips in, "pray apologize for my having disliked him so much before, I hope you will overlook it."

 Perfectly in character.

Lauren: Speaking of Mrs. Bennet, though, I do want to go back just a quick second to note that part of why Mr. Bennet is so concerned about Lizzie making the right choice in marriage is because he didn't. And Mr. Bennet says, "my child, let me not have the grief of seeing you," with the emphasis on you, "unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are about," kind of implying in that, that that's the situation that he himself is in because he rushed into a marriage that he hadn't thought through well enough, and this is one of the few times where he's not sarcastic, he's being 100% serious because Lizzie is his favorite child.

And, you know, as much as it would be a benefit to him to have his daughter so well married, he doesn't want it to be at the expense of her personal happiness. And he wants her to avoid the same mistake that he made.

Emily: But she does convince him. This is not a mistake. She's completely genuine in her love for Darcy and her happiness in this match.

And so he relents and says, "if this be the case, he deserves you. I could not have parted with you to anyone less worthy," which again, just pull my heart out of my chest. I love soft dads.

And so I think in terms of the particulars of what happens in these chapters, I think we've actually covered it.

Lauren: Most of it's mostly just denouement after that and talking about where the characters end up.

Emily: So people's reactions, et cetera.

Lauren: Elizabeth writes a long letter to Mrs. Gardiner, basically [00:28:00] saying as long as you don't assume that I'm married, you can assume whatever you'd like, you can come to Pemberley whenever you want. This is the greatest day of my life.

Emily: We'll get those ponies!

Lauren: Right? We'll get you whatever you want.

It kind of tells us that, of course, lydia and Wickham continued being their usual, eh, tactless selves. So when they find out, Lydia immediately writes to ask for money, which they are refused, you know, like Wickham would love a place at court. Absolutely not. It says kind of like what Kitty and Mary get up to.

So Kitty comes to stay with Elizabeth and Darcy at Pemberley quite often. And when she's away from Lydia, she's actually not so bad. She improves. And Mary just kinda stays at home and, you know, becomes the pride of Meryton because there's nobody else there. So.

Emily: Yeah, the Bingley's only stay at Netherfield for a year because even they can only stand being so close to Jane's family.

They purchased an estate 30 miles from Pemberley. And so Jane and Lizzie get to hang out all the time, which, mood.

Lauren: Right.

Emily: Basically we get our perfect happily ever after for our main characters. And it's wonderful. I'm a fan. I like it. I think it was excellent. And I think everyone got the ending that they deserved.

Lauren: Yeah, I would, I would agree with that.

Emily: So let's transition into our theme, Lauren, where did you see our theme of identity in this section?

Lauren: Oh my God. Where didn't I. I think the biggest thing that we kind of already touched on is that initial conversation with Elizabeth and Darcy after they've confessed or renewed their feelings for one another, and looking at how those key identities or how like their own identities drive that conversation.

And one of the, one of the things that, you know, you're always taught in creative writing classes or any kind of like story development is that your characters should drive the plot and the conversations and the dialogue and the plot should not be driving your characters. And you can tell the difference when characters are doing something because the [00:30:00] plot says that they should.

And when you have a plot that's being driven by somebody who knows their characters really well and the plot develops because of the natural decisions or mistakes that those characters would make. And thinking about how pride was so entrenched in Darcy's identity and how we watch him kind of walk that back a little bit.

And Elizabeth says to her father as well, at some point, "he doesn't have," I think the line is something like "undue pride." She realizes that he has some things to naturally and rightfully be proud about, but that unchecked pride that she had thought was there was not running quite as rampant as she thought that it had.

That key aspect of his identity I think we see him wrestle with throughout that conversation as well, specifically because she had called him out on it. And the fact that he's able to, to be humble and to relinquish some of that pride is what has allowed them to be happy in the first place, because he sucks it up and asks her, accepting a potential blow to his pride again.

Tell me how you feel and tell me if you don't want to speak to me again, because if that's the case, then I will never, you'll never see me ever again and that's fine, but just, if anything has changed, I just need to know. And that's such, like, that's a vulnerable spot to be in and it never would have been something that Darcy did at the beginning of the book.

Emily: Yeah. I like that you started with that because what I was thinking about the whole time was the idea of internal versus external identity. So this pride that Darcy has, and where he's talking about how he was kind of raised to be that way, albeit unintentionally, by his parents, that informing the core of his identity, versus what Lady Catherine is always so concerned with, those external indicators of status.

Which are things that we've talked about. I was making note of all, all of the other ways that our previous topics could fall into this, in terms of class, especially where Lady Catherine is concerned, and [00:32:00] race and family and age and religion, gender, all of these things that, that contribute to this. And sort of sliding a little bit into my historical thoughts as well.

How we've talked previously about how everything we know about it has to be external indicators because we don't have access to most people's internal lives. We don't know precisely how people would have thought about their gender identity or things like that. But we tend to conceptualize it now as being the performance of identity, rather than internal identity, the things that we're able to see and understand about people in the past.

So when, when we're talking about someone's identity in Jane Austen's time, we're talking about the things that they manifested in the world, the influence that they had, how they presented themselves. And I was thinking about how rare it is that we do get a glimpse into people's own thoughts about their identities.

And that led me to thinking about the Public Universal Friend. Have you heard of this person?

Lauren: No.

Emily: So the Public Universal Friend was an American preacher in the late 18th, early 19th century, so Jane Austen's time. Who was born, identified as a woman and then had a, a near death experience and came to claim a sort of rebirth that they were reborn as a genderless being.

They shed the use of their birth name and insisted for the rest of their life on being referred to as the Public Universal Friend.

Lauren: That is awesome.

Emily: Which is really awesome. But because the friend was a preacher and a diarist, we get a lot more insight into the way that [00:34:00] this one particular person conceptualized identity in a way that we just don't get throughout most of history.

And it's just, it's really fascinating. I love it. And also, I can't believe it's taken me this long to talk about the Friend on the podcast.

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, I feel like for every person who has said that non-binary identities just kind of like sprung up in the past eight years, not to mention all of the indigenous cultures and cultures outside of Western tradition that recognized them for ages anyway, like that's an entirely different podcast that we would need to get into all that detail. But here you go, here's, you know, not in so many words, but an example of somebody who looked at gender and said, nope.

Emily: I mean, very close to being in so many words. And yet the Public Universal Friend is one of the first Western people that we know of who publicly identified in this way.

Of course, there are cases throughout the history of Western Europe and the United States where people dress or present as another gender for some pragmatic reason, there are people who we believe in modern terms might have been transgender. Someone like Dr. James Barry, who was born a woman, and then dressed and presented as a man for the rest of his life.

But yeah, the Public Universal Friend is one of the very few that at least I know about who specifically said no gender, which is, which is really fascinating to me because that also would have been an unusual concept presumably in the late 18th century, in New England and in Britain. Yeah so that to me, sort of stood out as straddling the line between internal and external indicators of identity.

That interior recognition that you don't, you don't mesh [00:36:00] with any kind of gender versus the way the Public Universal Friend presented themselves with a combination of masculine and feminine dress and styles and public interaction and things like that. So I just thought that was really cool.

And I just started thinking of that.

Lauren: Yeah. I really love that you brought that up as historical context because I feel like that's just such a perfect encapsulation of what we want to talk about on this podcast too, is just the different ways in which, you know, the history that we've taught isn't always as it seems, that that there is space for everybody in these narratives and if there isn't space, then we can create it, but here's a perfect example of where we already exist.

Emily: Yeah. Even where you think there's not space often, there are already people who inhabit those spaces within the narrative. We just may not see them on the surface.

Lauren: Oh, I love that.

Emily: I'm so glad. Did you have a pop culture connection for us today?

Lauren: I did, it's along the lines of constructed identity. Thinking about how we do that much more actively because of social media, how we really actively construct an image for ourselves, especially depending on how you want to use your own social media, or if you have public social media versus just private for family and friends and how there are people who will help you strategize, like how to craft your, your presence and your image online and how, even if it's not an intentional thing that you're doing, like with everything that we post on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook, where constructing an image of ourselves and helping to shape what that external identity is, that's completely separate in some cases from what our internal identity is.

So I was thinking about how different the story would be-- and I know this is such a fan fiction-esque trope of 'what would the characters do if they had social media?'

Emily: No, [00:38:00] but we love it though.

Lauren: But what would the characters do if they had social media? Like if you gave Darcy the chance to construct his identity online, what would he do?

Emily: Well, he wouldn't have social media to start. He would have like a single bio page on his professional website and that's it.

Lauren: He would have LinkedIn.

Emily: He would have a meticulously updated linkedIn.

Lauren: But yeah. Thinking about what that looks like as far as constructing identity and then how that influences how we interact with other people, especially if the only image that we have of them is that external identity that they have.

I think Instagram is a really good example of that. I think Twitter is seen as more of an authentic social media, as authentic as social media can be. I mean, everything is still, you're making a conscious decision about what you're going to put online. And nine times out of 10, it's not your truly unfiltered thoughts because we're still picking and choosing what you're going to share with people and what you want them to think of you.

There are some people who truly put unfiltered thoughts on Twitter and you know, more power to you. Couldn't be me. But Instagram, especially because it's so image focused, is really where I think people put the most effort, consciously or otherwise, into making their identity that they want people to consume that doesn't necessarily reflect who they are.

I'm sure there's like some really good research paper about it, but like, how does that influence how we interact with people? Or does that change how we think of people when we can see both sides of their identity, the, the external identity that they put online and then the external identity that they share with us in person.

And I think it's interesting to think about how that would affect the characters from Pride and Prejudice if you pick them up and gave them social media. And I think the Lizzie Bennet Diaries team kind of address that back in 2012 to 2013. So we are obsessed with Lizzie Bennet Diaries, but for anybody who's listening, who's not actually seen it.

It was [00:40:00] a web series that ran for a year that also had lots of different interactive components to it. So there were the main episodes on YouTube, which was a modern day adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, of course, but then also if you wanted to get really into it, you could follow the characters on their various social media platforms.

So on Twitter, or Jane had a Pinterest--

Emily: because of course, Jane had a Pinterest.

Lauren: Of course she did. You could follow them on Tumblr. And so they did that kind of work of thinking about, how would the characters present themselves on social media and how would they interact with one another? How does that influence what's happening in the main story on YouTube and the web series?

And it was fantastic. And just so well done. I think those types of questions are just so creatively, inspiring and fun to think about. And you can, you can do so much with just that question of what would this character do if they had social media?

Emily: It's the kind of thing like with other world-building tactics where it doesn't have to feature in your final piece of media, whatever it may be, but it can give you so much insight into who they are as people and how to create those characters.

I mean, I absolutely love world-building. I love doing that kind of stuff. So.

Lauren: Yeah, I do think Lizzie Bennet Diaries got it right. Like Lizzie would have a snarky Twitter. Jane would absolutely have a Pinterest where she pins cute things all the time. Lydia 10000% would have her own blog channel. No content, just vibes.

Just chaos. I feel like probably Kitty would be a supporting character in Lydia's vlogs. And she would have a pretty good Instagram account, I think, I don't think Kitty would have Twitter because Kitty doesn't have thoughts.

Emily: Under the influence of Lizzie and Darcy, once they're married, Kitty would have, like, a very curated Twitter that was just like trying to be professional.

Lauren: And I think her Instagram presence would shift, too. Like, she would [00:42:00] go from posting her wild nights out on her public story to her close friend story. And then her public story would be like, 'Ways that you too can help, blah, blah, blah.' An infographic slide!

Emily: Lizzie would have an Instagram that has like five posts and they're all either six months to like three years apart, but she would constantly be on Instagram, looking at other people's stuff.

Lauren: Oh, yeah, she likes everything.

Emily: Never post anything herself.

Lauren: No, never. Darcy follows one person, it's Lizzie. Wait, you know what that actually made me think of? Jay-Z recently got Instagram for about 36 hours. For the brief period that he was on Instagram. Beyonce finally broke-- she follows no one on Instagram and she followed Jay-Z. And then I guess he had seen enough and he deleted Instagram and now she follows no one again.

Emily: That's amazing. I'm going to be thinking about this for the rest of the day.

Lauren: Right? I think Georgiana would also be a Pinterest girl.

Emily: Oh, definitely. She would, as soon as Darcy told her about the Bennets, she would go and find Jane's Pinterest and follow it.

Lauren: Oh my gosh, right. Caroline Bingley would be a mean girl, Instagram influencer.

Emily: Absolutely. She sells diet teas.

Lauren: She never uses them. And she swears she does.

Emily: I feel like we've, we've had similar social media discussions before, but I feel like with, with both sort of history topics and pop culture topics, we kind of come back around, incorporating a bunch of things that we've talked about previously, which feels very appropriate for our last reading episode.

Lauren: Look at us being unintentionally full circle.

Emily: No, it was completely intentional.

Lauren: It was completely intentionally full circle.

Emily: Well, this has been delightful and I cannot believe that we're done reading Pride and Prejudice.

Lauren: This is our final, final takeaway.

Emily: It is, oh my God. Well, it's, it's you up first. Lauren, what's your takeaway from these chapters?

Lauren: I think my final takeaway is that identity is both fluctuating and fixed and that there are some [00:44:00] character traits that I think are just innate that make us who we are, and that kind of shape who we are as people, but also that our identities can and should always be changing. You know, we're never going to relate to the world in the exact same ways we did six months or six years or six decades ago. And as we continue to learn more about ourselves, maybe get dragged by our friends a little bit, we learn new ways of being, and I think incorporate the world around us and our own internal work into our identities.

So I think that they can be both, that your identity can always be changing, but that there are always going to be some parts of you that are just you, that just make you who you are.

That will stay, that will stay put.

Emily: Well, you stole my take away.

Lauren: Dang it.

Emily: Okay, this is still related, but I think I have one that's sufficiently different from yours. My final takeaway, similar to what I've had for a lot of the other sections of this book, is that no matter how confident we may be of our own internal understanding of our identity, no matter how well we think we understand ourselves, there is no guarantee that the people around us will be able to access that based on how we present that identity externally.

Lauren: That's an excellent takeaway.

Emily: Thank you.

Lauren: You know what, sometimes it kind of bites us in the butt that we usually think the same thing, but it meant that we had to come up with something that was also very profound.

So in this case it worked.

Emily: It worked

Lauren: So before we go, we do have some exciting announcements about the end of this season.

Emily: First, like with Sense and Sensibility, we will be releasing an exclusive themed sticker to all of our Patreon supporters who join at certain tiers before the next [00:46:00] season airs. And also current Patreon supporters will get a sneak peek at that before anybody else does.

Lauren: Make sure you've joined the club before February 2nd, that is your deadline, that is when season three airs and we'll have our first analysis episode of Mansfield Park. But don't worry, until then we're going to be hosting a ton of post-season Pride and Prejudice content. So we'll have blog posts, we'll have some live tweets, we'll have some live streams, so be sure that you're following us on social media so you can get all the information about all of those fun things as it comes out.

Emily: But we do still have a couple episodes of Pride and Prejudice left.

Lauren: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be wrapping up our final thoughts on the whole of Pride and Prejudice, as well as giving some questionable advice to the characters in our segment, Advising Austen.

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

Lauren: If you'd like to get access to exclusive content, as well as support the podcast, 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.

[singing to the tune of “Everything Is Awesome”] Everything is awesome! Everything is cool when you're Elizabeth. No, don't put that in.