Pride and Prejudice 6-10: “I’ll Make A Man Out of You”
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Anchor | Breaker | Castbox | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Radio Public
Don’t see the latest episode on your platform of choice? Click play above!
This week, Emily and Lauren discuss masculinity and our leading men. Also included: English nationalism, gendered gazes, and just a splash of High School Musical.
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
Show Notes
Be a man…or don’t, we’re not about to police your gender expression.
Y’all, reading this book is such a delight. If only you could see the text conversations we have where we send ALL CAPS reactions and then remember we’re supposed to be saving our reactions for when we’re in front of our respective microphones. (We could post screenshots, but what a slippery slope that would be.)
Both of us have read this book several times before, so this season will be especially interesting to discuss. What are your thoughts on keeping this season spoiler-free — keep it pristine, or dive into what we know of the book? Let us know in the comments below or drop us a line on social media!
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Season 2, Episode 2 | Pride and Prejudice 6-10
[00:00:00] Emily: This is Reclaiming Jane, an Austen podcast for fans on the margins.
Lauren: I'm Lauren Wethers,
Emily: and I'm Emily Davis-Hale.
Lauren: And today we're reading chapter six through 10 of Pride and Prejudice with a focus on masculinity.
Emily: Well, thank you for joining us in this continuing journey of Pride and Prejudice. We're having a lot of fun with it. We-- we've been trying not to talk about our reading experiences outside of podcasts, because then we, we use up all of our material and forget the things that we were thinking about.
Lauren: Yeah, the podcasts would just be screenshots of our text conversation or dramatic readings to fit with the, fit with the medium.
Emily: Which, you know, doing dramatic readings would also be super fun. And also for anyone who is on Twitter or likes this kind of thing queer pride pod, so Pride and Prejudice has been doing their fundraising campaign and as a reward for hitting 10% of their funding one of the creators kero has just done a recording of, of several lines from Darcy. But as Elmo. So if you have not listened to that, I beg you to go and enjoy it.
Lauren: A dramatic reading of the caliber we can never hope to reach.
Emily: And also shout out to queer pride pod.
Lauren: Anyway,
all of that is to say that we were having so much fun reading Pride and Prejudice that we're having to [00:02:00] stop ourselves from talking about it outside of the podcast and forced ourselves to record the conversation so that we actually have content to share with you.
Emily: Oh, this is the struggle.
Lauren: Okay. We should dive into recaps because otherwise we're going to start talking about the chapters and we're going to have to go back and circle back to the recaps. So it is your turn. Are you ready?
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: On your marks, get set, recap.
Emily: The Bennets are getting to know their new neighbors a little bit better.
They are visiting back and forth. There is obvious affection between Bingley and Jane that has been growing, but everybody's kind of unsure about everyone else on both sides. But then Jane is invited to dine at Netherfield just with the ladies. And falls ill because her mother has decided that she has to ride the horse and she is forced to stay overnight.
Lauren: Dun, dun, duuuuun.
Emily: I'm just, I know, I missed material, but I'm just going to be proud of myself for not having like a full five second pause where I usually do when I forget how to speak. So I'm going to be proud of myself anyway.
Lauren: As you should be.
Emily: And then we're going to move on to you.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: Ready?
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: 3, 2, 1. Go.
Lauren: Okay. Everybody in their little country town is having lots of gatherings, Bingley, and Jane are getting to know each other better. Charlotte thinks that Jane should be a little bit more explicit and Elizabeth, Elizabeth's like, ew, reveal that you like a man? No. Which she tries not to do with Darcy at all.
Who's beginning to like her a little bit more. Mrs. Bennet schemes to get Jane stay overnight at Netherfield. Bingley's two sisters despise everybody except for Jane and even Jane, they make fun of. Darcy's kind of falling in love with Elizabeth and Elizabeth still hates him and everyone but Bingley sucks.
Emily: Well done.
Lauren: Thank you.
Emily: I think that was very good. Okay. So yeah, this is very much [00:04:00] just kind of building character relationships in the section. The Netherfield group comes and pays a visit to the Bennets and the Bennets return the visit and all of that. They're meeting at, various gatherings in the neighborhood.
Lauren: Bingley is clearly beginning to show a preference for Jane and here's also where we get to see. So we see Charlotte's pragmatism. We see that Elizabeth is determined not to do anything that would make her look as though she's pursuing a man in literally all areas of her life. Now Elizabeth is saying, oh, isn't this great, Bingley so clearly prefers Jane. And I can tell that she really likes him as well, but you know, she's discreet and she's not going to like, make sure that everyone knows about it. And Elizabeth is like, she's proud of her sister for not being. Super obvious. And the fact that she likes Bingley and Charlotte says, well, actually she might want to be a little bit more obvious because otherwise Bingley's not going to believe that she likes him.
And Elizabeth is like, oh, well, don't be stupid. Like any idiot could see that Jane likes him. Charlotte is like, ah, no, they can, they can not see that. And she will lose him if she's not a little bit more obvious.
Emily: I feel like we also are really strongly here starting to get the sense that Lizzie is the main character.
We're starting to see things through her perspective more often than anyone else. Whereas the first five chapters, we kind of saw it more evenly from like the perspective of the Bennets as a whole. With, of course, asides to the Netherfield gang, which I think I'm just going to have to call them that.
So we do also here get a little bit of insight into, you know, what the Netherfield gang are gossiping about when the Bennets aren't in the room. But when Lizzie is on camera, as it were, she's definitely the, the character of focus.
Lauren: We talked a little bit last episode about how you're not sure if Bingley is being set up to be the prize or Darcy in just these first five chapters, if you go into it completely blind.
But here we see that it's very clear that [00:06:00] Darcy and Lizzie are being set up as like the magnets that are slowly being pulled together over the course of the book, especially because now that we've kind of solidified ourselves as looking at this through Elizabeth's perspective, the only other person whose thoughts we get are Darcy's, he's the only other like interior monologue or thoughts we get.
Emily: Yeah. And let's talk about that. Because as we said, last time, we re-- we can't be plot agnostic about Pride and Prejudice. Think most people know the basic trajectory of the book, but it's, it's fairly popular to characterize Lizzie and Darcy as disliking each other right off the bat. But in these five chapters, I really didn't get that sense.
The only time was when there was some callback to where Darcy had said that Elizabeth wasn't handsome enough to dance with, but reading through their interactions now, I, it really feels like they're just kind of like, it's a playfully antagonistic relationship, but they don't actually dislike one another.
And even in their internal monologues, Lizzie seems pretty convinced that Darcy dislikes her. But when you read Darcy's thoughts, he's just like, wow, she's really cool. Like, man, if her family didn't suck, I could really like her, which yeah. Yeah. We're, we're starting to see that--
Lauren: --a few character flaws --
Emily: --that pride, yeah. But definitely nothing so egregious or deeply felt as what Ms. Caroline Bingley would like to portray it as. She spends the entire time, teasing Darcy about like, oh, when are you and Lizzie getting married. Like you should tell your mother-in-law to tone it down. And like, to his credit, he just kind of takes it in stride.
But also on this read, I feel like I'm really relating to Darcy. Because he's hanging out [00:08:00] with like the sister of his best friend and presumably they're close enough to know each other well, but still when someone's just going on and on and on about something, it's hard to say. I don't really like that.
Can you stop teasing me about that? Like I relate Darcy. I relate to you so hard right now.
Lauren: He's just a little awkward turtle.
Emily: He really is.
Lauren: On the subject of Caroline Bingley though. One of the things that stood out to me was last episode we had talked about the, not like other girls trope and in this section, Because Caroline spends so much of these five chapters, either talking about other women or putting other women down in order to make herself look better.
It was hilarious to me that at one point she accuses Elizabeth of doing just that when she spends these entire five chapters speaking badly of every single woman, including her sister, except for Georgianna Darcy, that's it. That's the only person who is female in these five chapters who she speaks up with any kind of regard except for herself.
Hmm. It is hilarious to me that you can see in the dialogue, how much she's projecting talking about Elizabeth under-cutting other women. When she does that for five chapters straight.
Emily: Yeah. And it's not even that Georgianna is the only person she speaks well of it's that Georgianna is the only person that she doesn't speak badly of.
Because like you said, she'll flatter people to their faces. But then as soon as they're out of earshot,
Lauren: did you see her petticoat?
In Unison: Six inches deep in mud!
Emily: But it was also very gratifying. And again, a, I relate to Darcy moment when she's like, basically trying to point that out to him, like, wow, Elizabeth is such a slob.
Like, I can't believe you're totally in love with her. And he's like, her eyes looked really pretty. Like Darcy my man, you're an honorary queer just for that.
Lauren: There was so much that happened in these five chapters. Versus first section was we're getting introduced to everyone. We have one main event, and then we have people talking about it.
This one was okay. We [00:10:00] have now established the setting, the characters, and like some of the plot lines that are going to be moving forward. And now let's go, here we go. No more discussing, what just happened. We're going to just keep moving it forward. Since we jumped ahead in time, a couple of weeks, we have like some summary of the events that happened.
Offscreen off page. And then after that, just one thing after the next.
Emily: Hmm. I mean, that's, it's really great in establishing a lot of character information in a short period of time without just sitting around and expositing.
Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. I actually made a note of that. There is one conversation in particular.
Where the author of this annotated version, or the editor, rather, points out how one conversation is a way for Jane Austen to integrate plot character and theme all in one conversation without doing too much telling rather than showing. It's when Elizabeth and Darcy and Bingley are all having a conversation about Bingley's character pretty much and are discussing.
If you should be easily persuaded or you should, you should remain in your own convictions. When is it a matter of like integrity? And Elizabeth by not folding her opinion actually like arguing back and forth with Darcy is actually upholding Darcy's idea of what you should be doing by remaining firm in her own convictions.
Even if Darcy might dislike her for it. Bingley just wants everybody to get along. And he's like, can you argue somewhere else? And not in front of me because I'm just trying to have a good time. And you guys are really bringing the vibes down.
Emily: Yeah, no, I, I highlighted that too. And it's really masterful the way Jane Austen can work all of these things together and dealing with, you know, Developing character through interaction is something that can be freely difficult, especially when you have a bunch of characters in the same room.
But these group conversations go a really long way towards illustrating to us what all these people are like. You have the debate over Bingley's character and the [00:12:00] conversation about what makes an accomplished woman. And these just say volumes about who each of these people are and the way they look at and move through the world
Lauren: 100%.
And that's really indicative of just how masterful writer Jane Austen is. And you know, why these books have persisted in popularity for over two centuries. Like, because she was so good at creating characters and introducing us to them and making us feel as though we know who these people are without ever info dumping or making it feel too contrived, just sketching out a picture for us and like inviting us into the world that she's creating while also writing commentary on social issues or like the norms of the time.
And it's. So adeptly woven together that it is impossible to me to understand how she did it. Like, how are you, how are you so good at this?
Emily: And it also still feels very relatable. I mean, I may be biased, but going through these conversations, like, okay. Aside from like some of the vocabulary, this is exactly a conversation that I could see having with most of my friends, just, you know, going off on a tangent while somebody else's snarking from the corner and another person is going, are you guys arguing?
Lauren: And that was 90% of the college house parties that I went to.
Emily: Well, you went to the nerd parties, so...
Lauren: I did, on purpose. It was great.
Emily: Like Jane Austen couldn't have been doing that particular thing on purpose, trying to make it a relatable scene throughout centuries. But just because she portrayed people and their relationships in such a, what I think of as an honest way or an authentic way, even if they are fictionalized and, you know, simplified as people because.
It, you know, it's a novel. Because of the way she constructed these characters and had them interact with each other, that just makes it so much easier for us [00:14:00] to grasp and relate to them.
Lauren: 100%. And that's like, what we talked about in virtual Jane con is that if the themes and the emotions in your story are relatable, Then it will be applicable to everyone who reads it, even if the setting is completely foreign to them.
Emily: So talking about how emotions and larger themes can come through, even when our social norms have shifted. And I was really curious to get into what masculinity looked like or was idealized as during the Regency period. I'm going to start off this history section with my eternal refrain that during the Regency era, social norms were changing. As we've talked about in the last season and a little bit with the theme of the last episode, along with the industrial revolution and the rise of the middle class, their ideals were becoming more prominent and being adopted by people of higher classes. Like the Gentry that we're seeing.
So society as a whole was shifting away from idealizing the sort of luxurious upper class lifestyle. Masculinity, of course plays a big role in this. Whereas before the kind of, aristrocratic man was sufficiently masculine when he was idle and just whiling away his time and spending as money, being polite to ladies.
Around the turn of the century, people are starting to say, well, you know, politeness, that can be used to mask a lack of character. Also. We don't really like it when a man's just like playing cards all day. He should have some kind of like, Business skill.
Lauren: Be a man, get a job.
Emily: Right. [00:16:00] And there's also in the wake of the French revolution, especially a burgeoning sense of national identity.
So English nationalism was incredibly strong around this time. And so the ideals of responsibility and service become paramount to what an ideal man is. Not only are you supposed to provide service to the nation, but also take on more intimate responsibilities in the domestic sphere. So being financially responsible for a family or managing an estate, if you have that kind of resource, but that did come along too, with what we discussed in the past season of these sort of Protestant Christian values.
Where emotional expression is being discouraged in favor of restraint. So we're starting to see that, that classic--
In Unison: stiff upper lip!
Emily: Yup.
Lauren: There it is.
Emily: Yeah. So the, the stiff upper lip. Fidelity to your family, obedience and piety in a more religious realm and self-control especially.
Lauren: All things that we happen to see in who?
Emily: Darcy, the perfect man! Yeah. As you mentioned before that conversation about Bingley's character kind of plays into it as well. So the Bingley's are basically a rich merchant family. I think it's like their father had accumulated their wealth. And so Bingley's personality is sort of contrasted with Darcy who.
I mean it's, it's so succinctly put when Caroline says, oh, I can't believe our father didn't leave more books for his library.
Lauren: I was just thinking that I was like, it's the library comment.
Emily: Yes. Yeah.
So Caroline laments, the lack [00:18:00] of books in their library from their father and then compliments Darcy's library at Pemberley and he basically says, well, it should be decent.
It's been building up over generations. So Darcy is coming from not aristocracy, but a long established genteel family. Whereas the Bingleys are new money. Actually the Bingleys have been directly elevated by the rise of the industrial revolution. I mean, they kind of exemplify that new. Middle-class they just happened to be at the top tier of it.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. It's a perfect example of old money versus new money. The only thing that's missing is Bingley being overly ostentatious with his wealth, because he has to prove that he has money, which his father might do. We don't know, that might've been something that the previous generation already did.
And so now his children can afford to be a little bit more restrained in their displays of wealth.
Emily: That actually comes into another one of these things that is desirable. I may have mentioned it last time as, as being something that, you know, fashionable women would have to accomplish. But men were also expected to have some kind of discernment in artistic tastes, in fashion, in music, in art, in literature, theater.
Lauren: We see that with Willoughby in sense and sensibility about men having discerning tastes in literature and in music because it's one of the things that Marianne really values and finds attractive about him is that he has these opinions and like deep feelings about music and art and literature.
When you spoke about the middle-class having an influence on masculinity and how it was perceived. I was thinking about that as I was reading about how professions were linked to masculinity and how you were a man more worthy of respect, depending on what occupation you held or didn't hold. And a lot of that is like a class thing and not just masculinity, like, but they're very tied together, especially they're talking about [00:20:00] when Caroline again is poking fun at Jane and Elizabeth and the rest of the Bennets and talking about.
The relations that Darcy will have when she's able to wish him joy, because he's going to marry Elizabeth. And they're talking about how they have an uncle who's an attorney, but attorney doesn't have the same, like social clout that it does in the 21st century, because like any Tom, Dick or Harry could be an attorney, but there's only like 15 judges in the whole country.
So a judge is really what you want to be. And an attorney is like, okay, like you're getting somewhere. But it's still not worthy of like the or the prestige esteem that a truly genteel profession would give to you. And it just made me think about how you could see how their value as a man and their masculinity was then tied to their profession.
Emily: And that also ties into this desirable trait of independence, especially financial independence. Because if you are a man who doesn't have a profession, then presumably you are dependent on the wealth of others. So this is something that we also saw in Sense and Sensibility with Edward being encouraged the whole time to basically get a job because he was lesser while he was dependent on the means of his mother, of his family.
Lauren: We see that today, you know, men are supposed to be the ones who are putting food on the table and providing for the family and blah, blah, blah. And if you can't provide, then you're less of a man. Or even if you are in a relationship where the woman is the breadwinner now you're less of a man because you're not providing.
Aside from historical context. Where else did you see masculinity in the pages?
Emily: Well, there were several sort of offhand comments about various people.
For one, they describe Mr. Hurst as being an indolent man who lived only to eat, drink and play at cards. So--
Lauren: exhibit a!
Emily: That was the kind of thing that [00:22:00] would have been perfectly acceptable in an aristocrat of the 18th century. But presumably he's also of the equivalent merchant class and he's just lazy and just wants to enjoy himself all the time, which mood, but it's , it's not painted as being positive.
Lauren: Right. I was thinking of differences in masculinity of old and masculinity of today and how in American and some Western culture like dancing is seen as a feminine thing to do. And that is somehow, you know, as so many things evolve to be considered feminine that weren't once gendered. Now dancing is like more feminine and men are sometimes looked down upon if they enjoy dancing or if they enjoy dancing that's specifically considered more feminine.
It's like, if they're a man in ballet or something like that, and now it's like, oh, well, I can make all these assumptions about you now, because you can't be a man's man or whatever you want to call it. But in these opening chapters, dancing is something that's expected of men and of genteel men. And you're rude if you don't dance and dancing and being good at it as something that's valued.
And I was just thinking about how that's different from like American masculinity today, specifically, because masculinity in other cultures encourages dancing. I just don't know where the hell America went wrong.
Emily: I don't know, also more men in ballet. Ballet is fucking hard. And I know this because I, was in ballet for possibly --
Lauren: For like two decades.
Emily: More than two decades.
So yeah. I have a lot of experience in ballet, but yeah, going back to, to dancing, this is one place where our modern conceptions of masculinity fail us because. One of the things that makes Mr. Bingley so desirable is that he's always ready to dance. Ready to ask a lady to the floor. But Darcy is constantly being like cajoled.
Like, Hey, why aren't you dancing? And has this whole [00:24:00] exchange where sir William is basically trying to get him to go dance and Darcy's like, there's nothing special about dancing. And sir William says, do you not think it would be a proper compliment to the place, you know, to, to dance and Darcy replies. It is a compliment, which I never pay to any place if I can avoid it, which.
Next to that. I wrote cue I don't dance from High School Musical 2!
Lauren: Oh, thank you so much. I'm going to have that stuck in my head now.
Emily: You're welcome.
Were there other significant places that you saw masculinity in the text? Oh, actually I, sorry that I asked you a question then immediately chose to interrupt --
Lauren: How dare!
Emily: but the brief exchange about the soldiers at Meryton. I think was kind of illustrative the concept of masculinity at the time.
What made a man manly? So as I think I mentioned earlier, English nationalism was strong. So rather than, you know, politeness and refinement being the ultimate goal, this sort of-- not just physical capability associated with the military, but also the idea of chivalry was very much a positive trait in a man.
Again, not necessarily politeness, because that can be, you know, duplicitous, but expressing your good breeding through action. And one of those chivalrous things would be, you know, joining the military, going and defending Brittania or whatever. Not that it needed much defense at the time.
Lauren: It's really easy to defend. Funnily enough, slightly related only because of the language that's used. The other thing that I was thinking of was when Elizabeth and Darcy had been having one of their little like playful barb conversations, [00:26:00] again. They've been tossing jobs back and forth at one another and Darcy goes and actually asks Elizabeth to dance and asked that she would like to dance a reel.
And a reel was usually like associated with Scotland and was very popular, but maybe wouldn't have been to Darcy's tastes. And so she was like, well, I will not give the satisfaction of laughing at me. So I was trying to decide how I was going to answer you. But I've now made up my mind that I do not want to dance a reel at all.
And now despise me if you dare! And Darcy's response is, indeed, I do not dare. And even Caroline Bingley turns around and was like, uh-oh, I can tell that there's something to be jealous of.
Emily: Yeah. Their interactions with one another and their internal insights too. Just about a page or so earlier. Bingley is he's making fun of Darcy and says, I declare I do not know a more awful object than Darcy, especially at his own house on a Sunday evening when he has nothing to do.
And then it continues with Mr. Darcy smiled, but Elizabeth thought she could perceive that he was rather offended and therefore checked her laugh. So they're both without realizing catering to each other's feelings. And I thought that was especially notable from Elizabeth because she still thinks that Darcy doesn't like her.
Lauren: But she's being polite.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: And also being perceptive and is paying attention to Darcy's feelings because she could have not been looking at him that closely to begin with and wouldn't have noticed that he seemed offended. And wouldn't have been able to check her laugh because she wouldn't even have seen it, but she's watching him closely enough to pick up on, oh, I actually don't think that he's as amused as he's trying to pretend he is.
Emily: This is also another thing that I relate to. I mean, for one, just kind of smiling along as somebody making fun of you, but also the total like high school experience of, oh my God, they're looking at me. They're looking at me. Are they still looking at me? Every time I look, they turn away.
Lauren: And Elizabeth says that at one point, and in the narration, we hear that Darcy had decided he wanted to get to know Elizabeth A little bit more. But he actually couldn't go and just speak to her. He has to [00:28:00] overhear one of her conversations first. So he's lurking on the edge of her conversation, trying to get to know her a little bit better because he can't just go up and talk to her because anxiety. And so he's like, maybe I'll just listen to hear what types of things she talks about.
Emily: And then she calls him out for eavesdropping and he just like in perfect earnestness. He's like, yeah, I thought you made a really good point.
Lauren: Does not pick up on the fact that she's making fun of him at all.
Emily: She says every everything, the deeper we get into this, the more I'm like, oh my God, Darcy, my man. I feel you. He's an honorary queer. That's the classic like women who are into women don't know how to interact with each other and cannot tell when anyone's flirting. So. Yeah, Darcy. You're an honorary queer. I love you.
Lauren: Elizabeth is like saying as an aside to Charlotte, like, what is his problem? And Charlotte's like, don't say anything to him.
And of course, because Charlotte says, don't say anything. Elizabeth's just like, I'm going to say something. I do love that we get more of Elizabeth and Charlotte's friendship in those first two chapters too, because their dynamic is also very entertaining to me.
Emily: Charlotte's always just like, please God, Lizzie don't.
And Lizzie is like, you can't tell me what to do.
Lauren: Lizzie, no. Lizzie, yes!
I did have a pop culture connection for today. It's it's perhaps precarious, but that's okay. I was thinking about male gaze versus female gaze and how that shows up in what men think women want when it comes to masculinity. Nine times out of 10, what women who like men want is something that's closer to a Bingley.
But men don't realize that women place more emphasis on emotion and on character. And while there are definitely women who are into beefy manly man, as far as aesthetic appeal, when you're looking at the type of men that women lift up and idolize, or that women [00:30:00] write as idealized heroes in fiction, it's not the idea of men that we get from Hollywood, which is usually directed by men.
So, if you look at like, who are the men in pop culture that women rabidly support, you have. The Beatles you have NSYNC and the Backstreet boys. You have BTS. All men who manly men call like, oh, well, those are women. They're overly feminine. They're this, that, and the other. People that a man's man with very heavy air quotes would make fun of or denigrate, but who is getting support from women by the millions every time versus who do you see in movies as this is what women want?
Also, let me just say, there is aesthetic appreciation to everything. Also. Women are not a monolith and there are lots of women who were like, yes, absolutely 10 out of 10, give this injected directly into my veins, but looking at like Chris Hemsworth in Thor and how that's the man that all women want, or the difference in how Hugh Jackman is edited on two different magazine covers.
When he's on the cover of a magazine marketed to women, he's in soft pastel colors. He's in like a v-neck shirt. You know, he looks very inviting.
Emily: He's smiling, gently.
Lauren: He's smiling. He looks like someone who would bundle you up and make you a cup of tea. And then you look at Hugh Jackman on the cover of a men's magazine within months of each other, by the way.
And he's jacked up to high heaven. He's snarling, he's doing all this stuff. So much of the performance of masculinity is for other men. And it's not for women. Masculinity is not based off of what do women want from us. Like how women are forced or asked to conform to what men want of us and are made to be aware, regardless of whether or not it's something we actually want to participate in or not.
We usually know what the expected or the standard is. Men do not care. They care about what other men think. But their conception of masculinity is [00:32:00] in a male echo chamber and isn't based off of any type of female input at all. I just find it interesting that the concept of masculinity is so homoerotic.
Emily: Elaborate rituals.
Lauren: I'm just saying.
Emily: Yeah, no, I mean, you're absolutely right.
That men are creating and disseminating the images that are deemed to be ideals, whether or not anyone can possibly live up to that. And I mean, we do have more of a trend now of kind of mocking these ideals. Like, oh, this is what peak performance looks like.
Lauren: I think the TLDR of what I'm trying to convey is that ideal masculinity is very different, depending on who you're asking.
Masculinity is in the eye of the beholder, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Emily: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, and that, that was true 200 years ago as well. The men at the top of the heap who were living their luxurious lives probably thought that, you know, oh, they were the peak of masculinity.
Whereas the middle or even working class man was probably much more concerned with like, am I working a respectable job and providing for my family?
Lauren: You know what specific scene has been coming to mind as we've been talking about this? Don Draper is the protagonist of Mad Men. And you learn over the course of the show that he came from like a very poor working class background, completely reinvented himself.
And over the course of the show is this very well-to-do businessman. And there is a scene where he's at a dinner party at one of his colleagues' homes, who was raised with a silver spoon. It's just like these two men and their wives. And they're having like the dinner party conversation and the sink breaks.
And the whiny man who's born with the silver spoon. Doesn't know what to do. Don Draper on the other hand, like removes the suit coat gets on his hands and knees. He's like, [00:34:00] hand me the tool that fixes the sink and the women are looking at him like. Oh, a man has arrived and it just reminded me of the indolent lazy man who doesn't really have to work for anything being seen as less of a man still.
And how, even though they work at the same agency, they're in very similar positions in life to the point of like working in the same building. But Don Draper is immediately seen as more of a man, because he has this very physical skill that he can put to good use. Whereas even though his coworker is still like a man in the sense that he can provide for his family, he couldn't do this very simple task of fixing a sink.
Emily: I think even where it seems like the male gaze versus female gaze agrees on something that is positively masculine, like undertaking a physical task. The male gaze tends to simplify that, I guess, into the physical appearance. It's the muscle. Whereas from a woman's perspective, I think it's not necessarily like, Ooh, muscly.
Although of course it may very well be, but it's something about the application in a practical way. And. Being capable of doing something. So--
Lauren: Being capable is so attractive.
Emily: Oh my God. Someone who's really good at what they do. Like that's the sexiest thing anyone can have going for them.
Lauren: I agree. It's less, it's less than Ooh muscle because it's, and it's not like excessive skin showing.
So he still has on like a little button up shirt. Anyway. It was definitely the capable skill that was the more attractive thing. Especially when the literal man of the house couldn't fix it.
All right. Shall we call it and wrap it up?
Emily: Yeah, let's wrap it up. So, Lauren, what are your final thoughts about this section?
Lauren: Oddly enough, this is the only thing that's coming to my brain. So I'm just going to say is that I would have to agree with Darcy when they're having the conversation about being easily persuaded about remaining in your own [00:36:00] convictions, which goes against the actual theme of the book. But I do think in the right time or place, there's something to be said for sticking to your guns.
And just being able to say, I know what you want me to think, but this is how I feel. And this is how I think, and I'm going to stick to that because I think there's a power in that perhaps, because I'm such a people pleaser. That's why it stands out to me like, oh yeah. Being able to stay firm in your convictions is something that I would like to be able to do more often.
So my final takeaway is that on this point, I agree with Darcy.
Emily: Yeah. That's, that's certainly not a bad thing to take away from this.
Lauren: Because like, there were so many things that my brain was overwhelmed by choice, and this was the one thought that was in my mind. So we're going to go with it.
Okay. Now it is your turn.
What's your final takeaway.
Emily: Surface appearances aren't everything. There's a lot of other things going on internally for everyone. So you can't necessarily take that most obvious interpretation of a person's thoughts or feelings.
Lauren: Don't take everything at face value.
Emily: Yeah, exactly. Don't take it at face value.
Lauren: Yeah, that makes sense. And that's all she wrote. Just kidding. There's like a lot of book left.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of reclaiming Jane. Next time, we'll look at chapters 11 through 15 of pride and prejudice through the lens of friendship.
Emily: To read a full transcript of this episode. Check out our website, reclaimingjanepod.com where you can also [00:38:00] find the show notes, our full back catalog and links to our social media.
Lauren: If you'd like to support us and help us create even more great content, you can join our Patreon @ReclaimingJanePod or leave us a review on iTunes.
Emily: Reclaiming Jane is produced and co-hosted by Lauren Wethers and Emily Davis-Hale. Our music is by Latasha Bundy and our show art is by Emily Davis Hale.
Lauren: We'll see you next time.
Emily: I just watched a video like three days ago about Chad and Ryan are gay that's centered on that song.
Lauren: They switched clothes at the end of that song. I'm just saying, if that is not a subtle nod from Disney saying that these two absolutely went and banged after the song was over and then came back and tried to act like nothing happened, I don't know what is.
Emily: I'm nodding so much I'm gonna get dizzy.