Pride and Prejudice Finale: Wrapping Up

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Anchor | Breaker | Castbox | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Radio Public

Don’t see your platform of choice? Click play above!

The final episode of the season, in which we drink and we (pretend to) know things. Lauren and Emily discuss their final thoughts on the whole of Pride & Prejudice and throw a healthy amount of shade in the Bennets' direction.

Show Notes

Us: Let’s actually get a little tipsy and give advice to Austen characters, it will be so funny!

Also us: Somehow manage to deliver a calm, relatively cross-talk and chaos-free episode

Clearly wine mellows us out…anyone got any suggestions for what we should sip on for our unsolicited advice to Mansfield Park characters next year?

Transcript

Season 2 Wrap Up

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 wrapping up our discussion of Pride and Prejudice and giving characters some questionable advice.

Emily: Ah, we made it to the end!

Lauren: We've made it!

Emily: And we don't have to recap this time. Hallelujah.

Lauren: We do not. We're, we're done with the recaps for now. At least. They'll return in February, but we're not going to attempt to sum up the entirety of Pride and Prejudice in 30 seconds. We struggled doing it five chapters at a time.

Emily: I know, cruel and unusual punishment is what 30 seconds of all of Pride and Prejudice would be.

Lauren: It would just be girl sees boy. Boy hates boy, boy loves girl--

Emily: Boy hates boy?

Lauren: Boy--

Emily: well, no, there is some of that.

Lauren: Wasn't my intention, but yeah, that worked.

Emily: Yeah, I mean, you, you could just shorten it with enemies to lovers.

Lauren: This is true. How to sum it up in one second.

Emily: But fortunately, we don't have to do this. Like with Sense and Sensibility, we're just going to look back at our experience reading Pride and Prejudice, especially through all of the lenses that we worked with this season. And then of course, we are going to dive into the second edition of Advising Austen and give some rapid fire advice to various characters.

Lauren: Fueled on by, we usually just have water while recording, but for these wrap-up episodes, we like to have, you know, a nice beverage.

Emily: A libation.

Lauren: A libation, if you will. So we have a glass of red wine, apiece. We have a nice Cali Red with Snoop Dogg, hashtag not sponsored, but I am just entertained by the fact that we have Snoop Dogg wine.

Emily: All right, well, let's, [00:02:00] let's go ahead and get started. How about we just jump in with our general thoughts on the experience of reading Pride and Prejudice in this particular way. Because last time I had not read Sense and Sensibility, and so it was sort of like, okay, Emily, how was it reading it for the first time?

But now we've read it many times before, but we've, we've read it in very different contexts. So, Lauren, how, how did this experience compare with ways that you've read Pride and Prejudice before?

Lauren: First of all, I hadn't sat down to read Pride and Prejudice in years. So it was nice because there were details that I had forgotten. Even though I'd read the book multiple times before this, the ways that I had been engaging with Pride and Prejudice lately had all been, like, some type of film adaptation, whether movie, or web series or a TV show. And so I hadn't gone back to the actual source material. And so it was nice to see the plot points that I had forgotten or that weren't adapted into the various things that I've seen and to get the original story. I really, really loved that.

I know it's such a basic thing, but it was nice to kind of revisit it after watching so many different adaptations to see what made it in and what I had forgotten.

Emily: Yeah. It's always fun to go back to the source material for anything that you've seen adaptations of, I think.

Lauren: And I think reading it through these different lenses helped it still feel fresh and new.

So it would have felt fresh be-- just because I hadn't read it in so long anyway. Being able to focus on different aspects of it while I was reading was really nice as well. So not just reading it to pick a part academically like I did for class or not just reading it just for fun, like I'd done so many times on my own, but to look, to see where do I see aspects of femininity or where do I see something where I can relate this to identity, to our last one?

I appreciate being able to think about and make connections to things that I wouldn't have thought of in any other context when reading Pride and Prejudice. [00:04:00]

Emily: That's similar to what I was thinking about as I was kind of mentally preparing to for this recording session was that when I've read it previously, because I've read it several times on my own, but then one of my high school English classes read it as well.

And so when I read it on my own, it was always sort of for the love story, basically. And then when we read it in high school, of course, it was sort of your typical, basic literature analysis. This is how we pick out themes, et cetera, et cetera. And we certainly were not looking at the kind of topics that we've talked about in this season.

You know, we weren't, we weren't talking about imperialism or family dynamics or anything in a high school English class. And so, yeah, like you said, we're able to concentrate on very different things than what we normally would in any other context, really, because we do have this discussion aspect where we're bringing our thoughts and our analysis and laying it out and bouncing things off one another.

But it's still not, you know, writing a paper that has to be graded.

Lauren: And I think it made it more fun too, that we had both read it before and that we both know the story so well and also have engaged in loving the story together. Before I think we had mentioned in passing that we really liked the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, but I don't know that we specifically said that that was one of the formative things of our sophomore year of college was, that was the year that we specifically shared a room.

So we had lived together in apartments after that, but that was like, typical dorm room experience. And we would come home from class Monday and Thursday and watch like new episodes of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. And so it felt like a return to that, like in our friendship level. And that I really liked.

Emily: That was really fun. Cause it's, I mean, Lizzie Bennet Diaries will have been out for 10 years, but it's like you said, it felt like returning to that moment, that kind of cemented our friendship. So yeah, that was a lot of fun [00:06:00] as, as much as I enjoyed the experience of Sense and Sensibility where I was reading it for the first time, this was unique and special.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: And especially with the timing of it being 10 years since we became friends.

Lauren: Oh yeah. Almost exactly. Yeah. I think it's nice to be able to have the analysis aspect, but also the fan girl with your friend aspect as well. Because I think that that's just an underrated part of reading and loving any kind of, like, literature or engaging with media is being able to talk about it with friends who also love the thing that you love and sharing in that like joy and excitement just makes it so much better.

Emily: And that's always been such a foundational aspect of our relationship is having both the fan girl and the analysis simultaneously, which is why, yes, we are fully aware that like, we're possibly one of the nerdiest friendships you'll see, but we own it, so.

Lauren: We met at a Doctor Who watch party.

Emily: We really did. That is that is truly our origin story is we met at a Doctor Who watch party.

Lauren: I don't think there's any hope for us.

Emily: So we have, like we did with Sense and Sensibility how much having the lens to read through affected our analysis and our re-experience of the novel.

So I have the list of themes here that we read through. Our themes for Pride and Prejudice in order are: femininity, masculinity, friendship, war, imperialism, family, trust, humility, truth, belonging, and identity.

Lauren: Ooh, we had some good ones.

Emily: We really had some good ones. And looking back over that, just such a simple list, like that was all we had?

These have really just become a jumping off point, which is great.

Lauren: But I do feel like thinking of reading these books for a second time, [00:08:00] I think because -- or fifth or, you know, however many times we've read it.

Emily: We're not counting anymore.

Lauren: No, I do feel like sometimes it was easy to completely go off the rails and forget about the theme because we had so many things to talk about just related to the book itself, because we're so familiar with the story, but it was nice to have that anchoring aspect to guide our conversation because otherwise we could have just talked about the events of the book ad nauseum forever. And so it was good that we had something to go back to and be like, okay, wait, well, let's actually analyze like the masculinity of Darcy in this scene because otherwise we would just be off the rails.

Emily: Right. Where in Sense and Sensibility, because it was my first time reading it, I felt like the themes were beginning the conversation about each section, whereas with Pride and Prejudice, it felt like it was, it was a good boundary to have in mind that we can't just go off the rails and talk about absolutely anything and everything.

There is a goal for each episode.

Lauren: Right. Did you have a favorite theme that we read through?

Emily: I've been thinking about this for hours. And I think if pressed, I would have to say truth because that led to such an interesting discussion of what truth is and how it's constructed and how we define it and how we think about it.

Which, you know, maybe I just like weird trippy psychological conversation topics, but that, that really got the juices flowing for me.

Lauren: I feel like we were able to get really philosophical with that discussion. I don't think I would have taken that analysis down that route without having that back and forth of thinking about truth in that section specifically, and being able to bounce ideas off of you because you brought up things that I never would've considered.

Emily: Every single episode for me. That's why I look forward to hearing the pop culture [00:10:00] topic every time, because I never know what it's going to be. And I'm always so excited to see that connection that wouldn't have occurred to me.

So did you have a favorite theme?

Lauren: I think that colonialism was one of my favorites. I think again, because it opened up a new aspect of conversation and we were able to talk about like the militia and its role, because even though the military features in so many of Austen's novels, I feel like people don't talk about why the military was just hanging around all the time enough.

Emily: It becomes almost a set piece rather than an aspect of the society of the time. It's just, oh yeah, the militia is there and they wear uniforms. And because there's so much else going on in the story proper, we kind of gloss over all of the other things that were happening out in the world.

Lauren: Where are these navy men going? What could they possibly be trading?

Emily: You know, don't think too hard about it.

Lauren: No. Just let it be. That's for Mansfield Park, we'll talk about that next season.

Emily: No, but it did also, I think, mesh really well with conversations that we, as a society are having right now about the history and legacy of these major actions that Western countries took in the last, I was going to say several hundred years, but. Well, okay.

Yeah. Several hundred years. That's that's when we did a big colonialism.

Lauren: Yeah. I think that colonialism was my favorite, especially because it opened up so many avenues for conversations that I think either people avoid having when it relates to period drama or don't feel like they have the tools to talk about, or they're stuck to like very niche spaces and they don't really make it into the wider fandom conversation.

And so I liked that we were able to have that conversation and to think about it and to talk about it and maybe inspire other people to think [00:12:00] about things differently too.

Okay. So what was your favorite pop culture moment this season?

Emily: Maybe I'm just harping on the truth episode, but I think The Matrix was my favorite one, because that was, I mean, they were, they were all kind of a surprise to me, but that one was so unexpected, partly because I've never seen The Matrix, it's just in my cultural consciousness, but connecting that to Pride and Prejudice through the theme of how truth is constructed was like... that blew my mind a little bit while recording. So yeah, that was absolutely incredible. And I still haven't watched The Matrix, but maybe during our pseudo break, I'll finally do that.

Lauren: That sounds like an excellent idea. Also, I am honored.

Emily: Did you have a favorite history topic that came up?

Lauren: Yes. And mine is easy because it was the one that we just did. It was Public Universal Friend. I love that one.

Emily: I'm so glad.

Lauren: And I feel like when I was listening to you, I was like, I must have learned this before, but I don't know why it didn't stick into my brain, but I don't-- whether I learned it in the past or not, I'm just really glad that that was something that we were able to talk about because, and I said this in that episode as well, but any time or any instance where we're able to look at history and prove that underrepresented groups have been here the whole time and that we didn't just spring into existence in like the last 50 years is something that's really important to me and something that I love that we're able to do. And so being able to talk about like what non-binary representation looked like in Jane Austen's time, I think is so cool. And I think that was definitely my favorite because I learned something new.

I hope other people learn something new. I just thought that was so cool because we're not taught that in like mainstream history classes. I mean, we've talked about the failures of the U S public education system [00:14:00] multiple times before.

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: But that is not something that my public school teachers saw fit to teach me. So I'm glad that I was able to learn it from you.

Emily: Yeah. And that's something that I'm hoping to do a little bit more like moving forward is taking the theme and finding someone related to that in history and saying, "this space existed." So we'll, we'll see how that works out. Because as I've said before, the history research can be a little bit tricky sometimes, but...

Lauren: yeah, I am so here for it. I do think, I know you haven't read Mansfield Park, but I feel like you'll have lots of opportunities to do that in our next book.

Emily: Wonderful. I'm so looking forward to it.

Lauren: It will be a field day for you.

Emily: I did just acquire a copy of Mansfield Park, which like my copy of Pride and Prejudice is secondhand.

So I think now that's just, that's just going to have to be a thing, that with every book I have to be given a secondhand copy from someone. So if you want to start lining up your old copies of the rest of the novels to send to me before future seasons... yeah. Keep that on board.

Lauren: You've got at least eight months. So you have time. Does your copy have any writing in it? Like did the previous owner write any comments in the margins?

Emily: It appears to be pristine.

Lauren: Dang. I mean, that's a good thing, but also darn. I just love seeing if people wrote anything in books, I used to be one of the people-- and forgive me if you are still one of these people -- who was absolutely against writing in books at all. And then when I went to school, then that changed completely because I was taking notes and like writing things.

Emily: I, I have always been hardcore on the marginalia. If you send me your secondhand copies, know that if they are returned, they will not be in the state they arrived in.

Lauren: You will now have a vintage, special edition...

Emily: We'll start auctioning them off for charity.

Lauren: You know, we get 10,000 plays and all of a sudden we're celebrities.

Emily: Look, we're manifesting.

All right. [00:16:00] Well, now that I, I think we've officially crossed the line into a little bit silly. Did we want to go ahead and start advising Austen characters?

Lauren: I'll drink to that.

Emily: Hell yeah. Cheers from across the table.

Lauren: All right. Shall we start off with the one, the only Lizzie Bennet?

Emily: Yes. I feel like that's the only logical place to start.

Lauren: Really is. Yeah.

Emily: What are we going to say to Lizzie? There's so many things that we could say to Lizzie.

Lauren: Just accept that you're bisexual.

Emily: That's our advice to everyone, accept that you're bisexual. Well no, not to invalidate anyone's sexuality. But I think Lizzie needs to keep in mind that her opinion is not the end all be all.

Lauren: I think also stop being so judgy of Charlotte.

Emily: Right? Like she's doing her best.

Lauren: She-- truly. She's doing her best and her best is actually pretty fantastic.

And your bestie is really smart and I need you to stop being so judgmental.

Maybe. And this is like less silly, I suppose. But I feel like in the little epilogue part of Pride and Prejudice, it says when Kitty was removed from Lydia's influence and went to go be with Lizzie and Darcy, that they had a good influence on her. And she was able to kind of shape up. So maybe spend more time with your younger sisters, because you have more of an influence on them than you, you think that you do.

And yes, they're like silly and annoying, but also they don't have to be, if you spend time with them and talk with them and maybe, you know, role model a little bit.

Emily: Don't write them off. They have an interior life, too.

Lauren: I did say that Kitty didn't have thoughts last episode. So I'm sorry.

Emily: That is on record ma'am.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah.

Emily: But still, the point stands.

Lauren: I, you know what, I take it back. I'm sorry, Kitty.

Emily: All right. Lizzie [00:18:00] got a lot of advice. How about Darcy?

Lauren: Oh, Darcy.

Emily: I feel like most of the advice I would've given Darcy, he already like, is aware of by the end of the book, because Lizzie called him out on it.

Lauren: Okay. Maybe one of the things that Lizzie didn't call him out on that would be good is just to watch your back around Caroline Bingley.

Emily: Oh, that's a good one.

Lauren: You know, she doesn't have your best interests at heart. She has her own best interests at heart. And you play into those, but that girl does not care about you.

Emily: We never got the sense that he thought she cared about him. So at least maybe there's that. But yeah. Yeah. Watch your back around Caroline Bingley.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: Advice for everyone, frankly.

Lauren: Amen. And I think he sees through her to an extent, but I wonder if he's aware of just how much she's plotting to like, worm her way into his life forever.

Emily: I've got one. If you're going to propose to somebody, maybe think of what you're going to say before you say it?

Lauren: That would be good.

Emily: And make sure it's not, you know, massively insulting to everything they love.

Lauren: You know what, there's so many aspects of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice that I really didn't like the first time I watched it, that now I adore. And one of the things that I hated was the proposal. Like the last one where he's just like walking up--

Emily: no way!

Lauren: That was--

Emily: --cause that was the part that I used to watch over and over and over and over.

Lauren: I will admit. I did not like it the first time I watched it because I thought it was nonsensical. It's dramatic. Now I love it. I just didn't when I first watched it.

Emily: Honestly, and this may be controversial, but I like that cinematic flourish a lot better than wet shirted Colin Firth.

Lauren: Uh oh!

Emily: I said it was going to be controversial!

Lauren: The gauntlet has been thrown.

Emily: Yeah. But we can get into this when we do our live tweets and our stories of, of 95 Pride and Prejudice. So make sure y'all are around for that. I will be on Instagram stories. Lauren will be on Twitter. It's going to be chaotic. We will be [00:20:00] starting fan wars. It will be great.

Whew. All right. I think we've ragged on Darcy enough. I think we've given him enough grief, but someone who does not deserve nearly as much censure as Darcy, what advice will we give to sweet, sweet Jane Bennet.

Lauren: Oh, perfect Jane.

Emily: Be a little less perfect?

Lauren: Yeah, honestly, it's annoying.

Emily: Stop making the rest of us look bad.

Lauren: Honestly!

Emily: Not all of us can be flawless eldest sisters!

Lauren: Like you can't be nice and pretty and good at embroidery and good at dancing. Like, oh my God, come on.

Emily: But no, I think, well, I don't know, kind of the same as Lizzie, but sort of like with the opposite intention is your own opinion isn't the be-all end-all. So Jane thinks well of everybody. No matter what. And I hate to like, want to pop someone's naive bubble, but Jane. Sweetheart, like, you're so lucky that you live in the little insulated society that you do because she would not survive anywhere else.

Lauren: No. If you knocked her down a couple of social classes? Thrown to the wolves.

Emily: Absolutely. And if you bumped her up a few social classes too.

Lauren: Also thrown to the wolves.

Emily: Ripped to pieces.

Lauren: Look at how Caroline manipulated her the entire time. That's a perfect example. Like, oh, she's being so nice to me. Girlie, she doesn't care.

Emily: Not, not to be those cynical people who are like, no one in real life is nice. Like blah, blah, blah.

Lauren: Be nice. Just be aware.

Emily: Yes. Yes. Give people the benefit of the doubt, but you're still allowed to have reasonable doubt.

Lauren: And that doesn't mean that you're a bad person for thinking that somebody could have negative intentions. Like still be a good person, just be a little less trusting of people.

Emily: Which I think swings us [00:22:00] perfectly into our next piece of advice for Mr. Charles Bingley, the golden retriever himself.

Lauren: If there was one thing that Mr. Bennet said that was 100% true, it was that Jane and Bingley will forever be run ragged by the people around them because they're entirely too trusting between the two of them. And will never say no to anything. Anyone could just ask them for the most ridiculous request.

And they would say yes.

Emily: Yeah. Both of them need to learn that no is a full sentence.

Lauren: And what would we say to Charles Bingley specifically.

Emily: Learn to use your own brain and make your own decisions.

Lauren: Yeah. Maybe if your friends say we're going to London, ask a question.

Emily: Ask a single question.

Lauren: Just one! Yeah. I think that's a good one.

Emily: Because his problem is not just that he's so trusting, it's that he's almost willfully blind to it.

Lauren: And it makes sense because he's with people who he trusts to have his best interests at heart. However, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't apply your own reasoning to whatever situation that you're in.

Emily: Yeah. Use your own judgment in addition to other people's.

Lauren: And maybe ask out Jane sooner? I mean, I say, ask out propose to as though there's anything other than like marriage or like awkward courting, but you know, just say something sooner.

Emily: Clarify the situation sooner.

Lauren: DTR. Define the relationship. Like what are we doing? What's happening here?

Emily: Perfect. I love it. That we've solved so many problems.

Lauren: So many problems! So much angst!

Emily: Elizabeth and Darcy could have done their awkward little courtship dance over like Jane and Bingley's parlor or something.

Lauren: I was just thinking like, how would Pride and Prejudice be different if Bingley had proposed to Jane before the ball at Netherfield [00:24:00] where Darcy was like, oh, absolutely not.

We're getting everybody out of here.

Ms. Lydia Bennet, what do we have to say her?

Emily: I think what we should say to Lydia is exactly what you would say to any teenager wanting to make any kind of life changing decision is--

Lauren: don't?

Emily: Maybe just wait a little bit, like just take a couple of years and think about it first.

Lauren: So here's my thing with Lydia is that I. I want her to be a little less self-centered, but I also don't want her to lose her joy because I feel like she's one of the most like, carefree, just like joyful characters in the book. She's also an idiot. And I want her to lose the second part of that without losing the first part. Like, I don't want to completely dampen her spirits because why not be a freewheeling, like fun loving person.

That's fantastic. You do you, but also understand the realities of your society a little bit more? What you do, doesn't only reflect on you. It reflects on your entire family and you will screw everybody over. And that's not fair.

Emily: Yeah. I mean, it kind of similar to Lizzie again, like I guess all the Bennet sisters are just like, it's not always about just you, or you are not actually the center of the world. And obviously that, like, it goes in different directions for each of the sisters because Jane and Lydia that would apply in completely different ways. But yeah, you're, you're not the center of the world and the universe doesn't revolve around you, Lydia.

Lauren: You may think it does.

Emily: I know you're a youngest sibling, but...

Lauren: oh yeah. I always forget she's younger than Kitty because--

Emily: I think everyone does.

Lauren: Yeah.

I think be a little less selfish would be my advice to her.

Emily: Between being a little less selfish and maybe think about this marriage thing for a year or two. She, she'd [00:26:00] be peachy. It'd be fine.

Lauren: Yeah. Anyway.

Emily: Anyway, Mr. Bennet, this is our sort of our, our advice wild card.

Lauren: Okay. So I feel like my first piece of advice to him negates the entire events of Pride and Prejudice, because it would be don't marry Mrs. Bennet.

Emily: I was going to say the same thing. Like, yeah, we've, we wouldn't have this story because those characters wouldn't exist if he hadn't married Mrs. Bennet. But I mean, I think, I think it was me actually a few episodes ago who pointed out that, in that very particular instance of like incidentally choosing a life partner, he and Lydia were very similar that they went for the looks and did not think about the future.

Lauren: Yeah. And it did not end very pleasantly for him. Like it's not a happy marriage.

Emily: It's not. Like, yeah. It's, it's not, you know, completely like abusively dysfunctional or anything, which I th-- I think we kind of default to that even today, that if there's not like. Very clearly something unhealthy or like overtly wrong with a relationship. Then you can't do anything about it, but not respecting your partner is a perfectly valid reason to not continue a relationship.

Lauren: And he clearly does not respect his partner.

Emily: Clearly he has not respected her for like 20 years at least.

Lauren: And is just checked out of family life in general. Unless it's Lizzie, in which case he cares.

Emily: I feel like maybe he looks at Lizzie as like the kind of person that he wishes he had chosen to be his own life partner, like him watching the way she grew up, whether he wishes that he had chosen a partner more like that, or if he wishes that he had been a little more full of consideration, the way that she is, [00:28:00] because she's, she's very clear from the beginning that nothing less than a deep and abiding love is going to convince her to marry someone. And he's very supportive of that, right up until the end when she convinces him that actually, yes, Darcy is the person that she has this deep and abiding love for.

Lauren: And he's so supportive of that that even when she tells him I'm going to marry somebody who will set me up for life and will set my children and grandchildren and will, you know, everyone in my family will be able to have some level of comfort depending on what we're able to provide for them. And he still says, but not if you don't want it. It's not worth it.

Emily: In that respect he is a very good dad to Lizzie, but he is a terrible husband to poor Mrs. Bennet. He's not a good father to most of the rest of his children. Jane he's probably decent, but once he clocks somebody as being silly or frivolous in any way, he's like, oh, they're there for me to laugh at. Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah. And I think that would probably be my other piece of advice is not to treat the people around you as your jokes.

Emily: That's very good, I like that. '

Lauren: cause I-- there's finding humor in situations. And then there's refusing to consider anybody seriously because they're just fodder for your own personal amusement.

Emily: It's the difference between laughing with and laughing at.

Lauren: Exactly. And he does a lot of laughing at.

Emily: Yes, the only person we see him laughing with is Lizzie. And when they are laughing together, they're usually laughing at someone else.

So that also, that also goes for Lizzie. He has a lot of like, wasted potential as a character. And part of his character is that he had all of that potential, that he made one decision and you can see where his trajectory ended up and where it doesn't have to, for his children who are of such a similar disposition.

Lauren: I know we're not doing like analysis, but I feel like it's also just a really good way to see how [00:30:00] Lizzie's character arc has developed when he brings her in to laugh at somebody else in the very end chapters of the book. And she's horrified and is not, not here for the laughter because it would now be at her expense, even though he doesn't realize what's going on.

Our last one, a non Bennet for once.

Emily: A non Bennet. Well, we did two non non-Bennets.

Lauren: Yes, this is true. Miss Charlotte.

Emily: Charlotte Lucas or Charlotte Collins, nee Lucas. We kind of intentionally chose her because she's tricky to advise because we actually support most of what Charlotte did. Like she ended up married to a pretty terrible husband. And actually, I guess, Going from that we could expound on the same thing that we did for Mr. Bennet, that not respecting your partner is a good reason not to continue that relationship, but in Charlotte's case, it's very different because she is a woman who is trying to secure her own place in life and in society.

Lauren: Charlotte is the most reasonable character, so I feel like with the characters who both we chose to give advice to and also just any of the other characters in the book, there's something where it's easier to advise and be like, Hey, that was dumb. Maybe consider this alternate option. But with Charlotte, I feel like whenever she's presented with a decision, she makes the right choice.

Emily: We chose Charlotte to give advice to intentionally because it would be hard, but now I really don't think I have advice to give. I mean, maybe, maybe my advice to Charlotte, like where she would stand at the end of the book, is like, make sure you have some friends outside of the house and like, cultivate a few hobbies.

Lauren: Mine was going to be to make sure that you can find your joy. We see her beginning to figure out her own space within her new household and saying, you know, this is the room that's just for me.

We see the way that she kind of works around or with Mr. Collins, that she's able [00:32:00] to kind of send him off on things where he thinks it's his idea. And she has time to herself. And that's wonderful, that she's able to manage the person who she's married to, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there's joy in her life.

And I think that now that she has secured her place in society, she's ensured that, you know, she won't be an old maid. She's not going to be ridiculed. She has a household of her own. It's okay to now find something that makes you happy. Like you've, you've been self-sacrificing enough. That now it's okay to just find something that makes you happy.

Emily: I second that. Our advice to Charlotte is find your joy.

Lauren: And don't accept all of Lady Catherine's invitations to Rosings.

Emily: Oh my God. Seriously, turn one down, now and again.

Lauren: That is part of finding your joy.

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: Just don't go. Just don't do it.

Emily: I think it's about time to wrap up.

Lauren: I think so. No, that means we have to do final final takeaways

Emily: I was going to say it's it's time for final, final takeaways and I'm on board to do the first final, final takeaway from Pride and Prejudice.

Lauren: I believe in you.

Emily: I think that my broader takeaway from all of Pride and Prejudice is that when it comes to interpersonal relationships, you have to keep space for change.

People can change for the better, they can change for the worse. Sometimes they just change because we're never static throughout our entire lives. So that that's my takeaway. Keep space for change, which also that's, that's one of the meanings behind my first tattoo was it's just triangle. And so one of my like justifications was that it's a Delta, which is the chemical symbol for change.

Lauren: Nerd.

Emily: I know, right. I'm not even a fucking chemist, but no. Yeah. I, I have many meanings for that one, but that was one of them. So it felt appropriate.

Lauren: I [00:34:00] like it.

Emily: Lauren, what is your final, final takeaway?

Lauren: Maybe just to be open to self-reflection and to learning more about yourself and also recognizing that there might be aspects of yourself that you're unaware of.

I mean, we're the best authorities on ourselves, just because we are who we are. But I think that sometimes it's easy to run with that and then think that we know everything there is to know about ourselves. When in reality, there are things that we might just be unaware of, or that we're actively not looking at because it's uncomfortable to admit aspects of ourselves to ourselves.

And so I think that my final takeaway is to be open to greater self-awareness and to actively pursue it.

Emily: I like that a lot. And that is, that does seem to have been the catalyst for the greatest character growth that we saw in Pride and Prejudice. So I th-- I think that. That's a great takeaway.

Lauren: I am actually very proud of myself for thinking about that a glass of wine in and truly off the top of my head.

Emily: If it wouldn't absolutely wreck the audio, I would give you a round of applause.

Lauren: Thank you so much.

Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be back with our brand new segment, Six Degrees of Jane Austen, where we'll connect the most outlandish topics that you suggested on social media to something Austen-related.

Emily: I cannot wait to see what topics we end up with.

Lauren: I know right, me either.

Emily: To read a full transcript of this episode, check out our website, reclaimingjanepod.com, where you can also find the 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, like voting on those outlandish topics suggested on social media, you can join our Patreon @ReclaimingJane.

Emily: Reclaiming [00:36:00] 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.

Pride and Prejudice needs more Snoop Dogg.

Emily: I don't know how it would work, but I'm into it.

Lauren: I'm only saying that because Snoop Dogg's face is staring at me on this bottle of wine.

Emily: No, I support it. I support it. Now we have to figure out where Snoop Dogg fits into the Pride and Prejudice universe.

Lauren: He is the gardener at Pemberley and supplies the Darcys with all of their weed.

I mean, I'm just trying to imagine him still being a musician in the Regency era and just like rapping over a violin.

Emily: I want to see it though. Like, can we get in touch with Snoop Dogg's people? Because I feel like that's the kind of thing he would make happen.

Lauren: He would, because that man just does random things just for the hell of it.

Like he was in like a McDonald's drive through the other day, handing people their orders for no apparent reason.

Emily: All right. If someone connected to Snoop Dogg is somehow listening to this, hook us up. We, we want to make this real.

Lauren: We have a vision and we just want...

Emily: Snoop Dogg is now part of our podcast manifesting.

Lauren: Yes. I just want, you know, those fan edits where they put a random celebrity in the scenes of a movie and make it seem as though they were there the entire time. I want one of those. But professionally shot with Snoop Dogg.

Emily: Yes. Yes. I'm. So into that.

Lauren: Pride and Prejudice out [00:38:00] the hizzy, I don't know what it'd be called, but I'm here for it.

Emily: We can workshop it.

Lauren: Sipping on gin and tea, you know, I don't know. It works! You know, gin and tonic, gin and T!

…Okay. What is my actual final takeaway for this book?