Sense and Sensibility 26-30: “Queering Jane Austen” (with Rational Creatures)
In Episode 6, Emily and Lauren are joined by the creators of Rational Creatures to discuss sexuality in media. Also included: wild speculation, chaotic bisexuals, and some ladies who are just really good friends.
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
Connect with Rational Creatures on their website, Twitter, or YouTube.
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!
Show Notes
We were so excited to have the creators of Rational Creatures as guests on this episode! We could have chatted with them for ages — it is so rewarding to be able to chat with people who are like-minded doing work that you admire. We could have stayed on the call for hours. We couldn’t include the full conversation because the episode would have gotten too long, but if you want to hear it in its entirety, it’s available to supporters on Patreon!
You may not believe us when we tell you we didn’t intentionally bring chaos energy to this episode, but it truly worked out that we started talking about chaotic bisexuals on the same episode where everything seemed ten times funnier than usual. We hope you enjoy the accidentally on theme chaos energy brought to this experience.
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Episode 6 | Sense and Sensibility 26-30: “Queering Jane Austen” with Rational Creatures
[00:00:00] Lauren: This is Reclaiming Jane, an Austen podcast for fans on the margins.
Emily: I'm Emily Davis-Hale,
Lauren: and I'm Lauren Wethers.
Emily: Today, we're talking about chapters 26 through 30 of Sense and Sensibility with the topic of sexuality to guide our conversation. But first, we have some special guests.
Lauren: This episode, we're interviewing the creators of the web series, Rational Creatures, a queer, modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion.
Emily: Stick around after that interview for our usual discussion and analysis of the text.
Rational Creatures Introductions
Lauren: Welcome. Thanks so much for coming on our podcast and taking the time to chat with us. We're really excited to have you here. To start off with, if each of you could just tell us your names, your role in the production, and then where you're calling from.
Anya: I'm Anya. I am calling from the Chicago area and I'm one of the creators slash showrunners slash director slash writers of Rational Creatures.
Ayelen: Hey everyone. My name is Ayelyn. I'm calling from Toronto, Canada, and I am also one of the, oh, I should have written down the order of which you said all that, but I am a co-creator co-director co-writer person.
Hazel: Hi, I'm Hazel. I'm calling in from Bristol in the UK. And I'm also a writer and showrunner, not a director.
Jessamyn: And I'm Jessamyn, I'm calling in from Eugene, Oregon, and I am also creator writer, director, et cetera, et cetera.
Lauren: So for listeners, these are the creators and showrunners of Rational Creatures, which is a web series based on Jane Austen's Persuasion.
It's updated for modern times. It has queer rep, it [00:02:00] has mental health rep and just a lot of really fantastic things that also really spoke to both me and to Emily. So we're super excited to have all four of you on the podcast. Could you tell us a little bit about your production process, a bit about the show, and then how you created a web series from four different places?
The Making of Rational Creatures
Ayelen: Yeah, our, our idea was very much we all kind of knew each other because we had all been creating our own shows in the same kind of liter— like, inspired by literature in the same format. And so we crossed paths, few paths a few times through Twitter, through different shows. We all worked together on Hazel's show, for example, and so we kind of all knew each other and we randomly started a Facebook, like, thread, where we started talking about ideas for Persuasion, which is a novel that we all enjoyed and it hadn't been done yet. And we all wanted to do something with it. And that kind of like really just became like a fun idea to like, wait a minute, we have a really good idea.
Why don't we make this thing?
Jessamyn: And from there it's been what, a three year journey at this point, something like that. Definitely the longest timeline any of us have worked on a show. We started that, just developing ideas really early and then started going, okay, how are we gonna actually make this?
Because we want it to be at a higher level of quality than other shows we've worked on. All of our shows, part of this — except Ash's Robin Hood show — had been filmed as if the characters were vlogging, which is a very approachable and affordable style of filmmaking. But we really wanted to shift over to more traditional cinematic, which is a little more involved and just takes a higher level of equipment and time and all kinds of things. So we started with applying for a grant or two. We didn't get any of them. And then we crowdfunded and we failed that. We were too way too ambitious with our goal compared to our audience. [00:04:00] And then we regrouped and did a smaller, just like a PayPal donation campaign.
And we're like, let's just do essentially a pilot season. Let's just do five short episodes and then we'll have something to show to crowdfund for the rest. And I'll let someone else pick up the story from there.
Anya: Yeah. 2019, we, we filmed the first five episodes and put it out.
And then last year, right before the pandemic happened, we crowdfunded for season two.
So, you know, we were all set to go for season two, basically, but yeah, we can't do anything.
Lauren: Awesome. I'll pass it off to Emily.
Queering Jane Austen
Emily: Great. Thank you. So our theme for this podcast episode is sexuality. Lauren and I both identify as queer or bisexual, and of course, you've created a series that's very modern and very inclusive.
So could y'all talk a little bit about the decision to write both protagonists as bisexual? So how does that become part of the story that you wanted to tell in your adaptation?
Hazel: So I think all of us try to incorporate different sexualities cause it's just so much part of the modern world, like making a modern version without it would just feel ingenuine, I think. Yeah. So that was always part of the viewpoint had going in. I think we started off definitely thinking that we wanted, like, our Louisa character and our Fred character to not be straight. And then just more and more characters became bisexual as we went along really, and that's quite a little bit and we just wanted.
Yeah, like varying views on the same sexualities as well. So it wasn't just one character like representing it for a whole community. It was spread across a few different people's personalities and [00:06:00] views on dating someone.
Anya: Yeah. And I'll just add that, like, obviously in popular media, we don't really have many queer characters, especially not bi characters and like explicitly, explicitly stated as bi characters. So. We wanted to make sure we were doing that.
Lauren: Yeah, that was something that stood out to me specifically, because if we do get queer rep, we fall victim to that bi invisibility again, where we either don't exist or we're just confused.
Jessamyn: Yeah. I think we got actually a little bit spoiled because coming from this community of super, super indie literary-based web series, It was a lot of young women and queer women, especially, making the shows and putting that representation in.
So sometimes I'll realize, I forgot that that's like not normal in regular media cause I'm so used to it. And then I'll be like, Oh yeah, this is, this is like unusual and really lacking still in, in more mainstream stuff.
Lauren: And that's something that's such a gift to be able to just see something as normal, but Ayelen, I don't want to cut you off. I saw you came off of mute.
Ayelen: No, I was just going to add that like in regular life, like our friends are like the people we hang out with. Like I've never been in a group of people where every single person is straight and completely straight. Like I that's just non-existent. So it's like, why would, why would the characters I write be all like, it just doesn't make sense to do it like that. So it's like, to be authentic writers means authentically displaying what we see around us. And that's just, that's just one part of it, I think.
Anya: Well, I'm like, from my point of view, at least I'll only speak for myself here, but just like, I want to see the characters that I should have seen like growing up, you know, like, I didn't know what bisexuality was for a long time.
And like, we should just say the word and have it in our show, which we will.
Lauren: I think, going off of that, one of the things that I feel like a lot of people in the queer community find to be true, but you kind of touched on Ashlyn is that [00:08:00] there's never, I feel like when you see us in mainstream adaptations of things, it's always the token queer friend.
When in reality, there's usually a token straight friend, like queer people tend to find each other and we don't, we're never just the only one in a, any given friend group and it's interesting to think about what that would have looked like in Regency times as well when people weren't out, because it wasn't safe to be, or it wasn't recognized as something that you could be, but that doesn't mean those people didn't exist.
And one of the things that Emily and I want to do in this podcast is talk about possible versus impossible readings of texts. So if. Just because the character isn't explicitly stated to be queer in a book doesn't mean that they can't be as long as it's not like specifically stated that they cannot be in the text.
The possibility is still there just depending on how you interpret it. So I was really wondering, were there moments in either Persuasion or in any of Jane Austen's other novels where you felt like a character could be read as queer, depending on how you want to read it? Sense and Sensibility, for example?
Ayelen: You know, we legit all messaged each other last night and like talked a bit like, wait, okay, let's go through the characters and start figuring this out.
In terms of Persuasion, I'm thinking of like Elizabeth, like her older sister, but I didn't think about it until last night when I literally started like, thinking about this and sh and that's not a character we have in our show, but like, thinking about it, I was like, may -- yeah. Like I can see that. Like she's like, doesn't she hang out with Mrs. Clay? Am I forgetting the names wrong?
Jessamyn: Yeah, I think that's right. That was literally the first thing that came to my mind when I was looking at that question. And I was like, it's hilarious though, that that's like, to me, the obvious queer reading in Persuasion, and yet we've cut those characters and made everyone else queer.
They were just like, not that important to the -- the main plot. So we've simplified some stuff. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of they're, like, companions and Mrs. Clay moves in with them and like, it's a very, I don't know. It [00:10:00] definitely, there's definitely a to me it seems a relatively obvious queer reading of, of those side characters.
Certainly as far as Persuasion goes.
Hazel: Like similarly again, I don't think we really have these characters, but Ms. Smith and them made seem to have a little like household or their own nature in the book as well. And she didn't seem happy with her husband. So something that's a potentially sapphic little place.
Jessamyn: I was trying to think about Sense and Sensibility. And I don't feel like there's anyone that I'm like very obviously, Oh yes. That seems like that character is queer. I feel like again, the one that I've maybe heard discussed. And, and I can see it is that you could do, you could do a queer reading of Elinor, but again, I don't have like a specific reason why that is.
It just, it feels like there could be vibes.
Anya: Chaotic lesbian Marianne. I don't know. Like —
Jessamyn: Chaotic bisexual Marianne?
Anya: Yes!
Jessamyn: I think, I think that could be there. I could see it.
Anya: Just romanticizing everything, in love with everyone and everything.
Jessamyn: Yeah. Well maybe she doesn't realize, maybe you make Brandon, a woman and that's part of her. Like, no, I don't, I'm not, I'm not into Brandon. And then she's like, Oh wait, I could, I can see it.
Lauren: Ooh, Shakespeare vibes. I like that.
Gender Swapping Persuasion
Emily: So actually on the topic of characters being different genders, that's something that, that y'all did in Rational Creatures was that sort of gender-swapping. And so I wanted to ask whether that was something that was intentionally decided on during the writing process or did that come about more organically, like during casting. How did you end up with certain characters not being their original gender from the text of Persuasion?
Jessamyn: It was in writing. We, we definitely made those choices. I think swapping Louisa to Louis was like a very, very early idea. And I don't remember whose idea it was, but we were all like, yes, [00:12:00] we like it. We're doing that. And who else have we swapped?
Oh, Charlie. I don't remember what the... why specifically we decided to swap Charlie. I think we were just like, it would be cute if lesbian married couple. I don't, I don't remember there being a lot more reasoning than that.
Anya: I think it was as simple as that. Yeah. We were just like, Hey, they should just be, they should just be a couple and they should be —
Hazel: I think it was partly because we're talking about how Sophie and her husband were like the model marriage in the book.
So we wanted our own version of that and it's kind of how it worked out.
Jessamyn: But we cut Sophie's husband too, so…
Anya: Sophie doesn't need a husband.
Ayelen: The gender-swapping also just allowed us to explore the characters in a different way than Jane Austen did. Like Louisa is a character in the book. We know who Louisa is, but I don't think that necessarily, like we really went deep with Louis, like doing that gender-swapped, allowed us to create our version of Louis and our really, like, organic way to our story and the way our story was going to work. And I think like Louis for a lot of, I know for me, like Louis is like, he's just like, he's one of my favorite. He's probably my favorite character. I love writing for Louis. I love watching Derek be Louis on screen. I'm like some of the things that I'm most excited about in season two, have to do with Louis.
And I don't know that we would have gotten that reaction for, I don't think we would have written Louisa as a female the same way.
Jessamyn: Yeah, that's probably true. I agree that Louis is my favorite. He's my son, but it was hard to choose! I love all my children equally but Louis is my favorite.
Anya: No. It was hard though, to choose, like, who we were going to swap, because it's like, then you start playing with the sexuality of the characters as well.
Like okay. If Louis is a guy, but then, then Fred still ends up with Ana who's a woman. And then like, you don't want it to seem like, Oh, we're trying [00:14:00] to say that. You know that the MLM relationship is bad.
So then, you know, we ha we worked to make Ben a more, like, main character, I think, or like give him more traits because in the book he's just kind of like quick at the end, get married kind of thing.
So we had to, I don't know, we, we did it.
We tried to be mindful with our swapping.
Jessamyn: Yeah. We had a, we had a friend who beta read and was like, Hey, just be careful that this doesn't read like, Oh, the male/female pairing is better than a male/male pairing. We were like, Oh yes. Excellent point. And tried to make it be more like, Oh, it's not that we're saying.
These relationships have different combinations of gender. One is better than the other. It's like a healthier, stronger, more connected relationship is better than another one. But then it also, it forced us to like flesh out and make all the characters more layered and complex, which is never a bad thing. So —
Creating Adaptations (& Artistic Freedom)
Ayelen: I think when we're, when people, when I think of adapting at all, it seems like in my head, I, or I used to, I should say, I used to think about it as easier than writing a, an original work because you're relying on a piece of fiction or something that already exists. And so there's certain things that we don't have to think about.
They're sort of like, we know that there are certain plot points that we want to hit, but at the same time, this is an adaptation and an adaptation means that we're creating something of our own just with this original piece of work in mind. And that actually causes a lot of stress within us sometimes because it's like, yes, you want to be original and you want to be true to the characters we've created, but we also don't want to steer too far away from Jane Austen, because that is the source material.
And, and like I said, doing these gender-swapped really allowed us to explore some of these characters more. And like Jessica -- Jessamyn mentioned the character of Ben, he in the book, he, he appears like halfway through and he's kind of like a poet or whatever, and you kind of learn a little bit about him and then he kind of [00:16:00] conveniently falls in love with Louisa to, to kind of get that out of the way.
And in our story, we — we've developed that character and like, I sometimes I think about it, like Ben to me is a completely different character than what he is in the book. And we got really lucky that we got an actor that was really able to portray him. And we're really excited about what's going to happen with these characters.
But again, that wasn't in our first draft, that it wasn't a character that we had really fleshed out.
Jessamyn: And again, he's one of my favorites now. I'm like what? Like, I would be so sad if we didn't have Ben the way Ben exists now. If he was just like the side character and their romance happened off-screen off-page, like it does in the book.
Anya: I mean, we can call this adaptation, but it's also kind of fanfiction. I'm realizing like,
Jessamyn: What's the difference, though? It's, it's just, you know, we talk about this fanfic — adaptation is usually like you got paid to make fanfic or in our case, not paid, but yeah. Yeah, like it's just —
Ayelen: What's the difference between someone writing at home a story about the Avengers and Joss Whedon creating The Avengers?
The only difference is that he got permission to do it. Well, yes, he got paid to do it, but like, realistically, on an intent, like on when you put, if you put them in two rooms side by side, it's not like Joss Whedon -- like, you know, like this process is the same. And I think so. To me, like we're all over it.
Every writer is writing fan fiction. It's just a matter of who gets paid for it and who doesn't.
Jessamyn: And everything is secretly fanfiction of something because it's like, Oh, well you're actually drawing off something that was inspired by Shakespeare, who was inspired by Chaucer, who was inspired by like, you know, there's, there's nothing new under the sun. Really.
Hazel: Yeah. As many problems as YouTube has. I think that. We all just reach back, whatever we want is really useful as well, because the other thing with Joss Whedon and the Avengers. There's so many checks and balances, everything. [00:18:00] Yeah. We can pretty much write what we want and put out. It doesn't mean get paid for it, but we can realize our vision with a bit of help from the crowdfunding, so on.
And that's pretty special.
Jessamyn: Yeah, and that actually ties in, I think, to being able to represent queer characters so well too, because I think there's still an awful lot of the studio system in Hollywood that is still scared that it's going to hurt them financially to have significant queer representation. And there's a lot of. Queer baiting or one-dimensional side characters or bury your gays.
And we don't have to listen to any executives who care about how much people are going to pay for tickets. And that is really great. I mean, it would be great to have some money also. So it's a trade-off a little bit, I guess, but it is nice to have the freedom.
Lauren: That's the eternal trade-off between liking the art and being able to get paid for the things that you want to do.
So you don't want to have the trade-off of I'm finally getting paid for this, but also part of my vision that I feel like is really important isn't supported by the person or the company that's giving me money. And so now what do I do? It's like, that's why can't artists just make the things that they want to do and get paid for it. Why does it have to be so difficult?
The Power of Adaptation
But that actually does tie into one of the other questions that we had, was about what types of things can we learn or can we discover when we take classic stories like Jane Austen novels, or like Shakespeare and tweak the gender, the sexuality of those characters?
So you guys mentioned before, you're not new to this. You had worked on other web series where you had gender-bent or queer retellings of classic stories. So I wonder if you can talk a little bit about what types of opportunities arise when you take those creative liberties and reenvision things that way.
Ayelen: That's a tough question.
I, I think that, like, [00:20:00] there's a reason why a lot of these stories have lasted as long as they have. And that, that there's something universal about some of these stories, at least that, that sticks with people, which is why people keep reading it over and over and over again, not to say that, like other stories don't get the same universality and haven't been read over and over again, but for whatever reason, these stories have stuck.
And I think that. We know that in, we know that in other times there are stories that could have been told, but weren't told because of societal pressures and things like that. And so right now, it's, it's kind of like, we have that opportunity to, to explore some of those storylines and. Like a lot of this, like I started out in literary adaptations because I like to read literature.
Right. And so it seemed like a nice fit for me personally. And in doing so I ended up meeting like, a legion, basically of female filmmakers who, who were doing the same thing as I was, and this wasn't really seen anywhere else. So it really gave us the opportunity to just explore are the things around us while also just connecting that with literature that we loved and we knew was universal in some sense.
I don't know, someone else add something.
Jessamyn: Yeah. I, well, I always say, I think that Jane Austen specifically, if she was writing now, this is a lot what her stories would look like because her stories are full of social commentary on the things that were you know… for her, a lot of it was about the struggles white women were facing, and that's who she was.
And yeah. Like that made sense for her to write about, but I think if she was around now, her char -- her works would probably include, you know, the world around her now, which looks very different than... not that there weren't obviously lots of people who weren't white women around in her time, but she was not probably exposed to very many or it wasn't socially acceptable to put them in published works, which obviously is a problem, but not a problem we face now.
So I think it's either that where you're like, I think if this writer was here now, this probably is the [00:22:00] kind of thing they'd be doing, or sometimes it's the opposite. I think like when we did the show that we did that was Hazel's was from Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. And I, I remember us kind of being like, he probably would hate this.
But we're, we're extrapolating and, and twisting what he did into something that speaks to us now.
Ayelen: Yes, but I liked what you said just now. It's it reminded me… like Jane Austen. Like we, when we think of Jane Austen now, or Shakespeare or any of these writers, we, we think about it as like, those are period pieces.
Those are things from the past. But when Jane Austen was writing, she was writing her contemporary world, right? She was just writing what you saw around her. So we're in essence doing the same, we're just displaying what we see around us in a, in a form of storytelling.
Hazel: Again, kind of going off what Jessamyn was saying.
I think. Maybe cause we started doing it at school. And maybe just because they're part of the canon that you grew up, like seeing what's on people's bookshelves, like all these stories carry a prestige with them. I like taking them and saying, “and now they have queer characters and women that are important.” I think there's something powerful about that as well.
Jessamyn: Yeah. Another thing with the gender-bending, actually, that I think is interesting as well, and sexuality, that I think a lot of us when we start our adaptations have gone — not with Jane Austen, but with a lot of other stuff, Shakespeare, certainly — “There's not very many women in this, so let's get more women in here.”
And then that leads to like, well, now these two characters who are together are both women. So now they're queer too. So, I mean, we've also purposely been like, let's make characters queer, but it's kind of a. Side effect, I guess, of, of also trying to just be like, Hey, why are these stories just full of dudes?
I guess Rational Creatures is weird in that it's maybe the only one where we've actually done the opposite and made more some of the female characters men, but, but they're nuanced men there. They're soft men, soft boys. We love a soft boi.
Rational Creatures Interview Wrap-Up
Lauren: Oh, those are all fantastic answers to a hard question. So I thank you.
Emily: It's [00:24:00] just, it's such a great series and we really loved seeing the way that y'all took Jane Austen, something that's perceived as being so stuffy and unapproachable, and really brought it into the modern world and told a modern and relatable story that resonates with diverse communities. Thank you all so much for being here with us today.
We know it was a feat of coordination. So just before we let you all go, could you tell our listeners how they can support Rational Creatures, where they can find you, anything that you want to drop before we end our call.
Jessamyn: No. Well, we're pretty easy to find online, we're — Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook are all @RationalSeries and YouTube is I think youtube.com/rational creatures, hopefully.
That's right. But you can find us from any of the social media too, and yeah, you can watch all of season one for free on YouTube and there's quite a bit of fun bonus content. We've tried to put out a few things, even though we're all quarantined, so that there's still something. And then, yeah, just follow along any of those places for updates on season two.
And if you like it, tell your friends, you know, our audience is still pretty small and we know that there's people out there that would like it and just aren't finding it. So if you know someone who would be a fan of modern, relatable, inclusive, Austen, send them our way.
Emily: We will definitely include all of those links in our description and show notes to make sure that we can direct people to see this fantastic piece of work.
Jessamyn: Thank you. And thank you so much for having us. This was fun. We're always, always down to chat about Austen and representation and media and adapting. And we just do this all the time anyway. So getting an excuse to [00:26:00] chat with more people about it is always fun.
Anya: Yeah. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Hazel: Thank you. This was lovely.
30-Second Recaps
Lauren: I'm really glad that we're able to come off of a conversation about what sexuality looks like in media, what it can look like, what it maybe shouldn't look like. And all the ways that you can incorporate that into adaptations as well, because I feel like that'll give us something really great to work with in the recording of this episode, as we talk about possible versus impossible readings. And as we talk about sexuality in a book that doesn't explicitly mention anything but heterosexuality, I think that'll be something that's really handy and also, I just really loved being able to talk to the creators because they're really great people to have a conversation with, let alone interview.
Emily: Yeah, I think it's great to keep in mind that Jane Austen was writing for and about the people around her. So when we're adapting her texts now, or even when we're just analyzing them, I think it's a great practice to put it into our context because I feel like we get to experience it, then, in something closer to the way that Jane Austen's original readers would have.
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: Because it's about our world.
Lauren: Yeah. Jane Austen was writing about her world, and so are we when we adapt her world to modern times.
Okay. Emily, I believe it is your turn to go first for the 30-second recaps.
Emily: For better or worse.
Lauren: For better or worse. We're going to say for better, we're going to be optimistic. Are you ready?
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: On your marks, get set, go.
Emily: Marianne and Elinor have gone to London with Mrs. Jennings. Marianne immediately [00:28:00] writes to Willoughby and he doesn't write back and he doesn't write back and he doesn't come and see her.
And then his card shows up. So he must be in town. Colonel Brandon does come to visit and is very concerned about Marianne. And then they run into Willoughby at a party and he ignores Marianne and then it turns out he's engaged.
Lauren: Time. Just at 30 seconds.
You kind of made it. You got like all the, you got all the points pretty much.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. Okay.
Emily: Let's see you do better —
Lauren: — probably —
Emily: — because I did not do a very good job.
Lauren: Okay. We'll see.
Emily: Ready?
Lauren: Yes.
Emily: Set. Go.
Lauren: Okay. Elinor and Marianne have come with Mrs. Jennings to London. Marianne's pining after Willoughby and is convinced that he's going to show up eventually.
And with each passing day, he does not. Colonel Brandon is still in love with Marianne and wonders if she and Willoughby are engaged. Elinor isn't really sure. They see Willoughby at a party with another woman? And he's super cold towards Marianne. It's really awkward. And then she writes him another letter, and then he writes her a letter and claims that he never loved her?
Excuse me?! And Marianne is depressed. She doesn't want to hang out with anybody else and she wants to go back home to Norland.
Emily: Well done.
Lauren: Getting better. I also just speak entirely too quickly, which I realize every time I transcribe these episodes. So it, honestly, I think that just gives me an edge.
Emily: It works to your advantage.
Lauren: It does give, it does work to my advantage in this context. And then I have to check myself literally every other moment of my life when I'm trying not to speak at 100 words a minute.
Emily: But here you can just let it rip.
Lauren: I can just let it go. And if you can't understand me, I'm very sorry. I know that's probably the case, but it's in the transcription. I promise you can read what I said.
Emily: This is why we post transcripts, just because Lauren talks--
Lauren: I speak too quickly.
Emily: That's not true. We post transcripts for a lot of other reasons. None of them are that Lauren speaks quickly.
Lauren: No. But it works well for the joke.
Emily: It's all in service to the goof.
Lauren: You know, we're quite good at [00:30:00] that.
Sense and Sensibility 26-30 Reactions
Shall we continue our chaotic energy and bring that to our analysis of chapters 26 through 30?
Emily: Yes, because there's so much chaos here and beginning with, you know, just arriving in London with Mrs. Jennings. Okay. I have to say, I have only grown in my appreciation of her in this section, she's like, yeah, she's over the top and kind of clueless sometimes, but she's a genuinely caring person.
She just shows it in ways that are kind of abrasive sometimes.
Lauren: Yeah. And it's like, she — she's a busy body, but she cares. She really just wants the best for you. She might not go about it the right way, but she's never. She's not malicious. She really just cares.
Emily: She's never malicious.
Lauren: And she's funny. She brings so much comedic relief.
I appreciate her so much.
Emily: Okay. So Marianne, Elinor and Mrs. Jennings arrive in London, the Palmers are already there. Elinor and Marianne are staying at Mrs. Jennings' home. And as soon as they arrive, Marianne dashes off a letter to Willoughby because she expects that he's in London.
Lauren: So that's part of why Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood have just assumed that Marianne and Willoughby were engaged without Marianne actually telling them that they were engaged, because otherwise, surely, Marianne would not be so improper as to be writing to Willoughby continuously without being actually engaged. And then I have to wonder, like, do you know your sister and your daughter? Because yes, she would.
Emily: Unfortunately, they're not the only ones who make that assumption because it turns out that all of London is talking about how Marianne and Willoughby are apparently engaged and poor Elinor is just trying so hard not to confirm or deny anything to leave Marianne an out basically. Which is, yeah, that's big sister energy.
Lauren: Yeah. But meanwhile, Mrs. Jennings is undoing [00:32:00] everything that Elinor is trying to do because she's out telling everyone at every society get-together that she goes to that, “oh yeah. I fully expect that we'll see a marriage by such and such a time. They're absolutely besotted with one another.” And so then, of course, that flits from person to person to person until everybody in their social circle knows.
Emily: Because her daughter, Mrs. Palmer is also in on it. The two of them are like actively trying to tell everyone they know Marianne's going to get married. I guess Mrs. Jennings, both of her daughters are married already. So she's like, all right, this is, I've adopted this one.
Lauren: Yep.
Emily: I'm getting her hitched.
Lauren: Exactly.
But that turns out to really work against her when each passing day goes by and there's still no visit from Willoughby. And Marianne tries to tell herself, Oh, well, maybe he's like out hunting still. And that's the only reason why he hasn't been responding to my letters. And that must be why. And then they go, is it to a ball?
Emily: To a ball, yeah.
Lauren: And Willoughby is there with another woman.
Emily: After not having responded to any of Marianne's letters.
All Aboard the Willoughby Hate Train
Lauren: Nope. And doesn't give her a satisfactory explanation, tries to pretend as though it was all a mere --. It was really like gaslighting her, like, well, it must've been all in your head. I never meant to give you the impression that we were anything more than just friends. I was just being cordial and friendly--
Emily: Sir, you took her to the house that you're going to inherit and walked around with her and showed it to her and made every appearance that you were forming a commitment.
Lauren: Yeah. And paid her partial attention and--
Emily: He was generally friendly, but very, very clearly attached to Marianne specifically. But it turns out that instead, he has gotten himself engaged to a woman who has 50,000 pounds.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Which is just an obscene amount of money.
Lauren: Yeah. It's hard to tell what that would be in 2021 [00:34:00] dollars because of inflation.
And there are different metrics for how much it would be, but it — millions. Millions of pounds you can assume.
Emily: And evidently that's, what Willoughby values.
Lauren: We'll learn more about why Willoughby specifically chose to be with this person and his financial situation and all that type of stuff. Why he did that sudden 180 and was like, actually just kidding. I never loved you at all.
Wait, you know what that reminds me of?
Emily: What.
Lauren: This is so silly, but in Frozen when Hans is telling Anna, no one ever loved you.
[cross-talk and laughter]
Emily: Okay, I know that's not your pop culture connection, but oh my god.
Lauren: Why is Hans Willoughby?!
Emily: Okay. No. Okay. But the difference between Hans and Willoughby is that Hans, he —
Lauren: He was never actually in love with Anna. He was manipulating her the whole time.
Emily: Right. Exactly.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Hans was intentionally manipulating Anna.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: Willoughby was not intentionally manipulating Marianne.
Lauren: Correct. Yes.
Emily: Okay. Now that we've gotten the Frozen out,
Lauren: I'm so sorry. It was just that gaslighting reminded me of that scene specifically, not the whole character arc because the whole character arc doesn't fit.
Emily: If only there was someone who loved you.
Lauren: Exactly!
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: If only, sorry, Marianne, I'm just going to give you back all these letters and write you this very cold and unfeeling letter back. Because even Elinor reads it and compared to Willoughby's usual, effusive communication style, this is as though he wrote like a business letter of separation to Marianne, like... to: Marianne. Subject: our acquaintance. Sorry. We cannot be of acquaintance anymore. Sincerely, Willoughby. Like that's essentially what he said?
Emily: To whom it may concern.
Lauren: To whom it may concern.
Emily: Yeah, it was, yeah, it was really cold. And I feel like it could be interpreted as him trying not to give into his own emotions and feelings about it, that he really did truly deeply care for Marianne, but also he's been a total scumbag. So fuck Willoughby.
Lauren: Both things [00:36:00] can be true. He both deeply cared for Marianne and wasn't lying. And then also kicked her to the curb with no warning and very little explanation and completely broke her heart.
Hence earning the scumbag title.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, it still would have been an asshole move to like, write to the Dashwoods and be like, Oh, I have news of my engagement to Ms. Gray, but at least you could have told her.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: On the other hand, we have Colonel Brandon.
Lauren: Oh, poor forlorn Colonel Brandon.
Emily: Whom I adore. Oh, I love him. He comes to visit as soon as the Dashwoods and Mrs. Jennings are in residence.
Lauren: Yes. And he also removed to town very suspiciously a while ago when they wanted to have that outing and had to just get out of dodge really quickly.
Emily: So he comes to visit, inquires after Marianne. And sort of quietly, lets Elinor know that he's heard that she and Willoughby are engaged, but is kind of trying to confirm it from Elinor and she takes pity on him and is like, no, they're, they're not engaged.
He's just, he's generally just so nice. And like comes and even though he's clearly coming, like to see Marianne, he sits with Elinor and they have very cordial conversation and I just, I love their friendship so much.
Lauren: I feel like they have very similar personality types to where I think Elinor also mentions that they're both aware that they're going through the polite conversation back and forth. And that in a way it's kind of helping both of them to just play these roles, because both of them are very stressed about the conversation they're eventually going to have to have. So for now, let's just continue sending these polite niceties, back and forth across the room.
We'll like ease into this conversation and neither of us is going to push the other to say something we don't want to say.
It's difficult for me to imagine Willoughby gallantly sending back and not getting in the way in order to let the person who he cares about be with the person who they clearly [00:38:00] prefer.
He would be the one who would say, like, “we duel at dawn for the lady's heart!” like something completely overdramatic like that. And Colonel Brandon with the maturity of age and a completely different personality type is instead assessing the situation and seeing that Marianne is clearly completely head over heels for Willoughby.
For all that he knows Willoughby returns those feelings, especially after what he was able to witness when they were in the country together. And so rather than professing his feelings to Marianne and making her more uncomfortable and saying, here are all the reasons why you should choose me is prepared to just say, okay, well, I wish her the best.
This is twisting a knife deeper into my heart, but I will suffer in silence because there's no need to make this other person uncomfortable. For what.
Queer Readings of Sense and Sensibility
Emily: So I would like to propose the existence of a true love triangle.
Lauren: Ooh, say more.
Emily: Between Marianne, Willoughby, and Colonel Brandon, of course, but rather than it being a V with Marianne at the center and each man interested in her, I say, Marianne is interested in Willoughby.
Brandon is interested in Marianne. Willoughby's interested in Brandon.
Lauren: Oh, okay.
Emily: Yeah. And is, and is if we want to lean into Willoughby as villain. He's using Marianne to get Brandon's attention and to make him jealous.
Lauren: Ohhhh.
Emily: So yeah, that's what I would like to propose. Willoughby is actually in love with Colonel Brandon and was trying to make, try to use Marianne to — to make him jealous.
Lauren: You know, what that kind of very obliquely ties into one of the ways that I was looking at those scenes and reminded me of some of those awful compromises that queer people have to make. And especially that first meeting at the ball where they kind of just have like that stricken look across the room at one another, where they both know that they want to be with one another.
And Willoughby clearly, also wants to be with her because that's where he's really losing the most control of his emotions because now he's face-to-face with her and he can see how upset he's made her. But [00:40:00] for whatever reason and circumstance, cannot be with her in order to continue keeping up his societal appearances and his social class, he cannot be with Marianne and he has to be with this other person who he doesn't actually care about.
I was like, where have I seen this story before?
Emily: That's such a great parallel to draw with compulsory heterosexuality.
Lauren: Yes!
Emily: So many people throughout the years have married someone of another gender because it's not socially acceptable to engage in a same-gender marriage.
Lauren: Exactly. And, or even in the way that we read characters, how we place heterosexuality on them, because that's what we've been taught is the only way to be to where if we have a character whose sexuality is not explicitly stated, that means they're automatically straight, but why? No one said that. So why do we assume that that's the case, especially if, like, they don't have any romantic attachments in the text to where we'd be able to see, okay, well, this is the type of person this character goes for, but even then bisexuality exists.
So just because they're in a quote-unquote straight relationship doesn't mean that person is straight.
Emily: Yeah. Being in a different gender relationship as a bi person does not make you any less bisexual, which is something that I'm constantly preaching because I'm a feminine person who is married to a man.
Um, surprise. Yeah. I'm still queer.
Lauren: Doesn't go away.
Emily: It's not a straight relationship. Oh. Also, Elinor is asexual and possibly aromantic.
Lauren: Ooh. Okay. Well, will you say more about that for people who might not be 100% familiar?
Emily: Absolutely. I would love to. Asexuality is typically defined as just having a lack of sexual attraction and it manifests very differently for all kinds of people.
Ace is [00:42:00] the, the shortened term for it. Some Ace people are perfectly fine with having sex. They just don't actively desire it. Some are sex-repulsed, some have trauma surrounding sex, but that's not like a root cause of asexuality. And then aromanticism is basically the same, but for obviously romantic attraction.
Lauren: Gotcha.
Emily: Yeah. So I think Elinor's aro-ace, contrasted especially with Marianne who is so full of romance. Elinor is just her, her feelings are so subdued. And even though we have access to her internal monologue through the narrator, she doesn't have those, those kinds of violent cravings that Marianne does.
And even when she's upset about losing Edward's apparent attachment, it's not the grief of being separated from someone that you are romantically attracted to. It felt more like, I mean, losing a good friend because they were, they obviously got along very well and enjoyed each other's company, but —
Lauren: — it's almost like she's more upset about the lie than the lack of regard.
Emily: Absolutely.
Lauren: I could see it.
Emily: Yeah, it's a betrayal of trust rather than. I'm so in love with you, I can't imagine you with anyone else.
Chaos Reigns
Lauren: And then, then she also becomes, once again, and she's already the foil to Marianne in the sense and sensibility, and then it's an even more perfect foil. As we kind of touched on in the Rational Creatures interview about reading Marianne as the chaotic bisexual character of this book, which once, once I thought about it, and then when I read these chapters with that in mind, I was thinking I could absolutely see that.
Emily: Would you like to talk a little bit more about the stereotype archetype of the chaotic bisexual? Maybe inside joke is a better word because it's, it's only bisexuals that I know joke about chaotic bis.
[00:44:00] Lauren: Same.
Emily: We know our own chaos better than anyone else.
Lauren: Facts.
So. The urban dictionary definition of bi, chaotic bisexual, which is also quite accurate, is “a chaotic bisexual is a bisexual who can't handle their hormones when they find an attractive person.” So you just find everybody hot and it's just chaos all the time.
Emily: Please note, this is very different from the mainstream representations of bisexual people being like obsessed with sex and. Just, you know, wanting to bang everyone all the time.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: That's not what this is.
Lauren: Not hyper-sexual. Chaotic bisexual is people who can't handle themselves when watching Pirates of the Caribbean because both Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann are super hot.
Emily: I maintain that movie turned me bi.
Lauren: You know, I honestly think that that's probably true.
Emily: That was the, the unconscious awakening of our bisexual generation was being really, really into Elizabeth and Will's relationship because both Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom are just really hot.
Lauren: …To bring us out of this chaotic energy we've been bringing and back to Marianne as a chaotic bisexual.
When you think of somebody who's just overwhelmed all the time by the sheer attractiveness of pretty much everyone, they surround you.
Emily: See a pretty person and they have to lie down for a while.
Lauren: You know? I mean, you just have to like send an all caps, text message to your friends. Like, Oh my God, this person's standing in front of me at the coffee shop.
Emily: Not saying we know this from personal experience with each other.
Lauren: …no…
Emily: That's never happened.
Lauren: No, no. But seeing that reflected in Marianne is quite easy to find when you go through and read it with that lens where she's just overwhelmed by romance on its own of every sort. I would not have difficulty believing that she would also find like romance between same gender, also something that's really swoon-worthy, even if that's not something that she's, like, explicitly stated as participating in the way that her character is written.
It's easy for me to picture it in my head again, where somebody writing this fan [00:46:00] fiction of Marianne also finding like attraction between women incredibly romantic and “oh, the odds that they must have to go against to be together. Can you imagine anything more beautiful than that?” I can 100% hear her saying that.
Queer People in the Regency
Emily: That ties in really perfectly to the little bit of research that I did about sexuality during the Regency period, because sexuality between women especially is so fascinating during this era because it wasn't illegal like homosexual relationships between men, but female relationships faced different kinds of barriers. For one, it was very often interpreted or just played off as being intimate friendships.
Lauren: Just gals being pals!
Emily: Just gals being pals. But without a husband, a woman had a much harder time achieving financial stability. And so it, it wasn't, you know, super common for girls to just, you know, be roommates who are really close. Oh, we can only afford one bed.
Lauren: Okay, Love Actually.
[cross-talk and laughter]
We're just three girls and we don't have any pajamas. We all sleep in the same bed.
Emily: But there were notable gay women, some relationships. One that has been more in the public consciousness lately is Anne Lister. The bulk of her story takes place a little later than these books would have been published, but some of the people she was associated with were known as the Ladies of Llangollen, Elinor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby. Who went against the wishes of their families who wanted them to marry men.
They said, we don't want to marry these men that we don't love. And so they maintained a house together at Plâs Newydd in Wales and became sort of a haven for writers and for other queers of the time. Really cool.
Lauren: That is super cool. And mean, of course it's also a creative haven as well, [00:48:00] because I feel like so often those two just kind of go hand in hand.
Emily: It's all the weirdos. All the artists and the queers.
Lauren: That's literally my friend group in a nutshell, so.
Emily: Right. But there's also another complex dimension to thinking about same gender relationships because of the idea of people being transgender. It wasn't really a solidified concept back then. And cross-dressing was, where it was not outright illegal, it was very frowned upon. That's not something you did. Men dressing in feminine ways was associated with gay male prostitution. But there were certainly people who were cross-dressing, but it's difficult at this kind of temporal remove, you know, some hundreds of years ago, to tell even from the personal accounts of some of these people, whether they would have considered themselves to be transgender as we understand it today, or if they were just presenting in a different way, like the concepts of fem and butch that we see in the queer community.
So that's, I mean, that's really not something that we can assess with a purely modern lens, but of course, it's, it's another thing that we can say, Hey, I recognize this. This is the way that I classify my experience. And so I want to interpret this person as also being transgender.
Possible vs. Impossible Readings
Lauren: And I think that's where-- we mentioned this in the interview earlier with Rational Creatures as well, but just to reiterate the difference between like a possible and an impossible reading.
So an impossible reading and people do this in like the Harry Potter fandom, for example, all the time. You can't say for example, that in Harry Potter, Harry's parents aren't dead because that's said multiple times. And that's part of the premise of the entire plot. So you can't say actually I'm reading them as alive.
You can't do that.
Emily: You can't say the Weasleys are brunettes.
Lauren: You can't say the Weasleys are brunettess because part of their character trait is them having red [00:50:00] hair. So you would, you can write them as like brunettes as an impossible, like fantasy in your fan fiction, but that's not an actual possible reading of the text.
Emily: An impossible reading is explicitly contradicted within the text.
Lauren: Exactly. So when we're looking at characters in Jane Austen and we're saying, we read Elinor as aro-ace, or we read Marianne as a chaotic bisexual, because those aren't explicitly said that they're not those things in the text, we can make those conjectures, even if that's not what Jane Austen originally wrote down. We're not trying to uncover a secret thing, but we can perform those readings.
And those can be totally valid because they're not explicitly disproved in the texts themselves. Let people enjoy things.
Emily: Lauren Wethers for president 2028, let people enjoy things.
Queer People in Pop Culture
So we've talked about relating to Jane Austen characters as being queer in various ways. What about characters today?
What's media doing with that now?
Lauren: That is a wonderful connection. So one of the things that I wanted to do for pop culture was talking about my favorite chaotic bisexuals. I'm not going to give time or space to the queer characters I feel like media has done wrong. This is not a space to talk about all the times where somebody is queer and then dies by the end of the season.
Emily: We will bury no gays on Reclaiming Jane.
Lauren: Not burying gays today. Instead we are talking about our favorite, iconic, chaotic, bisexual characters. So if you recognize some of these, you also have a better idea of what it is that people mean when they say chaotic, bisexual. So, first one, we have the iconic Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn 99.
Bad-ass in every way.
Emily: Also played by an out bisexual actress, Stephanie Beatriz.
Lauren: Yes. One of the best quotes from her is, “you can hate people and still think they're hot.” Chaotic, bisexual energy for the win.
Emily: Yeah. That encapsulates it. Yeah.
Lauren: That's, that's pretty much it right there. There you go. For some wonderful Black woman representation, we have Tara Thornton from True Blood on HBO back when that was [00:52:00] a thing, she was the smartest person in that town. And also I love seeing more Black women represented in bisexuality on television. So she, 100% makes my list. So she has a history with men, but then gets involved with her like her vampire maker, who was a woman later on. So it was able to be canonically bisexual, which we love.
For even more chaos energy, we have Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who.
Emily: You said Captain Jack, and for a second, I was afraid that you were going to say Jack Sparrow. It was like he's chaotic and also probably bisexual, but--
Lauren: Yeah, not on my list.
Emily: We don't give Johnny Depp space here.
Lauren: Eh, That that, yeah, we're getting, we're going to walk away from that.
Emily: That's not the kind of chaotic bisexual we're claiming here.
Lauren: No. But Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who is the type of person who will charm anyone of any gender in about five minutes flat.
Emily: Or of any species.
Lauren: Oh yeah. Or of any species.
Emily: It's a space show, guys, it's fancy aliens.
Lauren: And then he got his own spinoff where he could continue just being. Dangerously charming to literally everyone who he meets and managed to get himself in god-awful scrapes every time and gets himself back out.
So just chaotic in every sense of the word. One that's not explicit, but who we're going to claim is Eleanor Shellstrop from The Good Place. We mentioned The Good Place a little bit in our last episode.
Emily: But that was all about philosophy.
Lauren: But that was all about philosophy. This is about the walking chaotic bisexual disaster. That is Eleanor Shellstrop.
Emily: Bisexual Arizona trash bag.
Lauren: Yes, truly, truly.
Emily: It's, it's never, canonically stated that she is bisexual or that she's had relationships with women. But as I mentioned to Lauren, before we started recording today, they were very, very careful in not excluding any particular gender when talking about Eleanor's relationships.
Lauren: Yeah. And she explicitly states multiple times that she's super attracted to Tahani, but I mean also who isn't. [00:54:00] The whole point of her character is that she's gorgeous.
Emily: Tahani transcends sexuality.
Lauren: Facts. Finally, just to close out, this is less chaos in the way that we've been using it, where it's like fun chaos, where it's people who are just like tripping all over themselves and just kind of a walking disaster in every area of their lives.
She is a walking disaster, but in many different ways. Annalise Keating from How to Get Away With Murder.
Emily: I only watched one episode of that show.
Lauren: You need to watch more. It was an experience. Anyway. Annalise Keating is canonically bisexual, also played by the amazing Viola Davis. And so we get even more Black queer representation on screen.
And I loved it. I did not know that that was where they're going to go. So I got to be surprised when that came up on the television show because she is married to a man. But as we get to know her character a little bit more over the course of the season, we realized that that is not indicative of her sexuality at all.
And I just very much appreciate it.
Emily: Yeah. Just a reminder, bisexual women, married to men--
Lauren: still exist.
Emily: Are not any less bisexual, and also bisexual men exist.
Lauren: People forget that all the time. I feel like people assume-- it's always the assumption that we're going to default to men. So bisexual men are assumed to be gay and just on the DL and bisexual women are assumed, just be experimenting, but like eventually we're going to go back to men. No!
Why do people keep thinking that men are superior here, that is not what's happening.
Emily: Bi people are bi. They don't stop being bi when they enter a monogamous relationship.
Lauren: But that is, that has been my recap of some of my favorite chaotic bisexual characters in modern media. And I would like to claim Marianne as part of this canon now and extend the line back to at least 1813.
Welcome, Marianne.
Final Takeaways
Okay, Emily, what is your final takeaway from this section?
Emily: That Willoughby is a [00:56:00] scumbag. That he's in love with Colonel Brandon and that there's always something that we can find to relate to in any piece of media, no matter when it was created or what actually happens on the page. What about you? What's your final takeaway?
Lauren: My final takeaway is that reading is a lot more fun when you don't limit yourself to the words on the page and you let your imagination run wild with possibilities.
Emily: I hear that.
Lauren: It just makes everything more engaging. And I think people who study literature get stuck in just the analysis part and they don't let themselves just have fun with the reading as much anymore.
And to my fellow literature students, I say, let it go, just let it go. Don't marry yourself to what's on the page. Reading is a lot more fun when you just let your imagination run wild and imagine the characters how you want them to be.
Emily: Now, if y'all will excuse me. I have a love triangle fic to write.
Lauren: Link will be in the description. No, just kidding.
Emily: I'm not saying I won't write it. But I am also saying that it will not be written by the time this goes up.
Lauren: No, it won't. And also you probably won't know her AO3 username.
Emily: Exactly. Yeah. I was going to say, if I ever do write it, you'll have to stumble on it organically. I'm not sharing it. Sorry.
[music begins]
Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be doing a trauma-informed reading of chapters 31 through 35 of Sense and Sensibility.
Lauren: Thank you again to our guests, the creators of Rational Creatures. To read a full transcript of this episode, including our interview with them, check out our website, reclaimingjanepod.com, where you can also find show notes and links to our social media.
Emily: If you'd like to support us and help us create more content, you can join our Patreon @ReclaimingJanePod, or leave us a review on iTunes. Reclaiming Jane is produced and co-hosted by Lauren Wethers and Emily Davis-Hale. Our music is by Latasha [00:58:00] Bundy and our show art is by Emily Davis-Hale.
Lauren: We'll see you next time.
[music continues and fades out]
Emily: If you had a poster of Orlando Bloom. I had a, like a two by three-foot poster --
Lauren: As Legolas, though?
Emily: No, as Will Turner.
Lauren: Oh, okay.
Emily: Yeah, no. Yeah. Having a poster of Legolas is like, that's just, you're just, you're not straight.
Lauren: I was going to say, yeah, you're gay.
Emily: If you're, if you're sexually attracted to Orlando Bloom as Legolas, you're just not straight.
Lauren: I'm so sorry to have to break this to you over a podcast, but we have some news for you. Welcome to the family.