Sense and Sensibility 36-40: “Sparking Joy”
After the trauma of the last episode, Lauren and Emily look for joy instead in chapters 36-40. Also included: relatable characters, emotional ranges larger than a teaspoon, and Emily’s endgame predictions.
(Please pardon the audio quality. We had technical difficulties in recording.)
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Show Notes
Y’all. When we tell you recording this episode did not spark joy…WHEW.
First, we had issues with changing the equipment settings. Then we learned that Saturday afternoons are now off-limits for recording if we don’t want to pause every ten minutes to wait for Lauren’s neighbors to finish running a chainsaw. And then post-recording we discovered that we hadn’t actually fixed the equipment settings and one mic just straight up didn’t record any audio.
Honestly. Won’t anyone have any compassion for our poor nerves?!
In between the frustrations, though, we did have fun recording, and we hope that comes through to create a little joy for you as you listen. (And the audio will be fixed next time, promise!)
If you don’t feel like listening, you’re in luck — as always, the transcript is below!
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Episode 8 | Sense and Sensibility 36-40: “Sparking Joy”
[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: And today, we're talking about chapters 36 through 40 of Sense and Sensibility with the topic of joy to guide our conversation.
Introductions…or Explanations
Emily: This is probably the most ironic topic.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Not because of the book, but because of the particular circumstances of recording today.
Lauren: Yeah. See, you would think that as the quasi-professional podcasters that we are trying to be, that we would know how to properly use our recording equipment by now and would not have issues getting it set up to record.
Emily: Oh, my God. Yeah. Plus Lauren's new neighbors are renovating something or other, so we may have some background noise of construction. My God, they're hammering. They're drilling. I swear to God I hear bandsaws out there and--
Lauren: you honestly might. We're gonna see how this episode goes. Cause we have been a little bit frustrated, but we are going to find joy through recording an episode in which joy is our focus.
So the hope is that by the end of this episode, we will be in a better mood. Y'all will be in a better mood. Everybody will just come away with a feeling of joy, regardless of what other extenuating circumstances may be outside of your control that are in your lives right now.
Emily: That's a very nice way to put it.
Let's talk about Sense and Sensibility, shall we?
30-Second Recaps
Lauren: We shall indeed. Because you have been so kind as to actually know which one of us is supposed to go first. So Emily, my friend, it is your turn for the 30-second recap.
Emily: It is indeed my turn.
Lauren: On your mark. Get set. Go.
Emily: Mrs. Palmer has had her baby. I've [00:02:00] just completely forgotten everything else that ever happened.
The Dashwoods and Ferrars found out that Lucy and Edward are engaged. They're not happy. They're both banished. But then Colonel Brandon shows up and says that he conveniently has a vacant living on his estate. And he offers it to Edward so that he and Lucy can get married and everyone's being polite.
Lauren: Exactly 30 seconds.
Emily: That was a questionable, yeah.
Lauren: Okay. This is going to be hard. There was, there was a lot that happened in these five chapters. Okay. Alright.
Emily: On your mark. Get set. Go.
Lauren: Okay. Because Mrs. Palmer had her baby, Mrs. Jennings is MIA because she's with her daughter all the time. Fanny Dashwood continues to be the shiny member of our Fanny Dashwood Hate Club.
And she decides she'd ignore the Dashwoods and invites the Steeles over instead, chaos ensues when they find out that Lucy is engaged to Edward, everybody is like losing their minds and crying. Marianne finds out that Edward's engaged and she doesn't know how Elinor has kept this to herself for forever, she's like, what the hell? Colonel Brandon gives Edward the living, Elinor is trying to convince herself that everything is fine and then they are going to go back to Barton sometime soon.
Emily: Very nice.
Lauren: I wa-- I feel like I forgot 90% of what was happening.
Full Recap of Sense and Sensibility ch. 36-40
So, okay. So you get a good idea of what happened in these chapters, but there was a lot we couldn't get to.
So do you want to expand?
Emily: Yes. So the very first thing that happens is that Mrs. Palmer has a son and heir and Mrs. Jennings is thrilled, which just. Again, I love, I love her just taking so much joy in being a grandmother, even though she already has three grandchildren at least through Lady Middleton.
But yeah, she's so excited. And so she basically spends two weeks just essentially living at the Palmers' house because she wants to take care of Charlotte and her grandbaby.
Lauren: But like what a doting grandmother, cause like we've we all have those people in our lives who do the exact same thing when they have a grandbaby of any number, whether it's their first or their sixth grandbaby, where they're just so excited and so needing to be helpful, that it's like, I will literally [00:04:00] move in with you and I will not let you do anything because--
Emily: My mom has no grandchildren yet, but guarantee that's going to be my mom.
Lauren: I was thinking that!
Emily: I love you, mama.
Lauren: Mrs. Jennings is with the Palmers all the time. Elinor and Marianne are kind of floating cause they don't have their person who they were hanging out with all the time. And so the Middletons instead are saying, “Oh, well you can come and spend time with us.” And Mrs. Jennings thinks that this will be great because she's like, “Oh, you'll be rid of this old lady. And you can go hang out with the Steeles as well with the Middletons and it will be great. And won't that company be better for you,” but it's, it's not. It, because Lucy doesn't feel like she can be the suck up that she is with Elinor and Marianne around because then it's embarrassing.
Lady Middleton doesn't want to do anything but is embarrassed about being lazy in front of Elinor and Marianne. So she doesn't feel like she can be her full self either. And she's not getting all of the compliments that she was getting before from Lucy. And so her ego's not being stoked. And so nobody's happy.
Emily: Yep. The Dashwoods are apparently making everybody miserable, but we haven't seen Elinor and Marianne outwardly do anything that would actually make these people feel that way.
Lauren: I think they're just-- Elinor and Marianne just reflect the poor behavior of other people. Like you have to...
Emily: It's by comparison.
Lauren: Yeah. You have to actually think about how you are or are not behaving when you have, like, model citizens in front of you. It's like when people dislike someone because they're too perfect. It's like, “please get out of my face so I can be flawed in peace.”
Emily: Right. Yes. Yes. I understand that. Definitely. So the Steeles have been staying with the Middletons, but their visit is coming to an end and Mr. John Dashwood and Fanny invite them to stay with them instead. Which of course Lucy is thrilled about because she can spend more time sucking up to her future sister-in-law and seeing her future mother-in-law [00:06:00] and then… disaster strikes.
Lauren: Yeah. Lucy's older sister decides, “Oh, well, since they've invited us here and everything's been going so well, surely it's okay if I let them know, BT dubs, Lucy and Edward have been engaged for a year now.” Spoiler alert. It was not okay. Fanny literally throws herself into hysterics to the point where her husband calls the doctor because she won't calm down.
Emily: It's amazing.
Lauren: And wants to throw the Steeles out of her house before they've even like packed their clothes, before they've done anything, it's just like, no, you've got, you've got to go.
Emily: Yeah. She throws them out and is like, we have to leave too. I'm not staying here another minute. It's all hysterics, first with Fanny, and then when her mother finds out, she immediately basically disinherits Edward and decides that the whole estate is going to be immediately settled on his younger brother, Robert.
Lauren: And calls her lawyer. Like she's serious.
Emily: It's intense. Yeah. They're really pissed about this, but Lucy, of course. Well, once she's not immediately in the line of fire, Lucy is thrilled. She's so happy. It's finally out in the open. They can plan for their future. He's going off to Oxford to become a minister to be ordained.
Lauren: It's a genteel enough profession and he's such like a man of letters. You know what I mean? He just seems like the type who's content to sit in a library, surrounded by books, and like leave him alone for the entire day. And he won't even notice that time has passed. So.
Emily: Edward, you don't want to be a priest. You want to be a Ph.D. student.
Lauren: No, that doesn't make enough money.
Emily: Oh, don't remind me.
Lauren: And the only reason why he might be able to have like, some kind of living is because Colonel Brandon comes to the home where Mrs. Jennings and the Dashwoods are staying, and he tells Elinor that the parsonage at his estate has just opened up.
It's a living of like 200 pounds per year, which he doesn't believe can support a family. He was like, [00:08:00] “well, he won't be able to get married, but he'll have some money. And he won't be completely destitute. And I'm happy to like, settle this living upon him if he'll take it. And will you tell him?” And Elinor is frozen.
She's like, “Yeah, sure. I will cement my unhappiness by cementing the happiness of the person who I love and can't have. Absolutely. Yeah, I will do that. Yeah.”
Emily: But she also doesn't want to come off as being the benefactor of this. So it's, it's all just very awkward, but all very well-meaning at the same time, because she does want Edward to not suffer because of his mother's theatrics.
But she's sad because she liked him.
Lauren: And finally admits to Marianne too, that she actually really loved him.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: When Marianne finds out, she's, like, horrified that Elinor has known this for four months and has said nothing, but we get really good conversation between the two of them where I feel like the sisters understand each other that much more.
Anything else, summary-wise that we need to touch upon before we move into like where we found joy?
Emily: No, I think that was pretty much it. Yeah.
Lauren: Oh, other than they're going back to Barton Cottage soon. So they were moving to the country. And then instead of continuing on with the rest of the party to go somewhere, I don't remember where, they're going to go to Barton cottage instead, because Marianne has had it with London and she's ready to go home.
Emily: Elinor has pretty much had it with London now, too so much has gone down.
Lauren: It has not been a fun trip for them. An enlightening one, but not a fun one.
Emily: Yeah. Those are very different things.
Lauren: There was no joy.
Emily: Yeah. But we're going to dredge some joy out of this anyway.
Beginning to Find Joy…and Getting Sidetracked by Hate
Lauren: We started off with a lot, like, with one of the most joyous events.
There's a new baby at the very beginning of this section.
Emily: Like the very first line is that Mrs. Palmer has had her baby and is thrilled about it. It seems like even Mr. Palmer is pretty happy.
Lauren: This was the one time where I was like, “Oh, I actually agree with Mr. Palmer on something” because [00:10:00] Mrs. Jennings is complaining about how he won't admit that his newborn son looks different than any other newborns.
He's like, no, all babies look alike. And on that I agree.
Emily: Except for the ones that are really, really ugly, because there are some really ugly babies.
Lauren: Oh, that's true.
Emily: I'm sorry. But yeah.
Lauren: And then of course we have the reason for a Fanny Dashwood Hate Club who's actively trying to withhold joy.
Emily: They say it pretty explicitly too.
Lauren: Literally that she's trying to make sure that the Dashwoods aren't happy and don't feel like they are favored by her.
Emily: Yeah. It's... as we've said last time, she doesn't really give a shit about the Steeles, but she does care about not giving Elinor and Marianne anything to be happy about. She's — she's so damn miserable all the time. She's just determined to be miserable and to make other people miserable.
Lauren: Yeah. So this is, this is how Jane Austen describes it.
“I come now to the relation of the misfortune which about this time befell Mrs. John Dashwood. It so happened that while her two sisters with Mrs. Jennings were first calling on her in Harley Street, another of her acquaintance had dropped in, a circumstance in itself, not apparently likely to produce evil to her.
But while the imaginations of other people will carry them away to form wrong judgments of our conduct and to decide on it by slight appearances, one's happiness must in some measure, be always at the mercy of chance.”
Emily: “In the present instance, this last arrived lady allowed her fancy to so far outrun truth and probability that on merely hearing the name of the Miss Dashwoods and understanding them to be Mr. Dashwood's sisters, she immediately concluded them to be staying in Harley Street, and this misconstruction produced within a day or two afterwards cards of invitation for them as well as for their brother and sister to a small musical party at her house.”
Lauren: “The consequence of which was that Mrs. John Dashwood was obliged to submit not only to the exceedingly great inconvenience of sending her carriage for the Miss Dashwoods, but what was still worse, must be [00:12:00] subject to all the unpleasantness of appearing to treat them with attention.
And who could tell that they might not expect to go out with her a second time?”
Emily: “The power of disappointing them, it was true, must always be hers, but that was not enough. For when people are determined on a mode of conduct, which they know to be wrong, they feel injured by the expectation of anything better from them.”
I was cackling as I read that it's like, “Jane, don't pull any punches!” She's determined to be a bitch and she's going to be mad if you want her to be anything else.
Lauren: Like I just. It could not be clearer that Fanny is just determined to withhold any measure of happiness from people who are related to her, like even to the small point of just sending a carriage to be able to come with them to this party, that she's not, she's not even doing anything, she didn't host it.
She didn't organize it. All she has to do is show up. And then she's annoyed further when they actually get in on time to the carriage because she wanted them to be late so that it could be, like, something else for her to complain about and would give her a reason to complain.
Emily: She's just so awful.
I didn't expect that the Fanny Dashwood Hate Club would become so poignant, but everything she does, I just hate her more.
Lauren: And in this section specifically, because then she sends, like you said before, she doesn't actually care about the Steeles at all, but John Dashwood suggested to her like, Oh, well, you know, why don't we invite Elinor and Marianne to come and stay with us?
And she panics and is like, “Oh no, no, no. They will want to stay with Mrs. Jennings, with the Middletons.” Like, “we couldn't possibly take them away.” And John Dashwood is still like, he's not entirely convinced. He's like, “no, they've been with them the whole time. I think we can have them with us for a week. And that would be, that would be good. And that'd be proper.”
And she's like, “Oh no, because I was going to ask the Steeles to stay with us and they need to be shown some attention, don't you think?”
Emily: She's making up the excuse on the spot, but--
Lauren: She had no intention of inviting them. She does not care about them at all, but they're not the Dashwoods, so. The Steeles it [00:14:00] is!
Emily: Much to Lucy's joy.
Lauren: She's thrilled.
Emily: Oh, she's so thrilled because she's still interpreting this as signs of Fanny's particular affection for her, which it's not.
Lauren: It's signs of Fanny's hate for Elinor. Like she looks, she's literally only giving Lucy attention in these past sections because she wants to show Elinor and Marianne that they don't care about her.
And because the Ferrars family, I think had perceived Edward's attachment to Elinor and thought that that was the match that he wanted to make. And so they're trying to discourage that by being rude to her and they don't even see Lucy as part of the picture. So —
Emily: She comes out of nowhere.
Lauren: Nowhere! They're like, well, we can be nice to her because like what the hell, she doesn't matter.
Sisterly Love
Emily: Yeah. And that's something that I thought about a lot while reading this section was what circumstances are promoting joy in each of these characters, because some people are completely self-centered in their pursuit of joy. Like Fanny. She wants everything to align around her in the way she has designed.
But then you have Elinor and Marianne whose joy is predicated entirely on the other person being made happy.
Lauren: Yeah. And that was one of the things that I had noted as well is that Marianne who was once the most joyous character is now having difficulty finding joy in anything because she's so depressed from how Willoughby treated her.
And she's still so sad and like grieving the loss of that attachment and like her entire view of the world had to change. And so she's grieving the loss of a lot of stuff. And usually, you know, in earlier chapters of the book, if we were to talk about joy, like so much of it would come from Marianne because she brings joy to everything, will find joy in everything.
And at this point in her life, she really hasn't been able to do that for herself.
Emily: So sad. She's only 17.
Lauren: You also feel heartbreak so much more acutely, I think, when you're a teenager, everything's amplified.
Emily: I don't even think [00:16:00] it's necessarily amplified. It's just that you don't have that trove of experience under your belt yet.
And so you don't have anything to compare it to. So the first time you feel anything is both the best and the worst it's ever been.
Lauren: Yeah, that's true. And, and then her happiness is taken away because right before this in the previous section, she is happy because Edward's come to visit. And so she's happy because she finds happiness in her sister's happiness.
And she thinks that seeing Edward will make Elinor happy. But that is misplaced and then is again taken away from her because Elinor has the task of telling her, A, that Edward is engaged. B that she's known for four months and C, finally expressing how unhappy she's been.
Emily: I feel like that whole conversation— you mentioned earlier how great it was to really be able to dive into their interactions.
It spoke so much to that sisterly connection, which digs deep into my soul because I'm the oldest of three sisters. And I relate so deeply to that idea of wanting your siblings to be happy. And when you realize that you thought they were fine all this time and they weren't, that immediate guilt, that “I didn't even notice. I was so wrapped up in myself. I can't believe I wasn't caring for your happiness at the same time.”
And so they basically go back and forth. Marianne feeling guilty that she hadn't noticed, Elinor admitting that she didn't want to feel those things outwardly. It's just, it's so much, but it was, I think it was a good and cathartic conversation for them.
Lauren: Definitely. Cause Elinor is also trying to reassure Marianne in the same conversation, like, “you didn't know because I was purposely doing my best to keep it from you.” And then having to explain why she had gone to such great efforts, because Marianne has another moment where she kind of verges on calling Elinor unfeeling again.
And Elinor has to [00:18:00] explain like, “no, I've been miserable for four months and it's only because I've had four months to work through these emotions that I can speak to you like this without any like violence of feeling.”
A Brief History of British Emotion
Emily: Elinor's behavior in her explanation to Marianne really brought to mind for me, the idea I came across in my research of the stiff upper lip and the way that Brits, supposedly, just repress all their emotions.
That was one of the first things that came up when I searched, you know, emotions in Regency England was British emotional repression.
Lauren: That just reminds me of the scene in Love Actually where Emma Thompson, who also is in the 1995 Sense and Sensibility, is talking about how Joni Mitchell taught your cold British wife how to feel.
Emily: We stan Joni Mitchell and Emma Thompson. But it turns out that historically there's a lot more than I realized to the idea of emotion.
Today, I think we tend to conceptualize it as being sort of a, a social construct and a psychological phenomenon, but in the past, it seems like it was much more tied to the idea that the basis of good health is balance. So you have the humoral theory where your four humors have to be in balance for you to be perfectly healthy.
And you also have the idea of emotional repression versus violent passions. And in this case, it seems like the expression, especially of powerful emotion indicates imbalance, it indicates something wrong. And that seems like it's really closely tied to this, this entire concept of sense and sensibility that we've been talking about for this entire book.
Lauren: Would that tie into like the olden days, one of the medical practices was like letting blood, did they think that that was something that would like balance you out, [00:20:00] which is like, we have to drain you of whatever.
Emily: That's exactly what it was. Yeah. Bloodletting was to, let's see, blood is supposed to be hot and wet.
I think it is.
Lauren: Well, yes.
Emily: Yeah. So, so the four humors are that blood is hot and wet. Phlegm is cold and wet. Yellow bile is hot and dry and black bile is cold and dry, I think.
Lauren: Okay.
Emily: I did not write that down, but I was just reading something the other day that was actually unrelated to this, but it was also talking about the four humors.
This is who I am as a person. But yes. So the idea was that by removing some of, one of the humors, it would prompt everything internally to balance out. But within this understanding of emotion and humors and balance, The Georgian era was taking sort of a different approach to it. There was a rise in these sort of introspective activities throughout like the 18th century and up to the 19th.
So through the Georgian and the Regency eras where people were starting to cultivate more of an emotional awareness in their activities. So keeping diaries and reading novels and things, the calm ones, obviously not, not the ones that would get your blood up.
Lauren: No Fifty Shades of Gray?
Emily: No Fifty Shades of Gray.
Yeah. The point of all these introspective activities seems to be very much, you know, moderation. You don't want to give into frenzy or hysteria, but to me, joy, doesn't follow those protocols. You know, you can't establish those kinds of boundaries around something that is supposed to be kind of overwhelming in a positive way.
But of course, we can also look at different definitions of joy. It could be, you know, like a [00:22:00] spiritual transcendence, like having a religious experience and feeling that kind of ecstatic joy. It could be quieter, like domestic bliss, that kind of thing.
Lauren: Huh. Yeah. I like what you say about not being able to put boundaries on joy too.
And I feel like that's, to relate it back to Regency terms, like very much the sensibility type of things, where you're encouraged not to put any type of boundaries on your emotions and to feel everything as deeply as possible, because that was then, as they're now exploring emotions further and allowing themselves to identify and indulge in emotions, something that was seen as really intelligent do was to remove the boundaries from your emotions, and feel both joy and sorrow and everything in between as deeply as possible.
Emily: I think it's also, though, that even if you're feeling these things, the outward expression is still very constrained. So, I mean, once again, we can contrast Elinor and Marianne because Elinor is feeling these things very deeply, but obviously she has hidden it so well. She has outright refused to show her emotions.
Even her sister had no idea what she was going through. Whereas Marianne feels things so noticeably that everyone can tell when something's going on with her.
Lauren: One of the other things that I thought was prescient about finding joy in the section too, was in the conversation with Elinor and Marianne, where they're having this really cathartic moment.
Where Elinor is explaining to Marianne, like, “yes, I loved him, but here's everything that was going on.” And she says,
“And after all, Marianne, after all that is bewitching in the idea of a single and constant attachment and all that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant — it is not fit — it is not possible that it should be so.”
[00:24:00] Basically saying that, like, your happiness and love isn't dependent on one person, nor should it be. That it has to come from you pretty much. And also saying that it's possible to fall in love more than once. And just because happiness could have come from this person doesn't mean that that's the only place that you'll ever find it.
I thought that was such an important point to make, especially when we're thinking about joy and that even if there's one person or one situation that makes you the happiest you've ever been. That doesn't mean that's now the limit to your happiness. You can find somebody who makes you just as happy or happier.
And who said that Jane Austen was just about getting married and settling down? She has lessons, people.
Finding Joy, Finding Love
Emily: That kind of concept of only one person being able to make you happy is something that we still see so much conversation about today. Not only, you know, that idea of true love and one true love. I can't even say it's archaic because I don't think it's ever been the only concept.
I mean, our ideas of love, just like our ideas of joy and any other emotion have changed so much throughout the millennia of humankind that we're always going to have these debates just in different ways and with different social circumstances.
Lauren: Yeah, I think it's enticing and romantic to think about the idea that there is one person who is destined for you and that the universe conspired to make sure that you meet and it was always going to be this one person. That's a really intoxicating idea to think of and to let take hold of you. So I get how that continues to persist.
Emily: Don't get me wrong. I love a good soulmate AU.
Lauren: Oh, absolutely.
It's just, it's not always the healthiest idea to hang onto because then if you lose who you think is your one true love then you think that your happiness is ruined forever and that's not true.
Emily: Love manifests in so many different [00:26:00] ways and joy does too, because you can have, you know, entirely self-centered joy, and not saying that in a bad way, you can purely take joy in your surroundings at any given moment, or, you know, if you have a really good, good piece of cake and you're just taking joy in that, that's completely valid, but then we can also feel so much joy through empathy and compassion.
Like Elinor and Marianne are concerned about with each other. So, Lauren, moving into your new house and seeing how excited you are about it. That brings me joy, even though it doesn't directly have anything to do with my life, except for sitting in a different room to record this podcast.
With both joy and love, they all come to us in such different ways. And in many ways that we don't think about, or that we don't recognize in the moment. There's such an expansive world of feeling out there. I mean, we could talk about a British stiff upper lip, but Americans, I think we, we need to indulge more in some of these introspective activities of, read some more novels, keep some more diaries, you know, go out and paint a tree or something.
Especially in the last year with the pandemic and quarantine and just all of these horrible things that are happening in the world. Joy is one thing that I've been really explicitly trying to find wherever I can. And someone sent me a message and basically said, I love reading about how much you're enjoying indulging in your hobbies.
I think I had been posting about, you know, costuming projects. And so ever since then, I've been trying to really explicitly say, “I did this little thing today and I took really great joy in it. You know, I finished knitting my first sock and I was so excited and so proud of myself. And that was my moment of joy. Or I got to go and sit [00:28:00] outside and have a really tasty drink with my husband or something.”
Just it's, it's okay to feel joy. It's good to feel joy. It's also okay if you're having trouble finding it, but it's there in little things.
Lauren: Yeah. I think finding joy in those small modes is something that's so important.
And I think undervalued because it's easier to talk about or to display like those big moments of joy that everybody can kind of see and understand and take part in like. Sometimes, if I need a good, like emotional release, I'll watch the happy crying videos of happy crying dads or like people coming home from a long thing.
And I have no idea who any of these people are. They're just random faces in a YouTube compilation, seeing them happy makes me happy. I think those are the things that we often broadcast because it's so easy to make that a shared happiness that we forget about all the small moments of joy that are like just ours that make us happy, that don't necessarily involve big gestures or other people or something that's obviously meant to be a creation of joy. Sometimes it's just sitting and drinking coffee on the front porch and that's joy.
Emily: Yeah. Even finding great joy in things that are fleeting by nature. You know, I find great joy when my cat comes and sleeps on my arm while I'm trying to read. And I know that she's going to be really mad when I have to move her out of the bedroom when it's bedtime, but I can still feel the joy of that.
And I think, especially in very stressful and traumatic times, like we're in now, we feel like any kind of joy has to be a silver lining. That we have to acknowledge the horrible things going on and say, in spite of that, I've found something good. You don't have to acknowledge the trauma all the time.
It's okay.
Lauren: Yeah, I think with coming out of something negative and finding something positive and also finding joy [00:30:00] within yourself, I think what's so important is that in this section, we can see Elinor and Marianne kind of letting go of things and deciding, okay, so I can, I processed these emotions, I can begin the process of starting to like move forward and through them so that I can then find joy in other things that aren't related to me being with this person.
Not to say that they're both thrilled at the end of the section, because they're not. Like they still have lots of stuff that they need to work through, but it feels like they've reached a point where they're now better equipped to be able to find joy within themselves versus expecting it to come from other places.
And I think that's such a healthy place to put your characters. It works for storytelling convention, but it also is just something human to note about where they are emotionally, these characters.
A Brief Break for Emily’s Predictions
Actually, now that we have 10 chapters left. Emily, what are your predictions for the end of the book?
Emily: Oh, geez.
Okay. Well, I think Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret are going to still be at Barton and they'll be very comfortable and happy. I think Marianne's going to end up with Colonel Brandon. Which I'm not unhappy about that because Colonel Brandon is wonderful and he deserves every joy in the world. And he's obviously, he's been in love with Marianne the whole time.
As much as I would love him and Elinor to just hang out all the time. I don't know about Elinor though, because I want her to be able to move past Edward. That's really all I've got. That's, that's all my predictions.
Lauren: Thank you for indulging me. I would love to make this a regular segment. Yeah.
Post Pride and Prejudice, because we all know how that goes.
Rom Coms & Jane Austen
Emily: Well, did you have a pop culture connection for this? I mean, we've talked a lot about connecting the experience of emotion to the modern day, but what about modern media?
Lauren: So I didn't have a specific pop culture connection, but we have been talking about how we have Jane Austen to thank for the romcom.
[00:32:00] And there was a really great article in the AV club by Carolyn Siede, I think her last name is. I am very sorry if that was wrong on the off chance that this person to actually listening to me butcher her last name. But the ending paragraph says,
Though Jane Austen did not invent the romantic comedy (she’s building on, among other things, the works of William Shakespeare), she brought to rom-coms a keen understanding of the interior lives of women. Austen’s canon is full of the kinds of complex female protagonists the genre could certainly use a lot more of. While modern rom-coms too often return to the well of neurotic or clumsy traits for their leading ladies, Austen’s heroines have complicated internal flaws that are balanced by their intelligence and dignity. They’re relatable, not because they’re written as broad everywomen, but because they’re written with such specificity. Elinor, in particular, stands as one of Austen’s best creations, and 1995’s Sense And Sensibility gives both her and her sister their due.
This was at the end of a review of the movie since it's the AV Club, of course. And it got me thinking about modern adaptations of Jane Austen and how some of the romcoms that like persist that we love to this day are based on the works of Jane Austen. So like Clueless, for example, iconic movie based off of Emma.
And it's one of the romantic comedies that's still super popular in like American pop culture specifically. And then you also have things like Bridget Jones's Diary, which is loosely based off of Pride and Prejudice. And that went on to spawn multiple movies and adaptations and was popular enough to endure many years over.
And I, I just thought that it was so indicative of how the characters and the plots that Jane Austen created can be translated so well into modern-day. And that those ideas still carry so much weight to the point where the modern adaptations, where they're meant for people who have our, sensibilities and expectations and all that kind of stuff are so beloved.
And we were [00:34:00] talking in our guest spot on First Impressions about bringing Jane Austen into the modern-day and then how that story format and those characters are still so emotionally resonant with audiences today. I think it's just such a testament to the strength of her writing and specifically to what this author said in the AV club about how, unlike some other romcoms that we see today, she doesn't rely on making her protagonists quirky or like hashtag relatable. They're not written so that you can be a self-insert.
Emily: They're not Bella Swans.
Lauren: They're not Bella Swans. I'm so glad you knew where I was going.
Emily: Yeah. I think that's definitely a problem that we see a lot in modern romcoms.
Characters just get so flattened because they're trying to make paper dolls that you can just impose yourself onto, but that doesn't make for interesting stories. For an audience to get invested in the stakes of a story, they have to believe that the characters also believe in those stakes. So having a very specific protagonist like Elinor, even if we say, Oh, I wouldn't have acted the way she does, we can understand her motivations.
And because she's specific, she also stands out from other characters. Whereas the most we see in a lot of romcoms these days is. The heroine's clumsy or something.
Lauren: It's always something that's not an actual flaw.
Emily: Yeah. They're not character traits either it's behaviors. Yeah. Everything's just so flattened trying to have that every man appeal, even if you've created a character that I think is a terrible person, if they're actually fleshed out and they have believable motivations and stakes that I can get invested in, that's going to be a story I enjoy.
God knows I've spent enough [00:36:00] time yelling at characters for the bad decisions they make, but I'm still way more invested in that. I'm taking the energy to yell at people rather than just being bored and then immediately forgetting what the story was supposed to be.
Lauren: And one of the reasons I thought of rom-com specifically is because that is a genre of movie that brings me great joy.
But because they are thought to be something that only women enjoy and that they're geared towards women. They're often either not given the consideration that they should by, like the studios that are producing and marketing the movie. Or are written off by critics as something that's just like derivative and blah, blah, blah.
And we've seen this structure a million times. And so it's no longer anything that holds weight. To which I would say, one, story structures work because they hit emotional beats that we respond to. And so just because somebody knows how to tell a good story by using a structure that's been used multiple times before it doesn't make that worthless. It means they understand what humans respond to and it's
Emily: Yeah, popular things are popular for a reason, they're not popular because they're so vapid that everyone can just decide their own interpretation completely.
Lauren: Right. And I think because romcoms are something that are “for” women, I think. For with heavy air quotes.
I think they're sometimes interpreted to be vapid even when they're not, or studios will put out content that actually is vapid because they don't actually put any effort into it. And one of the things that I appreciate so much about Jane Austen, this author also touched on is that she doesn't make vapid stories.
Like she specifically focuses and treats women seriously and treats the interiority of women seriously. And that's why they work so well. And why the romcoms set in the nineties and two thousands based on her work work so well because they treat the characters seriously. And because they treat the women and their emotions seriously, [00:38:00] and that comes through and then audiences respond to that and it brings us joy to watch.
Emily: Yeah. When, when you make interesting characters and you treat them seriously, then even the smallest stakes. You can be invested in and you can feel those compassionate emotions, whether the character is feeling joy or anger or sadness, we can feel them alongside those characters. I don't have to see myself perfectly reflected in Elinor, to understand the disappointment and the grief that she's feeling when she learns that Edward is engaged to Lucy. You know, Elinor is not a perfect analog for me, nor should she be. But because she actually has an internal world, because she feels like a person who could actually exist, I can feel that compassion for her.
Lauren: Really my, my ending point is that more romcoms should take inspiration from Jane Austen.
And whether that's in adapting her work, not to say that we need another adaptation, or just in taking inspiration from the way that she writes her characters and takes them seriously. And by understanding that you do not need to make your character broadly relatable in order for them to be broadly appealing.
I think those are two very different things. And I think that's something that studios in pursuit of making the highest dollar don't always take into account. But I think the people who make decisions about what gets funded are not necessarily the creative people who understand what it means to create a good story.
And we've had this conversation before and we don't need to go down that rabbit hole.
Emily: Yeah. You know, it's just, it's just kind of stressful to watch an empty shell save the world when you could watch a person with depth deal with [00:40:00] whatever their own immediate problems are.
Lauren: And find happiness! I think there's the idea with like prestige television, that it has to be dark and gritty to be worth anything, which, I mean, let's examine the psychology of that another day, but --
Emily: Please stop making gritty reboots!
Lauren: It doesn't need to be gritty to be good or to be serious. And so people think that lighter television shows or movies or books somehow have like less worth or less depth. And that's such a misguided way to consume your media. You're closing yourself off to so much. Like Parks and Recreation is an excellent show and it is light and happy the entire way through.
And it still manages to like touch on important issues and provide social critique and write characters with an incredible amount of depth that feel like they could be real people, even as they're like turned up to 10 to the point where you like, wouldn't actually meet this person in real life. It all works.
And didn't have to be depressing to watch to achieve.
Emily: Yeah. If your story's built on strong foundations of, you know, the human experience. Then whether it's high fantasy or goofball buddy comedy or something like parks and rec, then you're going to speak to people. And I feel like that's more important than broad economic appeal.
Although of course I'm not a studio head.
Final Takeaways
Let's do final takeaways. It's your turn to go first.
Lauren: Oh, okay. I think my final takeaway is a reminder to find joy in the little things. And I think today I'm going to find joy in the fact that the construction next door has finally ceased.
Emily: Hallelujah.
Lauren: What about you? What are your final takeaways?
Emily: That joy takes many forms.
It can be an interior, a [00:42:00] self-focused joy, or you can take joy through the joy of others and we shouldn't invalidate either of those things.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading chapters 41 through 45 of Sense and Sensibility through the lens of religion.
Lauren: To read a full transcript of this episode, check out our website, reclaimingjanepod.com, where you can also find show notes and links to all of 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 Bundy and our show art is by Emily Davis-Hale.
Lauren: We'll see you next time.
Emily: Anyway, something that would bring me joy is if we changed the definition of ‘gritty reboot’ from something that is depressing and quote-unquote realistic to something that stars Gritty, the hockey mascot.
Lauren: Oh, my God. I would watch that. I would watch the Gritty Batman reboot.
Emily: Okay. Okay. Gritty reboot of Sense and Sensibility, who does Gritty play?
Lauren: Colonel Brandon. Just the most out of place.
Emily: I love it. Thank you. Thank you for that answer.
Lauren: This does spark joy.
Emily: It does. I was going to suggest Mrs. Jennings.
Lauren: Oh, that would be funny.
Emily: I mean, you can't, you can't go wrong.