Sense and Sensibility 41-45: “Losing Our Religion”
In Episode 9, Emily and Lauren go to church. Also included: near-death experiences, unexpected visitors, and a healthy (?) dose of pining.
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
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 can’t believe that we’ve gotten through Sense and Sensibility so quickly! Only five more chapters and one more episode to go before we reach the end. (Cue the dramatic music.) We have lots more content planned for you, both on our normal platforms and other ones, so watch this space. Imagine that there is an eyeball emoji here since Squarespace won’t let us be great.
With every lucky connection, it becomes less and less believable that these topics are chosen randomly and not based on 1) what is happening in current events or 2) what is happening in the section we’re reading. It honestly did not even occur to us that we would be releasing our religion-themed episode two days after Easter Monday. You could almost say the timing is divine…
Religion and faith are interesting in that they are both deeply personal experiences while also playing a major role in our culture. Whatever you believe (or don’t believe), we hope you find some nuggets of wisdom in this episode.
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Episode 9 | Sense and Sensibility 41-45: “Losing Our Religion”
[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 41 through 45 of Sense and Sensibility with the topic of religion to guide our conversation.
This, this book. Oh my God. It started out. Like not slow, but pretty tame. And then the last few sections.
Wow.
Lauren: We're just racing towards the ending here.
Emily: We really are. I'm like, Oh my God, how many more things are we going to cram into this book, it’s so much.
Lauren: And it’s like, this is our penultimate episode talking about Sense and Sensibility.
We've only got five more chapters left in the whole book.
Emily: And I legitimately have no idea where it's going to go from here.
Lauren: Which is so thrilling, isn't it?
It's always nice not being able to predict the ending of the book. So for example, did you think that we would be spending these five chapters with Marianne, like on her deathbed?
Pretty much out of nowhere.
Emily: No, that came out of nowhere.
Lauren: Foreshadowing where?
I cannot believe one, that we're almost done with this book and two that we only have two more episodes of Sense and Sensibility before we move on.
Emily: I know.
Lauren: It went so fast.
Emily: It did.
30-Second Recaps
Lauren: I feel like all of the things I have to say, we have to keep in our actual like recap slash discussion.
So do we want to start with our thirty-second recaps and then just. Dive on into the content?
Emily: Let's do it. Are you ready to [00:02:00] recap?
Lauren: No.
Emily: Come on, come on. It's the second to last episode, got to keep it moving here.
Lauren: I will have confidence in myself. I am ready to deliver.
Emily: All right. Timer is starting in three, two, one.
Lauren: Yeah. Okay. The Dashwoods finally leave from London, but not after a few more awkward conversations with John and the member of our hate club. Elinor also sees Edward's brother who she vehemently dislikes. They remove to the country and Marianne comes down with, like, this mysterious illness after going for lots of walks, Willoughby shows up because he hears that she's like dying and then pours out his guilty soul to Elinor who feels sorry for him for some god-awful reason, because I don't, he's still trash.
His, her mother comes back, Marianne becomes better. And Colonel Brandon's totally in love with her.
Emily: Thank you.
Lauren: You're welcome. I don't know what I'm being thanked for.
Emily: For recapping. I don't know, being the first one.
Lauren: Whoop whoop. Okay. Are you ready to follow up that fire recap?
Emily: Now that you put it that way. Geez. So much pressure.
Lauren: You're trying to have confidence here. The proper response is, “yeah, I'm going to murk you,” you have to like, bring me the same energy back.
Emily: You're going down, Lauren Wethers!
Lauren: There you go. Okay. Are you ready?
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Beginning in three, two, one.
Emily: Okay.
So the Dashwoods finally leave London. They are going with the Palmers to their home at Cleveland. But then Marianne gets sick unexpectedly and everybody's freaking out about it.
Elinor's taking care of her. Willoughby shows up out of the blue while Colonel Brandon is off fetching misses, Mrs. Dashwood he makes confessions and things are happening. Yup. I lost the thread at the end there. Oh. And just another reminder, we only do these in one take.
Lauren: We really do. Sometimes it shows more than others.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah, man. I was feeling good about this too, because I, I admit, I only read this section this morning. And so I was reading through, it was like, yeah. Oh, I know [00:04:00] what I'm going to talk about now.
Lauren: It's okay. We have one more, Sense and Sensibility episode, we're both going to nail it.
Emily: Gonna crush it.
Lauren: Just going to, put that out into the universe.
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Manifesting.
General Recap
Emily: Okay, so…
Lauren: What aspect of this do we want to dive into first? As far as like general recaps go.
Emily: I think chronologically general recap because things start happening more and more towards the end of the section.
So while they're in London, like in the last few weeks, I guess, before they leave, Fanny and her mother, Mrs. Ferrars are still all in a tizzy, which Elinor ends up talking to her brother, John, about. He still thinks that Colonel Brandon is totally into her. But he also shares that apparently it's been said that Edward marrying Elinor, even though it wasn't desired, it would have been so much better than getting with Lucy.
Lauren: Which is such a backhanded compliment from your own brother.
Like, I mean, we didn't want you to marry him either, but like, man, you would suck way less.
Emily: See, I don't think he's even capable of giving a backhanded compliment. He's just head empty.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: John Dashwood is a smooth brain.
Lauren: It's not like he was even trying to actively pay her a compliment. He just thinks and speaks simultaneously.
So there's, there's no filtering that happens.
Emily: Relaying a backhanded compliment probably without realizing definitely without realizing it was a backhanded compliment.
Lauren: Right. And Elinor is the only one in this conversation because Marianne has absolutely refused to come over. She's like, no, you cannot, you cannot make me go fraternize with those people.
Emily: Marianne and Mrs. Jennings absolutely refused to go and see John and Fanny, which I get, but Elinor is like, okay, I guess I have to, you know, keep up the mask of propriety and go let them know that we're leaving.
Lauren: The burdens that oldest sisters carry, honestly.
Emily: Oh good Lord.
Lauren: They finally leave London and they make it to like their first stop in Cleveland.
[00:06:00] And Marianne is taking lots of long contemplative walks amongst the mists unless it's too rainy.
Emily: So first, to reiterate, that Cleveland is the home of Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. And so it seems like Mrs. Palmer is pretty happy to be home and she's very excitedly, you know, showing off the baby to all their servants.
And there was also a funny line about how Mr. Palmer was clearly very fond of the child, although he pretended he wasn't.
Lauren: Which is so in character.
Emily: It is.
Lauren: And Elinor actually grows to like him a little bit more in this section as well, like okay. You're not actually that bad and you're a little gruff, but there's, there's a little undercurrent of fondness and kindness beneath it.
But being at home seems to bring that out of him a little bit more.
Emily: So who all is at Cleveland? Let's see, it's the Palmers, Elinor and Marianne, Mrs. Jennings and Colonel Brandon is also there. So yeah, they're, they're all settled in at Cleveland, just for a chill time post-season. Marianne is just, all she wants to do was wander around outside except when it's like pouring down rain.
Lauren: And she physically can't. But then!
Emily: But then.
Lauren: Perhaps because even in drizzles and moderate rain, she will still go outside and walk. She comes down with an illness and — oh, I can't wait for you to see the movie because in the movie, it's way more dramatic. Anyway, Elinor at first thinks, Oh, it's just a cold, you know, she'll get over it. She's not very concerned, but then...
Emily: It lingers.
Lauren: It just continues lingering.
Emily: And so finally Elinor agrees to let the Palmers call their local apothecary. I guess. And he doesn't seem very concerned, but it seems that he accidentally let slip the word ‘infection.’ And so Mrs. Palmer freaks out, she's like, no, I can't stay.
Which I get. She's concerned about the health of her newborn child who can only be a couple of months old at this point.
Lauren: Max.
Emily: If that.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: So she and the child, and then Mr. Palmer all [00:08:00] defect to a nearby relative’s house, which at first I was thinking like, that's really weird that they would leave their own home, but then realize like, okay, that's actually pretty considerate.
Like this girl is, is ill and they don't want to risk their baby also getting sick.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: But they also don't kick Marianne out of their house which was very surprisingly thoughtful. And. But Mrs. Jennings stays, which Elinor is very grateful for because, you know, Mrs. Jennings raised children and it says that she has much greater nursing experience and that she was sort of a boon to have on hand.
Lauren: And that her daughter had asked her to come with them, but Mrs. Jennings refused, and insisted on staying to take care of Marianne, just further cementing -- and even Elinor says the same thing. Like, you know, “do you have any tact? No, but are you a lovely human being who just has endless amounts of love and care for the people around you? Yes. Yes you do. I really like you.”
Emily: So Elinor and Mrs. Jennings have stayed to tend to Marianne who still is not improving. And then she gets worse. She gets significantly worse. She has a fever. She's really not sleeping. And then at one point she wakes up just completely disoriented and is asking where her mother is and saying things like, I hope she's not coming like basically the long way around, because then I'll never see her.
And Elinor's like, Oh fuck.
Lauren: Time to go, time to get mom. Yeah, let's try not to freak out.
Emily: So Elinor decides that one, of course she has to call the apothecary back, but also that it's time to, to get Mrs. Dashwood there. And so, because Colonel Brandon is also still at the house, Elinor goes to him for help. And he immediately offers to go himself.
Calls up the horses right away. Leaves as [00:10:00] soon as they arrive to go personally, to tell Mrs. Dashwood what what's going on and to deliver her back to Cleveland and her two older daughters.
Lauren: Which is in direct contrast to the scoundrel who shows up hours later, basically after Elinor has moved downstairs.
And she hears a knock at the door and she thinks that somebody else has shown up again. And she goes to the door and it's Willoughby. And she's like, what on earth? What possible purpose do you have for being here in the middle of the night? Like, he doesn't seem entirely sober, but he insists that he has a good reason to be there and then proceeds to spill out his heart to Elinor for an unknown amount of time.
Emily: Basically, he's just trying to redeem himself in her eyes and explains that he had genuinely cared for Marianne. That initially he was just kind of, you know, having fun, hanging out, but really came to love her. But then his cousin Mrs. Smith, who he was staying with. She found out about the scandal with Miss Eliza Williams, who is, remember, Colonel Brandon's adopted daughter.
Lauren: The one who Willoughby impregnated and then left destitute.
Emily: Yeah. He tried to spin from what I can tell, whether or not this is true, that basically, he didn't know she was pregnant.
Lauren: He was just very--
Emily: He impugns her--
Lauren: no remorse whatsoever. It was like, well, she didn't say anything to me. And she easily could have figured out my address was, like, she could have told me.
Sir.
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Spare me.
Emily: And gives this spiel about how, “I should have respected her more. But you know, she did it too. It wasn't just me.” Excuse me, sir. You talked a teenage girl into running away and sleeping with you. I place the bulk of the blame on him.
Lauren: But he was the one who orchestrated the entire thing.
And then tried to act as though the power dynamics in that relationship weren't in his favor, he was like, “well, she was [00:12:00] an equal participant in the whole thing” and no, she wasn't. And you know that, but you're here groveling for pity, but you are not here to actually apologize. You're here to squash your own ego and make yourself feel better.
Like, please leave. That, that whole scene just made me so angry.
Emily: He also goes in on his new wife, Sophia talking about how, “Oh, she was so jealous of Marianne every time we were in contact.” And apparently, she was the one who dictated that final letter that came from him, which was so business-like and eviscerating for Marianne.
Lauren: Which. This is not healthy in any century, but it reminds me of people who write texts for their partners, because they're mad that like their ex got in touch with them again or something like that. And instead of letting the partner respond, because they've been reading over their shoulder and seeing who's texting them or just monitoring their phone for whatever reason, they're like, no, no.
Let me tell you what you're going to say back to this person, which no, don't, don't do that in 1813. Don't do it in 2021. Stay out of other people's business.
Emily: Yeah.
So Willoughby has laid out this defense of himself. It's not even a defense. It's just making all kinds of excuses for how shitty he's been to everyone, to Marianne, to Eliza, to Sophia.
He's trying to say, what did he say? Oh, I've, I've always been a bonehead, but I've never been a rascal. And I wrote next to that, I think Ms. Williams would disagree on that front.
Lauren: He only married Sophia because Mrs. Smith said that he would be disinherited because of what he did with Eliza once she found out.
So “I had to do what I had to do,” but it's not as pragmatic as it sounds because you wouldn't have been in poverty. If it were actual poverty versus like living a life free of worry then. Okay, cool. Let's have that conversation about like the horrors of class, but...
Emily: and he does that manipulative self-deprecating thing where [00:14:00] he's like, “Oh, I can't believe I was such a horrible person as to put money above the affections of your sister.”
Which the whole thing, it sort of sways Elinor a little bit towards his camp. She still doesn't like him and doesn't like what he's done, but she has a little bit of sympathy for him, which, sorry, Elinor, I disagree with that.
Lauren: Yeah. She goes back and forth the entire conversation, but also because Willoughby is showing here how much of a skilled manipulator he is, so we can see how he must've played on the emotions of Eliza, of Marianne, even though we never really see those conversations like on the page, he spends the entire time talking about himself and trying to manipulate Elinor's emotions into feeling sorry for him. And the self-deprecating thing that you mentioned is very much like abuser tactic 101 where it's like, I'm going to apologize in a way that makes you feel sorry for me.
And then reassures me. It's like, now I'm going to make you do all the reassuring when really I'm the one who's supposed to be atoning.
Emily: Yeah. It's the, “Oh, I can't believe I did that. I am. I'm so sorry. I'm the worst person in the world.” So that you end up comforting them instead.
Lauren: “Oh no, you're not the worst.” “No, I am. I suck. Look at all the things that I did to you,” and “no, it's fine.”
It's not fine.
Emily: It's not fine. So Willoughby comes and spills his guts to Elinor and then he leaves. And a few hours later, Colonel Brandon returns with Mrs. Dashwood. Poor thing. She is just in an uproar because when Colonel Brandon left to get her Marianne was really unwell, she was delirious. She was feverish.
So she is like half expecting to show up, to find her daughter dead. But Elinor is able to give them the excellent news that Marianne is actually on the mend now.
Lauren: And who knows how far the word went that Marianne was on the brink of death because the whole reason that Willoughby came was because he ran into Sir John, who was specifically trying to hurt him because Willoughby had been such an ass.
He was like, “Oh, by the way, you know that girl who you left heartbroken, [00:16:00] she's dying now. So hope you feel good about yourself,” basically what he said!
Emily: Be careful who you call ugly in middle school!
Lauren: Anyway, what a mess.
Emily: So they show up, Marianne is doing better. Mrs. Dashwood is hugely relieved. Of course. And then she tells Elinor later that while they had been traveling, Colonel Brandon confided in her, confessed to her seemingly in spite of himself that he was just, he was so distressed that he felt he had to tell Mrs. Dashwood how deeply he cares for Marianne, that he loves her.
Lauren: This isn't much of a surprise to Elinor at all, but then her mom continues on about how they'll be able to go and visit Marianne and Colonel Brandon and Elinor in the back of her head is thinking. That's even more reason for me to go to his land and his property.
And I've been trying to avoid doing that because Edward has a living over there and I'm really trying not to see him, but all of you seem to be conspiring against me to make sure that I just keep coming into contact with this man who I would rather forget.
Religion in Regency England
Shall we talk about where we either found or read religion into this section since that's our focus for today?
Emily: Yeah. Shall I give some historical context first?
Lauren: Yes, please.
Emily: Okay. So the story is taking place during a period that is coming out of the influence of the enlightenment on religious life. England had been under the influence of Church of England, the separation from the Roman Catholic church since the mid 16th century, but in the sort of half-century before Sense and Sensibility would have been set, the religious landscape of the country was kind of changing.
There were preachers coming onto the scene who were trying to draw people away [00:18:00] from what had been almost secular observance of faith, where mostly they just kind of went to church out of habit. And these groups were instead trying to instill a more personal investment in faith. And in salvation, that's referred to now as this movement called The Great Awakening, which affected not just England, but also America when it was in the later years of the colonies, as well as its early independence era.
This really led to a renewed vitality in the church or, and just in religious life, in general in England which had kind of fallen off in the wake of the Enlightenment. And I would suspect as well in the wake of everything that happened in the 17th century with Catholic monarchs and Protestant rebellions and the English civil war and things like that. So as they're moving on to more than a century out from that, people are starting to embrace religion and faith practices again.
Now, during this period, England was of course dominated by the Anglican church in contrast, specifically to other sort of nonconformist sects of Protestantism, as well as Jews and Roman Catholics and splinter groups like Baptists and Quakers. And actually, I learned something new that Catholics were actually barred from holding public office in England until 1829.
Lauren: Really?
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: I did not know that.
Emily: Yeah. Because the church of England was, I guess, still is? Government controlled and sponsored because the Monarch is head of the church.
Lauren: Right. Oh, dang.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: I never, I never even stopped to [00:20:00] consider that. That's so wild.
Emily: Yeah, so we think about, you know, how Christian-centric the United States is. Even more so in England, especially this period, right.
All marriages and baptisms, that all happened through the Anglican church. There were only very specific exceptions like for Jews and Quakers, but despite these relatively limited movements towards a more personal brand of religion that didn't filter all the way through the Anglican church on the lower levels, you know, individual.
Pastors might be more devout, more devoted. Jane Austen's father and her two brothers who were clergy seemed to have been sort of in that pool. But although clergymen were traditionally educated and were supposed to be, you know, dutiful and seeing to the spiritual and even financial needs of their parishioners--
Lauren: --tend the flock --
Emily: that wasn't always the case.
And I can't imagine it was helped by the fact that large landowners owned these assignments and generally had the power to appoint clergy.
Lauren: I can see how that would go south real quickly.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah.
That's also not helped by the fact that the bishops of the church didn't necessarily attain their position through religious devotion.
And they just, they kind of enjoyed the prestige of that position without doing a lot in the way of spiritual guidance. And then even with the clergy who were doing their jobs, I have this quote from Henry Wakeman in the book, An Introduction to the History of the Church of England, talking about basically how most people experienced Christianity and Protestantism and Anglicanism.
So he says,
The clergy held and taught a negative and cold Protestantism, deadening to the [00:22:00] imagination, studiously repressive to the emotions and based on principles which found little sanction, either in reason or in history. The laity willingly accepted it, as it made so little demand upon their conscience, so little claim upon their life.
Lauren: I mean, that makes sense. If I have to go to church and church is easy. Great. I don't want to actually do —don't make me do things. Don't make me change my lifestyle, you know.
Emily: So yeah. I mean, it's, it's nominal Christianity and nominal religious devotion. Of course there are exceptions to this.
I mean, Jane Austen for one would write prayers for her father's services. And seems to be one of the genuinely pious people during this time. But another thing that I found really, really fascinating about this is that in contrast to how it's often painted in the United States today with science and religion are inherently opposed.
Ministers were actually doing most of the scientific discovery, which really makes sense because they were the most likely people to be educated. At least in sort of the general population outside of universities. So that was super fascinating to me.
Lauren: Cool.
Emily: Yeah. So that's, that's our historical context. The Anglican church dominated, religion was just sort of a habit for a lot of people, but there were, of course, people who were more genuinely devoted, who really took Christian faiths seriously.
How Sense and Sensibility Characters Use Religion
Lauren: If you were to place Elinor and Marianne into those camps, where would you put them?
Emily: In the religious habit camp.
Lauren: I think the only difference I see between Marianne and Elinor, Elinor definitely strikes me as “going to church is right and proper, so I'm going to church.” And then Marianne, I think I see her as somebody who, like, does dramatic readings of Psalms because they're poetry.
Emily: Yeah, I see that. Yeah. I could definitely see Marianne cottoning more on to the idea of personal salvation and having an [00:24:00] individual relationship with Christ. But yeah, I don't think either of them would have like any kind of missionary zeal.
Lauren: They don't strike me as the type. Nobody in this book really does.
Emily: Yeah. Edward definitely seems like the kind of clergyman who would just be educated and he would give his sermons and tend to the questions that people might come to him with.
But I also don't think he would be very invested in like proselytizing.
Lauren: He would be good at it, but I don't see him like diving into the mysteries of the Bible every night in his free time.
Emily: He might, but —
Lauren: Yeah, I feel like it would be out of like an academic perspective though, and less that of like faith.
Emily: Which, you know, was not uncommon at the time.
I mean, this is also the neoclassical period. People are kind of getting into the Greeks and Romans and investigating those sorts of things. So yeah, I can definitely see Edward approaching that from sort of a secular curiosity perspective.
Lauren: Do you know, the acronym C&Es?
Emily: Christmas and Easter? We call 'em Cheasters.
Lauren: Oh, I like that.
I'm going to use that instead of C&Es now. It's— I feel like if you, if you picked them up and you put them in 2021, like the Dashwoods would be like the Cheasters.
Emily: Absolutely.
Lauren: They would show up on Christmas and Easter because those are the main religious holidays and that's what you're supposed to do.
But like any given Sunday, ehhh.
Emily: Edward probably goes about half the time.
Lauren: And that reminds me of throughout Willoughby's soliloquy, you can see some like religious ideas or phrases in the way he speaks to Elinor, which also makes sense for his character since he and Marianne are the ones who are mostly tied to sensibility and that access of feeling and art and literature, which you can kind of place the Bible in that camp.
But it also shows how much he doesn't actually believe in it at the same time. So the biblical teaching is that, you know, you kind of turn away from wealth and the accumulation of wealth, and there's so many stories about that across both the Old and the New Testament about, you know, the meek and the poor will [00:26:00] inherit the kingdom of heaven and not the rich man who has been sitting on his wealth and not helping the people who need it.
And while Willoughby is peppering, like all this religious vocabulary into his story. He's also talking about how he was acting only in the pursuit of wealth. And wasn't thinking about the feelings or considerations of others. And there are so many things that are basic biblical teachings that if you spend time in the church, you have to know because you can't escape it.
But just don't stick with him at all.
Emily: I mean, that's definitely not unusual to see today, either. A term that I think is pretty apt is the idea we have the gospel of prosperity. I don't know if you can even really call it Christian in terms of systems of belief, except for the incorporation of Jesus as a savior figure, because so much of the core action that people undertake, even as they talk about how it's a Christian nation, they're not acting on, on Christian values.
They're not taking care of the people around them. They're looking out for their own interests.
Lauren: Yeah. It's a lot easier to say that you believe something and perform believing in that thing and not actually doing what your chosen text tells you to do, which is what we see in Sense and Sensibility and what we see in real life.
Emily: But, yeah, I mean, like you said, organized religion hasn't really appealed to me for a while, but yeah, my knowledge of Christianity is probably also helped by the fact that I went to Catholic school for three years.
Lauren: Oh my God. I forgot about that.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: pre-K kindergarten and first grade, but still, yeah, we went to mass every Wednesday morning.
That's another thing that's I feel like I say constantly on here, like, Oh, that's really interesting to me, but it genuinely [00:28:00] so many of the dominant denominations in the United States grew out of traditions that emphasized a very personal relationship with God. I mean, Protestantism basically was everyone should be able to read the Bible and interpret it for themselves and taking authority away from the actual institution of the church, and yet American Christianity relies so heavily on the performance of faith.
Lauren: One of the other things that stood out as like a possible religious connection to me, as far as this passage specifically, is it almost feels like Willoughby's going to confession to Elinor.
And Elinor is trying to do the Christian thing of not judging him, but she should, this is where I'm going to say now, now be a hypocrite and ignore what moral teachings tell you, because you absolutely should judge him because that was worthy of judgment.
Emily: Actually. Now that you frame it in terms of confession, let's compare.
Willoughby's very performative confession to Elinor versus Colonel Brandon's confession to Mrs. Dashwood.
Lauren: Yes, that is so reminiscent too, of what you said about like performing Christianity and performing belief versus the quiet belief in that personal relationship with God or whoever it is that you choose to worship.
And I feel like that's exactly analogous to that. Where Willoughby as well as being very performative in his confession and making sure that everyone knows how hurt he is and how sorry he is, and Colonel...
Emily: It's standing up and giving testimony in front of the whole church.
Lauren: Yes. And making sure that everyone knows just how pious and just how sorry you are.
Whereas Colonel Brandon would just have, you know, that quiet [00:30:00] prayer and that's it. That's your confession. And your sins are forgiven and I feel like that's more Colonel Brandon's approach.
Emily: I think it fits really well into the dichotomy of sense and sensibility too, with sensibility being so much more associated with outward actions and sense being linked to introspection.
Colonel Brandon and Willoughby we've, we've talked before about how Willoughby embodies the Regency idea of sensibility. Whereas Colonel Brandon, like Elinor, falls more into the category of sense, right? And being, you know, internal versus external. Introspective versus performance.
Lauren: And it's really, you know, it's such a basic title, but it works so well for literally everything in this book.
Emily: It does. Jane Austen was a genius.
Religion As A Practice
Lauren: Relating to sensibility and Marianne being linked to sensibility as well. And being in touch with her emotions. Like the part of the reason she gets sick is because she's going on these long solo contemplative walks. And that's also like a type of prayer or meditation is just being alone with your thoughts in nature pretty much.
And that was something that struck me because I think that's something that I would practice because that's the type of prayer that makes me feel renewed. And so I liked being able to read Marianne's long solo walks as like, this is her version of like of prayer or meditation or contemplation or whatever noun or verb you'd like to use.
Emily: Yeah, I think we can definitely look at religion in terms of both an internal and an external practice. And like, we can see with like Willoughby, for example, there doesn't seem to have been any kind of introspective work. He's just doing the external performance of conciliation.
Lauren: Yeah. It's maybe like performative atonement because if he had actually done any type of. Introspection [00:32:00] then he would have had a little bit more insight into his own actions. And he kind of says like, this is, this is why I did XYZ, but it's still lacking the motivation piece. Because I feel like whether you get this through prayer or therapy, you need to understand your own actions and why it is that you do things.
What is driving you? What, what caused you to do XYZ? You can say. Like, “I self-sabotage.” Okay. But why? It's not enough just to be able to say, I did this thing. What was the root cause of that? And he doesn't have it because he hasn't spent time thinking about it.
Emily: And that's true. I think for a lot of nominal Christians in the United States today, what has prompted their actions is other people's expectations.
They want to see you acting in a certain way and so they do that, but it's not actually grounded in any kind of personal conviction.
Lauren: And there's sometimes so much pressure that goes with that too. Like how you mentioned earlier that, I mean, the United States is, especially the South, is very heavily Christian, so it's like, well, if I don't want to be ostracized from my own community, then I will continue performing this.
Do I believe it? Yeah, sure. Kind of, but it's not--
Emily: Not even necessarily from the explicit fear of being ostracized, but just because. That's what you do. I mean, I got married in the church. I, I don't subscribe to Christian ideas of marriage really, and I think it would be disingenuous of me to be baptized into the Christian church and to declare that I believe those things because I really don't.
But yeah, you know, of course I was going to be married by a priest.
Lauren: It's what you do.
Emily: It's not my belief, but it's what you do. And you know, there, there were people involved, you know, for whom that is an important thing. And because it wasn't important to me, I was perfectly happy to [00:34:00] do that because it has significance for other people.
Learn Something New
Lauren: Yeah. I really appreciate when I can listen to people who really ardently believe in something and see, like, the life and the energy that it gives them, because it makes me happy that they've found that. Even if it's not something that gives me like that same type of energy or joy just cause we can all find things differently.
I think like my personal belief is that every religion is recognizing like the same power. That's kind of what I have in my mind. We just have different ways of going about it and different rituals of it. And everyone kind of made their own thing in recognition of the great unknown. So there are things from Christianity that I really appreciate and can pull from and incorporate into my own life.
But if I did more research into Judaism or Buddhism, I might also find other teachings from those religions that I really appreciate and can apply to my own life. But I don't subscribe to any one faith or way of living or any of that, it just doesn't fit me.
I mean, and studying-- studying the Bible and Judeo-Christian tendencies is important if you want to understand like European and American literature anyway, just because so much of it is steeped in it. Like any book from the Regency period, for example, like whether or not it's explicitly mentioned a lot of the themes or the cultural setting, it's just the setting. And so to be able to fully understand it, you also have to understand where they're pulling from.
Emily: But then it's also important because it is the cultural setting to explicitly seek out other things. I mean, I just read a romcom where the main characters are both Muslim and.
Lauren: Ooh, drop the title!
Emily: Ayesha At Last. And I really liked that it talks about how each of these characters approaches their own faith and why they approach their faith in those ways.
It was really good. It was really, really good. So yeah, I [00:36:00] recommend checking that out, but also, you know, finding media where the cultural setting is different from the hegemonic Christian America that we find ourselves in currently.
Lauren: Yeah, I think it's more, and this is just my personal opinion, but I think faith is stronger when you have the opportunity to learn about different things and then you choose this faith versus this is what I was born into or what I'm told to believe. So I believe it, but if you get to explore different ways of understanding the world or moving through the world or different moral codes and say, ah, this one, this one resonates with me. And this is what I choose to believe. I think that's really powerful.
Emily: Yeah. I feel like in all aspects of identity, not just religion coming to something through consideration rather than by default is always going to be more meaningful and is always going to lead to feeling more authentically yourself.
So whether that's gender or sexuality or religion, even if you come right back around to feeling most settled in the identity that you began with, then, you know. You know that you did the work, you know, that you looked into other options and that you've come to what feels most authentic and genuine for your experience.
And, you know, it's, it's never easy to do that. It does involve a lot of work. And sometimes it involves really difficult frank conversations with yourself. Or with other people, but it's so worth it.
Lauren: This has been our earnest application for people to do introspective work. In whatever way works for you.
Emily: Think about who you are, think about why you are that.
Lauren: Sorry, I just got, what is it? The Office. “Why are you the way that you are? I hate so much about the way that you choose to be.” It is, it's Michael speaking to Toby. [00:38:00] Ignore me.
I'm sorry.
Emily: But yeah, I would definitely encourage everyone, either on your own or with other people.
It's always more fun with other people. But. You know, make sure you're, you're in the company of people who are supportive of taking this journey, whatever it may be, wherever it may end up.
Pop Culture Connections
Do you have a pop culture connection for us today?
Lauren: In a way, I do.
Emily: Okay.
Lauren: In the vein of thinking about how like Christian values kind of permeate a lot of American and British culture.
We also see a lot of tropes in pop culture that come from that. And when Willoughby was in his monologue because that took up so much of the events of this section so we just keep coming back to it. He uses language that kind of hints at that Madonna-whore complex, where especially because if Marianne had died in that moment, she would have died like an unmarred virgin, who was just full of feeling and blah, blah, blah, you know, pure.
Emily: Mm.
Lauren: And would have been the perfect Madonna who could be worshiped and revered forever, especially because she's now untouchable. Versus the whore of Eliza — in the way that Willoughby speaks of her — and is just very dismissive and trying to claim as though she brought this on herself, despite the fact that he was a very active participant.
And even that sometimes extends to like women who are married. Like sometimes the Madonnas are still wives, but there's, yeah, it gets a little bit complicated when you do that. But I was thinking about that and then how that same madonna-whore trope shows up in pop culture all the time as well. So not only does it show up in how people speak about others in Regency literature, then you can also see it in how female characters are written for television, for books. You know, in comics you have like Betty and Veronica in the Archie comics where you have the blonde, All-American milkshake drinking girl, who Archie is supposed to end up [00:40:00] with. And then the raven-haired, worldly, Veronica. Clearly setting up one as like the innocent virginal one to be desired for like a wife and a mother. And the one who's only desirable for sex. And shouldn't ever actually end up with a main character.
He can be with her for a little bit, but then she's going to be cast aside because she's not ultimately worthy.
Emily: She's not the kind of girl you bring home to your mother.
Lauren: She's not the kind of girl that you bring home to your mother. It also shows up in more explicit ways. Like the final girl trope in horror movies, where the one who is left standing is usually the one who is more.
Pure or virginal and the women who either have been trying to have sex during the movie, or have been hinted at, in dialogue to be the ones who are more promiscuous or more comfortable with their bodies, you know, how dare they, those are the ones who die. And it's just seeing how that type of value that we place on women shows up in pop culture specifically because of values that were born out of Christianity, whether or not they're Christian.
It's a little bit of like a tenuous pop culture connection, but that was what I was thinking of. How this type of trope shows up so often in our media, whether we mean it to, or not just because religion is so entrenched in culture.
Emily: Yeah. I was going to say, I mean, it's, it's really just, it's the extension of what we were talking about earlier about how our cultural setting in the US has become kind of default background Christian. And of course, that's reflected in our media, which is why representation is so important.
Lauren: And it just becomes a feedback loop. It's like what you see reflected in movies or television or literature is what you think is right. Or it's the only thing that's ever been presented to you. So you don't know there's another option.
And I just, I think about how harmful it is for girls to internalize that type of message. Like. I no longer have worth because I've been touched. Why is that something that we continue to [00:42:00] reinforce all the time? Yeah.
Emily: And it plays into all of our conceptions of gender and gender roles and sexuality, morality.
Lauren: Yeah. So I'm grateful that Marianne did not become the perfect martyr, but she really was set up as like perfect virginal martyr versus this fallen woman of Eliza and we see that repeated--
Emily: In Willoughby's conception.
Lauren: In Willoughby's conception, not by Jane Austen. By Willoughby specifically.
Emily: Jane Austen actually understands that people are complex.
Lauren: Right. And also was way too smart to purposely do that in her books.
Final Takeaways
Emily: This is such a, the, so much more of a thorny topic than uh...
Lauren: Oh yeah.
Emily: Then I think I expected going into it, which was weird because I knew our topic was a religion, but...
Lauren: I feel like it's difficult for religion not to be thorny, just because there's so much associated baggage.
Emily: There is... there's so much history tied up or religion, so much religion in history. You cannot extricate those.
Lauren: No. Shall we do final takeaways?
Emily: Let's do final takeaways.
Lauren: What is your final takeaway? Penultimate section of Sense and Sensibility.
Emily: God, I really don't know what my final takeaway is. I'm going to say my final takeaway is that in times of need people's true nature will reveal itself.
Lauren: I like that.
Emily: What is your final takeaway for this section?
Lauren: I think my final takeaway is that religion and faith can be used as tools for greater self-understanding. And when used in that way can be really beneficial and affirming.
And Willoughby sucks.
Emily: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading chapters 46 through 50, our final section of Sense and Sensibility, through the lens of [00:44:00] adulthood.
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 our social media.
Emily: If you'd like to support us and help us keep creating 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.
[fade out, fade in]
Emily: It's about the journey, not the destination.
Lauren: Now you're going to be a fantastic youth pastor.
Emily: Oh God. I don't want to be a youth pastor.
Lauren: I can already see you in the catchy Jesus t-shirt, you know something, oh God. I saw so many of those things at church camp.
Emily: For those of you at home, I'm just shaking my head.
Lauren: I just, I can see it. We just got to get you a microphone, you know.
Emily: I have a microphone.
Lauren: Shut up.
Emily: Excuse you. You're the one who invited me to join you on this podcasting journey.
Lauren: I'm rescinding the invite. That's over, that’s canceled.
Emily: It's too late now, I have all the editing powers. Either you learn to use Audacity or I stay on this podcast.
Lauren: Alright, fine, I guess you can stay. Can't learn another thing. I can't do it.
