Sense and Sensibility 6-10: “Gender Is A Prison?”
In Episode 2, Emily and Lauren discuss chapters 6-10 of Sense and Sensibility with a focus on gender. Also included: gendered expectations in the Regency era, the evolution of beauty standards, and launching Lauren’s presidential campaign. #LetPeopleEnjoyThings2028
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Show Notes
If this episode sounds at all cohesive, or if we have fooled you into thinking that we are intelligent people with multiple degrees, it is all due to the magic of Emily’s editing. (Though we do actually have those degrees.) Pros of making a podcast with your best friend: recording episodes means you have a great time and watch clips from The Graham Norton Show while procrastinating. Cons: sometimes you get a little loopy while recording and go off on multiple giggle-filled tangents that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Regardless, we hope you enjoy our second episode. Goodbye, 2020!
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
Transcript
Reclaiming Jane Episode 2 | Sense and Sensibility 6-10: “Gender Is A Prison?”
Introductions
[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: This episode we're using the theme of gender to look at chapters 6 through 10 of Sense and Sensibility.
Welcome back to Reclaiming Jane. This is episode two. Thank you so much for joining us again.
Lauren: We are really excited to be diving back into Jane Austen's first published novel.
Emily: Shall we go ahead and dive into our recaps?
Lauren: We will. Hopefully, I do better at this 30-second recap than last time because last time was an epic fail.
I really did not realize how short 30 seconds are going to be.
Emily: It's really short.
30-Second Recaps
Lauren: It's really fast. All right, Emily, are you ready to sum up chapters six through 10 of Sense and Sensibility in a matter of 30 seconds?
Emily: Not at all, but I'll try.
Lauren: Fantastic. On your mark. Get set, go.
Emily: So in this section, the Dashwoods move from Norland to Barton Cottage.
They are greeted by the family owning the estate, the Middletons. There's a person staying with the Middletons, Colonel Brandon. So they meet him. Everybody has opinions about everybody's personalities, and then Marianne twists her ankle and a random man appears out of nowhere, named Willoughby and saves her.
And then they fall in love.
Lauren: Perfect. I don't know if I can do much better than that, but we'll find out.
Emily: Are you ready?
Lauren: Ready.
Emily: On your mark. Get set. Go.
Lauren: Okay. So the Dashwoods get settled into Barton Cottage. They meet their neighbors the Middletons, Mr. -- Not Mr. -- Sir Middleton is very jovial and lively. His wife, not so much. They meet Colonel Brandon who is stuffy and boring, according to Marianne. And when she twists her ankle, she meets somebody who she thinks is going to be the love of her life [00:02:00] because he literally shows up like a knight in shining armor and picks her up from where she's twisted her ankle and carries her back home.
And she thinks she's going to fall in love with him, but everybody else thinks Colonel Brandon absolutely loves her.
Emily: Nice.
Lauren: So much better than last time.
Emily: We both managed it.
Lauren: Whew.
Emily: We survived.
Lauren: We survived.
Historical Context
Emily: All right. So let's talk a little bit about the historical context of what's going on in Regency society and how it applies to all of this.
Lauren: Fantastic. Teach me something.
Emily: I, this is things that you know, most likely.
Lauren: Eh, probably. Teach me something anyway.
Emily: So, so the historical context that I was thinking about most while reading this section is the behavioral norms of the time for women versus men. Now in England, in the late 18th, early 19th century, it's very much binary gender.
There's not a spectrum. Although there absolutely would have been in other cultures at that time, but Western Europe around the turn of that century wasn't so on board. And it, it shows through very clearly in the section, especially as I mentioned in my part of the recap, everyone having opinions about everyone else's personalities.
It's very interesting to me to see how the narration characterizes people who seem to have similar mannerisms. So specifically, I was thinking about the contrast between Sir John who's very jovial and chatty and maybe a little overbearing sometimes. He keeps inviting them to dinner, very insistently, and yet they recognize that he's a friendly, happy dude.
Whereas his mother-in-law, Mrs. Jennings, seems to have similar proclivities in her conversational address. [00:04:00] And yet she's described as being pretty vulgar and not someone that you really want to be associated with. And I think that's absolutely linked to the fact that Sir John is a man. He is a landowner, whereas Mrs. Jennings is widowed. She's an older woman and that's just, you, you just can't do that when you're that, that kind of person in society.
Lauren: I actually made the exact same note, like on the third page of the chapter I wrote down, "Does Sir John feel emboldened to go beyond civility because he's a man?" but I was looking at descriptions of his wife versus him where she's allowed to be a little bit more -- not allowed.
She's more... castigated for being more reserved and aloof as a woman. Whereas Sir John can go beyond what is civil and be upbeat and happy and kind of in your face at times. And it's fine because he's just being polite. He's a man, he's being nice. But if that breach of civility had happened, or it had come from a woman.
It wouldn't have been received as well.
Emily: Yeah, definitely. With having so many introductions made in this chapter, the way they're all described as acting and how they're assessed from the point of view of the Dashwoods, I think is really very telling as to what, what roles each gender is expected to play at this particular level of society.
So this is not nobility, but they're landed. They're landowners. They have some measure of wealth. Colonel Brandon clearly is a military officer. And so the way that they're expected to behave is definitely delineated along gender lines. So Lady Middleton is described as being reserved and sort of cold.
She's primarily concerned with the elegance of her house and [00:06:00] how it's perceived by all the visitors that her jovial husband invites. He's very enthusiastic, perhaps too friendly for a man of his standing. Mrs. Jennings making comments about lovers at the table is very much frowned upon. Colonel Brandon is apparently too quiet.
He's too dour. Whereas Willoughby is very much painted as being like the platonic ideal of the Regency gentleman. He's well-spoken, he's courteous. I noticed when he asks Mrs. Dashwood's permission to come back and check on Marianne after he rescues her, very much enacting the, the non-threatening gentleman.
So, yeah, definitely. I think there's, there's a mention that Colonel Brandon is also very gentlemanly in his address. So clearly he can comport himself in that way if he wants, but it seems like he's just not, he's not as committed to the holistic society man ideal that Willoughby is very carefully enacting.
Lauren: I think it goes back to, we talked a little bit in our first episode about what sense and sensibility meant at this time. And while sense was typically linked to men and sensibility was linked to women, you were meant to kind of have a healthy dose of both. And Willoughby especially is like the epitome of what, like men and sensibility should be when you combine the two. And Marianne says that when she's talking about how he loves the same literature as she does, and will speak rapturously at length about things and is just excited and the epitome of like, a rom-com romantic hero pretty much. I mean, in both 2020 and in 1811.
Emily: Oh, absolutely.
Lauren: And it's, it's interesting to see the two kind of contrasted against one another in this section.
Gender in Sense and Sensibility 6-10
[00:08:00] Emily: Yeah. It's very interesting, I think, to compare the ways that Willoughby and Colonel Brandon especially are characterized, especially in terms of the way they relate to Marianne and how she interprets their reactions to things that she enjoys.
She's shown taking a lot of pleasure in the way that Willoughby interacts with her on topics. Like music and literature. Whereas when she plays the piano at the Middletons' and the whole family is, you know, sort of in a chaotic uproar of a dinner party, she finds herself appreciating in that context that Colonel Brandon is just quietly, stoically sitting there listening, just like basically says, okay, that's good enough.
At least he's listening.
Lauren: I will never give Jane Austen enough credit for how much of a shady queen she is in her narration. And I will say that multiple times, I'm sure throughout the length of this podcast, because --
Emily: She's the shadiest queen!
Lauren: The narration is hilarious. When they're talking about Marianne's performance at the Middletons' home it says that, "Sir John was loud in his admiration at the end of every song and as loud in his conversation with the others while every song lasted." So really not paying attention at all. "And Lady Middleton frequently called him to order, wondered how anyone's attention could be diverted from music for a moment, and asked Marianne to sing a particular song, which Marianne had just finished."
So she's not paying attention either. And Colonel Brandon, on the other hand, is the only one who's actually like sitting and listening attentively. So he's not as effusive in his praise as Sir John is, but he's also the only one who's actually sitting and listening to her.
Emily: And then of course we have all the gender associations of the relationship obsession.
So of course, Mrs. Jennings immediately declares that Marianne and Colonel Brandon must of course be in love with each other, obviously, because they're two people of marriageable age, who aren't fighting like cats and [00:10:00] dogs.
Lauren: And she has nothing better to do.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: I mean, honestly, Mrs. Jennings is goals.
Emily: She really is.
Lauren: She's just fat and happy and making fun of everybody else and just content in her life. I mean, I, that sounds ideal to me.
Emily: I relate to that.
Lauren: Amen.
Emily: Absolutely. Uh, but there's also the question of people's relative ages that when I, I had to pause for a moment when I started in on the section that was talking about how Marianne and Colonel Brandon are basically being shipped.
Lauren: Right.
Emily: Wait a minute. Isn't she 17? And they're talking about how she-- he's 35. And I appreciated so much the comment that Elinor, I believe made. That basically, well, you shouldn't be finding him the pinnacle of attractiveness for you right now. He's 35 and you're 17.
Lauren: I mean also that whole section -- I mean, Marianne's objections reminded me,
I wrote in the margin, "this is like Tik ToK teens calling millennials old." You know, "at least mama, you cannot deny the absurdity of the accusation that you may not think it intentionally ill-natured. Colonel Brandon is certainly younger than Mrs. Jennings, but he's old enough to be my father. And if he were ever animated enough to be in love, must have long outlived every sensation of the kind."
And I think I've been feeling old most recently because I stay too much on Tik Tok. And I am ‘old’ at 27, which then this book reinforced! I was already thinking about how teenagers think I'm old at 27 and then literally farther on down the page --
Emily: "A woman of seven and 20 can never hope to feel or inspire affection again," which being the best friend that I am, immediately screenshot it and sent to Lauren.
Lauren: Which was so rude! Uncalled for, I was already attacked when I read this section and then Emily read it and made the point of pointing it out to me again.
And one other thing about gender that stood out to me in even like the first opening chapters, especially, when we're looking at the relationship between Sir and Lady Middleton is the narrator clearly has such a [00:12:00] distaste for Lady Middleton in the way that she's described. Just total disdain. And especially -- so like this description, "There was nothing in any of the party which could recommend them as companions to the Dashwoods. But the cold insipidity of Lady Middleton was so particularly repulsive that in comparison of it, the gravity of Colonel Brandon, and even the boisterous mirth of Sir John and his mother-in-law was interesting."
Emily: I highlighted that exact passage I remembered as you were reading it. So I think that that really succinctly illustrates the way that a person's gender colors their perception by other people.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's a woman with no sensibility, if we're going to continue using that term to death. And she's... the narrator disdains her. And she's also not well-liked by the other characters in the book. So while an excess of sensibility is perhaps not advisable either, as we see with Marianne, even in these first like 10 chapters of the book, clearly you can't have none because that wasn't socially acceptable, either. Women aren't allowed to be cold and unfeeling, you'd have to have some sort of emotional release.
Emily: But regardless of whether they have an excess of sense or an excess of sensibility, they're still judged more harshly on that than men are, because you could say that Sir John has an excess of sensibility, like his mother-in-law, but still he's okay. He's a friendly guy, whereas you just don't want to be around Mrs. Jennings. And then you have Lady Middleton versus Colonel Brandon, who both seem to have an excess of sense and no sensibility and she's repulsive, but by comparison with her, Colonel Brandon, who seems to have, you know, similar outward mannerisms, he's pretty all right.
Because at least he's not a woman acting like that.
Sensible Regency Gentlemen
Lauren: Right. With Willoughby as well. I mean, that's, I mean, he and Marianne are pretty well-matched in terms of their sensibility, but Willoughby gets to be [00:14:00] seen as like the romantic hero coming down from the mist to swoop Marianne up in his arms and carry her home.
Emily: Which, I mean goals.
Lauren: Honestly, though.
Emily: Who hasn't had that fantasy?
Lauren: That's so true. It's like I, who could blame Marianne for instantly falling in love with this person and not even being able to look at him when he brings her home because you're just so embarrassed that this man has just like pressed you against his body, into like, and like carry you across a threshold into your house.
I wouldn't be able to look at him either. I'd be mortified.
Emily: And Mrs. Jennings' assessment of Marianne slash Colonel Brandon. Also, we get this very concise statement, "that it would be an excellent match for he was rich and she was handsome" and that's really all you need. So we talked a little bit last time about the concept of dowries and how a woman needs to bring a fortune, but we see here, the absolute minimum for an acceptable society marriage is for somebody to have money and for the girl to be pretty.
Lauren: And honestly, are we ever going to get away from that?
Emily: No.
Lauren: Yeah. That's true.
Emily: I mean, it's yeah. That's kind of a trope that we've seen in real life throughout the ages, in cases where men control the money that basically, if they want a beautiful wife, they can get a beautiful wife. It's the whole concept of trophy wives.
Lauren: God. So true.
Emily: We've had lots of discussions about age gaps in relationships and at what point things get acceptable. But, uh...
Lauren: I think for like with adults, it's a gray area, right? Because in some cases, it's truly something where you can tell that they care for one another and they're at a similar maturity level, despite the age gap.
And they can connect really well. And it works for them --
Emily: -- once everyone's truly an adult.
Lauren: Exactly --
Emily: -- and has attained that maturity, I don't care as much.
Lauren: Like over 25, truly an adult.
Emily: Exactly.
Lauren: Yeah. Your, your brain is fully developed.
Emily: Which we can say because we're over twenty-five.
Lauren: Barely.
Emily: [00:16:00] Barely, but we're over 25.
Lauren: We made it though.
Emily: Yep. But still 17 and 35? No, absolutely not. No.
Lauren: I mean, but by 2020 standards too, because I'm -- even though, so Elinor is saying, you might not like it, but that was still clearly something that was acceptable in 1811, because Marianne is marriageable age at 17. It's just weird to us in 2020. I mean, weird to Marianne as well, but mostly because...
Emily: cause she views him as being old.
Lauren: She views him as being old. And she also has a very specific idea of what her ideal man is, which has that excess of sensibility, which I think is also tied to youth. And that doesn't fit in her mind. I think if you would see Colonel Brandon as somebody, if you mixed Colonel Brandon with Willoughby to have like a hybrid of the two of them at 35, I don't think she would have had as many objections.
Emily: That's fair.
Lauren: Which I think, you know, we see today as well where it's like, 'Oh, you know, he's XYZ, but he doesn't act like it. Like he sees, he feels so young!' Or I noticed people -- like the number of teen girls who like -- one, I don't blame them. Let me just preface that. Who like are obsessed with people like Chris Evans or like Benedict Cumberbatch or something like that, where I'm like, he is a good 20 years older than you.
Emily: That's a whole middle-aged man.
Lauren: This is ILLEGAL, very illegal. But I mean, if they feel like somebody who's relatable to you and you've only seen them through interviews or movies or TV shows it, it feels less, it feels less taboo, but if you were to tell them something like, "Oh, well, did you realize that Chris Evans is the same age as your math teacher?"
I think they would have a different response.
Emily: Yeah. And it's definitely also the effect of, you know, the parasocial relationship because it is one-sided.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: But also when you're a 15-year-old teenage girl, 15-year-old boys are the absolute last thing you want anything to do with.
Lauren: That's so true.
Emily: All teenagers are gross.
I'm sorry, babies, but...
Lauren: It's just unfortunate.
Emily: It happens to everybody, you know.
Beauty Standards, Then and Now
Lauren: But does it though? Because [00:18:00] I also, this is completely off-topic, but one of the things that bothers me about Gen-Z -- love you, Gen-Z, so much, but why do you not have an ugly phase? The rest of us had to suffer and now people have makeup gurus and Instagram filters, and you know how to make yourselves look good from like 12 years old, on.
We had to look like crap for years and struggle.
Emily: I still look like crap!
Lauren: I-- facts.
Emily: I'm 28. I look terrible.
Lauren: Where are your awkward years?
Emily: I still have acne.
Lauren: God, they don't tell you that. It's like, oh, once you get older, acne disappears. No, it doesn't!
Emily: I went to a dermatologist once. This was like five years ago and told her I was having acne problems and she looks at my chart and my age, goes, "shouldn't you have outgrown this?" Yeah, I wish!
Lauren: If only. If only, if only, the woodpecker sighed...
Emily: Glad I'm not the only one who thinks of that song every single time someone says if only.
Lauren: Every time. I will never get it out of my head. If you don't carry Madame Zeroni up the mountain...
Emily: So moving on from Madame Zeroni...
Lauren: Moving on from Madame Zeroni. Though, I mean, always relevant. Find a way to make it relevant.
Emily: The Dashwoods would hate Madame Zeroni.
Lauren: Would they? Why?
Emily: I don't know. I just get a vibe. I just, I just have a feeling they wouldn't like her.
Lauren: That's fair. I mean, she was Black, so they probably wouldn't.
Emily: True. That's for next time.
Lauren: Anyway. Okay. Well that -- so, in chapter 10, that was one of the things that I underlined, where they're talking about how Marianne is quite pretty, when you're talking about how you know, Colonel Brandon and Marianne would make a good pair because he's rich and she's handsome. And so they talk about how Elinor has a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure.
And so then they go on to talk about Marianne. So first of all, this is again, some shade from the narrator, which is also what I put in the margins of this book. "Her form, though not so correct as her sister's and having the advantage of height, was more striking and [00:20:00] her face was so lovely that when in the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens," which like... dang.
But then it goes on to say, "her skin was very brown, but," and I was like, ah, 'but' is doing a lot of work here. Lovely. So it's, it's those little things when you're reading something that just takes you out of the book when you're in 2020, like, "very brown, but."
Emily: Yeah. And that's, I definitely read that. And of course, you know, the comparison to modern beauty standards came to mind, which I know has gotten a lot of airtime.
In recent years, the contrast between, you know, the lily white, delicate, noble maiden versus today's quote-unquote, ideal of being tanned and fit, but not muscular. Yeah. And I wonder to what extent that was made explicit in the Regency period, because there were absolutely beauty publications. There were fashion plates, so the ideal was distributed, but I don't know, to what extent the goal of being a pale delicate beauty.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Was --
Lauren: held up?
Emily: You know, worked towards, because later in the century, you know, the Victorians are infamous for doing horrible, horrible things to their skin to try and be pale. Don't take arsenic, ladies. Not good. You're going to be pale because you're half dead.
Lauren: That'll do it. Yeah. It makes me think of, it's interesting to see how beauty standards have changed for women and how quickly they change as well.
And you mentioned earlier, you know, now the societal ideal of what beauty is, is like being tanned and you notice it --
Emily: But only if you're white.
Lauren: But only if you're white, but also you notice people kind of going in the direction of... have you heard the term 'black fishing'?
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: So [00:22:00] getting as close as you can get to like a light-skinned black woman, but still being white.
So you still get that societal privilege of being like, being a white woman. Um, but you get the societal ideal of like, you know, that tan skin, you probably, like, wear your hair in hairstyles that have been popularized by black women, but you think it looks really cute. So you're going to do your hair that way, right?
Not always, but, um, most of the time it's the, the tanning, the clothing that you decide to wear, the hairstyles. And like Ariana Grande is like notorious for this where it's like she tans because she's "very Italian," heavy air quotes. I'm like, okay. Yes. But also when you were on the cover of Elle Magazine, all of a sudden you were lily-white with freckles for a high fashion publication, but then in the "thank u, next" video, you looked darker than my mother.
So like, what is the truth?
Emily: I'm just always lily-white with freckles.
Lauren: Well, you're a redhead, my dear.
Emily: Yes. That's just, that's just who I am. But I have seen this interpreted as, and I think very rightly, the beauty standard, the ideal being associated with, "what does leisure make possible?"
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: So in the Regency period, that would be, if you are wealthy and you have leisure time, then you're not outside working. You're not having to do physical labor. You can stay out of the sun. Whereas nowadays, if you have the privilege of wealth, you can go lay out and tan or get a spray tan and go and work out and things like that. So basically it's what is for women, at least, the physical representation of not being beholden to work? Whatever that work may be.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. And it also just makes me think of how, which is so messed up, how body types can go in and out of style as well, which should not be a thing. Like the way that your skeleton is constructed [00:24:00] should not be a style. It should just be a fact like why, why do we decide that body types are in and out of style?
That is ridiculous to me, but thinking about how in 2007, I mean, like similar thing and you see the same trends come in and out for all of eternity. There's nothing new under the sun.
Emily: I do have something interesting to say about that, but finish your thought first.
Lauren: So thinking about, how like in the 1920s and in like 2007, it was very 'in' to have like that very thin, 'no curves on your body' figure.
So in 1920s, it was like the more androgynous cut, like very skinny, kind of like straight lines were “in.” Similar in 2007 where it was 'in' to be. Like, I mean, 2007, the early two thousands, 2007 is just what comes to my mind. And I'm thinking of like all of like the pop-punk bands and that type of look where it was really in to like, have the skinny jeans and be able to fit into skinny jeans.
Cause if you had any curves, like good fricking luck, whereas now, mostly due to like Instagram and people like the Kardashians having an influence on pop culture, who stole their look from black women, but like, we won't get into that. Now it's more “in” to be curvy. Like butts are more of a thing.
Everyone wants to have like the hourglass shape and now that's in. And so you happen to have that body naturally, like you're really lucky and other people are getting plastic surgery to achieve that. Whereas 10 years ago that wasn't desirable at all. And it just makes me think of how superficial beauty trends are, but also how in order to have societal capital, sometimes whether you're in 1811 or in 2020, women are forced to conform to whatever the trends are for your body or for what you're supposed to look like in order to secure a husband or in order to have more followers on Instagram or whatever it is in whatever time period, we're always beholden to just this bullshit standard.
Emily: Yeah. And so related to that, being a fashion history enthusiast, although far from an expert, there's definitely been a shift in just the last few [00:26:00] decades from the fashionable ideal being a silhouette, a way you present yourself, to an ideal being a body type.
Lauren: Oh, interesting.
Emily: Because in the past, when it was standard to wear, you know, supportive shaping garments, stays corsets, things like that. That's just, everyone did that. And the look, quote-unquote, was achieved mainly by the shaping of your clothes around you. So in the Regency period, it was that columnar, neo-classical, Grecian drapey shape.
And so you have very light floaty fabrics. You have skirts that start just under the bust line and just flow straight down, whereas, say, in the late Victorian period, you have bustles. So you weren't expected to actually have a fat ass, but you would wear the appropriately shaped corset, you would wear a fitted bodice.
You would wear a bustle cage and have excess fabrics draped over that. So it wasn't so much the net shape of your body. It was, okay. Do you have the means to acquire the fashionable kit, essentially? And that's definitely changed. And I don't know if it's because, you know, we just, we don't have that norm now of being so covered that our outward look depends on our clothes entirely.
Or if, you know, we just, we have the technology and so now people can get butt injections, right?
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. And it's incredibly common now, too. I mean that, lip filler, I think is something I see more often as well. With, like getting the full lip look to where, I think for, for some people, depending on where you live, who you follow on Instagram, like what you immerse yourself in, people with normal lips that they were born with, look off to you or look too [00:28:00] small because you're so used to seeing people with like pillowy lips that they got from a plastic surgeon.
Which, I mean, again, let's talk about how black women are the standard, because who usually has more full lips? I'm just saying.
Emily: Unless you're a black woman.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's absolutely a double standard that if you're a black woman with naturally full lips, like some white woman might be like, Oh, that's, you know, that's my goals or whatever, but it's not valued for that on an actual black woman.
Lauren: Everyone wants to be black, but nobody wants to be black.
Pop Culture Connections (Kind Of)
But that does kind of take me into, I wanted to talk about a pop culture connection as well, which we kind of touched on anyway. But one of the things that I was thinking of when reading this section, especially with the introduction of Willoughby, is how most fictional heroes that we love, or like the paragon of what we want to see in a romantic hero is usually written and constructed by women because we understand what we want and it doesn't actually exist... commonly in real life. It's there. But also what, what I was thinking of is that the most popular fictional men are written by women because we know who straight women want to fall in love with. You know what I mean?
Emily: Absolutely. They're, non-threatening, they're attentive.
Lauren: Exactly.
Emily: They share and are willing to talk about your interests.
Lauren: Exactly. Yeah. And, I think toxic masculinity creates this false ideal of what men think that we want. And then they then perform to those standards when that's not what straight women want at all. And I want to emphasize straight women as well, because you know, let's, let's not pretend that all women are attracted to men.
We won't do that today, but when you compare romantic heroes written by women to the quote-unquote desirable, protagonist written by men. It is like night and day. The one author who would give an honorable mention is Nicholas Sparks, because he seems to understand what it is that straight women want. And has profited off of it to great success.
Emily: I've never read [00:30:00] Nicholas Sparks, but I think it stands, too, that basically both men's and women's beauty standards are still very much set by mostly the men who have the most control over visual media, essentially. And that is complicated now, with greater recognition of gender non-conforming identities, whether that's someone who identifies with a binary gender or someone who's non-binary, even when you look at quote unquote androgynous fashions, they're actually male.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: They're just not overtly like manly masculine. So, you know, in college, when I would try to wear something that was, you know, androgynous, it would be like jeans and a flannel shirt and a pair of tennis shoes. Like that's not actually gender-less necessarily, especially because women didn't regularly wear pants until the last century, but all of our defaults, everything neutral goes to masculine because that's the unmarked status in at least American society.
Lauren: Yeah. And I think I see more commonly now. Well, actually, that's not true at all because I feel like there were a lot of really androgynous celebrities in the eighties who were really popular. And I don't know what happened in the nineties and the two thousands, but I think now of how like male celebrities who are really popular are people like Harry Styles, or like Timothee Chalamet who are more androgynous.
And also, I feel like play with their gender expression a little bit more. I hope that that makes its way more into mainstream because that's something that I feel like people recognize, but don't talk about that, like when women dress as men, it's acceptable because it's, we're going up a step. You know what I [00:32:00] mean?
It's like, well, you can, women can dress as men, quote-unquote, because what is dressing like a man anyway. But men are not as, it's not as societally acceptable for men to dress as women. And I say that with heavy air quotes, because I can't think of a better way to express it because clothing doesn't have a gender, but like dressing in clothes that are societally meant for women.
#LetPeopleEnjoyThings2028
Emily: So, this is just the saddest thing, but also something I very strongly relate to when Marianne says about Colonel Brandon, that he's just the kind of man -- oh, sorry. When Willoughby says about Colonel Brandon, that he's just the kind of man who everybody speaks well of and nobody cares about whom all are delighted to see and nobody remembers to talk to.
Lauren: Yeah. I think one of the things I noticed about Colonel Brandon is that even though he's meant to be kind of the example of sense rather than sensibility, the characters still find something in him to esteem or to like, and kind of can sense that there's something else there and appreciate him for his sense, even as they wished that he had a little bit more of the emotional sensibility.
So it says, towards the end of, I think it's chapter nine that, Elinor is now kind of figuring out that Colonel Brandon is indeed interested in Marianne. At first she thought it was just Mrs. Jennings kind of messing around. And then she takes the time to look at him a little bit more and realizes, Oh no, he actually does esteem my sister more than he thought -- more than I thought that he did.
And she, the narrator says, you know, "Elinor saw it with concern, for what could a silent man of five and thirty hope when opposed by a very lively one of five and twenty." But then goes on to say, you know, "she liked him in spite of his gravity and reserve. She'd beheld in him an object of interest. His manners, though serious, were mild and his reserve appeared rather the result of some oppression of spirits than of any natural gloominess of temper," which is still, you know, he's, they're giving him a pass because they think that sensibility is in there [00:34:00] somewhere.
You're not naturally like this, but there's something that happened that has suppressed it within you a little bit, but because he has that potential, he has potential for Marianne and to be a man of greater depth than maybe they would have given him credit for.
Emily: And he at least has that baseline of perceived good breeding in that he has mild manners and gentlemanly address.
Lauren: Exactly. And that goes back to sensibility and sense being that cultural movement of what proper manners and behaviors should be for both men and women that he's, he's still societally acceptable, but just perhaps lacking a little bit in that department.
Emily: Toxic masculinity is bad, kids, and don't judge people for who they are.
Lauren: Just let people enjoy things, just let them do whatever they want. Why does this have to be so difficult? Let people enjoy things, 1811 to 2020. That's going to be my campaign slogan. For what I don't know, but it's going to be my campaign, so --
Emily: Let people enjoy things!
Lauren: Let people enjoy things. Whatever year I run for something.
How old am I? 27? What's eight years, 2028. "Let People Enjoy Things 2028." I'll be 35 then.
Emily: Perfect.
Lauren: You wanna be my campaign manager? Actually, my mom might beat you to that. She insists on being my manager of whatever it is that I end up doing.
Emily: That's fine with me.
Lauren: You can be assistant campaign manager.
Emily: As much as I am Ben Wyatt as a person, I don't think I could manage a campaign.
Final Takeaways
Well, shall we talk about our final takeaways?
Lauren: Let's do our final takeaways.
Emily: Lauren, what is your final takeaway from the section?
Lauren: My final takeaway is that gender is a prison. Full stop.
Emily: If I could snap, I would snap.
Lauren: Gender is a prison and it does not make any sense and people should just behave the way they would like to behave.
Not based on what society's roles have dictated for them, depending on the gender that they were assigned. That is my takeaway. That's it.
Emily, what is your final takeaway?
Emily: My final takeaway is that even though how we define gender norms has changed enormously [00:36:00] in the last 200 years and in longer and shorter time spans, those norms still exist and they still define a lot of the ways that we act and the ways that we perceive other people.
Lauren: I don't know if that's depressing or how I feel about that. When will things change? You know, God knows. Let me stop.
Emily: In 2028.
Lauren: In 2028, when I begin my campaign of “let people enjoy things 2028” will be when the world is magically fixed. You're welcome in advance.
Emily: I look forward to it.
Lauren: Thank you.
Outro
Emily: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Reclaiming Jane.
Lauren: We will be back in 2021. Until then you can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @ReclaimingJane, or visit our website, reclaimingjanepod.com.
Emily: Next time we'll be looking at chapters 11 through 15 of Sense and Sensibility through the theme of race.
Reclaiming Jane is produced and co-hosted by Lauren Wethers and Emily Davis. Our music is by LaTasha Bundy.
Lauren: See you in 2021.
[fade out, fade in]
Emily: The description of Margaret not being able to stop because they were running so fast on that steep hill that she just had to go right through the gate. That was hilarious. I can also relate to that.
Lauren: That's so true because I was, the house I lived in when I grew up was on a hill and I remember like running down hills like that and just like gaining so much momentum by the time you get to the bottom that you're just going to run into a tree or run into something because you can't stop your feet from moving that quickly anymore.
Emily: Yeah. We couldn't do that down the hill that I lived on because at the bottom there is, [00:38:00] you know, a hundred-foot bluff.
Lauren: Maybe don't do that.
Emily: Yep. We still got pretty daredevil-y on our razor scooters though.
