Sense and Sensibility Wrap-Up: “Unsolicited Advice”
In our last Season 1 episode, Emily and Lauren share their thoughts on Sense and Sensibility as a whole and give its characters some feedback in a new segment, “Advising Austen.”
Thanks for joining us this season! We’ll be back on June 2 to start our (re)reading of Pride and Prejudice.
Show Notes
And with that, Season 1 has come to a close! This is more of a bonus episode than a true segment, hence the much shorter run time. Think of it as us tying a bow on Sense and Sensibility before we move on to the next book.
“Advising Austen” will be a recurring segment at the end of each book — let us know what advice you would give to the characters of Sense and Sensibility! Do you agree with ours?
Transcript
Sense and Sensibility Wrap-Up: “Unsolicited Advice”
[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 are wrapping up season one with a review of Sense and Sensibility plus some questionable consultations offered in a new segment called Advising Austen.
Lauren: Okay. So we're at the end of Sense and Sensibility, book one done, under the belt, moving on.
Emily: I'm so excited. I, I've also been very emotional about, you know, finishing our first book and finishing season one. And I feel like we've come so far. We started from the bottom.
Lauren: Now we're here! Where's Drake when you need him? We do have to offer up a slight confession that we did say to bring a libation of your choice to this recording.
This is our second recording because we did bring a libation of our choice to the first one and may or may not be related to the fact that then we went back and realized that my microphone was not recording properly. So… yeah.
Emily: This is, this is round two. The first time we've ever re-recorded an episode.
But we are here again with renewed enthusiasm.
Lauren: And we're still, we did it completely off the cuff last time. So honestly might be a little bit better to have a slight sense of where we're going. Probably a better listening experience all around.
Emily: So with that, why don't we jump in? Where do we want to begin?
Shall we start with our general feelings about Sense and Sensibility?
Sense and Sensibility Final Thoughts
Lauren: Yeah. Let's. I would love to hear your, your thoughts and your general feelings first, since you read it for the first time.
Emily: Yeah. I have to preface this with saying that I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much or gotten as much out of it if I had read it on my own, which I [00:02:00] think I've mentioned before in previous episodes, but.
I mean, I did really enjoy it. And I really like taking the time and giving the consideration to all of the different things that Austen may have written into this, all of her social commentary and her quick satire and looking at different aspects of her immediate surroundings socially was really fun.
Lauren: I feel like her humor specifically is really underrated. And I really loved picking out all the spots, especially where we could go back and just read passages out loud for the humor, for like, the narration being particularly shady, which I think we pointed out multiple times, or just like one character completely being deadpan and other people not picking it up and not seeing the humor in that.
She's such a funny writer.
Emily: The humor is very subtle, but it permeates everything. Except for, you know, those most serious moments, which she treats with appropriate gravity, but every thread is so connected that it, yeah, it really kind of immerses you in that very specific social moment.
Lauren: Yeah, Bianca Hernandez-Knight reposted one of her earlier blogs that was talking about Jane Austen as a wine aunt and that image is what I now see in my mind every time I read something of hers, that's like just tearing apart one of the characters in her books, is Jane Austen with like a glass of wine by the fire, or like some tea, just not missing a single detail and understanding like, I know exactly how to roast you within an inch of your life.
And I will do it with a smile and make it sound polite.
Emily: Yeah, no, I'm already looking forward to whenever the next time I read Sense and Sensibility is just to see what else I can catch?
Lauren: Yeah, 100%. I think that was one of the good things for me. [00:04:00] I'm reading this again, was that I'm reading it for second or third time, but then also reading it with you and then reading it with specific themes.
I definitely got way more out of it. And I picked up a lot more that I wouldn't have, or just created new interpretations of the book, reading it this way. And that I really liked being able to do, because it was such a fun way to read it. And I feel like now, when I go back, like I'll have different emotions associated with each section.
And so it's like a nice. It almost becomes nostalgic to reread the book because of the experience that we had reading the book and not just because of the book itself, because we made another experience on top of that, which I really like.
Emily: Yeah. It was a really great experience doing this very particular kind of close reading with the assigned themes.
So just as a reminder, these were all randomly assigned. We wrote out a big old list of potential lenses before we began this season and just kind of slapped them onto different sections. So some, we had very relevant textual evidence, for some, we had to kind of make it fit. Lauren, would you remind us what all of the themes are?
Lauren: Yes, we have read for Sense and Sensibility through the lenses of power, gender, race, class, morality, sexuality, trauma, joy, religion, and then adulthood was our last one for our final Sense and Sensibility recap episode.
Emily: I feel like there are several of those that would not be out of place in sort of your classic lit analysis course dealing with Jane Austen, but others are a little more out of the box. And I have to say, I also really enjoyed researching the historical context of those things, how they all might have manifested and been understood and perceived during Jane Austen's time. It gave me such a different look [00:06:00] into history.
Because you have to sort of burrow down beyond what the straightforward recorded events were and also get into like, sort of different fields of study as well. There was more than one topic where I ended up having to go look at like psychology research and, and that was super fun. It was such a challenge sometimes to pull together relevant research that did talk about the history.
And that would actually give me some kind of insight, but it was. It was a really neat challenge.
Lauren: And I really liked that we were able to read it that way too, because I think it's valuable to be able to have the context, because especially with something that was written so long ago, sometimes we don't really understand what the book is going for without realizing the context in which it was written.
So we have that and we acknowledge it, but then also through looking at it through all these different themes, say, okay, we know what the context was. And we know what was probably intended. And now for the second half, we're going to ignore that. And here's what meaning we can create regardless. And I think those are two completely valid and just very different ways of reading.
Emily: And both very important ways.
I mean, especially the idea of taking these themes and sort of looking at the universality of some of these and how they may have been understood and expressed in the past versus how they're understood and expressed now, I think those are really important connections to make with, you know, the classic literature like Jane Austen and trying to help people now see.
Yeah, it's not just stuffy upper-class and white ladies in the past. We can still relate to these things now.
Lauren: Side note, we have a video that actually kind of touches on this that just went live for Virtual Jane Con. So that's our very first YouTube video. So if you weren't able to check that out over this past weekend and you want to see the faces that go with [00:08:00] the voices, we're on YouTube.
And we also chat about why we can still relate to Jane Austen and her characters, despite identity differences or major time period differences or any of that.
Emily: And also why we will not stand for gatekeepers in our community.
Lauren: Very much that. Yeah. Yeah. What was your favorite theme that we read through?
Emily: Oh, that's so difficult because I, I liked all of them in such different ways.
Some of them were definitely more fun and lighter than others. I think power might've been my favorite. And also like now looking forward to going back and rereading Sense and Sensibility now that we've been through all of these different topics, I kind of want to go back and like do more in-depth research on power dynamics and relationships during the Regency era. Of course this is just adding to the list of like things I would love to do and papers I would love to write, but I can't because, you know, I'm kind of a full-time PhD student and this is totally unrelated to my field of study, but that was such a rich field to explore that I would love to devote more time to looking at that, just, you know, as an historical concept, as a modern concept, and then how Jane Austen expresses it.
And what was your favorite topic?
Lauren: I also really liked power. That was something that was at the top of my mind too. I think just because there's so much that you can do with it. And we had so many different ways to pull it out and to relate it to the chapter. I really liked race because we were able to, I think create like some really cool analogies, but then also learn more and put more into the discussion about what race looked like in the Regency era.
Cause I feel like that's missing so often and people either don't think about including it or purposefully don't. And so I really liked that we were able to do that. And that was definitely one of the standouts for me. And I realized [00:10:00] the question was a favorite, but I asked the question so I'm breaking the rules.
And then I think my third one was sexuality. I really loved that.
Emily: You got a whole top 10 list here.
Lauren: That was only three. Thank you very much. But having Rational Creatures on was also really cool.
Emily: That was great.
Advising Austen
Lauren: So do we want to slide on into our Advising Austen segment to give our unsolicited advice to these fictional characters?
Emily: I would love to.
So we've been, you know, sort of reflective and introspective, and now we're going to throw all of that off and just roast some fictional people.
Lauren: Now we're just going to lean into the chaos.
Emily: Yes. Lauren who are we starting with? Who's our first victim?
Lauren: I feel like we've got to go with one of the Dashwood sisters first.
So let's say Elinor.
Emily: All right, Elinor. Oh, Elinor. We relate to her so hard being eldest daughters, but also...
Lauren: Roasts of Elinor, also just self-owns, to be fair.
Emily: Elinor, learn to keep a diary.
Lauren: Like express your emotions, ask for help, do, do something because you got lucky in this book and this would not have worked out well for you.
Ask for help and stop repressing all of your emotions.
Emily: So Elinor, keep a diary.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Learn to express emotion.
Lauren: Yup. I think with Marianne, I think the advice that I would give to her, which I think is like good advice for any teenager who thinks that they've discovered the arts is that you, you didn't and you have very good opinions, but also other people have probably discovered whatever piece of classical music you're waxing poetic about.
And it's okay. But you don't own opinions on art and on music. I feel like Marianne is too earnest to be like a too cool for school hipster, but she would have like some gatekeeping music opinions. So I think that would be my advice to her. Music and [00:12:00] literature. She would be like not like other girls literature person.
I feel like.
Emily: Definitely.
Lauren: Yeah.
Emily: Moving on from our Dashwood sisters.
Lauren: Let's give some advice to Edward.
Emily: Oh, Edward God, the most passive of passive men.
Lauren: Yeah. Is grow a spine advice?
Emily: Yes.
Lauren: Yeah. Please do that. For four years you were in a relationship with this person and you didn't do anything about it. Even after you realized this isn't actually a thing that I would like to continue.
You just kind of let that go on and remained miserable and I guess continued leading on this person from afar. Like what was the end game plan here? What was he going to do? If she hadn't outed them?
Emily: Just be miserable for the rest of his life.
Lauren: Well, what kind of a plan is that?
Emily: It's not, it's a terrible plan. So yes, Edward, our advice to you is grow a spine.
Lauren: I think I feel like grow a spine encapsulates all of it. Like talk to Elinor, tell her how you feel. Grow a spine. Break up with Lucy. Grow a spine. Speak to your mother, grow a spine.
Emily: It all comes down to that one thing.
Lauren: Elinor just has to have enough backbone for the both of them. Cause--
Emily: seriously,
Lauren: --otherwise I don't know what they're going to do. Can you imagine like Edward trying to mediate a conflict between his parishioners?
Emily: Oh, good lord. Elinor is going to have to do all the mediation.
Lauren: He's just going to go hide in the rectory and read the Bible. And she's going to have to be the one to actually do any of like the mediation and conversation because she's an eldest daughter.
And so she's been doing that her whole life.
Emily: Moving on from Edward. Do we want to tackle Colonel Brandon?
Lauren: I was about to say, it's your turn to choose. Yeah, let's talk about dear Colonel Brandon.
Emily: Again, I I feel like I don't have anything to say except maybe don't be a force for imperialism?
Lauren: Yeah. Don't be a colonizer. That would be cool.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: I don't think you need to run off to the West Indies to find yourself. You could just go to like, Scotland.
[00:14:00] You don't have to -- you don't have to get on a boat.
Emily: Go take a tour of the Lake District.
Lauren: You know, just get in a carriage. You didn't have to, you didn't have to do the, you didn't have to do all that. It's a bit of overkill.
Emily: Yeah. Otherwise, like he has a tragic backstory, but he has his life together. So yeah. Aside from maybe don't do a colonialism, I think we're okay with him.
Lauren: I think he and Elinor, have the same problem where it's like, bruh, you need to go see a Regency therapist.
Emily: All right. Who's next.
Lauren: What's your advice for Lucy?
Emily: Learn manners. Stop being so petty because it's not going to get you anywhere in life. I can't blame her for looking out for number one, but yeah, she could lay off the pettiness.
Lauren: I think my advice to her would be don't tell your sister anything, because she does not keep secrets.
Emily: Yeah. Anne is a terrible older sister.
Lauren: Yeah, she's not a steel trap, she's a colander. Like everything go, just go right through. You can tell her something and she'll be like, absolutely. I won't tell anyone. And then turn around.
And the very next person she sees, you will not believe what Lucy has just told me. Like you could have ruined your sister's life. Yeah. So my advice to Lucy is don't tell your sister anything that you want actually kept a secret because that's not going to work for you.
Emily: All right. Our grand advice finale, what will we say to Willoughby?
Lauren: Mine would have to be censored by a lot.
Emily: Yeah. I was going to say like, my succinct answer is fuck off.
Lauren: Maybe don't groom teenage girls.
Emily: He should also go to therapy.
Lauren: For different reasons. What other advice would I give to Willoughby... wrap it up?
Emily: I mean...
Lauren: just saying, if you're gonna be...
Emily: I was going to say, pay child support.
Lauren: Also that. You could prevent that, like, there are [00:16:00] ways. There were ways.
Emily: Yeah.
Lauren: You know?
Emily: We did not invent contraception in the eighties. I mean, there were some horrifying contraceptive methods, but --
Lauren: Oh yeah. Let's not go there. Yeah. So stay away from teenage girls just in general. Pay child support if you're going to ignore that piece of advice and, or wrap it up. Please and thank you.
Yeah. So Willoughby just ride off into the sunset and never be heard of again and that would be great.
Emily: Yep. Thanks so much.
Lauren: Bye. Thanks for coming. Thanks for stopping by. Please leave forever.
Final (Final) Takeaways
Okay. Final, final takeaways from Sense and Sensibility.
Emily: Final, final takeaways.
Lauren: Last time, last chance speak now or forever hold your peace.
Emily: I think my final, final takeaway is that it's good to know what you want and to be able to pursue that in a healthy and self-aware manner.
Lauren: Pursue what you want, like life goals, or just like even small things?
Emily: Yeah. Both.
Lauren: Nice.
Emily: What about you?
Lauren: I think my, my final final takeaway from Sense and Sensibility would be to find balance in all aspects of your life.
I feel like that's one of the main goals of the book anyway, is like finding balance between like the sense and the sensibility. But also I think you can expand that to really any area that you want, like finding balance in work, in play, finding balance in keeping things to yourself and sharing what's bothering you.
And finding a healthy balance in all areas of your life, I think would be the takeaway, hopefully applied to my own life. You know, we'll see if I actually take any of the advice. I guess.
Emily: That's a very nice takeaway.
Lauren: Thank you very much.
Emily: I feel like Jane Austen would approve too.
Lauren: I hope so. Wine aunt Jane Austen?
Have I made you proud? Yeah, I think she'd appreciate it.
Emily: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Reclaiming Jane. We are taking a short break for the month of [00:18:00] May, but we will be back in June for our season two premiere to focus on Pride and Prejudice.
Lauren: We will also be joined by some very special guests.
So keep an eye on our social media for that big reveal. Until then to read the full transcript of this episode and all the episodes from season one, check out our website, reclaimingjanepod.com where you can also find show notes and links to our social media.
Emily: If you'd like to support us and help us create more content, you can join our Patreon, @ReclaimingJanePod, or leave us a review on iTunes. We do also have an ongoing pledge drive on Patreon. Everyone who signs up before the season two premiere will receive an exclusive Fanny Dashwood hate club sticker designed by yours truly. So we hope we'll see you over there and maybe at some watch parties during May. 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.
We didn't give advice to Fanny. Do we want to?
Emily: I have nothing to say to Fanny Dashwood.