Persuasion 7-9: “Think It Over”

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It’s a contemplative kind of episode — let’s talk about the exquisite agony of estrangement and Mary Musgrove’s chronic FOMO.

Transcript

Reclaiming Jane S5E3

Emily: [00:00:00] This is Reclaiming Jane, an Austen podcast for fans on the margins.

Lauren: I'm Lauren Wethers.

Emily: And I'm Emily Davis Hale.

Lauren: And today, we're reading chapters seven through nine of Persuasion through the Lens of contemplation.

Emily: Contemplation is such an interesting framing for this section, and I can't wait to talk about it more.

Lauren: I know every episode we say, 'Ooh, this is such a perfect one.' But every episode it's so perfect.

Emily: Yeah. There have been a couple where we're like grasping at straws.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: But for the most part, this tarot deck has served us really well.

Lauren: It really has. Thanks mom. I think honestly, contemplation could be applied to any section of Persuasion and it would be perfect. So this was kind of a, just a gimme theme for the book.

Emily: Definitely, yeah. This is of, of all of the ones we've read, contemplative definitely describes, you know, the nine chapters of Persuasion that I've read so far?

Lauren: Yes. That will continue.

Emily: Okay. It seems like it. Anne is a, a very introspective, contemplative person.

Lauren: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we get a lot of good introspection from Anne in these three chapters.

Emily: We really do.

Lauren: Because there is some drama that is brewing. And we get lots of Anne's thoughts about it.

Emily: Do you wanna recap that for us?

Lauren: Oh, is it mine first?

Emily: It's you first.

Lauren: Oh, joy of joys. Yes. I'll recap it first.

Emily: Are you ready to recap chapters seven through nine of Persuasion?

Lauren: I certainly hope so.

Emily: All right. On your mark, get set, go.

Lauren: [00:02:00] Captain Wentworth is here, ladies and gentlemen, and Anne has lots of feelings about it. she really does not want to see Wentworth, but she also knows that it's going to be inevitable, and inevitably they are thrown into each other's company and it's very awkward because they are now worse than strangers. They're forever estranged and she hates it. It seems like there might be something going on between him and two of the Musgrove sisters, TBD, everyone loves him.

He's now, you know, the number one person and Anne is really sad about it.

Emily: Nice. A whole second to spare.

Lauren: Yes! Okay. Are you ready to fill in the gaps of my recap?

Emily: We sure will see.

Lauren: Okay. 30 seconds on the clock. On your mark. Get set. Go.

Emily: Okay. Wentworth has finally arrived to stay with his sister and brother-in-law at Kellynch Hall, but Anne is saved from having to see him unexpectedly by her nephew getting injured, which turns out to be really convenient for the rest of the section.

it is super awkward when they finally see each other. She's convinced that he hates her. he's very popular with almost everyone, including the Musgrove sisters, who are both angling for him, and he does not seem to be opposed to this.

...you're just gonna count down the last five seconds.

Lauren: I was!

Emily: Cool. Alright.

Lauren: I was gonna make it evident how much time you had left. Like, look how Emily had a full five seconds left. Look how well they did.

Emily: Look at that. Look how little they took in the way of notes.

Lauren: I thought you were going to, expand on with whom he was not popular.

Emily: Well, I didn't think I would have time. I went faster than I expected, but yeah, he is, he is not popular with everyone. But that does come a little later in the section. Do we wanna start at the beginning?

Lauren: Yeah, let's, that's a very good place to start.

Emily: All right. Thanks Maria Von Trapp.

Lauren: Anyway!

Emily: So let's, begin with chapter seven with the start of our section where Captain Wentworth has arrived at Kellynch Hall, and it is not long at all [00:04:00] before he is coming to see the Musgroves as they are another family of consequence in the neighborhood.

Lauren: As Emily mentioned in their recap, Anne is spared from an initial meeting with him because one of Mary Musgrove's children is, grievously injured. by which I mean he's broken his collarbone and he'll be fine, but they don't know that immediately.

It, you know, there's much, much ado about finding the apothecary, about notifying everyone, about making sure that he's safe and in bed and fine. And then even after they've, you know, figured out, okay, no danger to the spine. It's a broken collarbone, the bone's been reset and now everything is great. You still can't just leave this child by himself as he's recovering.

And cuz he's, he's had a bit of a day.

Emily: It's not even broken. It was like dislocated.

Lauren: You know? He, but he's fine.

Emily: To be fair, I'm terrified of any kind of injury to do with collarbones. So like, valid. I support this child.

Lauren: Yes. And collarbones are particularly painful from what I hear.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: So, you know, not a good day for him. So he really can't be left alone. So at first it's, Mary and Anne who are going to stay behind with this child because someone has to be with him. And Charles has, you know, determined that this is women's work. And so he does not need to be kept from meeting with Captain Wentworth. He can go.

Emily: Okay, sir.

Lauren: Because this is the woman's sphere, so you know, it's fine.

And so it's Mary and Anne who are going to be left behind. Anne really does not want to see Captain Wentworth again. She's trying to put this off as long as possible because she knows that it's not gonna be a good time. Like on the one hand, she wants to get it over with, but on the other, she's really okay with putting this off as long as possible, and so she tells Mary, you know what? It's fine. I'll stay here. I'll make sure your child is fine. You go off and have fun. Mary, of course, needs no further provocation.

Emily: My God, just watching over like four or five pages as Mary is like absolutely distraught at the fact that her husband is about to leave them for dinner in the midst of this chaos, and then it just completely [00:06:00] turns around to like, oh, I couldn't possibly miss this. Like obviously I have to go. You will be fine. Here, Anne, with my eldest son, like the heir of the estate.

Lauren: I know you don't mind being left alone.

Emily: Yeah, and, and Anne actually is perfectly fine with it. Just I'm frustrated on her behalf.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: With the flightiness of her sister.

Lauren: And even her husband, like Mary's husband, is more attentive to Anne's feelings than she is because he says, well, it might be a little hard on Anne for her to watch our sick child while we go out and have fun. And Anne actually pleads her own case, like, no, no, it's fine.

And so he says, all right. And the two of them go off and have their merry fun, and Anne stays back at the house.

Emily: Mary's FOMO just will not be denied.

Lauren: No at all, ever. But she spends all of her time thinking about the needs of others.

Emily: Of course.

Lauren: She's very generous.

Emily: Like her injured child.

Lauren: Mary was like, honey, you're good, right? Okay, bye. I'm leaving you with Auntie Anne. Have fun!

Emily: He's not having fun, but sure.

Lauren: He's not having fun. That child's miserable.

Emily: But with the appearance of Captain Wentworth, even before they meet again, Anne is very much in her own head, imagining all the things that he must be feeling and how he must think of her now.

Giving into what seemed to me to be a lot of projection about the regrets and how much he must have hated how easily she was persuaded away. I'm like, Anne, sweetheart, you good? She is not. The answer is no.

Lauren: She's not. The answer is no. That was, I think, a relatable amount of rumination, especially when it's a decision that was so life altering for her in so many different ways and now, you know, it's one thing to think about it in the abstract when that person's no longer in your immediate vicinity, but now that he's going to be part of your society for the foreseeable future, and you have to be confronted with the realities of the decision that you made over and over and over again.

I think I would be a little bit in my own head too.

Emily: Mm-hmm. [00:08:00] Yeah. At one point she, she does seem a little. You know, sort of trying to bolster herself and says, "what might not eight years do?" Like surely this is faded. And then literally in the next paragraph it goes on to say, "alas, with all her reasonings, she found that to retentive feelings, eight years may be a little more than nothing."

Lauren: Yeah. I underlined that, that made me sad.

Emily: Same. And then of course, she's hearing things about Captain Wentworth from the other people that he's spending time in company with, including a comment he made to one of the Musgrove sisters that Anne was so changed from how he last knew her, that he scarcely recognized her.

And Anne, of course, is like, oh yeah, I'm an old hag now. And just a terrible person. Like this is why he hates me.

Lauren: May not be how he meant it.

Emily: Yeah. Po- possibly not. That's, that's such a neutral comment. Like, oh wow, you've changed in the last eight years. That could mean literally anything, but Anne immediately goes to the worst interpretation.

Lauren: I, it's also not like contextualized well by Mary because the way that Mary says it is immediately, "Captain Wentworth was not very gallant by you, Anne, though he was so attentive to me."

Emily: Mary, you're not helping.

Lauren: Not at all. And so then that comment comes with the, like the added injury of Mary saying, 'oh, well, Captain Wentworth wasn't very nice about you. This is what he said.' Which I think usually Anne has a sense to be able to parse through what her sister says and what's actually true, but she has a lot of other conflicting emotions going on right now, and so it's really easy for her to seize onto that and be like, oh yeah, I'm not young and beautiful anymore.

I look old and tired, and he looks fantastic and everyone loves him, so that's fine. I guess we're just going to be at opposite ends of the spectrum now.

Emily: And he has apparently done very well for himself. We had a little discussion about this last time. But someone mentions in the section, [00:10:00] Captain Wentworth has made nearly 20,000 pounds in the Navy, which converts to more than 2 million pounds today.

Lauren: Oh my God. Okay. That's about 2.5 million dollars in eight years.

Emily: Yeah, man. The comparison between the way Elizabeth and Sir Walter talked about Captain Wentworth back in the day versus how rapturously, everyone else speaks about him now. His gentility, his worth, his accomplishments.

Lauren: It's night and day. And from what we can gather from the way that Anne thought of him then and thinks of him now, his gentility and his charm, those have been the same the entire time. Same.

Emily: The only thing is material wealth.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: And poor Mrs. Musgrove also sits down and tries to talk to Captain Wentworth about poor Richard.

Lauren: Poor Dick.

Emily: Poor Dick. And Anne notices and says to herself that no one else would've noticed, but that she knows him so well.

She sees the change in his face when he recognizes who Mrs. Musgrove is talking about and goes, oh no, not that guy.

Lauren: So this is at a dinner party where they're all together. Anne and Wentworth have had their first like initial very awkward, like first sighting again, where Anne really tries not to make eye contact with him and now they're at a dinner party with both of the families and, they can no longer use the son as an excuse for like, one person to stay behind at the house anymore.

And Mrs. Musgrove was waxing poetic about her poor son, and we are so glad that he was put in your path. You know, like he wrote to us so much more often when he was with you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Emily: Which, we have no indication that that's actually true.

Lauren: None at all.

Emily: he mentioned a Wentworth once in passing.

Lauren: Literally like one time. Charles at least has the good sense to realize that Wentworth probably does not have the same opinion of his brother [00:12:00] as his mother does, but he doesn't wanna say anything to her about it. He just kind of is humoring her, like, yeah, okay, sure mom. I'm sure he loves him just as much as we do.

I highly doubt it though. And she has just not picked up. Mrs. Musgrove has picked up on none of this because the people who do know her son and also have kind of an inkling of Wentworth's character aren't saying anything to her. So she's just, she's not really embarrassing herself because Wentworth is too polite, but she really doesn't realize that she's not getting the reception that she thinks that she is. And like you said, Anne is really the only one who can read his face full enough to pick up on the fact that he did not like that man at all.

Emily: Which no one else did either.

Lauren: No.

Emily: Everyone thought terribly of him. They thought they were lucky to lose him young. Like...

Lauren: cuz Dick Musgrove was a dick.

Emily: All he earned was the abbreviation of his name.

Lauren: What a line. I'll never get over it.

Emily: Never ever.

Lauren: And that also is just another jab to the heart for Anne because you know, she has this knowledge of this person where she's still able to like pick up on his emotions and read him so well, and yet they've barely spoken to each other at all.

We get this really beautiful passage about it. This is just, I think, such a perfect encapsulation of what it's like to see an ex again after a long amount of time. Like someone who you used to be so close with, who knew so much about you and your life, who now is kind of like a stranger to you. And like again, you know, the whole point of this podcast, something that's still relatable 200 years later.

This is in the beginning of chapter eight and it says, "they had no conversation together, no intercourse, but was a commonest civility required. Once so much to each other, now nothing. There had been a time when of all the large party now filling the drawing room in Uppercross, they would've found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. With the exception perhaps of Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who seemed [00:14:00] particularly attached and happy, Anne could allow no other exception, even among the married couples. There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now, they were as strangers, nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.

It was a perpetual estrangement."

Emily: The tragedy of it all.

Lauren: Twist the knife in my side.

Emily: They were so close and took so much joy in one another.

Lauren: And now nothing.

Emily: Yeah.

Lauren: Once upon a time they would've been in the corner and ignoring everybody else, being rude because they were wrapped up in one another and now they barely even share a glance.

Emily: We do get an inkling though, that Wentworth still kind of has that on his mind because right at the very end of the preceding chapter, we get sort of a, a snippet of a scene between him and his sister, where he's saying like, here, I'm ready to be thrown at some woman and get married. As long as she's not too much of a fool, I'll be fine with it.

But when he's actually asked to describe the kind of person he would want. He says, "a strong mind with sweetness of manner." And then the very last line in this chapter just absolutely kills me. And he says, "if I am a fool, I shall be a fool indeed, for I have thought on the subject more than most men." He's been thinking about her the whole time.

Jane Austen, how could you do this to me?

Lauren: Welcome to the agony of Persuasion. You are in the process of being initiated.

Emily: Yeah, I'm feeling it. I'm feeling the agony. Lauren.

Lauren: Ooh. But before we get too off track and we dive right into contemplation, let's talk about the one person who's not happy.

Emily: That one exception!

Lauren: That one exception that Wentworth has arrived in Uppercross.

Emily: Yes, there is a cousin of the Musgroves, a, a family, the Hayters, which I'm [00:16:00] so sorry to these people, it's spelled H-A-Y-T-E-R, but. I can, like, it's pronounced hater, right?

Lauren: I mean, this person is a hater.

Emily: He is a hater. Charles Hayter is a hater. Comes, comes back from like two weeks absence and his girl, Henrietta Musgrove, who apparently they're very fond of one another, were perfectly on track to be engaged and married.

Henrietta has fully attached herself to Captain Wentworth, along with her sister Louisa. And Charles Hayter is not happy about this.

Lauren: He's like, I leave you alone for two seconds. This man has come in and just swept you off your feet. What the hell? I thought we had a history.

Emily: I predict that there is going to be some kind of kerfuffle about Charles Hayter and Frederick Wentworth and Henrietta Musgrove.

That is my prediction. There's gonna be something, even if it's all in the mind of Charles Hayter there's gonna be something.

Lauren: It's giving Mansfield Park play vibes.

Emily: It really is, truly. But Captain Frederick Wentworth seems like much too upstanding a gentleman to ever suggest such an engagement.

Lauren: It also means that we get a passage from Mary that seems very reminiscent of what the conversation must have been to Anne when she was considering Captain Wentworth, then just Wentworth, as a partner all those years ago.

Emily: So Mary says, you know, "I cannot think him at all a fit match for Henrietta," talking about Charles Hayter, "and considering the alliances which the Musgroves have made, she has no right to throw herself away. I do not think any young woman has a right to make a choice that may be disagreeable and inconvenient to the principle part of her family, and to be giving bad connections to those who have not been used to them. And pray, who is Charles Hayter? Nothing but a country curate. A most improper match for Ms. Musgrove of Upper Cross.

Lauren: This sounds a little bit familiar.

Emily: The apple does not fall far from the tree.

Lauren: At all, and she had to get it from somewhere. And you know, I wonder if she has those old conversations in [00:18:00] mind as she's saying this. Not like she would've been the one to tell this to Anne because she was the younger sister and that was not her place then.

Emily: But I was under the impression that Mary didn't know.

Lauren: I don't think she does, especially because she's not conscious of like all the remarks that she's making to Anne.

Emily: But she may very well have, you know, heard conversations at home at Kellynch.

Lauren: Right.

Emily: About impropriety of matches. Just you know, in the vaguest sense.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: And internalized that. Yeah. There is nothing actually wrong with Charles Hayter. Like they're of slightly lesser consequence. I mean, aside from the fact that they're literally first cousins, but you know what? Different time, different society.

Lauren: Yep.

Emily: Moving on.

Lauren: The rest of his siblings apparently have nothing to recommend them, but Charles is the one who has decided he's going to become a man of consequence and learning, and so he's fine. If it were his other siblings, they would have to put a stop to that, but, Charles sees no issue with. with Charles.

Emily: Charles Musgrove sees no issue with Charles Hayter. Yeah, lots of, lots of Charles's.

Lauren: Lots of Charles.

Emily: There's also, you know, young Charles who's the one who dislocated his collar bone.

Lauren: Oh yeah. Yeah. Charles one, Charles two, Charles three. Just so many, so many Charles.

Emily: So yes, we're seeing the beginnings of tension and conflict in our story here. Not just Anne's life being changed, but there's outside influences and other people coming in to rattle up the happiness that she has at, or what, what happiness she can find at Upper Cross cottage.

Lauren: Right, exactly. I think that is a good summary of the events of this chapter, or this section, rather. contemplation was really everywhere in this section. It's the whole thing, but what stood out to you as far as contemplation?

Emily: Definitely all of Anne's introspection stood out to me. Because she's contemplating so much about what she had, what she lost, the ways that she thinks she has [00:20:00] changed in the intervening time.

Comparing that to the ways that Captain Wentworth has changed, comparing who she was, who she is now to his current prospects as well. She doesn't really ruminate on that on the page. but just by virtue of knowing her past connection and his current, possible pursuits in the Miss Musgroves, it's impossible not to, to make that comparison, but, Yeah, a lot of her contemplation, and especially the speculation that she makes about the way Wentworth must be feeling.

It's all, it's just so projection. There was one particular line that I just had to note. This is in chapter seven, after Mary has said that, oh, he wasn't very gallant, he said you were so changed. Anne thinks to herself that "he had thought her wretchedly altered and in the first moment of appeal had spoken as he felt. He had not forgiven Anne Elliot."

And that sounds to me like Anne has not forgiven Anne Elliot.

Lauren: He's-- nowhere in that sentence was, "I don't forgive Anne for what she said to me eight years ago." What she, what he said was, 'Anne looks very different. I almost didn't recognize her.' That does not necessarily translate to, 'I don't forgive you,' but in Anne's mind.

Emily: Yeah. This is a rare case where I think Anne could do with a little less contemplation and maybe externalize some of that. maybe talk to him.

Lauren: Yeah. That's like the difference between contemplation and rumination.

Emily: Yes.

Lauren: When are you having a nice meditative moment with your thoughts? Writing in a journal or walking through the gardens and when is your brain going over and over and over and over and over the same topic until there's nothing else to even be considered.

Emily: It's when it gets to a point where it's just festering. Yeah. So, yeah, that, that was the interpretation of contemplation on the page that really stuck with me. What about you?

Lauren: I had also [00:22:00] thought about the contemplation of past feelings and all of the, like the memories that Anne goes through about, here's what things were between the two of them when they were young and in love and things were beautiful versus what the relationship is between the two of them in the present moment.

And it's interesting that now because he's in front of her, she's really not able to like, avoid going down that memory lane. In the previous chapters, we can kind of see her stopping herself from remembering that, at least as far as the narration presents it. Whereas she thinks about it, but she really doesn't want to examine those thoughts too closely because it's like probing a sore tooth or something like that, where it's like every time you get a little close, like you, you can't quite resist.

But also it hurts and you don't want to push it too far. And now that Wentworth is, is back and is in front of her all the time, it's like that mental block that she's placed has been involuntarily removed, and now she's reliving all of those old emotions that are coming back because, apparently eight years have not changed her feelings, and as much as she would like to believe otherwise, and as much as she's trying to convince herself that they're just strangers now, she's still clearly very much in love with him.

Emily: The girl is not having a good time.

Lauren: She's not having a good time at all. And then on top of that, you know, there's this person who's come back into your life who you still have deep feelings for who you are now worse than strangers, is your relationship, and--

Emily: God, worse than strangers!

Lauren: Worse than strangers.

Emily: It's such a visceral description.

Lauren: It truly is. And now you have to watch two very young, pretty women who are very eligible and will be very lovely. pretty much say, okay, yep, I'm going after this one. And there's nothing you can do about it.

Emily: And no one around her even knows.

Lauren: Mm-hmm. There's no consideration of her feelings because they don't know that there are feelings to consider.

They're not even being rude at [00:24:00] this point. They just don't even know there was anything that went on between the two of them that they should be cognizant of.

Twist that knife...

Emily: just a little bit deeper.

Lauren: Oh, poor Anne.

Emily: But it's so good.

Lauren: It's so good. It's. Oh, and then my last thing, not necessarily related to contemplation, but we do get a Rational Creatures mention, which I-- stood out to me because if you guys listened to our Sense and Sensibility season, we had the hosts and creators of the Rational Creatures Web Series on for a Queering Jane Austen episode, and now Emily gets to understand more of the Rational Creatures Web series because it's based on Persuasion.

Emily: Hooray. I did watch that first season and then, Decided that I should maybe save the rest of it for after Persuasion, so I didn't totally spoil everything. So I'm also just like vibrating to finally get to watch that.

Lauren: Yes. So if you, if you haven't, definitely go check out Rational Creatures on YouTube. It is worth your time.

Emily: Does that wrap up our discussion of the section?

Lauren: I think so. I think we can move on to the historical context that you had such fun researching.

Emily: Yeah. I texted Lauren in agony because I had a fun little topic and then I started researching it. It was like I'm halfway through a master's thesis right now.

There's so much more that I didn't realize, and I wanna talk about all of it, but I will restrain myself. So the topic that I was considering is, a little pastime that gives Anne the opportunity to indulge in some of her contemplation, as she is kind of the go-to person for playing music, when the families gather together in the evening.

So I was curious about what kind of music she might have been playing and like, how that was treated, because it's clearly not like sitting down and giving a performance, but like what did the musical landscape look like at the time? if you are like a musicologist or a music historian, deepest apologies. I'm not a musician, [00:26:00] but there's some really interesting things about music at this time.

As with like every single other aspect of society, it was changing, what was popular and what people looked for and what people indulged in and enjoyed. The lines between popular and sort of classical music were blurring a little bit. Interestingly, part of that was like distribution of sheet music and stuff like that so people could get music more easily.

It would've been pretty casual entertainment in the home. From what I read, it seems almost like it would be, you know, sort of having the TV on in the background while everybody else kind of does their own thing, except that the TV is also someone doing their own thing. Which is totally related to me. I love being in the same room as other people.

We're all working on our own little projects.

Lauren: That was the entirety of our sophomore year of college.

Emily: Yeah. I was like, oh yeah, that was most of our friend group in college. I also found a really fascinating, like I said, a master's thesis, by Lidia Chang from 2016 arguing for some of the reasons that England fades from music history a little bit, during the Regency era. I'm gonna quote these three main points. One is complex and longstanding cultural anxieties regarding music's supposed ability to feminize men and empower women.

Lauren: Interesting.

Emily: Mm-hmm. the invisibility of England's most musical citizens being women.

And a vibrant culture of domestic music making dominated by women that was incompatible with the new aesthetic values of 19th century romanticism, which placed greater importance on the autonomous musical product than the malleable musical process.

Lauren: Huh.

Emily: Yeah. So there were these vastly popular classical composers on the continent.

Beethoven and Schubert and Vercini were very popular, but England was really loving just kind [00:28:00] of this popular music movement around this time, slightly earlier than when Austen was writing, through like the last quarter of the 18th century. There was this guy who could kind of be described as like the first pop star, whose name I absolutely love.

He was Charles Dibdin.

Lauren: I think I learned about him.

Emily: Oh really?

Lauren: I took a music class my very first semester of college because I needed a fine arts credit. And we had like, it was basically like a survey of European art music, I think is what it was called.

Emily: Yeah. So for like, 30 years, he was this massively popular singer and songwriter.

He wrote and performed his own music, traveling shows, and then bought a theater in London where he would give his own solo shows. He also published his own music as sheet music, which was unusual at the time, and so, that really helped it be distributed around. Austen actually had copied down several of his popular pieces.

They were, a lot of them, comedic and yeah, definitely fit right into this movement of popular music in England. You know, short little pieces that you can just kind of play for fun and not have to sit down and make a production of it. I had no idea that this was like the musical landscape in, in England at the time.

But it's so interesting that a lot of even what Jane Austen has in her own musical collection is considered kind of pedestrian music. Like yes, she, she has those great composers, but there's also Dibdin and just pieces that are just sort of pretty and popular and not like high culture. Like, yeah so much of England was into Scottish and Irish folk songs that were almost certainly, you know, bent beyond, recognition for the middle class English consumption.

But yeah, music was being done in [00:30:00] the home, in popular spaces being done very much by women. I mean, it's listed in like all of Austen's novels being an accomplishment. So being musical is an inducement to marriage. It's, it's something the lady puts on her resume, you know, checks that off. I can play music, I can, can entertain in the home.

So I, I did not expect that from this little dive into, well what's, what kind of music is Anne playing? I thought it was gonna be so simple and it was so not.

Lauren: It reminds me of how like cooking is a woman's task, but then when you look at who is in the professional world--

Emily: you got it.

Lauren: Chefs are like, it's dominated by men, and I never thought about music having a similar kind of divide in England, but it was right in front of my face.

I just hadn't given it additional thought. That's really interesting.

Emily: I mean, that's the case in so many professions that you can think of fashion, you know, seamstresses working at home versus the people who are at the top of, you know, the designer hierarchy, even like medicine, folk healers working out of their homes versus big shot doctors. Yeah, the same was true for music in the Regency. The people doing daily music at home were just ladies who were playing, whereas people like Beethoven were doing whatever Beethoven does.

Lauren: No, that was really, really insightful. Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.

Emily: I did. And, that, that gives a better segue than most of my topics to pop culture.

Lauren: You know, it would, except for I didn't write about music.

Emily: Well, not music necessarily, but just, you know, we've talked a little bit about what was popular in Austen's time.

Lauren: True.

Emily: So how are you connecting Austen to what's popular today?

Lauren: I am connecting Austen to some of most loved movies about heartbreak and lost love today.

Emily: Oh, this is gonna be good.

Lauren: So still pop culture. And [00:32:00] it is a good segue into my pop culture connection to expand this outside of just movies that I like. I was pulling from things like letterboxd, which is basically Goodreads for movies and for film nerds, and then from some other curated lists of people's like, top movies about lost love or heartbreak because that was such a prominent theme in these three chapters. And as usual as we do on Reclaiming Jane, I'm doing heartbreak and lost love. But then for half of this, let's make it gay. So, yes. So to start off, it's a little bit of a controversial pick for several reasons. Blue is the Warmest Color to kick off the 'make it gay.'

This is controversial because -- the, the movie is controversial because there are some very extended sex scenes between the two women leads, like to the point where it actually was like a little bit, it was a bit much.

Emily: Gotcha. I've never seen this movie.

Lauren: Not like pearl clutching, like, oh my God, why are women having sex? But like, why do we have to watch this?

Emily: Just unnecessary.

Lauren: This is unnecessary.

Emily: We got into gratuitous territory.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: Gotcha.

Lauren: which then tracked with why the director had like, some sexual assault allegations against him, so.

Emily: Ooh, yikes.

Lauren: So don't love that behind the scenes part. However, I do love a movie about lesbians. And it's French, so.

Emily: There we go.

Lauren: Blue Is the Warmest Color is one that is about heartbreak and lost love. It's like a three hour long movie. It goes on for forever.

Emily: Anyway, I'm gonna say I just, right up front, 90% of these movies I will not have seen. It's fair just because I, I don't watch things apparently.

Lauren: You watch a lot of things.

Emily: I watch a lot of things. Nothing that's ever popular.

Lauren: That is, that is fair.

Emily: Anyway, Blue Is the Warmest Color. What's up next?

Lauren: You will at least know this one, even if you have not watched it. Brokeback Mountain.

Emily: I've not watched it.

Lauren: But you know it.

Emily: But obviously I, I know it.

Lauren: Exactly, exactly.

Emily: Of course I know it.

Lauren: Exactly. That's my point, you know of it even if you haven't seen it. once again, make it gay entry on this list, and that one is, if you somehow don't know Brokeback Mountain two men in Wyoming who are cowboys, were able to reunite [00:34:00] when they're like out, like farming, doing whatever you do out in Wyoming.

I haven't watched that movie in like 10 years. I don't really, it's a little fuzzy. But then when they go back to real life and they're no longer out in the field, they have to be closeted because it's just not something that society is ready for. And they go off and they lead their separate lives, but they're always yearning for the other person.

And it's the quiet yearning because they're macho, manly men in Wyoming. And society is not ready for gayness.

Emily: Oh, the pain!

Lauren: The pain. the other one is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That's with Jim Carey. And the premise of that movie is that you can erase memories from your brain. And so his ex-girlfriend has elected to erase all memories of their relationship.

And so he decides he's going to do that as well because they don't really want to hold on to the memories. And then, you know, of course, like the movie explores what that means. And do you actually want to keep those memories? And that's also just-- who amongst us has not wanted to just erase memories that are now painful from our minds, especially when it's something where, that was something that brought you so much happiness and joy, but now thinking of that person brings you pain, which also thinks, makes me think of Persuasion, where it's like, this was a really happy moment in my life, but I can't have this with this person anymore.

And so now this is agonizing and I would prefer just not to know it. I feel like Anne would probably elect to have her memories of Wentworth wiped from her brain.

Emily: But she would contemplate it a lot before she did.

Lauren: She would. I, I think she would probably have a very similar journey in the movie. Another one that I have not seen, but that was a Tumblr favorite is Atonement.

Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. Oh, of course. Yeah. That was all over 2012 Tumblr.

Emily: Of course.

Lauren: I, I am likewise familiar with it, but have not seen it. But that's another one where two lovers have been separated. I won't spoil it, but two lovers have been separated through unfortunate circumstances and then are reunited, but can't really just reconnect as [00:36:00] though nothing has happened because there's a lot of extra emotional baggage that now accompanies what their interactions look like.

Emily: Amazing. When you're two people who have been separated for a period of time, you both change.

Lauren: You both change and there was, there was some meddling in their separation.

Another one that is, not pop culture, but definitely of note, it's pop culture. It's not current, but Casablanca, I feel like I would be remiss to talk about movies about like Lost Love or lovers reuniting and not talk about Casablanca because it's kind of like a seminal film text just in general. And then also the whole premise of that movie is two lovers reuniting in this bar, and then that's how the rest of the movie spins out.

I only watched that because I took a screenwriting class in college, and so that was literally required viewing.

Emily: I was gonna say the film minor came out a little bit. That one, one.

Lauren: It, oh yeah, it did.

Emily: A semi, a seminal film text.

Lauren: Oh, no. Sorry. but yes, it is.

Emily: I just literally quoted someone's masters, so like, you're good.

Lauren: It was just the way I didn't even realize I was doing it. But you're so right. Casablanca is a great movie just in general. Humphrey Bogart icon of like that era of film, would recommend if you can find it. It's old, so harder to find, but also it's Casablanca, so I feel like it should be in like a library somewhere or something.

Okay, two more and then I will wrap up this list of excellent movies about heartbreak and lost love because it truly could go on forever because this is a theme that has been explored time and time again.

Emily: It's universal and immortal.

Lauren: Exactly.

Emily: Like there will always be heartbreak stories.

Lauren: Exactly. Which. You know, hate that, but also love that we're not alone in heartbreak. If we have, we have movies to turn to.

Emily: We didn't just invent it.

Lauren: Exactly. One. which I either do or do not recommend you watch if you're in a long distance relationship, depending on how much you would like to cry, is Like Crazy.

That came out 2010 or 2011 has like Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence is in it before she became like a big star, Jennifer Lawrence. But that one is based off of like two young people who fall in love, but [00:38:00] the woman has visa issues, and so she has to get back to the UK. And so now they're separated and they're trying to make long distance work, but also there are other people in their immediate vicinity who they also start developing feelings for, and just it gets, it gets messy.

And so that is also a really great like heartbreak slash lost love story, however. If you were currently in a long distance relationship, don't, maybe don't recommend you watch it. I maybe wouldn't.

Emily: Sometimes things hit a little too close to home.

Lauren: Sometimes things hit a little too close to home. And if you have any kind of insecurity in your relationship, that movie will exploit it.

So I would recommend staying away. And then the last one, which. Is funny to me because it is a movie, which is the reverse of what usually happens, that everyone else has seen and I have not, mostly because I think it's really funny to see what people's reactions are. When I tell 'em, I've never watched this movie.

Emily: What is this movie?

Lauren: The Notebook. It's like everyone and my mother has seen The Notebook. I have not seen The Notebook.

Emily: I'm not surprised at all that you've not seen The Notebook.

Lauren: No. At at this point it's just because it's hilarious to me watching the horror on people's faces.

Emily: Now, it's just a bit that you've committed to.

Lauren: Now it's just I've committed to the bit, I can't watch this movie now. However, it is a really great example of lost love. And lovers being reunited. So I hear, so I've been told, and that is my pop culture connection for today. If you have not seen any of these movies, you now have a list. If you have seen any of these movies, let me know if you think that they were good selections.

Or let me know what you wish I would have included, because I was definitely culling things. And also it's like when somebody asks you what your favorite x, y, Z is and suddenly, you know you've never watched a movie or read a book in your life.

Emily: Yeah. Well that was delightful. I love when we just get to look at the direct threads between like topics that we still explore on the daily.

Lauren: Yep.

Emily: There's a reason that it's a massively popular topic to make any kind of media about.

Lauren: I honestly think you could draw the most direct line between The Notebook and [00:40:00]Persuasion. So for that alone, I kind of wanna watch it now, but again, too committed.

Emily: you just have to watch it like totally in secret, like never tell anyone.

Lauren: You still haven't seen The Notebook, have you?

Emily: No.

Lauren: Or maybe I'll just read the book and then I can continue saying I've never seen The Notebook.

Emily: God, I forget it's a book.

Lauren: Okay. Shall we do our final takeaways?

Emily: Let's do our final takeaways.

Lauren: I recapped first.

Emily: So I have to take away. What is my final takeaway?

Basically what I want to get at is exactly what you said earlier about finding that line between introspection and rumination. But especially when it comes to what Anne is doing with deciding how Wentworth must feel without having actually spoken to him. This is something that I work on personally a lot, so I, I don't know how to phrase it as a succinct takeaway.

but the idea that you're only responsible for yourself and you can't control or necessarily predict how other people feel.

Lauren: Nice. I like it.

Emily: Thanks. What is your takeaway from this section?

Lauren: I think my takeaway is less of like an idea than an emotion, and it's just angst.

Emily: That's totally valid.

Lauren: That's honestly my biggest takeaway.

Emily: It was a very good angst section.

Lauren: Yeah. Like in the most literal sense of like, what do I take from this section? It's just like a feeling of sadness. So yeah, that is, that is my takeaway is Anne's emotion of just melancholia.

Emily: Austen, you're doing a great job.

Lauren: You're doing amazing, sweetie.

Emily: Keep it up. With that.

Shall we pull our tarot?

Lauren: Yes, we shall.

Emily: All right. Our card for next time is the Ace of Diamonds or the World. The illustration is a very nice little, almost mandala of flowers. It's very pretty.

Lauren: Hmm. The ace of diamonds, or the world, is completion and the illustration is a bouquet, and it says one [00:42:00] deserves a bouquet when a demanding endeavor has come full circle to success.

Emily: Completion.

Okay, that'll be interesting for such a relatively early section.

Lauren: Yeah.

Emily: We'll see if anything comes to completion in the next, the next few chapters.

Lauren: We'll have to see what demanding endeavors come full circle to success.

Thank you for joining us in this episode of Reclaiming Jane. Next time we'll be reading Chapters 10 through 12 of Persuasion with a focus on completion.

Emily: To read our show notes and a transcript of this episode, check out our website, reclaimingjanepod.com, where you can also find the fullback catalog and links to our social media.

Lauren: If you'd like to support us and gain access to exclusive content, you can join our Patreon @ReclaimingJanePod.

Emily: 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: See you next time, nerds.

What did Beethoven do?

Emily: He wrote music.

Lauren: Yes, I know that. I'm like, did he like go on tour?

Emily: I think he just like, I think he just wrote music. He probably had patrons or something. I don't know. I don't know. I didn't go into that part of it.

Lauren: He wrote music. Yes, I know.