Podcasts about janeites

Jane Austen created the definitive picture of Georgian England. No writer matches Austen's sensitive ear for the hypocrisy and irony lurking beneath the genteel conversation. That's the argument of the Janeites, but to the aficionados of Emily Brontë they are the misguided worshippers of a circumscribed mind. In Wuthering Heights, Brontë dispensed with Austen's niceties and the upper-middle class drawing rooms of Bath and the home counties. Her backdrop is the savage Yorkshire moors, her subject the all-consuming passions of the heart. To help you decide who should be crowned queen of English letters we have the lined up the best advocates to make the case for each writer. In this event, chaired by author and critic Erica Wagner, we invited guests including author Kate Mosse, Professor and author John Mullan, and actors Mariah Gale, Samuel West and Dominic West, to discuss each writer's influence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jane Austen completed six full-length novels. And today, 250 years after her birth, those novels are all still present in our culture. This hour, a look at Austen’s life and work, the world of Janeites, and the many film and television adaptations of her work. GUESTS: Devoney Looser: Author of The Making of Jane Austen and Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës Deborah Yaffe: Author of Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Anya Grondalski, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired July 28, 2022.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome, Janeites, to the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host, Izzy Meakin, a lifelong Janeite with a deep love for Austen. Each month, I team up with fellow enthusiasts to explore the wit, charm, and quirks of Jane's novels. This podcast is for those who enjoy thought-provoking discussions and a good laugh, covering everything from romantic moments to quirky aspects and unpopular opinions. We embrace the full spectrum of the Austen fandom. Join me for lively conversations that deepen your love for her timeless tales.

Join me for a bookish chat with author Jessica Bull as we discuss her latest novel, A Fortune Most Fatal (Book 2 in the Miss Austen Investigates series).We explore the inspiration behind the book, delving into the fascinating life of Mary Baker, also known as Princess Caraboo, and the resilience of women in Regency society. This story also highlights Jane Austen's connection with the Knight family, who adopted her brother Edward, and Mrs. Knight's role as a supporter of Austen's creative work.It's good to be back Janeites! I hope you enjoy the episode

In this episode of "The Bookshelf Odyssey Podcast" we celebrate being boring! I have the pleasure of interviewing cozy mystery writer Anna A. Armstrong - who is NOT a boring writer! We kick off our conversation by discussing our mutual love for Jane Austen, acknowledging that while it may seem basic to some, we find immense comfort in her timeless works like "Pride and Prejudice." Embracing our so-called "boring" tastes, we chat about the joy and comfort these classic stories bring us. Anna also shares her inspiring journey to becoming a writer, giving us an inside look at her process and her delightful FitzMorris Family Mystery series. Join us for a delightful chat that celebrates the beauty of simplicity and the charm of beloved literature. The FitzMorris Mystery Series: https://thecotswoldwriter.com/Timestamps:03:42 Discussing Jane Austenwwwwww 12:40 Anna Armstrong's Writing Journey26:00 Biggest challenges and joys29:55 What's coming up next35:08 In Praise of YA literatureBooks Mentioned:Corpse in the Chard, by Anna A. ArmstrongMurder on the Isle,  by Anna A. Armstrong    Season for Murder,  by Anna A. Armstrong Among the Janeites by Deborah YaffeMansfield Park by Jane AustenEmma by Jane AustenPride and Prejudice by Jane AustenThe Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling____________ There are 4 ways you can help support the channel! -Like and subscribe!-I'm now a bookshop.org affiliate - check out my shop and find your next great read! https://bookshop.org/shop/bookshelfodyssey -Buy me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/bookshelfpod - My Amazon Wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2PTGNQWISVZE/ref=nav_wishlist_lists_3 _____________ Find Me Online: Podcast: https://bookshelfodyssey.buzzsprout.com/ Voxer: @artbookshelfodyssey Discord: https://discord.gg/8MFceV2NFe Facebook Group Page: @thebookshelfodyssey Twitter: @odyssey_podcastInstagram: @bookshelfodysseypodcast

It's Austen Chat's one-year anniversary! Encouraging more people to read Jane Austen and gain a deeper understanding of her works and life is at the heart of JASNA's mission; to celebrate our podcast birthday, we welcome not one but three guests to talk about reading Austen and the online event they organize each year called Jane Austen July. Our guests today are Katie Lumsden, host of the YouTube channel Books and Things, Marissa Schwartz, host of Blatantly Bookish, and Claudia Falcone, host of Spinster's Library. These BookTubers are dedicated Janeites, which is why, for the past six years, they have been spearheading a month-long reading challenge all about Jane Austen. Every July, thousands of readers across the internet join them to read Jane Austen and Austen-related books, watch Austen adaptations, and discuss their experiences. For a transcript, show notes, and guest bio: https://jasna.org/austen/podcast/ep13Visit our website:  www.jasna.orgFollow us on Instagram and FacebookEmail: podcast@jasna.org

Hello, Janeites! Pour yourself a hot drink or glass of wine, and settle in for an enlightening conversation on our favourite Austen characters, their intriguing relationships, and the societal pressures they endure. Caily back for this year-end episode, where we reflect on the past year's discussions, the challenges we faced, and the wisdom we gained along the way.From the manipulative Lucy Steele in "Sense and Sensibility" to the controversial Lydia from "Pride and Prejudice," we dissect the multi-faceted personalities of Austen's world. We explore the complex dynamics of Edmund and Fanny's relationship in "Mansfield Park" and the role Lydia played in Lizzie and Darcy's love story. We stress the significance of 'girl code', supportive female friendships, and the importance of self-care for us modern-day Janeites. As we look ahead, an exciting new year awaits us with more in-depth character studies, the expansion of our book club, and the growth of our Patreon community. With gratitude in our hearts for each of you, we are thrilled to continue this Janeite journey, engaging in profound discussions about the timeless world of Austen. Let's raise our teacups to another year of Austen adventures, and let the conversation flow!Mentions: Melodie illustrator (Cover Art)The Woman's Guide to Girl Code | Spot a Friend or Foe  Classics Out LoudWe take great books that have stood the test of time and make completely new recordings...Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzy_meakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

What if you could join a tea party with Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, and Arthur Conan Doyle? Tune in to this riveting episode where author and screenwriter Julia Seals reveals the inspiration behind her latest work, A Most Agreeable Murder. We chat about how her novel masterfully intertwines Austen's elegant narrative style with an enigmatic murder mystery set in a swampy small town. Julia opens up about her unique journey to becoming a Jane Austen devotee and the profound impact of various literary influences on her writing style.This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Julia?  Instagram: @juliamaeseales Book: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/episode-mentions Audible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzy_meakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

In this episode I am joined by Lynette host of the Storyhooked podcast, as we journey into the world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. We shine the spotlight on Lydia Bennet, the youngest of the five Bennett sisters, known for her impulsiveness and recklessness. Lynette, and I dive headfirst into Lydia's character, drawing on our own teenage experiences to explore her traits further.Let's peel back the layers on Lydia's dramatic and immature tendencies, and explore how her parents' complacency may have influenced her development. contemplating the societal norms of Austen's era and how Lydia's understanding of marriage and her age affected her decision-making. Lydia posses a puzzling paradox as both a victim and a perpetrator of her circumstances. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Lynette?  Instagram: @storyhookedShop: https://storyhooked.company.site/Audible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzy_meakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

Those familiar with Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice, will recognize its very first line of narration: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."  In the second episode of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE - THE PODCAST, librettist Josie Brown and lyricist-composer Rita Abrams discuss how they bring this phrase to life in the second song in their musical, and why it comes out as a duet between Darcy and Bingley -- with snide asides from Bingley's sister, Caroline. In other episodes to follow, Rita and Josie discuss their creative process with each of the songs and how Jane Austen's wonderful book inspired the placement, pace, and lyrics in this musical. Can't wait to hear more of the musical's songs? Go to Josie and Rita's website, where you can hear more of the songs, download their Reviews brochure, and see video of some of the productions:   https://www.PrideAndPrejudiceTheMusical.com (c) 2023 Josie Brown. All rights reserved. This is a copyrighted episode of Pride and Prejudice - The Podcast. Any use by AI is expressly prohibited.

Caily is back on the pod and we are taking on the role of the ultimate match makers and pairing up couples from different Jane Austen novels! ranging from power couples like Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Knightley to the quieter pairings like Edward Ferrars and Fanny Price, we hypothesize a gamut of romantic possibilities. Heat up your teapots and ready your crumpets, Austen lovers, because it's time for a literary matchmaking party!This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Caily? Where can you find Caily? Instagram: @half_agony_half_hopeEpisode 2: A defence of Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility Episode 5: Discussing Jane Austen's most awkward characters  #AwkAustenAugEpisode 7: Jane Austen Villain off 2021 | Wickham v Willoughby with Caily and EllisEpisode 9: The power of the letter in Jane Austen's work Episode 12 & 13: Placing Austen's Heroines into Harry Potter Houses.Episode 22: Villain 2022 | Caroline Bingley v Isabella Thorpe Episode 28: The other Jane | A Jane Bennet Character Study Episode 37: Unpopular Opinions Pride & Prejudice | 2 Year Podcast Anniversary Ep with CailySupport the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzy_meakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

Part 2 is here! I had to split this episode up cause me and Caily can clearly talk for England when it comes to Jane Austen ahah. Caily is back on the pod and we are taking on the role of the ultimate match makers and pairing up couples from different Jane Austen novels! ranging from power couples like Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Knightley to the quieter pairings like Edward Ferrars and Fanny Price, we hypothesize a gamut of romantic possibilities. Heat up your teapots and ready your crumpets, Austen lovers, because it's time for a literary matchmaking party!  This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way.   We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it!  Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.  Where can you find Caily?  Where can you find Caily?  Instagram: @half_agony_half_hope Episode 2: A defence of Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility  Episode 5: Discussing Jane Austen's most awkward characters  #AwkAustenAug Episode 7: Jane Austen Villain off 2021 | Wickham v Willoughby with Caily and Ellis Episode 9: The power of the letter in Jane Austen's work  Episode 12 & 13: Placing Austen's Heroines into Harry Potter Houses. Episode 22: Villain 2022 | Caroline Bingley v Isabella Thorpe  Episode 28: The other Jane | A Jane Bennet Character Study Episode 37: Unpopular Opinions Pride & Prejudice | 2 Year Podcast Anniversary Ep with CailySupport the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzy_meakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

In this episode we unravel the secrets of Jane Austen's classic novel, Emma, focusing on the often overlooked narrative of Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill's clandestine engagement. Teaming up with Ellis from the Historian Ellis Blog, we chat about where the clues to Jane and Frank's secret engagement are concealed in the most unsuspecting places and our feelings about their relationship as a whole. Jane and Frank introduce a unique dynamic to Austen's tightly-knit village setting, their complex pasts adding a layer of mystery and speculation that's begging to be dissected. We delve deep into Frank's manipulative tactics and explore his motivations behind the oddly timed gift of a piano. We challenge you to consider the societal implications of their actions as we further examine Emma's opinion of women's roles and Frank's impropriety in engaging with other women while committed to Jane.  As we venture into the complexities of Austen's narrative, we invite you to uncover the obscured truths and decipher the hidden meanings within her masterful storytelling for yourself. Leave no stone unturned and no secret engagement undiscovered!This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Ellis? Instagram: @historian_ellis Hear El on the following podcast episodes: Episode 1 Episode 7 Episode 14Support the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

In this episode I am joined by Habiba @habibareadsbooks to discuss the Pride & Prejudices Mrs. Bennet. A character who indeed has a multifaceted personality that elicits a range of emotions from readers. In this episode we explore her character in more detail, acknowledging both her humorous aspects and the challenges she faces as a mother of five unmarried daughters. We also look at the ways in which Mrs. Bennet is similar to some South Asian Mums and Grans, standing as a true matriarch at times. Habiba touches on her own experiences, and how Pride and Prejudice relates closely to both her Pakistani traditions and Desi culture as a whole. Thanks again to our sponsor Haus of Bennet: https://hausofbennet.com/ Use code whatthediscount at the checkout for 15% off! and you will also be supporting the Podcast

In this episode I am sitting down with author Tirzah Price to discuss her upcoming book Manslaughter Park, which is the 3rd book in her Jane Austen murder master series including Pride and Premeditation and Sense and Second Degree Murder. It was so wonderful to chat to Tirzah about her love of Jane Austen, how the series came about and her writing experience as she captures the essence of Jane Austen characters, but gives them a wonderful Agatha Christie twist. Manslaughter park is available for pre-order! Buy Tirzah's books: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/episode-mentions Out in the US 27th June and 31st August in the UK. Thanks again to our sponsor Haus of Bennet: https://hausofbennet.com/ Use code whatthediscount at the checkout for 15% off! and you will also be supporting the Podcast

Carol Evans; author, entrepreneur, business consultant & proponent of a positive mindset, is the guest this week, to give her perspective on running a successful business, along with her two-decade-long journey! In more detail, Carol starts by explaining how her love for music & performance translated into her business mindset, while providing an idea of what her work is, how travelling around the world has changed her perspective, where her passion for business stems from, some of the pitfalls of a new business and her positivity. Carol then speaks about women in business and why female entrepreneurs often underperform and how one can go about changing this, how one must accept help and that the profitability of a business is directly linked to how much time one puts in – this is a conversation for any entrepreneurs, risk-takers, business owners or people wanting motivation to push themselves further! Carol's Sites: https://PlanetPeacockClub.com – https://ConsultancyAndCoaching.co.uk Carol's Social Media: Instagram: @PlanetPeacockClub – https://Facebook.com/Consultancyandcoaching - Twitter: @CoachCarolEvans The book Carol co-authored: Women Who Are Not Willing To Settle - https://amzn.eu/d/faSPUOK Sign up to the Pop Culture Collective newsletter here to keep up to date with Mike & Tony's many releases: https://pccnewsletter.com     To support Mike, you can rate/review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & other podcast apps, you can share the show or support financially. You can give a one-off payment/donation at ⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/genuinechitchat  or you can subscribe monthly at ⁠⁠https://Patreon.com/GenuineChitChat⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - either option will give you access to the exclusive “Afterthoughts” episodes. Patreons get access to weekly episodes plus every past episode (even when paying £1 a month) while Ko-fi tippers will be able to choose some episodes, depending on how much they give - any and all support of this nature is hugely appreciated! In the previous episode of GCC (ep 195), Mike spoke with Tony Farina; podcaster, educator and published author, to talk about his ultimate passion project coming to life; 6 modern-day adaptations of Jane Austen's books! In more detail, Tony & Mike discuss why Tony embarked on this literary endeavour, his love of Jane Austen and her writing, core messages & themes in Jane Austen's literature, what it means to write “young adult” books, how he will be creating a shared universe for the characters and so much more – this episode is one for book-lovers, “Janeites” and authors! Find Mike's other show; Star Wars: Comics In Canon on Spotify & the other podcast apps on the feed of Comics In Motion or on GCC's YouTube channel. Episodes are out every Saturday; episodes 0-128 are out now; ep 128 featured Hidden Empire 4; the penultimate issue, while ep 127 was the first volume of The High Republic's Phase 2 Marvel comics and the week prior was a review of Jedi: Battle Scars! Previous episodes include the War Of The Bounty Hunters & Crimson Reign crossovers, every other canon Star Wars comic by Marvel, the Journals of Old Ben Kenobi, full High Republic coverage (book reviews & comics) & much more - https://podfollow.com/comicsinmotion    Mike recently guested on: Where I'm From by Alyson Shelton, where he read out a poem he wrote: https://youtu.be/kl-E9a-6XIo Stevie B's Star Wars Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/McbWHBMZQxM Ike's Flame podcast to talk about The High Republic here: https://pod.fo/e/143ce4  Instagram – Twitter – Facebook – YouTube – Stitcher – Podbean – Spotify

  THE JANE AUSTEN ADAPTATION YOU NEED TO READ! Tony Farina; podcaster, educator and published author (as A.R. Farina) is the guest this week, to talk about his ultimate passion project coming to life; 6 modern-day adaptations of Jane Austen's books!   In more detail, Tony & Mike discuss why Tony embarked on this literary endeavour, his love of Jane Austen and her writing, how his adaptations are different, and similar, to the original works, how one modernises a set of books that are hundreds of years old, the core messages & themes in Jane Austen's literature, Tony's favourite Austen books, how he got his book deal, what it means to write “young adult” books, how he will be creating a shared universe for the characters and so much more – this episode is one for book-lovers, “Janeites” and authors!   Go to Tony's website for updates on his books, his newsletter, podcasts & everything else: https://www.arfarina.com   Tony mentioned Beau Lake in this conversation - she is a writer at 4 Horsemen Publications as well as an editor and writer Liaison - https://4horsemenpublications.com/our-authors/beau-lake   Tony appeared on Spider-Dan & The Secret Bores, talking about their top 5 loose Shakespeare adaptations, listen here: https://pod.fo/e/13c6f0   Tony has appeared on episodes 71, 88 & 184 of GCC and Mike has appeared on Indie Comics Spotlight several times; on the 2022 episodes Miracleman & Shadow Service and the 2021 episodes Flintstones, Billionaire Island & Second Coming!   Sign up to the Pop Culture Collective newsletter here to keep up to date with Mike & Tony's many releases: https://pccnewsletter.com      Check out Mike's Patreon, where he releases at least 1 episode of his & Megan's “Afterthoughts” a week, plus there are unsplit full-length episodes of GCC and more, so if you want to support the show and get more content, check it out at http://patreon.com/genuinechitchat       In the previous episode of GCC (ep 194) Megan & Ria return to discussion Star Wars Visions with Mike! The trio discuss the 9 new anthology episodes in Volume 2, which are from animation studios across the world – tune in for found easter eggs, episode reviews, thoughts on the themes & messages, animation-style discussions and so much more – the episodes are Sith, Screecher's Reach, In The Stars, I Am Your Mother, Journey To The Dark Hand, The Spy Dancer, The Bandits Of Golak, The Pit and Aau's Song.   Find Mike's other show; Star Wars: Comics In Canon on Spotify & the other podcast apps on the feed of Comics In Motion or on GCC's YouTube channel. Episodes are out every Saturday; episodes 0-127 are out now; ep 127 was the first volume of The High Republic's Phase 2 Marvel comics, we week prior was a review of Jedi: Battle Scars and the week before that was ep 125 which featured the second half of the Han Solo & Chewbacca series! Previous episodes include the War Of The Bounty Hunters & Crimson Reign crossovers, every other canon Star Wars comic by Marvel, the Journals of Old Ben Kenobi, full High Republic coverage (book reviews & comics) & much more - https://podfollow.com/comicsinmotion     Mike recently guested on:   Where I'm From by Alyson Shelton, where he read out a poem he wrote: https://youtu.be/kl-E9a-6XIo Stevie B's Star Wars Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/McbWHBMZQxM   Ike's Flame podcast to talk about The High Republic here: https://pod.fo/e/143ce4     Instagram – Twitter – Facebook – YouTube – Stitcher – Podbean – Spotify

In this episode I am joined by Leah @janeaustenrunsmylife to discuss Lucy Steele, this is the first in what will become a series titled L is for Liability. Lucy Steele is marked high as one of the most calculated villains of Austen's work. She is strategic in improving her situation in life and cares little for hurting people along the way. Join us as we discuss this fascinating villain from Sense and Sensibility. Thanks again to our sponsor Haus of Bennet: https://hausofbennet.com/ Use code whatthediscount at the checkout for 15% off! and you will also be supporting the Podcast

In this episode I'm  joined by Charlie @thebookboy to discuss Jane Austen's Mary Crawford from Mansfield Park. Described by some as the real heroine of Mansfield Park, she is a character who divides the community. embodying everything Austen tells us is good such as being outspoken and lively, Mary isn't so dissimilar than Lizzy Bennet and yet she is a polarising character and is placed in binary opposition to the heroine Fanny Price. This is a fun and interesting conversation to explore the character of Mary from two Mary sympathisers. Thanks again to our sponsor Haus of Bennet: https://hausofbennet.com/ Use code whatthediscount at the checkout for 15% off! and you will also be supporting the Podcast

In this episode I am joined by Carolyne @theaustenite to discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, specifically focusing on the character of Mr Knightley. Mr Knightley stands firm as many peoples favourite Jane Austen hero and it's not hard to see why he is kind, pragmatic and observant guiding our heroine Emma to become the best version of herself. So we thought we would look at detail at some of his actions and moments in which he really shines, and why we think he should be Knighted for his gallant behaviour. Thanks again to our sponsor Haus of Bennet: https://hausofbennet.com/ Use code whatthediscount at the checkout for 15% off! and you will also be supporting the Podcast

Jane Austen completed six full-length novels. And today, more than two centuries later, those novels are all still present in our culture. This hour, a look at Austen's life and work, the world of Janeites, and the many film and television adaptations of her work. GUESTS: Devoney Looser: Author of The Making of Jane Austen and Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës Deborah Yaffe: Author of Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Anya Grondalski, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired July 28, 2022.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Caily joins me in this episode to discuss the character of Jane Bennet, the supposed Ingénue of Pride and Prejudice. Jane is kindness itself and her beauty is unmatched in Meryton. She possesses great equanimity but is Jane's only role to be the innocent, elegant and selfless sister of headstrong Elizabeth Or does she have strength and substance in her own right.This is what we'll be discussing today as we look more closely at her character. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Caily? Instagram: @half_agony_half_hopeEpisode 2: A defence of Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility Episode 5: Discussing Jane Austen's most awkward characters  #AwkAustenAugEpisode 7: Jane Austen Villain off 2021 | Wickham v Willoughby with Caily and EllisEpisode 9: The power of the letter in Jane Austen's work Episode 12 & 13: Placing Austen's Heroines into Harry Potter Houses.Episode 22: Villain 2022 | Caroline Bingley v Isabella Thorpe Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

In this episode I am joined by friend and fellow Janeite Sophie Andrews from blog and Instagram page @LaughingwithLizzie as we discuss the life lessons we have taken from Jane Austen's heroines over the years. Looking at what quotes we resonate with and what it means to live with Jane in mind 200 + years after her death. Sophie is a prominent Janeite in the community and it was so much fun to sit down and chat about our mutual love of Jane's novels and characters. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Where can you find Sophie? Instagram: @laughingwithlizzieBook: Be more Jane & Be your own HeroineBlog: http://laughingwithlizzie.blogspot.com/Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCfVhOxVmayHjm4O9qGbCMbA BBC Documentary 'My Friend Jane': https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08ywkjv Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

That's a wrap! Welcome to the twenty sixth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Caily Bridgeland. To say goodbye to the 2022 podcast year we are reflecting back on all the episodes that have come out, meeting each other in person and life in general.  It has been a tough year at times dealing with a mixture of grief and burnout, but it's also been an exciting year making loads of new friends in the Austen community and the podcast has grown massively. I want to say a massive thank you to all the guests who have been on this year, you really do help to make this podcast a reality and I loved recording with each of you! Caily Bridgeland @half_agony_half_hopeMartha @marthabethanreadsCharlie @thebookboyEllis @HistorianElYolanda and Jillian @thepemberley | The Pemberley Podcast Ann @Paperheartslibrary Bontle @colourful_litchi Eleanor @hausofbennet  Thank you for all your love and support, you help to keep the podcast going. I can't wait to return in 2023 with a whole set of new guests and new content. Please subscribe and rate the podcast, it really does help to grow the community. Have a wonderful December break and I will see you In the New Year! Mentioned in the ep: Mr Fogg's Cocktail chainJane Austen Funko Pop @MarshaLaurenceart on Instagram and Marsha's shopEleanor's shop Haus of BennetThis podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Caily? Instagram: @half_agony_half_hopeEpisode 2: A defence of Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility Episode 5: Discussing Jane Austen's most awkward characters  #AwkAustenAugEpisode 7: Jane Austen Villain off 2021 | Wickham v Willoughby with Caily and EllisEpisode 9: The power of the letter in Jane Austen's work Episode 12 & 13: Placing Austen's Heroines into Harry Potter Houses.Episode 22: Villain 2022 | Caroline Bingley v Isabella Thorpe Support the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

Jane Austen gift guide 2022! So I thought this would be a fun episode to help you build your wish list or to give you some ideas on what to get a fellow Janeite. I am joined by the wonderful Eleanor owner of the Haus of Bennet shop @hausofbennet as we pick our favourite Jane Austen themed gift ideas for this year. Mentioned (please find links and more info on my blog post): Jane Austen felt decorations/ornaments Ex Libris designs Austen Heroines & Tee Jane was Here Travel Guide by Nicole Jacobsen, Devynn MacLennan, Lexi NilsonNorthanger Soapworks SoapsClaire and Clementine Bookish Stickers  The Jane Austen Tarot Deck by Jacqui Oakley The Jane Austen playing cards by John Mullan Haus of Bennet's "What are men to rocks and mountains?" Holographic Sticker The Well Read Company's Pride and Prejudice bags WheatonsCloset's Regency Dresses Penguin Clothbound Books Wordsworth Collectables Barnes & Noble Collectible EditionsVintage copies of Jane Austen's novelsTea and illustration StickersVivi at Home Studio's Jane Austen Themed Cutie, Kawaii Character Faces Haus of Bennet's Regency cross neckless  Build a Bear's Rebel Girls collection Jane Austen Build a Bear Discount codes: Haus of Bennet: whatthediscount for 22% OFFNorthanger Soapworks:  IZZY10 FOR 10% OFF.Everything myself and Eleanor mentioned can be found on my website: www.whattheausten.comI have added easy links and info for you there. Where can you find Eleanor? Instagram: @hausofbennetWebsite: https://hausofbennet.com/Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/HausofBennet This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

Welcome to the twenty fourth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Ann from @disneyprincesslessons and @paper.hearts.library. We are back and today we are covering the villains in  Jane Austen's  Northanger Abbey and comparing them against Disney Villains. This is the last episode in the Disney Villain series! It's been so much fun to cover all of the villains and I recommend listening in to all the other episodes for your Austen x Disney fix. Don't miss out on our other episodes: Pride and Prejudice villains (Ep 15)  Sense and Sensibility  (Ep 18)  Disney Princesses x Jane Austen Heroine (Ep 8)This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it.  Further Reading: Disney Wiki Villains | FandomJane Austen Runs my life Blog: Waiter there's some Disney to my Jane AustenThe Disney Book of Maps Where can you find Ann? @paper.hearts.library @disneyprincesslessons PrincessLessons YouTube ChannelSupport the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

Welcome to the twenty third episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Ann from @disneyprincesslessons and @paper.hearts.library. We are back and today we are covering the villains in  Jane Austen's  Persuasion and comparing them against Disney Villains. Don't miss out on our other episodes: Pride and Prejudice villains (Ep 15)  Sense and Sensibility  (Ep 18)  Disney Princesses x Jane Austen Heroine (Ep 8)This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Next in this series we will be covering Northanger Abbey (ep 24) Further Reading: Disney Wiki Villains | FandomJane Austen Runs my life Blog: Waiter there's some Disney to my Jane AustenThe Disney Book of Maps Where can you find Ann? @paper.hearts.library @disneyprincesslessons PrincessLessons YouTube ChannelBuzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

The battle of the Jane Austen villains, Villain off is back! On the left we have the abominable Isabella Thorpe from Northanger Abbey and on the right we have the intolerable Caroline Bingley from Pride and Prejudice. Welcome to the twenty second episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Caily Bridgeland. Villain off is back for 2022, we will be analysing Isabella and Caroline Bingley and the question is who's the bigger villain?  we will be looking at their crimes in detail before we crown our Biggest Villain of October 2022. If you enjoyed this topic listen to Villain off 2021: Episode 7: Jane Austen Villain off 2021 | Wickham v Willoughby with Caily @half_agony_half_hope and Ellis @historian_ellisThis podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Caily? Instagram: @half_agony_half_hopeEpisode 2: A defence of Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility Episode 5: Discussing Jane Austen's most awkward characters  #AwkAustenAugEpisode 7: Jane Austen Villain off 2021 | Wickham v Willoughby with Caily and EllisEpisode 9: The power of the letter in Jane Austen's work Episode 12 & 13: Let the sorting begin... placing Jane Austen's Heroines into their Harry Potter Houses.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the showWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? Podcast

Welcome to the twenty-first episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Martha from @marthabethanreads. In this episode, we will be unlocking all the secrets of The Mysteries of Udolpho a novel by Anne Radcliffe which Catherine Morland reads during Northanger Abbey.We will run through the plot of Udolpho, talk about the references in  Northanger Abbey and all around explore the Gothic that inspired Jane Austen's satire.  This is a long book to try and summaries and so I have created a supporting document which you can download from my website: www.whattheausten.com This was such a fun episode to record and a wonderful novel to read despite its length, we hope you enjoy tuning in. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Where can you find Martha? Instagram: @marthabethanreadsEpisode 10: Bridgerton Gossip (S1, S2 and the books)Where can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? PodcastPlease follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Support the show

Welcome to the twentieth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Ann from @disneyprincesslessons and @paper.hearts.library. We are back and today we are covering the villains in  Jane Austen's  Emma and comparing them against Disney Villains. Don't miss out on our other episodes: Pride and Prejudice villains (Ep 15)  Sense and Sensibility  (Ep 18)  Disney Princesses x Jane Austen Heroine (Ep 8)This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Next in this series we will be covering Persuasion (ep 23) Further Reading: Disney Wiki Villains | FandomJane Austen Runs my life Blog: Waiter there's some Disney to my Jane AustenThe Disney Book of Maps Where can you find Ann? @paper.hearts.library @disneyprincesslessons PrincessLessons YouTube ChannelWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? PodcastPlease follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Welcome to the nineteenth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Bontle from @colourful_litchi. In this episode, we will discuss Harriet Smith a character who is often overlooked as the unassuming  friend who is heavily led by Emma. Myself and Bontle are here to tell you that Harriet deserves her time in the spotlight, celebrating her development throughout the novel. In many ways Emma is not just a growing of age novel about Emma Woodhouse, we will argue Harriet could be seen as a protagonist in her own right. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Where can you find Bontle? Instagram: @colourful_litchi Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/BontleLanga Podcast: 1 A.M CLUB PODCAST | Linktree Instagram: @1amclub_za Where can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? PodcastPlease follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Support the show

Welcome to the eighteenth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Ann from @disneyprincesslessons and @paper.hearts.library. We are back and today we are covering the villains in  Jane Austen's  Sense and Sensibility and comparing them against Disney Villains. Don't miss out on our other episodes: Pride and Prejudice villains (Ep 15)  Mansfield Park villains (Ep 17)  Disney Princesses x Jane Austen Heroine (Ep 8)This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Next in this series we will be covering Emma (ep 20) Further Reading: Disney Wiki Villains | FandomJane Austen Runs my life Blog: Waiter there's some Disney to my Jane AustenThe Disney Book of Maps Where can you find Ann? @paper.hearts.library @disneyprincesslessons PrincessLessons YouTube ChannelWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? PodcastPlease follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the showBuzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Welcome to the seventeenth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Ann from @disneyprincesslessons and @paper.hearts.library. We are back and today we are covering the villains in  Jane Austen's  Mansfield Park and comparing them against Disney Villains. Don't miss out on our episode where we covered Pride and Prejudice villains (Ep 15)  or our Disney Princesses x Jane Austen Heroine Episode. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Next we will be covering Sense and Sensibility (ep 18) Further Reading: Disney Wiki Villains | FandomJane Austen Runs my life Blog: Waiter there's some Disney to my Jane AustenThe Disney Book of Maps Where can you find Ann? @paper.hearts.library @disneyprincesslessons PrincessLessons YouTube ChannelWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? PodcastPlease follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

It's here! the new Netflix Persuasion adaption staring Dakota Johnson, which takes a modern approach to Jane Austen's intimate novel. I am excited to say that I have Jillian and Yolanda from the Pemberley Podcast joining me to discuss this new adaption. Jillian and Yolanda are no strangers to analysing Austen adaptions and I like to think I have a good recollection of the books so will be fun to compare how the new adaption not only sizes up to the books, but adaptions which have come out in the past. Further Reading: Persuasion by Jane Austen Liam Hess for Vogue Dakota Johnson's Persuasion Is a Stylish, Subversive New Take on Jane AustenPenguin Publishing: How Netflix's Persuasion talks over Jane Austen's novelDana Stevens for Slate Magazine: Netflix's Persuasion Isn't Just Bad Austen. It's One of the Worst Movies in Years.Deborah Ross for The Spectator: Everyone involved should be in prison: Netflix's Persuasion reviewedWhere can you find Jillian and Yolanda? The Pemberley Podcast@thepemberleyWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? PodcastThis podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Please follow and subscribe on your podcast app and on Youtube to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Some of the links I use will be affiliate links, you won't pay any extra but buying from the links helps the podcast grow. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Jane Austen, the English novelist, wrote six full-length novels in her lifetime. And, over 200 years after Austen's death, those novels are still present today, from English classes, to her devoted fans, known as Janeites. This hour, we look at Austen's life and work, the world of Janeites, and the many film adaptations of her work. GUESTS:  Devoney Looser: Professor of English at Arizona State University and author of books including The Making of Jane Austen Deborah Yaffe: Author of Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode we are matching Pride and Prejudice villains to Disney villains who share similar characteristics. Welcome to the fifteenth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Ann from @disneyprincesslessons and @paper.hearts.library. So many of you loved the Disney princess episode, so we thought we would come back and compare Jane Austen's villains to Disney Villains. Again we found so many fun cross overs, so if you love Austen and Disney this series is for you! In this episode we cover Pride & Prejudice: Wickham, Caroline Bingley + Mrs Hurst, Mr Collins and Lady Catherine. Next month we will be covering Mansfield Park (ep 17) and Sense and Sensibility (ep 18) Further Reading: Disney Wiki Villains | FandomJane Austen Runs my life Blog: Waiter there's some Disney to my Jane AustenThe Disney Book of Maps Where can you find Ann? @paper.hearts.library @disneyprincesslessons PrincessLessons YouTube ChannelWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? PodcastThis podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Please follow and subscribe on your podcast app and on Youtube to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Some of the links I use will be affiliate links, you won't pay any extra but buying from the links helps the podcast grow. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Welcome to the fourteenth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Ellis from @historian_Ellis. In this episode, we discuss Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility, specifically focusing on the character of Edward Ferrars and what makes a hero. Often in Jane Austen's work the hero only merits the title because they marry out protagonist, however in this episode we will see if Edward has qualities which warrant the title of hero in his own right. Edward is often seen as shy, unexciting and for many can be considered a bit of a coward. However, are we missing the more nuance aspects of his character and does he in fact have hero like qualities which often go unnoticed. We hope you will join us in reconsidering Edward as not only a hero but a romantic partner we can all aspire to have. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Ellis? Historian Ellis Blog: https://historianellis.wordpress.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historian_ellis/ Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/HistorianEllis?ref=ss_profileWhere can you find your host (Izzy)? Website: www.whattheausten.com Podcast Instagram: @whattheaustenPersonal Instagram: @izzymeakinYoutube: What the Austen? PodcastBuzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Welcome to the Thirteenth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by regular on the pod Caily from @half_agony_half_hope. In this episode, we will continue playing the roll of the sorting hat and placing the wonderful Austen heroines into their houses. This episode will cover Emma, Persuasion, Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey.  We will look at a primary and secondary house for each, and convince one an other of our choices.  If you want to hear our picks for Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility then head over to part 1! Me and Caily both love Harry Potter and Austen so this was such a fun episode! This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Follow @whattheausten to see all the behind the scenes and more Austen content. Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Welcome to the Twelfth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my part-time co-host and fellow Janeite Caily from @half_agony_half_hope. In this episode, we will be playing the roll of the sorting hat and placing the wonderful Austen heroines into their houses. We will look at a primary and secondary house for each, and convince one an other of our choices. Me and Caily both love Harry Potter and Austen so this was such a fun episode! This will be the first part of a two part episode series, we will cover Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility in this episode and the next part will be out in May, Ep 13. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Follow @whattheausten to see all the behind the scenes and more Austen content. Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Welcome to the eleventh episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Charlie from @thebookboy. In this episode, we will discuss how wealth is portrayed with in Austen's novels. We will specifically be focusing on some of the heroes, who is the wealthiest, how is their income talked about by other characters if at all, how was it generated and what does this mean for them in terms of marriage etc. From Bingley's celebrated 5 thousand a year to Edwards Ferrars' complicated finical situation, this is a fun episode playing banker and sizing everyone up. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Esteemed members of the Ton,Welcome to the tenth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Martha from @marthabethanreads. In anticipation for the new season which airs next month, in this episode we will be discussing Bridgerton! We will specifically focus on Season 1 of the the Netflix series which is based on Julia Quinns book The Dunk and I (Book 1 in the Bridgerton series), but we will also discuss the other books in the series and our expectations for Season 2. If you watched season 1 last year and want to join the discussion,  or if you want to join us in getting excited for the new season which comes out next month! tune in. NOTE: BIG SPOILER ALTERS FOR BOTH THE BOOKS AND SEASON 1. Julia Quinns Bridgerton: The Duke and I: Bridgerton Family, Book 1Book | Audiobook (Audible) Youtube videos on Race and Diversity in Bridgerton: The World According to Chyna - The Unspoken Racism & Colorism in BridgertonThe Feminine Fancy - My Unpopular Opinions About "Bridgerton"This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Calling all Janeites! ...or anyone else familiar with Jane Austen's work. This week's episode covers Autumn de Wilde's 2020 film Emma., an adaptation of Austen's 1815 novel of the same name. Marta and Vikram welcome Bridget Raymundo in discussing the navigation of contemporary adaptation, gender, and female relationships. Put on your bonnets and tune into their conversation! Some resources on this episode's News Reel segment can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W_hbCIqgSfPhiEnM47-YGbmC6-z9W58D_Mqsgu5wHOw/edit?usp=sharing Don't forget to check out our website for more information about SVC: https://vicscreenwriting.wixsite.com/uoftsvc And you can stay up to date on all things SVC on our social media - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vicscreenwriting/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vicscreenwriting

Welcome to the Ninth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my part-time co-host and fellow Janeite Caily from @half_agony_half_hope. In this episode, we discuss the power of the letters in Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility. We will explore how Jane Austen uses letters in her novels to drive the novels plot forward and to expose deeper truths between characters. From Darcy's letter of revelations to Willoughby's letter of deceit, Jane Austen develops her characters and captures us all through these exchanges. Article mentioned in the episode: Letters Within Jane Austen's Novels: A Bridge Towards Romantic Communication, Mary Butler, Article 17. 2006. Pride and Prejudice (Letter edition) mentioned in the episode: Pride and Prejudice: The Complete Novel, with Nineteen Letters from the Characters' Correspondence, Written and Folded by Hand. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Danny Lavery welcomes Wendy Lee, an associate professor in the English Department at New York University. She studies and writes about the history of the novel and philosophies of emotions and is currently working on a new book called Jane Austen & the End of Life. Lavery and Lee tackle two letters. First, from someone who wants to have a third child, despite her husband's concern about passing along a rare genetic condition. Another letter writer is depressed about getting cut off by her close friend, and is wondering how much she can push for answers. Plus Lavery and Lee discuss Jane Austen and her devoted fans, or “Janeites”. Slate Plus members get another episode of Big Mood, Little Mood every Friday: sign up now! Need advice? Send Danny a question here. Email: mood@slate.com Production by Phil Surkis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny Lavery welcomes Wendy Lee, an associate professor in the English Department at New York University. She studies and writes about the history of the novel and philosophies of emotions and is currently working on a new book called Jane Austen & the End of Life. Lavery and Lee tackle two letters. First, from someone who wants to have a third child, despite her husband's concern about passing along a rare genetic condition. Another letter writer is depressed about getting cut off by her close friend, and is wondering how much she can push for answers. Plus Lavery and Lee discuss Jane Austen and her devoted fans, or “Janeites”. Slate Plus members get another episode of Big Mood, Little Mood every Friday: sign up now! Need advice? Send Danny a question here. Email: mood@slate.com Production by Phil Surkis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jane Austen created the definitive picture of Georgian England. No writer matches Austen's sensitive ear for the hypocrisy and irony lurking beneath the genteel conversation. That's the argument of the Janeites, but to the aficionados of Emily Brontë they are the misguided worshippers of a circumscribed mind. In Wuthering Heights, Brontë dispensed with Austen's niceties and the upper-middle class drawing rooms of Bath and the home counties. Her backdrop is the savage Yorkshire moors, her subject the all-consuming passions of the heart. To help you decide who should be crowned queen of English letters we have the lined up the best advocates to make the case for each writer. In this event, chaired by author and critic Erica Wagner, we invited guests including author Kate Mosse, Professor and author John Mullan, and actors Mariah Gale, Samuel West and Dominic West, to discuss each writer's influence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the 8th episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Ann from @disneyprincesslessons. This is a really fun episode where we are matching Jane Austen's heroines to Disney Princesses who share similar characteristics. Myself and Ann love both Austen and Disney so we thought what a great way to combine the two things we enjoy. There are so many cross overs between the characters, so it has been fun to look at them in more detail. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way.  We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it.  Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes. Where can you find Ann?  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/disneyprincesslessons/Bookstagram: https://www.instagram.com/paper.hearts.library/Disney Vlog: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJWTIxzIK96PK9-pE8NERBwBuzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Hello friends,Today we bring a new podcast episode and conversation that I think you will love. It's with Damianne Scott, an educator, writer and speaker in the Jane Austen community - she teaches literature at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College and Cincinnati State University. And she's the host of the Facebook page, Black Girl Loves Jane. She's also working on a very intriguing project right now - rewriting the story of Jane Austen's Persuasion into the setting of an African-American megachurch. In her own book project, Persuaded, due out from Meryton Press next year, Ms. Scott makes Anne Elliot a PK - or preacher's kid. And as Dr. Cornell West has pointed out, in a legendary talk at the JASNA Annual General Meeting of 2012, Jane Austen was also a PK, or preacher's kid. This is a world that Damianne Scott knows well, and it's a world I also am not unfamiliar with - I also, as it happens, am a PK - so I really enjoyed this conversation. Ms. Scott says that as a student of 19th century literature, which she has loved since middle school, she often has found herself the only Black student in the room. So she appreciates the nontraditional casting of shows like Bridgerton, but has also watched and addressed the backlash that has arisen from that production and from the PBS series Sanditon.An article Damianne Scott contributed to JASNA.org, or the Jane Austen Society of North America online, addressed the pineapple controversy surrounding the Sanditon series. A chorus of viewers felt that using the pineapple emoji as a fan symbol for the show was insensitive to the cultural weight and the connotations of colonialism and of the slave trade carried by that symbol. Damianne Scott weighed in, and she weighs in here, in this conversation, saying she hopes people and the community of Austen lovers and fans will continue to grow and understand that - as she says - Austen doesn't want to be put up on a pedestal: Jane Austen, she says, wants to be among the people. I love that.Press play here (above) to stream this from any device, or find the Austen Connection podcast on Spotify or Apple. Enjoy!And for you word lovers, here's an excerpt from our conversation:Plain JaneLet me talk a little bit first about Persuasion. So why do you love the story of Persuasion?Damianne ScottWell, I love the story of Persuasion … It was my first Jane Austen novel that I read in college. And the first one I did a paper on. So that was one reason why I loved it. Second, I do enjoy the movie, the one that [from 1995], with Ciarán Hinds, the BBC, is one of my favorite adaptations. And then I like it now. Because Anne Elliot is very adaptable for any woman today, who is over a certain age who is not married, who has no children, and who has come to bear the responsibility  - either willingly or unwillingly - to be the caregiver of their parents, and their finances, the dependable child in the household. And I find that very relatable to me, because I am not married, have no children, and have become the pseudo-caregiver [and] financial-responsibility person, in my family. So it speaks to me. The other thing is, I think that Persuasion in itself, again, is very adaptable to what I'm doing now with my rewriting of it and modernizing it. Anne - she's always criticized by her father for the way she looks. There's that famous scene where, you know, she's talking, and he's like, “Oh, your skin looks better today, you changed cold creams”! And he talks about the naval officers, and he talks about Admiral Croft and how, you know, he looks pretty well for somebody who was in the Navy!Plain Jane  And it's very funny, like, it's a source of humor, but also it's just, you feel Anne's pain. I mean, any woman in the world feels Anne's pain with all of this. We're also laughing at it.Damianne Scott Because he's totally ridiculous! Like, really. So it is very funny. And so my adaptation- it's a little focused on physicality. So my Anne does not necessarily have a skin issue, but she has a weight issue. And then, because she's in this community, a small community - well, not a small community, but anyone who knows about African-American megachurches, which is where my book takes place ... people can still pretty much know your business, because it's a small community.Plain Jane So let me - I have to ask you more about this: I want you to talk about this retelling, but I will just say, I grew up going to Black churches. And I grew up going to megachurches. But never a Black megachurch.Damianne Scott Well, there actually are not that many.Plain Jane Well, I grew up in a sort of evangelical background. So I didn't love the megachurches … So can we just pause for a second and you tell me: Why that setting? Why the Black megachurch?Damianne Scott Well, because I'm familiar with it. It is, you know, my world. I go to church now. And so, though my church was not a megachurch, in the terms of how we think of it, when I was growing up, it had about 500 members. And at that time, so those were like mid-'80s, that was a big number of people. And then my pastor, he was the head bishop of the state of Ohio, for our denomination. So I'm very used to that church, where everybody knows your business. And you know what it means to be a preacher's kid, so I wasn't a preacher's kid. But I know what it means to be a preacher's kid and deacon's kid, someone-of-authority's kid, everybody talking about what's going on and everybody else. It is a village mentality. Plain JaneYeah, that's so true. And it is like a village. You were starting to say everybody knows each other's business. It's like the “four and twenty country families.” But I love what you're sayingd: there's a hierarchy, it can be a very wonderful, close community. It can also be a fairly oppressive community. And nobody shows this better than Jane Austen, right? I just have to say, Dami, so you were going to megachurches in the ‘80s; I remember going to the megachurches in the ‘80s. And this was in Atlanta. I would not have stepped foot in there without, like, [full] makeup, hair …!Damianne ScottOh yeah. Plain JaneSo, whole thing. And I kind of resented that, you know? So what was your experience? What  has been your experience in the church?Damianne ScottSo … I think I am not critiquing the church as a whole, pastors as a whole, as [much as] this particular pastor. But yeah … I came from a denomination for a long time [where] you didn't wear makeup, so that wasn't a problem. But you know, we were dressed, you didn't go to church and pants … you put together your hair, no jeans, there was no such thing as wearing jeans to church, on a Sunday morning. … if you're a woman, you wear a skirt. … I didn't resent it, because that's all I knew. I didn't feel oppressed by it. Especially when I was young. My friends were there, my family was there. That's where I participated in things, where I cultivated my speaking abilities or my writing abilities. So it didn't find it oppressive, to me, growing up at all. And then as I grew up, something altered and changed. I did start seeing things a little different, because then I realized, you know, church is also business. And so sometimes, it's all business, just like with all denominations … preaching one thing and doing the other. And so there is a little greed aspect to some churches - not all, of course. So … with this hierarchy, there is a power trip … Because of how the system was set up in America, systematically, the racism, the church was the only place where Black people could have clout. So if you are a pastor, or deacon, if you're a missionary, you have power. You have clout. What you say, goes. And so if you are the child of a pastor, a bishop, or whatever, people are looking at you. They expect you to act a certain way, be a certain way, do things a certain way, because you are not only reflective of Christ … but you're also reflected on that power structure. If you do something, you are challenging that power structure, that whole thing might fall down. And so Sir Walter, my character, he is a pastor of a megachurch. But he also has some gambling issues, and some spending habit issues. And he puts his church into debt, where he's almost losing the church and the upper limits of his power and his clout in the community. And then he has these children and one of them … is fiscally responsible and capable and efficient and knows how to run things. He doesn't see her value because she doesn't represent what he thinks a daughter should look like. Physically. … She's someone with intelligence. She's kind of challenging his wisdom … his thought process. And so that makes it really Austen. Even though it's 2021.Plain Jane That's so great. Everything you're describing is this character - that's so Austen, a character, a strong woman, a smart woman who's undermined and undervalued, and just how frustrating that can be. But Jane Austen just shows people how to go forward. So that's kind of what appeals to you about the story of Persuasion? You mentioned a teacher encouraged you, in your Facebook Live [event]. You called it an adult fairy tale, in a way because she does persevere, doesn't she? And is gracious. How does she get by? How does she survive? And why is this an adult fairy tale?Damianne Scott Well, I guess the fairy tale part is because there is no, necessarily, fairy godmother, or magic  - just that Anne kind of realizes that what she wants is important and valued. That she should move on. I mean, the only reason why she doesn't marry Wentworth in the first place is because Lady Russell and her family, and the small community that she's involved in, is like, “No, he has no money. He doesn't represent what we represent, being gentry … You can't marry him, he has no money.”And of course, during that time, having money was the most important thing - you're not marrying somebody necessarily for love, you're marrying somebody for connections, growing the family, making sure you're not starving, especially if you're a woman. So all your sisters are not starving. So this is what you're getting married for, you're marrying for the benefit of society, and particularly your small society. And so what Anne does is realize at the end: “Bump that! Now I'm wanting to do what I want to do, where my voice is heard, and I'm gonna marry this man that I love, that I probably [should have]  married eight years ago, but I listened to y'all.”And so I think the magic is that she realizes her own worth. And that there was somebody who already recognized it and she kind of let it slip away. And she gets a second chance to rectify it, which is something most of us do not get - that second chance to rectify a decision that we made incorrectly. And I think that's why it's a fairy tale.Plain Jane All right! … Do you find yourself having to explain to people about why you love Jane Austen, that it is about hardship? It is about endurance and survival? It's not just about finding somebody to, you know, to marry and carry you off. That it is about what it is like to get through life with responsibility, and how to do it graciously, and how to, hopefully, how to find happiness?Damianne Scott … My friends, they just don't understand that at all. They think of Austen as, you know: the dresses, the balls, the bonnets. And it is, let's not get it twisted: It's part of it. That is the appeal for people who read it today or look at the movies today. It's the romance. Because I mean … all the major novels that she wrote, all the main characters get her man, they get married. We may not see the marriage, but we know they get married. So for some people, that is the appeal of Austen, that is what they look at for Austen. That's why they read Austen and that's all they want. And that's fine. Others, like myself, I'm interested in also the other themes that are going on, the nuances. Because the nuances of the dance, [for instance]: Well, why are they doing that particular dance? Why can't women inherit from their fathers? Why [is it] they cannot work? What was going around in England at that time, to make it the way it is? That is what interests me also. And so, in the community itself … my biggest push is just trying to get them to understand not only the historical, which many of them already do, because that's why they're Janeites, and they really dive in and they're really scholarly about it, where I'm not as scholarly about a lot of the issues. But my biggest question is just to see that it's text, it's ideas that are open to all people. And... that it can be open to other people who might not necessarily have been in the thought of, or the mind of, Austen when she wrote those novels.Plain JaneWell I love that. And I want to hear more about that, Dami. So you started the Facebook page Black Girl Loves Jane to basically do what? To kind of put a stamp on that?Damianne Scott Yeah, well it initially started as something really for me to do, where I could share Jane Austen's quotes and wits and books and all that. That was in August of 2018. So it's pretty new. Just something to, like, put a quote of the day or a photo of the week. And then I would share something that was happening in my life that that wisdom either expresses or answers for. And then my goal was to then have other people share their experience that is similar to the quote that I placed out there today. And I call it Black Girl Loves Jane because I'm a Black girl! So I was a Black girl who loves Jane, which is an oddity! It's not completely, like, not heard of - you know, I've met and seen other women of color who love Jane. But for my circle, I am the odd man out and in college, here I am trying to get my master's degree in English, and I am the only African American who's in a Victorian class or British Romantic class, you know, trying to read Shelley and Austen and talk about these things. And I'm the only one there. And so what Anne does, is realize at the end: “Bump that! Now I'm wanting to do what I want to do, where my voice is heard, and I'm gonna marry this man that I love, that I probably [should have]  married eight years ago, but I listened to y'all.”So that's how it started. And I just like classics in general. So it's not just Austen. I love Hardy. I was presented to Hardy when I was 14 in school. So Hardy was who I started off with, because my teacher did not believe that I would like Austen. Because he was like, “Oh, you like Hardy? You're not going to like Austen because Austen is happy and they get married.”  … We never could read anything modern. So every book we read in high school from ninth to 12th grade when we had to do a book report was a classic. You know, everything else was Hardy, or Eliot, or Dickens, or Austen. So I was like, “Okay, this is a world I'm not used to. I've never been introduced to these classics before. So here we go.”My first book I read was Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Like, “This is what's happening in England in the early 1900s?! Okay! My goodness!” I read Hardy, and then [continued in] high school, college. And then it has eventually over time has evolved to just trying to make the case, in whatever small way I can, that Austen is not just for Caucasian people, that Austen is not just for people from Britain, that there are other cultures that can benefit from the lessons of Austen, or from other classic literature as well. Because anything I deem to be classic is something that is relatable to everyone, if you're willing to do the teaching to make it relatable. I think part of the issue, especially in high schools today, and maybe in some colleges … is that we teach these books, particularly these books that are in the canon, as unrelatable to anyone who's not white, or young … or whatever, and we tell you, “You're never going to understand it.” And really what it is, is the teachers are going to have to figure out a way to make it relatable and teachable for whatever generation they are presented with. And so part of my reason for writing my version Persuaded, part of my reason for why I read other modernization versions of Austen's novels and other classic novels, is because I have this hope. I want to have this hope that it's reachable even to this generation, and that if we don't learn how to make it reachable to the next generation, they're going to die. These classics are not going to be classics anymore. They're not going to want to teach Austen, or Dickens, or Toni Morrison. They're not going to want to teach them anymore because they won't feel they are relevant today. And so, books like, hopefully books like mine, but also Pride by Ibi Zoboi is giving that attention, making that way. And also Unmarriageable [by Soniah Kamal] which I just read too, is making that way, that it is so relatable! These are my people! Even if it is, you know, 1789 when it's written, and I'm reading it in 2021. These are my people. This is what's going on in my life in my world, too. And she's speaking to me. And so that is what my goal is.Plain JaneAwesome! Listeners can't hear that I'm snapping at Dami. I love it. It just makes Austen so much richer, when people realize [that], like I feel like they have already with Shakespeare. So I think you're - hopefully, you're right, and I am too, because I have the same hope -  that it's just a matter of imagination. It's just a matter of changing the way we see it, changing the way we teach it.Damianne ScottI always try to - even with my students,  because I teach English Composition, but I have taught upper-level classes as well about literature - and I'm always trying to get my students to understand that period just means it happened at a certain period of time. And the themes and experiences that we are having are the same themes and experiences that they'll be having 75 years from now, and the way that they were having 75 years ago, if you get through all that superficial stuff, right? Yes, you might have to practice some of the language because Shakespeare is no easy man, by any means! But the themes, the lessons, really what he was saying is just as modern today as anything else.Plain JaneLet me ask you, Dami, what would you like to see in any kind of Persuasion adaptation? What do you think makes it work for today? Because there are also two films coming out.Damianne Scott There is, and one I'm really excited about because one is going to be a color blind or nontraditional Persuasion, what they're calling nontraditional casting, where the Wentworth character is going to be played by a person of color.Plain Jane Oh, is it Cosmo Jarvis? Yes. Okay.Damianne ScottYes. So he's, going to be playing Wentworth. And then Mr. Golding, Henry Golding, who I adore, he is playing Mr. Elliot. Cousin Elliot, I guess. … So, it's nontraditional casting. And so that's what I was excited about, that we had that happening in the era of course of Bridgerton, which I also loved. But [it] also got a lot of flack. And those who are Jane Austen fanatics did not appreciate Bridgerton, some have not appreciated casting for this new Persuasion. And it's because of the nontraditional casting. So for the past six months or so, I've been doing some talks and things like that. I did one for “Race and the Regency” for Jane Austen & Co., where I'm pushing this idea: “Why not? Black people were there. Why are we acting like Black people are not there? There are people of color there, there are people from South Asia, India, were there during that time.” So I don't understand why people get upset about this notion … as if Austen was this historical document that could not be altered. It's fiction! It's fiction! Everything in it is fiction. I guess in England during that time, there is the wars going on at the time. All that has happened. I know this is happening, but again, it's still a fictionalized world, some of the cities don't even exist, really, in England. And these are fictionalized stories. And so the hullabaloo about Bridgerton, particularly, it's the greatest thing right now, is somewhat disconcerting to me. Which is why I make Black Girl Loves Jane, because I just don't understand it. That icing out of cultures who are sometimes forced to read Austen, but they can't be in Austen? They can't be in an Austen film, but you're gonna make them read it as part of the literary canon that you have in school, but then they can't be in it? Doesn't make sense to me. [P]art of my reason for why I read other modernization versions of Austen's novels and other classic novels, is because I have this hope: I want to have this hope that it's reachable even to this generation.So I'm really excited about that. And I'm looking for not only for Persuasion to do it, but I'm looking forward to a time where it's not a big deal. So that is what I'm looking forward to, not only with Persuasion, but all novels and really, you know, all classic novels. Where it's just not a big deal. And I don't always go into it, you know, by any means, looking at any kind of film or book. I'm like, ‘Oh, there's no Black people in it. So I'm not gonna read it, or people of color.' That's not me at all. But I do when I'm looking at it. And as I get more past the the surface stuff, but to the actual discussions about modernization and race and class, there's discussions to be had: … “What is wrong with this scene? Or, what's wrong with this theme that is being carried out through this period? Why was it established? What's wrong with it? And how have we rectified it? Or have we rectified it in 21st century England or America? Are there still class systems that's going on? Are they still based on race? Are they still based on it?” I am just saying that, like you said, the new normal has to come about where it's not such a big deal. I don't know if you know that I published an article in JASNA. Plain Jane Thank you for  reminding me - Yes, I did.Damianne Scott Well, one of the things I mentioned is, and that's part of the problem, I said, is that there is this need to hold on very tightly -  for many British citizens, but it's the same here in America as well - to this history that is not accurate. So this why people get upset with Bridgerton, or nontraditional casting in some Dickens movies, is because they're holding on to this idea of what they believe they are. And even though their history was told to them incorrectly … the challenge of it that's coming about in these last few years, it's very disconcerting for people. So this is why people have a cow. When you're going to have a multiethnic person play Wentworth, this is why people are upset that you have as the high royal in a drama going on in 1830 Regency be a Black queen. This is why people had a cow when the Jane Austen museum said, “Oh, we're going to establish and talk about how Jane lived during this time slavery,” and people have a cow about it.It's because it is challenging an idea and a history that is so ingrained in them, that, “Who will I be, if I am not the owner of Shakespeare or Austen or the Bible, or, for us in America, this great southern tradition? Who are we, if I don't have this? Or if you're telling me that I was wrong, or that my ancestors were wrong for what they did back then. And so therefore, you're now deeming me to be wrong.”And that is part of what solutions are going to have to come about. Because the change is coming. But how can we bring people along? Because it's scary to say to somebody, “Okay, you don't own Austen. I know you're Caucasian, I know you're a woman, and I know you might just want to tackle the stories of love and romance in these novels. But there's something else going on. Jane lived in a time of extreme upheaval. And if you say you love Austen, then you have to love all Austen. And some of what's was going on with Austen is not pretty.” Not necessarily with her, because she was a supporter of abolition, but what was going on around her was not pretty. And it's not all about the balls and the dresses, and that's scary for people. And so my hope is also that we can just have these dialogues where people don't feel like we're attacking or trying to take away something from them, but instead, understand and come to realize that we're trying to add to something that they already have.Plain Jane What would you like to see in our conversations going forward to be more equitable and inclusive? In our conversations about Jane Austen?Damianne Scott I guess what I really would like to see in the future is just this real, true understanding that people of color are not trying to - like what we've just discussed - invade people's space. What we're trying to do is say that we were always there. And that we want to be seen. And that we want to be accepted. Now, does that mean you have to go back and change 250 years of history? Well, no. You can never change that slavery, you can never change that there was a feudal system, and there were the landed gentry - you can't change it. But the idea that we are … this exclusive club, that is a problem. Because the change is coming. But how can we bring people along? Because it's scary to say to somebody, “Okay, you don't own Austen. I know you're Caucasian, I know you're a woman, and I know you might just want to tackle the stories of love and romance in these novels. But there's something else going on. Jane lived in a time of extreme upheaval. And if you say you love Austen, then you have to love all Austen.”So, hopefully, the future is that when we have these discussions, and have these conferences and have these things, that we are interested in the needle-point, and the dancing, and the foods that Austen ate; but we're also interested in the history of what was going on with the slave trade that was happening at that time. And we're also interested in how they were treating women. And we're also interested in talking about what they were doing with the tea that they were taking from India. And then we're also interested in, in all these other maybe somewhat earthy discussions about Austen and that are just as prevalently produced and advertised and populated and attended, as the latest discussion about how to make a bonnet. I am for you learning how to make a bonnet. I want to learn how to make a bonnet too. But I also want you to know that often, we put Austen on a pedestal. Austen does not want to be on the pedestal. We put her on there. And we make her so unreachable: She can only be talking about “this,” she can only be presented “this way.” As long as we keep Austen on that pedestal. she's going to die. Her words, her wisdom, is going to die. Because the one thing my generation - Generation X, Y or millennial - we're not looking for people to put on pedestals. We want people who want to be among the people. And Austen is among the people if you let her be. -------Thank you for being here, friends. Please talk back to us - let us know your thoughts on what Damianne Scott says here about how we read, and teach, and talk about Austen, and how we can make Austen more relatable. Teachers and professors, how do you introduce Jane Austen's stories to your classes today? Do you find that it's helpful to, as Damianne Scott says, consciously think about how to engage young, diverse readers with the classics and to help them see, as she says so beautifully, that Austen is speaking to all of us? And is among us? Let us know! It would be fascinating to continue this discussion! You can comment, here:Meanwhile, watch for more conversations coming up, including new podcast conversations with Ayesha at Last author Uzma Jalaluddin, Island Queen author Vanessa Riley, and Harvard professor and long-time New Yorker writer Louis Menand on “How to Misread Jane Austen.”  Thanks to you for listening, engaging, and making this the wonderful community and conversation that is growing and thriving. Invite a book-loving friend to join us! Have a wonderful week. You can stay in touch with us on Twitter at @AustenConnect, on Facebook and Instagram at @austenconnection, or you can simply reply/comment here. Stay well and stay in touch,Yours affectionately,Plain Jane Cool linksHere's Damianne Scott's piece for JASNA.org on PBS's Sanditon series and the pineapple controversy: https://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/volume-41-no-2/scott/Here's our piece on Damianne Scott and BGLJ Facebook page in the Christian Science Monitor: https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2021/0917/Is-Persuasion-the-Jane-Austen-story-we-all-need-right-nowMeryton Press - where Damianne Scott's retelling Persuaded is due for release next year: https://merytonpress.com/More on the upcoming Persuasion film adaptation, starring Cosmo Jarvis, Dakota Johnson and Henry Golding: https://deadline.com/2021/05/dakota-johnson-netflix-henry-golding-persuasion-cosmo-jarvis-suki-waterhouse-richard-e-grant-nikki-amuka-bird-1234754639/*This post was updated to reflect that Damianne Scott also teaches at Cincinnati State University. Get full access to The Austen Connection at austenconnection.substack.com/subscribe

The battle of the Jane Austen villains on the left we have treacherous Mr Wickham from Pride and Prejudice and on the right we have despicable John Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility.  Welcome to the seventh episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friends and fellow Janeites Caily Bridgeland and Ellis Naylor. Both Caily and El have been on the show before and we thought it would be fun to do an Halloween episode called: Villain Off. This year we have the conniving Wickham v the treacherous Willoughby. The question is who's the bigger villain? we will be looking at their crimes in detail before we crown our Biggest Villain of October 2021. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Caily & Ellis? Ellis: Blog: https://historianellis.wordpress.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historian_ellis/Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/HistorianEllis?ref=ss_profile Caily: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/half_agony_half_hope/Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Hello friends,Today, a podcast episode!It would not have been possible to have our Everything Emma month here at the Austen Connection without consulting Professor George Justice. Dr. Justice is the editor of the 2011 Norton Critical Edition of Emma, a professor of 18th Century British literature, and a frequent contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education. And he's also the husband of Austen scholar, author, and friend Devoney Looser, who tells the story of their romantic meet-cute in a previous Austen Connection episode. Consult him we did, and the conversation was really fun, because: Emma is fun, just as it is also complex, surprising, baffling, and romantic. All of this complexity comes out in the conversation with George Justice. We explore what's going on with Austen men, what's going on with Austen women, and how romance and power get wrapped up in the stories of Austen. I first met Dr. Justice on the campus of the University of Missouri, where he served as dean of the graduate school. Now, he is a professor of English at Arizona State University. But in the process of that journey, from Missouri to Arizona, and from administration back to the classroom, he rediscovered the power of teaching Jane Austen.  This journey also has involved a recovery from a serious illness, and Dr. Justice says one of the things that got him through tough times has been reading Jane Austen, and talking about Jane Austen with his students. We spoke on a recent sunny Saturday, by Zoom. Here's an edited excerpt from our conversation:*Please note: There is a light mention of sexual assault in this conversation, about 20 minutes in, and again at 40 about minutes.Plain JaneI'm so glad that you're sharing your beautiful Saturday morning. Let me just ask a little bit about your work, George. So you're obviously on English literature with a focus on women's writing and publishing. And you're writing a book on Jane Austen, as a writer for Reaktion Books, the “Critical Lives” series. You also write about higher education, very compellingly, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. What, in all of this, are you most focused on and most passionate about, like, right this minute?George JusticeI can't say there is one thing because you're right, you just outlined the two major threads of my career as they've evolved. They both involve students, higher education, and places where I think I can contribute. But on the literature side, it feels like a miracle to me to be able to write about Jane Austen, to do research on Jane Austen, and especially, to teach Jane Austen to undergraduate students, which I can't imagine a more enjoyable thing that I can pretend is productive for myself to do. But my most recently published book is How to Be a Dean from the Johns Hopkins University Press. So figuring out ways, outside of administration, to take my passion for higher education to make structural change, structural change that is also focused on the individual. And I think that's something that maybe I'll be able to bring back to a discussion of the novels, genre, and to teaching. I love thinking about what the novel is. But what I also love is what it means to individual human beings to change their lives and do great things in the world.Plain Jane George, you said something else, about your illness, which you handled, it seemed, so gracefully. But I know that it's been huge. And in some ways, you were hit by this turn-the-world-upside-down thing. And then the world itself was turned upside down, not too long later. So in some ways, we're all kind of stunned. But you look the picture of health, and it's so great to see it. What were you reading during this time? Can Jane Austen get you through something like that?George JusticeTo me, it was therapeutic. It was therapeutic not only to reread her books, and to dig back in, more generally, to 18th century literature, but I was a little shaky, you know, I had been very sick. I had not from my own choice been thrust out of a job that I had spent 70 hours working on actively, and the rest of my life kind of thinking about, when I got into the classroom, and started teaching Jane Austen again. And it was absolutely life-changing. And I realized, that is what the life of an educator should be. And it was really … a life-changing class for me, not only because it marked kind of re-entry into a different kind of career: But the students were so shockingly great to me. To me, having these students in that class, loving Jane Austen and understanding things about Jane Austen, was transformational in my understanding about what the rest of my life and the rest of my career are going to be. I can bring together a complete passion for bringing Jane Austen not just to white, upper-middle class students at a private liberal arts college, but at Arizona State University, 120,000 students. It's now a Hispanic serving institution. It serves many, many first generation and low-income students, and they love Jane Austen. Not only with as much passion, but with at least as much insight as any students I've ever had anywhere else in my life. That class changed my life, when I had these students engaging with such depth and brilliance with the texts.Plain Jane That's amazing. I hear you George, I think that's true. It is life changing. And this project arose also from the difficult times, the winter of the pandemic, and just looking for something to lift you up and a community to engage in. What you're describing, going into that classroom, sharing Austen, but then also having some brilliance shared back at you and just literally connecting around the stories. But you know, the Norton Anthology that you edited and curated came out almost 20 years ago. And you may have not looked at it recently. I have. But you were talking about the power of Jane Austen, then, so it's Everything Emma in the Austen connection right now.George JusticeGood for me.Plain Jane Yes. Well, is Emma your favorite novel of all time?George JusticeOh, that is a a very difficult question. And I know because you talked to Devoney and you had Devoney on your podcast a couple of weeks ago. In that now infamous conversation, I declared to Devoney that Mansfield Park was my favorite novel. And I do love Mansfield Park … because it was the first one that grabbed me. I mean, I was assigned it in a class my first year of grad school. I didn't read it until then, and I started reading it and it was just one of those amazing things, but my life was changed: How could I not have seen this or understood this in my past 22 years of life? I stayed up all night reading it, and it was like an onslaught. If you ask me, yes, that was my favorite. Plain Jane Well, I'm just curious. It seems to me like you were a more mature 22 year old. I mean, I read Mansfield Park when I was just out of college. Weirdly, I've never been assigned much Jane Austen at all. I just discovered it after all of the degrees - it was only two degrees - in English. … It wasn't until later that I realized there's a heck of a lot going on with Austen. What were you noticing? Why were you reading it up late at night? I mean … I had kind of a weird education, up until college. But you had a good education. So maybe you did have the training to spot the subtexts.George JusticeI don't know if it was about the subtext. I think it was about Fanny Price. Plain JaneYou like the underdog! Devoney said this … George Justice  The underdog and the person with depth, with a strong, correct, and unassailable moral code, oppressed by the world. I mean, that was a thing that just for whatever reason, maybe, from my high school years, which were kind of miserable, the person who was neglected. I mean, it just spoke to me, this whole world moving around in a cynical and nasty way. And yet, there's a moral center to that world, which was Fanny Price. So it wasn't even, it was not a literary reading, where I was looking at themes and context. It was Fanny Price. Who is, as you know, of such huge controversy in the Jane Austen world, because there are so many self-proclaimed Janeites who hate Fanny Price. To me, Fanny Price is the true center of Jane Austen. Which is why I found the film both interesting and disturbing, because Patricia Rozema melds Jane Austen and Fanny Price together, which I think actually weakens Fanny Price. But I do believe that the role of Fanny Price in the world, and especially in her world, is a truth about the social world. And it grabbed me. To me, Fanny Price is the true center of Jane Austen. … I do believe that the role of Fanny Price in the world, and especially in her world, is a truth about the social world. And it grabbed me. And the unbelievable moment when she turns down Henry Crawford. I always bring it up in class and I ask my students, “Should she have accepted Henry Crawford?” And the ones who read it correctly but glibly, always say, “Of course not.” The ones who are very cynical say, “Of course she should.” The real answer is, “I don't know.” Because that actually is the answer that the narrator provides to some extent. I just thought it captured a truth about the choices we have to make in the world, and the possibility of choosing good, not as an obvious choice, and not as a glibly self-justifying choice. But as a choice that resonates as truth within one's own moral complexity.Plain JaneI agree with everything you're saying about Fanny Price. … She is ascendant. And you talk about Henry Crawford: She's superior. Like, you can't read that without thinking, “This child, this female child of the species, is superior to everyone. What are you gonna do with that, people? What are you going to do with that? Not even the parsonage and Edmund and not even the grand estate of Mansfield Park is worthy of this child. So, take that!” And I don't know if people really see it that way. You say it's still a little controversial. But you saw this when you were 22?George Justice Well, I think it was a weakness in my psychology.Plain Jane No, because Austen was showing you. Austen was showing you. But we just, I feel like there's still so much to unpack with Austen with every new generation. George JusticeAnd she shows it to you both without humiliating her and without glorifying her. So, as you were talking so eloquently, what came into my mind [is] another woman author of the 19th century, George Eliot and Middlemarch and Dorothea Brooke, and Dorothea Brooke is both humiliated and glorified. You are right, Fanny Price tears everything down. The humiliations are our humiliations from society, not from the writer. I mean, Dorothea Brooke is somewhat humiliated by George Eliot. Jane Austen never humiliates Fanny Price, even if Mrs. Norris is there brutalizing her, but she's definitely not glorifying her either. Fanny Price comes back, and in some ways you could say she assimilates herself to the patriarchy, she marries her cousin, the bossy Edmund  - I don't even think he even fully 100% appreciates her but maybe that's just me. I think I would have been better for Fanny Price than he is.Plain JaneYou would have, George! And no, Austen does not want us to love Edmund, you know? That's clear. She does not love Edmund. We're giving our opinions here! So let us know, people, if you disagree. But yeah, but I love what you're saying, George, that Austen is not humiliating. And in fact, it's not really Fanny tearing things down. Right? Fanny is not doing that; Austen is doing that. And the world is humiliating. The world is full of humiliations, insults, injuries. And here's how you stand. Here's how you stand in this. You point out something in your writing that I want to get to too, which is that there's imagination. This is, in some ways, a fantasy of what can happen. This is re-envisioning a world where a young woman, a young person who identifies as female, a young person who identifies as however you identify, whatever your race, color, sexuality, gender, you - just as a human - you can stand, and this is how you might survive and maybe even be ascendant. Even though it's not necessarily going to happen in real life.So, Mansfield Park. The next novel Austen wrote, I believe, right after Emma. How does she go from Fanny Price to this heroine that has so little to vex her?George Justice When you look at Mansfield Park, which is certainly an experiment in light of Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility, and a novelist who is a genius and who is shaping the form and breaking the form at the same time that she's inhabiting it. In a way it's the right next experiment. You take somebody who's very much unlike Fanny Price. She's wealthy. She's beautiful. She's admired. She never makes social mistakes. Really. She is the queen of the world, as opposed to Cinderella. So Fanny Price is Cinderella. Emma is one of the wicked sisters. Yet, and the brilliant ... “I'm going to create a heroine nobody but myself will much like”: That's something an artist would do. It's a kind of intellectual game. But unlike the way postmodern novels sometimes [create] experiments without a heart. It's an experiment in which life overwhelms whatever kind of intellectual experiment may have given rise, to trying to write about an entirely different character, because there is just as much life in Emma, as there is in Mansfield Park. And there is in its own way, just as much integrity in the character of Emma, as there is in the character Fanny Price.Plain Jane It's interesting because she's taking us on this roller coaster ride. So she's like, “Here, I showed you the poor, mousy Cinderella, who becomes ascendent. How does that happen? Now I'm going to show you somebody who - as you say, George - the queen, she's at the top. But she also is going to change and evolve. And in both cases, she's focusing on what matters to her, which is character, and kindness, and how to exist in the world - not to just be on top because that's not the goal, people - we're still getting that memo. But it's to be a contributor, a good citizen, a kind person. How do you feel about that, that aspect of this, that she's got someone on the bottom there, she's got a female character that's already at the top. But yet, what are the themes that remained the same? George JusticeWell, I think you actually just put it in a way that crystallizes something for me. And it's what I become much more self-conscious about …  in life: which is that kindness is at the core. And so that's not something that I wrote about in the introduction that you very kindly mentioned, to the Norton Critical Edition. But it is something that is absolutely true. And I point out to students, you know, [Emma] does what she's supposed to do. She visits the poor, she's charitable to the poor. And that's the kind of structural kindness, and she doesn't do it cynically. So there is a goodness to her character that gets expressed. And kindness. Of course, as we know, she's not always kind to some of the people that are closest to her, including Miss Bates, including Jane Fairfax. … One of the prevalent readings of Emma continues to be that Emma is … humiliated into kindness. The scene on Box Hill, where she is so cruel to Miss Bates, and so out of touch with her surroundings, because one thing about Emma is that she is unbelievably … perceptive about the world around her, at the same time that she doesn't put all the clues together. So she's this detective who's taking in all the evidence, and then she can't quite put it together to understand what's going on. Like Mr. Elton trying to rape her in the carriage - when anybody who had been reading it, anybody in Emma's position should have been able to see exactly what was happening. But that's very different from Box Hill, where she's not even perceptive. … But at the same time, that is a crucial moment in which she certainly sees the world more clearly and is able to correlate her kindness as you put it, this is correlated with her role in the social hierarchy, and her own personal satisfaction and romance. And it doesn't stamp out her imagination. Her imagination is still there. … No, she's a brilliantly imaginative person who doesn't have a job where she can do anything with it. … I love Mr. Knightley. But Emma, Emma wins the novel. And she wins novel not because she makes some sort of cynical or moral change from who she was, to who she will be as Mrs. George Knightley. It's because she has reshaped her world - uncomfortably because we're still in patriarchal, early 19th century England. But she shaped a world in which she can continue to love, be kind, have a lot of nice things, be admired by other people, which she certainly loves to do. And do good in the world. Plain JaneSo speaking of Knightley: You love Knightley. You say something in your intro [to the Norton Critical Edition]: Emma is being forced to recalibrate the cultural and the social hierarchy. She thinks she knows this social hierarchy. She has that classic definition of privilege, where it's not something she has to think about. She's just at the top of it. But she in fact is wrong about it, and then it turns out - you point this out - she's recalibrating, but that recalibration is coming every single time from challenges from Knightley. How does a romance and marriage and all of this fit into this recalibration and what is it like, also George, reading this as as a person identifying as a man reading that?George Justice Hmm, let me backtrack a little bit into how you've set this up in a very interesting, complicated way. It is Austen who has given Knightley those characteristics and that genuine insight into the world. Mr. Knightley really does understand and he's older - I mean, it grosses my students out how significantly older Mr. Knightley is. And he's kind to her and he's loved her since  - that also grosses out the students ...Plain Jane … for some reason Austen likes that older, very older, powerful guy to be the one just kind of showing us the way. I mean, she gives that power, and who knows why she does that. George JusticeBut it's not just giving him the power. It's also, I do believe, he is speaking for her. He is speaking correctly. The brilliant, writer, critic named Sarah Raff wrote a wonderful essay that talks about Emma and Mr. Knightley and Emma's relationship in the context of the letters of advice that Jane Austen is writing to her niece, who's trying to decide whom to marry. And there is a bullying, authoritative voice and approach to her niece, that mirrors a little bit of this relationship. It's a it's a great essay about it.Emma wins the novel. … because she has reshaped her world - uncomfortably because we're still in patriarchal, early 19th century England. But she shaped a world in which she can continue to love, be kind, have a lot of nice things, be admired by other people, which she certainly loves to do. And do good in the world. Plain JaneIf you're a woman, Regency writer, you're a genius, and you see the world and you're reflecting the world, there'll be some things that … occur when you have genius and imagination and art intersecting, right? Some things are going to occur to us 206 years later that you didn't envision, but … she's giving Knightley her viewpoints because people will listen to Knightley. People will listen to Knightley and not necessarily listen to someone else.George Justice And maybe in a romantic relationship - this is utter speculation! - she'd be more the Knightley character. And so you know, we do have these interesting intersections of gender, power and attraction. Plain JaneI love that we don't know how Jane Austen identified 100%. We have no idea. She may have identified with Knightley, she might have been in love with Emma, she might have ... Who knows? I think that's wonderful. And that's a whole other aspect we could dive into which is the LGBTQI critical approaches and queer theory approaches to Austen. Really the question we were discussing, sorry, is how it all ends up in the hands of Knightley, but also how to channel all of this into romance?George Justice Oh, yeah. I mean, because it is romantic. And I know there are some against-the-grain readers who don't find the love between Emma and Mr. Knightley plausible. I am not one of them. I find the scene - and it's a scene in which despite the fact that Mr. Knightley has just dressed her down and made her weep - the narrative is constructed so that Emma is allowed in private to have her moment of internal revelation that no one but she must marry Mr. Knightley. And then she also finally, instead of being clueless, she figures out that he likes her. So in that, it is a, to me, it's a wonderful thing. When he he starts, you know, “Can I talk to you?” And Emma's a little nervous. Because she doesn't 100% know. But as the conversation gets going, she knows exactly what's coming. And so the power is turned. Emma actually knows before he knows that Mr. Knightley is going to propose to her and that she will say yes. Before Mr. Knightley understands that. And so he's, like, mortified: I shouldn't go on. And she's like: No, no, go ahead and go on. And it's an interesting power dynamic. And I'm certainly not the person who's seen this first or seen it best. Claudia Johnson's [written] about Mr. Knightley as a character who is very masculine. And yet he's a kind of new man, because he is truly emotionally sensitive to Emma. [I]t is romantic. And I know there are some against-the-grain readers who don't find the love between Emma and Mr. Knightley plausible. I am not one of them.What is interesting in the romance is that power is so completely built into the sexual energy between Mr. Knightley and Emma. He was a teenager, looking at a little girl. And as they grew up, he would kind of mock her and tease her. And she'd flirt with him, totally unafraid of this older guy, really. So I mean, she was herself, who really has the power there? And …  in the context of Box Hill, where he really has, you know, put his hand down, if you reread the novel from the beginning, Mr. Knightley doesn't have really any power over her. He has her total respect, but she has the power of doing what she wants. And that really is what comes through at the end - that this powerful romance, which I think it is not a kind of dominance-submission thing. It is really a romance of two morally and intellectually equal people. They are very masculine and very feminine - it's interesting if you get into the GLBTQ thing, because there is a long history of people seeing Emma not as being a woman. But we shouldn't forget that it's very clear … and Jan Fergus points this out really beautifully in an essay that I put at the back of my Norton Critical Edition: We linger over the feminine, beautiful form of Emma. But her mind is powerfully intellectual. … Even as it's kind. She is a kind, intellectually brilliant person who answers to nobody. So where you might see it as, “She makes all these lists of books that she hasn't read!” … That shows her power. She has the intellectual power to know what she should do. And she has the intellectual power and the judgment to say, “I'm not going to do it.” And is happy to live within the structures, the class structures, the social structures, the architectural structures of her society. But she kind of scoffs at any structures that would restrain her moral and intellectual worth. Plain Jane  Well, it's almost like she doesn't even notice those structures. She's like, clueless in some interesting ways.George Justice Yes, but I, but I don't think it's clueless overall.  … She's clear-sighted and not insecure. She's totally non-insecure. It's kind of amazing.Plain JaneWell, it's interesting describing her power. It's true. Like you say, Austen's not humiliating these characters with Emma, she's doing the opposite. She's showing someone who is not only superior, but she's artificially superior. Emma's so powerful, she can be as wrong as the Eltons and the, you know, all of the wrong patriarchal figures. Emma's wrong and artificially propped up just like they are. But she has this transformation that comes from this this man. .. There was a little post I did called The Smartest Person in the Room. ...I feel like maybe Austen wanted someone, man/woman/person to be as smart as she was. That's a hard way to go through the world when marriage is your option. Who is going to be smart enough for Jane Austen? She didn't find it. She created stories with people who find it. But at the same time, obviously, she showed us so much more than that romance.George Justice  That's sad! And it's very true. Let's go through from the beginning: I'm just going to ask you. Do you think Mr. Darcy is worthy of Elizabeth Bennet?Plain Jane  Yes, I believe that. It seems to me like Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett make each other worthy of each other. It seems to me like the both characters You want to just focus on Darcy and Elizabeth for a minute? George Justice  Yeah, I mean, I'm going to go through the whole list.Plain Jane Externally, he's worthy, right? He's a ticket. Internally, not so much. But because he transforms, they make each other better. I feel like they make each other better. And I feel like Austin is showing us that marriage - if you're going to get married, make sure it's somebody who will make you better and not make you worse. And she's full of examples of people who make each other worse.George JusticeThe Crofts. Admiral and Mrs. Croft make each other better.Plain JaneAnd are they the only ones?!George JusticeThey probably are. I want to go [through the list] because I think this is something I haven't thought of. We already said that Edmund really isn't worthy of Fanny. But Darcy is worthy of Elizabeth. Would you say that Edward is worthy of Elinor.Plain Jane Almost! He has potential. That little engagement on the side is extremely disappointing. But he needs to speak up. He needs to grow a spine. But he has potential Maybe with Elinor's extremely strong spine, those two will be all right. What do you think?George JusticeI don't think he's worthy of her. But he's whom she chose. And he's not terrible. That's like Edmund. It's, that's who Fanny wanted and he's not terrible. I'd say the same thing about Henry Tilney. Catherine Morland's not as fully developed a character. But he's, he's not a bad guy. We linger over the feminine, beautiful form of Emma. But her mind is powerfully intellectual. … Even as it's kind. She is a kind, intellectually brilliant person who answers to nobody.But if you take Mr. Darcy, and you take Captain Wentworth, and you take, Mr. Knightley, those are characters who embody - as I said, Claudia Johnson talks about it - these new men who are masculine and powerful, and yet have a sensitive intelligence to them, as well. And respect and value deeply the women that they're with. … This conversation has made me want to think about that. And why the last two, thinking about Persuasion, and Emma, the last two of those powerful men are truly worthy, I think. And you know, of course, I think the moment at the end of that letter, in Persuasion, is one of the most intense things. But I know a colleague who thinks it's camp, that it's purposely overdone. I don't believe that at all. I think it's one of the most beautiful things ever written in the English language.Plain Jane  It's so beautiful. I love your categorizing all these leading men, who's worthy, who's not. It's really interesting. You, okay, I had to pick up the Norton Edition, Claudia Johnson. Here's what she says: She says Knightley is “a fantastically wishful creation of benign authority, in whom the benefits and attractions of power are preserved, and the abuses and encroachments expelled.” So what do you think is going on with that as you categorize the leading men? That's Claudia Johnson's Knightley, wrapped up in power.George Justice And because authority and power are inherently not wrong things in these books. When I'm teaching classes, I bring it back to the authority and the power of the narrator, who is the actual authority and power in all of these novels. And I think that's partly why the turn from an epistolary novel, where, you know, it's harder to weld that to increasingly intense narrative strategies that express their authority, often by merging the voice through free indirect discourse, with the voice of the main character. So it is such a trick to have the most fully controlling and authoritative and benign narrators who efface themselves and express their authority and power, almost through their own self effacement.Plain Jane Let me George, read your own writing back to you, because this is so amazing. And it just kind of sums up everything that we said, and I have this kind of as our last question. You write almost 20 years ago in your introduction to the Norton Critical Edition. Here's what you wrote: “Reading Emma requires interaction. We impose meaning on the text just as the text pushes its various meanings on to us. Trying to understand Emma, with its interplay of psychological realism and moral vision, is like trying to understand ourselves and the world. We must be both introspective and exceedingly observant of what lies around us. Complete success eludes us. We must reread, reflect and change our minds, and perhaps become better people for having done so.” I almost cried when I read that!George Justice That's very kind (laughing). I can't believe I wrote that. It does sound pretty good. Plain JaneMy question for you with that is, Do you still think that? Twenty years later, almost 20 years later?George Justice Yeah. And that's an interesting thing I do. And it's an interesting thing, and it's humbling about teaching, and it's a wonderful thing about teaching. Like any teacher, when I teach a novel a lot of times, like I do with Emma, I have go-to points, I have shticks. I have different scenes I like to focus on. … So I'm, you know, leading, I like to talk about the carriage theme, for example, and I do have a strong reading, and Mr. Elton is basically raping Emma, and I want students to see the actual violence that is in that scene. It isn't just the sloppy, silly guy who is physically menacing in that space and in the way that he approached. But then students will say, “Well, I read it in this way.” And any good teacher has to be able to say, “Wow, I hadn't thought about that.” Just as your focusing on just your use of the word kindness, and putting that deeply into our conversation about Emma. I had not articulated it to myself in that way before. That's new to me. And I can tell you, I'm going to be thinking about that for months to come. So I do believe that every time I read this book, it's a new book to me. She's constructed the books so carefully that it's impossible to understand even what's happening, 20 times through the book, for me. And then when you add the increased complexity of how human beings interact with each other, and how the fixed and unfixed parts of their personality come into this complicated matrix of interaction. Yeah, it's a new book every time. And it's a new book that is morally compelling. Because it tells us to look at everything anew.Thanks for joining this conversation, friends.As always, let us know your thoughts on: Austen's men - who's Worthy and who's Not Worthy? Who makes your list? What are your thoughts on Emma, Knightley, and the power dynamics in Austen's romances? You can comment here!You can also find us on Twitter, at @AustenConnect and on Insta at @austenconnection.Meanwhile, stay in touch, and hope you enjoy a beautiful autumn with soups, teas, and lots of great novels.Yours truly,Plain JaneIf you liked this post, feel free to share it!Links:“Critical Lives” series - Reaktion Books: http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/results.asp?SF1=series_exact&ST1=CRITICALLIVES&DS=Critical%20Lives&SORT=sort_titleThe Norton Critical Edition of Emma:  https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393927641More on scholar and critic Claudia Johnson: https://english.princeton.edu/people/claudia-l-johnsonDever Justice LLC: https://deverjustice.com/about/How to Be a Dean - from Johns Hopkins University Press: https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/how-be-dean Get full access to The Austen Connection at austenconnection.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the sixth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Naomi from @naomi.not.niomi. In this episode, we discuss Jane Austen's novel Mansfiled Park and focus on the character of Fanny Price. Fanny is a very different protagonist to Austen's other heroines, resembling Jane Eyre more than Elizabeth Bennet. We will go through the book looking at the her pros and cons of her character, making reference to the constant comparison between her and Mary Crawford that is evident in the novel. We will also explore her relationship with Edmund and whether their marriage is one of love or connivence. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Naomi? Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naomi.not.niomi/  Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice delights, charms and entrances readers since its anonymous publication in 1813. The Bennett sisters need to marry rich, for otherwise they'll fall into poverty and social disgrace. Will arrogant Mr. Darcy be the solution, and will the fiercely proud, intelligent and also charming Elizabeth settle for this socially imposed scheme for women's happiness? Or does Austen put a twist on the hackneyed romance plot that made this book into the blueprint for countless re-tellings but keeps it separate from them - whether they are written by Charlotte Brontë or in the season episode of The Bachelor, any Hollywood rom-com, or Love is Blind? I talked with one of the great Austen experts of our time (Austen fanatics are called "Janeites," I learned), Professor Wendy Lee of New York University. Wendy explains why readers like Winston Churchill have turned to Austen in times of crisis, how Pride and Prejudice transcends the hackneyed dead-end storyline of romance as every woman's goal and fulfillment, and why Austen's novel rewards re-reading like few other books. How does Elizabeth get over Darcy's cruel snub at the first ball, and is Mrs. Bennett correct that the country has as many interesting people as one would ever need to meet for one's happiness? Find out in this episode on one of the greatest novels of all time, now also available in a newly edited version by Warbler Press with an Afterword by me, Ulrich Baer. Wendy Lee is the author of Failures of Feeling: Insensibility and the Novel, and also runs some reading groups that are open to the public. 

Welcome to the fifth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Caily Bridgeland from @half_agony_half_hope. This is out Awkward Austen August episode, each August we share our favourite Awkward moments in Austen's novels and adaptation. We will discuss the most cringe worthy characters, and of course we will be featuring the notorious Mr Collins and many other moments which just make us cringe. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Caily? Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/half_agony_half_hope/Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Hello dear friends,Welcome to another week of The Austen Connection and our sixth podcast episode, which you can stream from right here, or from Apple or Spotify! And this episode features a conversation with Austen scholar and Janeite Devoney Looser - who for many of you captures the spirit and vibe of Jane Austen's stories in her work and in her life: Looser has dedicated so much of her life to connecting through literature and Jane Austen, from her books, her teaching, her many appearances at conferences and at Janeite and JASNA gatherings, and also in her personal life through her marriage to Austen scholar George Justice and her roller derby career as Stone Cold Jane Austen.These days Devoney Looser is working on a new book, due out from Bloomsbury next year: Sister Novelists: Jane and Anna Maria Porter in the Age of Austen explores two sister novelists writing, innovating, and breaking rules in the Regency and Victorian eras. Devoney Looser is also the author of The Making of Jane Austen. And - full transparency here - I'm lucky enough to call Devoney Looser a friend. We met as professors on a campus in Missouri. So this is a continuation of conversations that Devoney and I have had for years. We got together by Zoom a few weeks ago and talked about many things, including the first time she read Austen, how an Austen argument was the foundation of her first conversation with her husband, and how -  just like Jane Austen - Devoney straddles the worlds of both high culture and pop culture.Here's an excerpt from our conversation. Enjoy!Plain Jane:  So let me just start if you don't mind with a couple of just questions about your personal Austen journey. What Austen did you first read? When did you discover Austen? Do you remember which book? And which time and place? Devoney Looser: Absolutely. And this is a question that I really enjoy. It's a kind of conversion question, right? … So I love that this is where we start …  I do have my awakening moment. And your awakening, I think this is a common story for a lot of Janeites, which is why the story resonates. It was my mother, who handed me a copy of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice bound together. I now have this book. It was a Modern Library edition of both of those novels that was published in the ‘50s. And she handed it to me because … she knew I was a reader, she knew I loved to read. And she said, “Here's one that I think you should read.” We had books from her childhood, or from church book sales in our house, we had a lot of books in our house. And I started to try to read it. And I really stumbled because I could not get at the language. But she was insistent, she kept kind of putting it toward me, and saying, “I think you should read this one.” And I think it was maybe around the third time I tried it - Pride and Prejudice is what I started with - it just really took. You know, it was like, Oh, wait this is kind of funny. And I like these characters. And I like the story. So after I got my PhD, I learned that my mother had actually never read Pride and Prejudice before. And to me that actually made her giving it to me even more meaningful. She is not college educated. She wanted me to have an education. And the idea that novels could be handed down from mothers to daughters, even mothers without an education, to say, “Here's a way for you to have access to more opportunities,” is what the books are about too, in a way, right? I mean, the mothers aren't always the ones doing it in the books. In fact, they're often not. But the books are functioning as that opening up - worlds opening up possibilities and opening up education, self actualization. You know that this is to me meaningful that my mother knew that this is a book that educated girls should read, and that she wanted it for me. Plain Jane: She was tapping into something that she hadn't had herself and just trying to give that to you. That's awesome. So you're a professor, scholar, writer. … What attracts you to the conversations about Jane Austen, and teaching Jane Austen? Devoney Looser: I think the thing about Austen that keeps me coming back to her is how readable she is. And lots of people say this in the critical community and the Janeite community like the scholars and JASNA. I think even anyone who picks her up casually having not read her in 20 years or never read it before, there's a complexity there on the level of the sentences, paragraph, plot, that is really, to me. enriching, or generative - it generates ideas. And every time I go back to the books, I see something new. every age, every experience that I've made it through, gives me a new way into those sentences. And there are a lot of books that we love, but that we can't really imagine rereading with the same level of love, I think. And for me, that makes Austen just really remarkable. The idea that you can go back to her, you know, every year. A lot of people who love her books read her every year, all six every year. Do you know that joke from Gilbert Ryle, the philosopher, philosopher Gilbert Ryle was asked, this is a century ago, asked, “Sir, do you do you read novels?” And he said, “Yes, I do, all six every year.” So this is this is a good Janeite in-joke, that the only novels there are these six? Obviously not true. … But the relatability is how I would I would answer that.Plain Jane: So I mean, Jane Austen can be, like you say, kind of adapted to your life as you go through different things in life. But you, with The Making of Jane Austen have really documented how not only individuals can adapt Jane Austen to their lives, but movements can adapt Jane Austen to their causes and ... we see that in kind of exciting ways. Can you talk a little bit about why her? Why are her novels so adaptable throughout the last couple of hundred years?Devoney Looser: So I know you know this, I talked about this in The Making of Jane Austen about the ways that various people have very different political persuasions find a reflection of their values or questions or concerns in her novels. So she has been used to argue opposing sides of political questions for 150 years and probably longer. I think this was partly to do with the fact that her novels and her fiction open up questions more often than they close them. And I think it's her relationship to the didactic tradition in her day, the moralizing tradition. I think she's really stepping outside of that and more interested in gray areas, than in declaring what's right and what's wrong. So I think this is a beautiful, complex thing about her novels and they're novels of genius, to my mind, and I'm not afraid to use that word. But they also present certain kinds of really interesting challenges, because you can't go to them and say, “What should I think?” They don't really answer that question for you in a clear away. I think in other kinds of didactic fiction where there's a clear moral outcome, this person's punished with death, or, you know, or some kind of tragic outcome, or this person's rewarded, and it's all going to be, you know, happily ever after, and nothing ever is going to go wrong. Her novels are working outside of that to some degree. So I do think that that's one reason why people have very different experiences and political persuasions and motivations, come to her novels, and it can be kind of like a Rorschach test, right? You can see what you want to see in the designs to some degree. Now, I do think people can get it wrong, I think you can find there are arguments that people make that I think there is absolutely no textual evidence for that whatsoever. But oftentimes, I can look at someone coming to a conclusion that might be different from the one that I reached, and say, Well, I see where you can get that from emphasizing this point, more than this one, or seeing this passage as the crucial one, instead of another passage.I think this is a beautiful, complex thing about her novels and they're novels of genius, to my mind, and I'm not afraid to use that word. But they also present certain kinds of really interesting challenges, because you can't go to them and say, “What should I think?” They don't really answer that question for you in a clear away.Plain Jane It's also occurring to me listening to you Devoney, that she sort of makes people think, in ways that might be uncomfortable. She must be one of the few novelists that can actually draw you to her story, draw you in and draw you to that narrator. But also be uncomfortable, maybe with what she's giving you. And maybe we just stepped around the discomfort some of us. Do you think that's an accurate way of thinking about Jane Austen as well?Devoney Looser: I think that's beautifully put. And, you know, I think too we can read her novels on many different levels. If you say, I want to go into this for a love story, that's funny, with a happy ending, which is what many people who read in the romance genre know the formula, and they're going to it because they like the formula. And it might have different things in different component parts. But you know that at the end you're not going to be distressed and dealing with something tragic, right? So when you go into an Austen novel, the kinds of discomfort you're describing, that they will be there along with something happy, too. So I think you could just read it for the happy ending. [But] I see that as a real lost opportunity. Because I think the happy endings are tacked on from genre expectation about comedies. If you're focusing on the happy ending, you're missing all the important stuff that's happening all along the way. And that's the uncomfortable stuff, right? The stuff about family conflict, economics, all of the kinds of ways that people are terrible to each other, that are, maybe borderline criminal or actually criminal. But everything below that, too. That's more mundane, the way that people mistreat each other. That is wrong. It's not criminal. And that, to me, is what makes these novels uncomfortable, is that even those people who are doing terrible things, usually get away with it. Plain Jane: Hmm, yes. If you said to people, Here's a novel about the insult and injury endured by women because of class and gender - and possibly you can add race and disability and a lot of other boundaries in there” -  I don't know how many people would see that as Jane Austen. But there's that subtext. … The more I read and reread Jane Austen and just stay really close to the text, the more I find myself relying on Gilbert and Gubar and their “cover story.” And it's, you know, I read that a long time ago. So it's probably influencing my reading, I say close to the text, but it's close to the text that's very influenced by what I already have read of you, and is it Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar…. How much do you think she was consciously or even unconsciously saying stuff? In all that meandering, within that courtship plot and then within that happy ending plot that you just described? How much do you think was going on with that cover story?Devoney Looser: So I want to first start with the end of this, which is to say, I think every sentence is saying something else. You know, and not like it's a secret ...I think there are there are people who will say that this is a code for a completely other world below the surface. I'm not sure that I would go there. But I do think that these are novels that are trying to get us to investigate not only who the characters are, but who we are. And sonthere's always something else going on in any human conversation. There's always something else going on. And I think she captures that in the conversations among her characters, that they can be having the same conversation but with such varying motivations that you can see it and it becomes humorous. You know, Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey, talking to Mrs. Allen, about Catherine Morland's chaperone about muslin, that whole conversation about clothing and shopping. You can read that as a love of fashion, you can read it as an indictment of consumer culture, you can read it as a kind of gender cosplay, or you can use it as an indictment of femininity. I mean, there's just so many different levels within the same conversation and you can try to understand how these characters are arguing with each other. So I think in some ways, what you're getting at is, Yes, there's something beneath the surface. So the text that you brought up, Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic, I think that came out in 1979 - incredibly important book. Because a lot of second wave feminism, 60s and 70s, had said Jane Austen is not a primary author for us or not an author that can be as important to the second wave, because these novels end in marriage. And it was a moment in the feminist movement, when looking for something that expressed anger, that expressed alternative lifestyles, was seen as more important than reinforcing heteronormativity, which is what Austen was imagined as doing. So what I think what Gilbert and Gubar did is allowed for feminists and feminist critics and scholars and people beyond that circle, to look at Austen and say, “What if we didn't emphasize the ending? What if we emphasize the other parts of the story?” And of course, they took that to a lot of other different texts and the “madwoman” in the attic is actually a reference, as you know, to Jane Eyre, to Bertha Mason? What if you read Jane Eyre and centered Bertha Mason, which is of course exactly what Jean Rhys did in her novel Wide Sargasso Sea. But Gilbert and Gubar gave us a framework to say, “Let's look at the parts of these novels from a feminist perspective that maybe we haven't focused on.” And I think it opened up so much possibility for Austen, reading it through that lens of saying,”Maybe there's more here than the ending. Maybe there's more here than heteronormativity. There is a lot more going on.” And I'm really grateful to that book for doing that. I do think there is some tendency now to turn it all into, “Well, it doesn't mean this, it means this exactly the opposite.” To me, that's doing exactly what we shouldn't be doing. We're just closing down the text. … “Here's a clue. Now we'll find an answer. Now we've got this new clue, solve next mystery.” These are not mysteries with solutions. They are moral quagmires - and you can't solve a moral quagmire with a fact or an answer.Plain Jane: I love that. I love the way you say, “Don't shut down the text.” I love the way you describe that 1979 Madwoman in the Attic, because you're right. They were just, I guess at a time when you know, feminism was wearing Doc Martens and reading Hemingway … Devoney Looser: … and reading Kate Millett and Sexual Politics: Let's find the sexism. It was a sexism-identification moment, which is really important because a lot of people couldn't see it until people like Millett and others said, “Oh my gosh, there's sexism here in every single book, how do we not notice this?” Plain Jane: Yeah. And they were saying, These are women's lives, let's interrogate what's happening with stories by women, about women, really going in depth in their lives. And they happen to be genius, as well. You know, Devoney, you also say, in your book, The Making of Jane Austen, that Jane Austen has, in many ways, been the making of you. This is getting back to you a little bit, Devoney. In what ways is Jane Austen and the making of you? I know a few of those ways. But why did you write that? Devoney Looser: Well, I think, again, this is the reason this story resonates with people is because all of us who care about literature, and who allow books to lead us places, probably had moments like this. Mine is slightly more bizarre than most people's in that I now make a living from reading Jane Austen. And as you said, I read lots of other things, too. I read Jane Austen in the context of the history of women's writing, which has been very opening up of territory for me as a scholar, and I help lead people to read outside of her. But I've also been able to create a romantic life that started around conversations with her - and I know you know, this - that I met my husband, George Justice is also an Austen scholar. We met over a conversation and an argument on Jane Austen's books. Plain Jane: What were you arguing about again? What book? Was it Mansfield Park?Devoney Looser: It was Mansfield Park. So my husband George and I were introduced at a cocktail party that I was crashing. … And George had actually been invited. And we had a brief conversation that ended, but he came and found me because somebody said to him that I had worked on Jane Austen. And so he said, “I hear you work on Jane Austen. What's your favorite Jane Austen novel?” And I know, you know, George, Janet. So you know that he likes to ask these kind of puncturing questions, right. … … And I said, “Well, the one that I'm working on right now is Northanger Abbey.” And he said, “I didn't ask you which one you're working on. I asked you which one's your favorite.” He heard that I was working on it. But he wanted me to make an aesthetic, you know, you want to make a judgement about which one's the best. … So I said, Well, I guess my favorite is Pride and Prejudice. And George said very proudly, “Well, my favorite is Mansfield Park. … And so I said, “Well, Mansfield Park is my least favorite. And I like it the least because I don't like the heroine. Fanny Price is too much like me. She's boring. Plain Jane: You said that?!Devoney Looser: Yes. And George said at that moment that he said to himself in his head, “I'm gonna marry this woman.” So you really need to hear his side of it. I just thought, this guy's kind of needling me. And I'm shutting down his meddling with, you know, disarming honesty and sarcasm. But you know, I do mean it, I did at the time. I really felt like a very shy person and quiet person and I had more class sympathies with Fanny Price of all of Jane Austen's heroines. But I didn't like those parts myself. I didn't like being quiet and timid, and didn't appreciate her as a character, I think, in a way that I now do. But he did end up proposing to me that night. And I said, “No.” I said, “I don't believe in the institution of marriage.” But whatever. What I can say is that he was very persuasive. And within about a month we decided we'd have a Jane-Fairfax-and-Frank-Churchill-style secret engagement. And we got married. We got married about a year later. So George is very persuasive. Plain Jane: That's awesome. I did not know that he had proposed and that you had declined on that same evening. And I love it that you relate to Fanny Price and find that kind of complicated. Now I have to say, you have told me that story, Devoney. And I had forgotten the details about Fanny Price. But I learned them again, from the First impressions podcast, where they were talking about you on that podcast, and that you related to Fanny Price. And that got me thinking about who people relate to in Jane Austen novels. And I feel like Jane Austen is putting herself  - I feel like all authors, for much of the time -  are putting themselves in not just the positive aspects of characters … She's even probably in Mrs. Norris a little bit, you know? Think of your worst person, you know? There's a part of her that wants to be Lady Bertram, probably. And there's certainly a part of her that's Fanny Price. And there's certainly a part of her that's Emma, who's also a difficult character. So anyway …  does George love Fanny Price?Devoney Looser: I think George loves underdogs who triumph. And I think to him, he likes the idea of people who weren't born to it sticking up for themselves. And he likes the idea of there being greater opportunity for people who weren't necessarily born to opportunity. And I think that's the story of his grandparents and his parents. So I think that's where he came to the love of that particular plot, out of stories from his own family. Plain Jane: So we are talking about, we've been talking about, the way people take on Jane Austen for their causes. You also talk about the fact that Jane Austen has ... carried pop culture and high culture simultaneously. Almost maybe like almost no other artist, maybe Shakespeare can carry those two at the same time. And you also walk both of those worlds. Can you talk a little bit about that? How are we doing with those two things right now? I mean, Jane Austen's probably bigger than ever before, right, today? And are we kind of bringing the high culture of the scholarly and the fandom together in interesting ways? And in productive ways?Devoney Looser: Yeah, that's such a great question. And the “greater than ever before,” quite possibly, if only because of how communication is greater than ever before, right? … But there were moments where she definitely popped in popular culture before now, you know, millions of people saw that Broadway play in 1935 that moved to the West End in London, the next year. This was another moment of Austen pop culture saturation. Where I think if we were able to compare it, then, to now we might say she was in the imagination of the cultural imagination to a pretty great degree in these other moments, too. But let's not go there - now I'm in the weeds! But I do think there is something about being in both worlds that really speaks to my sense of our responsibility as scholars to be educators, but also to be trying to understand the world outside of the academy and seeing that as a talking across, not a talking down. And there are moments where it's easier for scholars to remember that than others, but the talking across has really made new scholarly ideas possible. For me, this is a divided identity. I think you're capturing that accurately in how you describe it, Janet, but I want to make sure that I'm saying it's not a one way street for me. When we talk about teaching, those of us who are educators, we talk about learning from our students, and people often roll their eyes at that … But I think back to an old, classic and educational theory of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where he talks about differently located learners. And the Janeite community through JASNA has definitely brought home to me the ways that differently located learners can inspire each other, and teach each other. And I think that is just really, really crucial. And I love that Jane Austen has made this possible.Plain Jane: You know, we're in a way a lot of what we're talking about is her image. And how, you know, there's a lot under the surface of the Courtship and the Marriage Plot, that you've researched this, and written about it in The Making of Jane Austen. In what ways did her family contribute to this image? Can you talk a little bit about that? And why - why were they trying to create, if I have this right, a respectable sort of Aunt Jane? Do you feel like this is what she also would have perhaps wanted? I mean, class insult, class injury can be humiliating, and I feel like perhaps also Louisa May Alcott, some of these women writers who were writing for money, maybe did want to be seen first and foremost, as respectable. What do you think was going on with the family members painting her image?Devoney Looser: I think this is a really difficult, multi-layered question. And I, of course, have different ways of answering this. But I think that the ways that her family described her, were trying to head off criticism. And I think if you look at the ways that women writers were treated in this period, you can understand why they wanted to head off the criticism. They very much wanted her not to be seen as strident Bluestocking, morally suspect. They very much wanted to put her on the side of … the polite, the proper, the lady .... Not the bitter spinster, not the ugly woman who couldn't get married or who was having all sorts of morally questionable behaviors with men. But the woman who was very much doing the “femininity”, quote-unquote, 1810s and the 1820s. So at first, I think that's what her family is up to. And the extent to which she would have been excited about that, I don't know. But it does seem quite possible that she would have endorsed staying to the side of that. Because in the same way that 70s feminists brought us to see the ways that language was about Virgins and W****s - not that no one had ever noticed this. But I think in Second Wave feminism, the Women's Studies classes, let us look at the words that were used to describe women and their sexual experiences, and say, “Wow, this is really unbelievable,” right? So I think if we take that and we move that conversation back 150 years, I think the Austens were wise to the fact that you were not allowed to be anything other than one or the other. And it was very clear what you wanted to be if your choice was to be castigated as the woman writer so who is more virgin-like, or the woman writer who is more W***e-like, of course, she wanted to be on the side of the Virgin. It's a crime that this existed, right? It's a linguistic crime. But if you're a family trying to negotiate the reputation of your relative at the same time that some of you are clergymen and trying to make your way forward in polite society, titled society, elite society, of course ... She's a Public Woman. Those words aren't supposed to go together. You want to put her to the side of the one who wasn't looking for money, the one who wasn't looking for fame, the one who wasn't too learned. She was nice. She was doing this for her family. She wasn't doing this for fame or money, you see that? Already, you're talking about sides of a question, where putting your eggs in one basket results in a different outcome. So the extent to which Austen herself wanted that, what would be desirable of being on the other side of that? Very little, right?Plain Jane: Listening to you talk makes me really understand that so much more. And also realize that in a way they were doing what Jane Austen seemed to do with her novels, which was to keep herself out of it. And maybe she's not as out of it on the third and fourth rereading as we thought she was on the first rereading. But she's kind of keeping herself out of it and just letting the story, letting the characters, say what she really doesn't want to be seen saying particularly, perhaps.Devoney Looser: You know that I'm working on two contemporaries of Jane Austen, Jane and Anna Maria Porter. I'm writing this book, Sister Novelists: Jane and Anna Maria Porter in the Age of Austen. And where for Austen, we have 161 letters of hers [that] have survived. So when we try to say, “What did Jane Austen think?” The novels give us a certain amount to go on. But a lot of us say, well, “What did she say in her letters where we can assume that she was being more of a quote-unquote, authentic self?” … But the idea that we only have 161 of these to go on; for the Porter sisters, they were both novelists. And they wrote thousands of letters, which they painstakingly preserved. And so to be able to go through these thousands of letters between these two sisters who are looking at literary culture through the eyes of public women and literary women, and looking at the ways that they describe the things that they want people to believe and what they're actually doing behind the scenes, has been really illuminating for me. And I hope other people will be interested in reading about that too, people who are interested in Austen, people who are interested in the early 19th century and Regency culture, Victorian culture, because the Porter sisters lived longer than Jane Austen did. [And] the ways that they tried to navigate making decisions with agency and with, specifically, female agency and romantic agency and a culture that said that, as Austen puts it, their only power should be the power of refusal. And they, the Porter sisters, were doing things all the time that you weren't supposed to do. And we know it because they were writing about it with each other. They were innovators in historical fiction. And Jane Porter claimed, I think with with some accuracy, that she was the one who influenced and inspired Sir Walter Scott's Waverley, which was published in 1814. Plain Jane: Wow, you had us at Hello - our sisters writing to each other, during the Regency and beyond, and they have each other, they're doing historic fiction. I mean, I just think hashtag-Regency is going to blow up over these two sisters! I think that sounds like a lot of fun. I just feel like there is a hunger to broaden out these conversations, and you can see it, the conversations are being broadened out in such exciting ways, especially right now. Books, like The Woman of Colour, and then every conversation we can have about Bridgerton -  like anything to do with the Regency and people's lives and especially the lives that we're uncovering that have been overlooked: Women writers, Black citizens of the Regency in Britain, and it's just and so many others. It's just really exciting. So I feel like there's a hunger for these conversations. Devoney Looser: And I think it's absolutely crucial and important that we start to try to understand race relations in the early 19th century. And think about why we care about them so much. Now, that's what literature should do. I get really frustrated when people want to tell us that we're taking questions from the present and popping them back falsely under the past. This is not at all we're doing. Things are popping in our moment that we can see, we're also popping in Austen's moment. ,,, Maybe she doesn't write about them to the degree that some of us would now wish she had. But these questions are there. And we are having a real opportunity, through scholars like Gretchen Gerzina and Patricia Matthew, and others who are helping us look back to the abolition movement, look back to texts, like The Woman of Colour, which Lyndon Dominique edited in a fabulous edition for Broadview Press that everybody should run out and buy. This is a novel from 1809, an anonymous novel. All of these works are giving us new opportunities to read Austen in terms of race issues that were important in her own day and to her novels. And for very good reasons have popped up in ours, so I'm excited about the opportunity to open up these questions.I do think there is something about being in both worlds that really speaks to my sense of our responsibility as scholars to be educators, but also to be trying to understand the world outside of the academy and seeing that as a talking-across, not a talking-down. And there are moments where it's easier for scholars to remember that than others. But the talking across has really made new scholarly ideas possible.Plain Jane: And some of this is historians also - Gretchen Gerzina, in a previous episode, alerted me to the National Trust report that was done documenting the ties to the slave trade in the Great Houses in England. Such a simple thing, really. And very much a historic enterprise, not a political enterprise in any sense, other than [that] everything is political. But that's exciting. And then you've also contributed to this conversation about the legacy of slavery and the ties to the slave trade in the Austen family. Do you want to talk about that at all? I mean, this is something that's just been published in The Times Literary Supplement and then picked up a lot of places. Do you want to just give a takeaway on what was going on with your research on that and what you'd like people to keep in mind when they think about Austen's family and the slave trade?Devoney Looser: Absolutely. So the May 21 issue of the Times Literary Supplement, which is a weekly newspaper that anyone who cares about literature should subscribe to … I am very honored to have published it. I did a piece on Austen and abolition, looking deeply and very minutely into the Austen family's relationship to slavery and abolition. And people are asking a question now, “Was Austen pro-slavery or anti-slavery? Was the author's family pro-slavery or anti-slavery?” And because of things like the National Trust report that you just mentioned, and a freely available database called the Legacies of Slavery that's run out of UCL by a scholar named Catherine Hall and a team. This is a freely available database, George Austen's name shows up in that database, because he was a trustee for a sugar plantation in Antigua that was owned by somebody who was probably a student at Oxford. So this is the fact that we had, and that has been repeated, that Austen's implicated in the economics of slavery. And what my piece did, is tried to look at what that means, and to try to deepen that conversation. And what I, the takeaway, for me is that the Austen family can be described as both pro-slavery and anti-slavery. And this is probably true for a lot of 19th century families, frankly, where you would have members who were on different sides, quote-unquote, of these questions. But the moment we try to turn it into sides, we're missing an opportunity for further description and nuance. And what my piece shows is that George Austen probably never benefited financially from this trusteeship. He was a co-trustee. And I go into a lot of description about that. And that years afterward, 80 years after that, Henry Thomas Austen, we never noticed this before: Henry Thomas Austen was a delegate to an anti-slavery convention. So we have a member of the immediate Austen family, a political activist, against the institution of slavery and with the anti-slavery movement. So to me, this tells us that the Austen family was both of these things. And I think it's an additional piece of information for us to understand the ways that race and slavery come into Austen's novels and the ways that she is working with the difficulties and complexities of this issue that was central to the moment she lived in.Plain Jane: What do you love most about introducing people to Austen? And what surprises you when you teach - in the classroom, or in Great Courses, from people that you hear from all the many Janeite and fandom conversations that you so graciously, drop in on Zoom with? What do you love about introducing people to Jane Austen?Devoney Looser: Yeah, so these 24 30-minute lectures I did for the Great Courses, which is interestingly just rebranded itself as Wondrium. But I say there, and I say this at the beginning of my classes as well: I love these books. And I love the ways that these books have inspired me to be a better thinker and have created certain things in my life that have become possible and meaningful to me. But it is absolutely not required to me that anyone in my class come out loving them like I do. What I want is for students to find that thing that is meaningful to them. And that generates meaning for them - that's generative, to go back to that word again. And I think when students take me at my word, I'm very grateful. I want them to read closely and think about these things. But it is absolutely not required that they see in them what I see.—————Thank you for reading, listening and being here, my friends. Please stay safe and enjoy your remaining days of summer. We'll be back next week - and it's all about my conversation with definitive Austen biographer Claire Tomalin! I caught her at home, safe, enjoying her garden during the pandemic, and I'll share our conversation here, same time, same place, next week! Below are many of the authors that Devoney mentioned in this conversation, with links to finding out more.If you enjoyed this conversation, please do share it!And if you'd like to have more conversations like these dropped in your inbox, subscribe - it's free! More Reading and Cool Links:Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic: https://www.npr.org/2013/01/17/169548789/how-a-madwoman-upended-a-literary-boys-clubPaulo Freire and The Pedagogy of the Oppressed: https://www.freire.org/paulo-freire/paulo-freire-biography/Gretchen Gerzina - https://gretchengerzina.com/about-gretchen-gerzina.htmlLyndon Dominque, editor: The Woman of Colour: https://broadviewpress.com/product/the-woman-of-colour/#tab-descriptionPatricia Matthew: https://www.montclair.edu/newscenter/experts/dr-patricia-matthew/UCL slavery database: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/ Devoney Looser's website: http://www.devoneylooser.com/The Wondrium/Great Courses on Jane Austen: www.thegreatcourses.com/janeausten Get full access to The Austen Connection at austenconnection.substack.com/subscribe

Professor Danielle Christmas is a scholar in English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her day-job, she researches serious topics about race and history, from white nationalism to the legacy of slavery and the Holocaust, and how issues like this are depicted in our cultural currency. But when she's off the clock and needs to unplug, Danielle Christmas turns to Jane Austen. And she says even though she doesn't always want to, she can't help bringing her knowledge of race and history into these stories. As co-editor of the most recent issue of the JASNA journal Persuasions Online, Danielle Christmas has become a convener of conversations within the Janeite and academic community on race and the works of Jane Austen. She took some time recently to chat with us about that issue, and everything from Fanny Price and the history behind Mansfield Park, to binging “Bridgerton.” And she says, for her, escaping to a Regency world can be both guilt-free and fruitful. Here's our conversation.Danielle ChristmasSometimes I really like the idea of putting my brain to the use of just having fun - of playing around in a text that's beautifully written and is doing subtle work, right? [During the day] I'm talking about slavery and the Holocaust. And my new work is on white nationalism. That's loud, there's nothing [subtle] about that. And you have to pay attention to the corners and the contours of what's happening in [Jane Austen's] novels, in order to really understand the stakes. And it's just a good brain exercise [and] it trains me to pay attention to the small things. Whereas maybe if I'm spending all of my time, just looking at the loud - you know, the loudness, the violence, all of that - I miss the corners.Plain Jane  Well tell me, Danielle, because you are reading with all of that loudness around you. And you're very aware of this and you're … choosing to dedicate the time to exploring all those issues in our culture, everything from our lynching histories in our culture and the legacy of slavery and the legacy of racism. What do you bring as a reader with your expertise to Jane Austen, does that enter into it very much? Do you find comfort in the fact that she was surrounded by these conversations? And they are, like you say subtle, but they might be there like Edward Said says, - look at what's not there as well as what is there.Danielle Christmas Yes, exactly! That it's always there. Even if it's not there. It's there and it's absence and the fact that it's absent, is itself indicating something that we should be thinking about that's doing something whether or not it's present in the room. I think it's fascinating that people that we talk to so much in this special issue that we're doing [in] Persuasions, there is a lot going on, of course about the triangle trade and how that works. And yet there are four lines in Mansfield Park … or the sum total of what Jane Austen clearly said, explicitly said - explicitly-ish! - that is her making a direct reference to slavery. If we, we smart people, we smarty-pants people, have so much to say, based on four lines and its absence, then there really is something fascinating going on. Anytime there is a narrative, a television series, a book, anything that has to do, it is deeply embedded in a construction of class culture, right? And manners. There are all sorts of politics that surround that. And she was right. … She was a brilliant woman and a brilliant writer who wrote knowing that, right? It's intentional. I think that sometimes it's fascinating to encounter resistance among people who love Jane Austen, out of fear, I think, that we're pushing politics into a space where it's like a protected space. So why are we bringing politics into yet another thing, right? Like, why are we? It's there! … If we were living in Regency times, there's no way to read her work without understanding it as construction of political narrative. Not only that, or maybe not primarily that, but to write a romance novel at the time is itself a political exercise. And so acknowledging the truth of that - two things can be true at the same time. This is what I like, my major discovery in my 30s: Things can be true, a person can be, you know, racist and fascinating; a person could be writing just enjoyable romantic fiction, and also be doing something interesting and political. And I think that's what's happening. And it's easy to to get our hackles up on either side of that, to insist that it is only politics. And to forget that it's more fascinating. So why are we bringing politics into yet another thing, right? Like, why are we? It's there! … If we were living in Regency times, there's no way to read her work without understanding it as construction of political narrative. I think maybe this is my pop culture brain. But it's more fascinating because it's not just politics, right? Like she's doing something that is supposed to be an exercise in entertainment and pleasure. But she's playing this all out. And in a tableau that's tends to be people of a certain like wealth and class and that money comes from someplace, their comfort comes from someplace, the exclusion or not, of people. You cannot read Mansfield Park outside of those four lines, without understanding Fanny, and her absence of wealth, her relationship to the wealthier family, and the way that that interaction works as anything except a political inquiry into how relationships with family and money work and power, and morals and ethics, right? Plain Jane  So everything you say, Danielle, so interesting about Mansfield Park: They have to get their money at Mansfield Park from somewhere. You mentioned the four lines about “dead silence.” There's so much in that novel, if you're closely reading the text, that are choices that Jane Austen is making. And … she's so good at her job that we forget that there's a puppeteer. There's a conductor, who's making choices about how Mansfield Park gets its money, about where Sir Thomas goes when he leaves Mansfield Park, about what Fanny Price is reading. So much more than the “dead silence,” you know?So tell me more. Danielle, when I read it, it occurred to me that it's not it doesn't seem to me like too much of a stretch to see Mansfield Park and its dismantling, I would say it's kind of reduced to rubble. By the end of it. It's kind of destroyed! And the only person who's still standing is Fanny Price. And I feel like it could be a metaphor for a sort of dismantling of England through colonialism - morally - not paying attention to your house, being out there and not concentrating on what's real and what's actually ethical. And the consequences of that. Do you think that's too much of a stretch?Danielle Christmas That's provocative! I kind of love that! I would have to sit and think about that. I think if that's plausible, and as a sort of larger metaphor, I think that maybe … you'll get my preemptive defenses against those people who tend to in general, tell me I'm bringing politics into politics-free spaces. So [they'll say], “It's just romance. Right? It's happy. It's just pop culture. Why are you insisting?” I think because of that, I tend to be more conservative in the claims that I make than you're being. I think that my the most conservative account that I could easily defend - that I think that any person could reasonably defend: After you learn a little bit about Jane Austen's family in general (I resist psychoanalytic readings of an author through their work, don't think it's helpful), but you can't find out that her father has a trustee relationship with a plantation, or find out that her brother would patrol waters for slave ships, and not think about how knowing that in her relationship to them, and doing that would inform her decision to write this novel. And what to include, and not. So I think the most conservative thing to say about slavery, history, [and] politics, and the novel, is that just the insistence that she's publishing this, and that she's insisting that people who like her novels, and enjoy her kind of writing, read this. That is disruption. That is interesting. Just that, yes. So, just even stopping there, makes me curious. I think sometimes I feel like my job as a teacher, maybe less so in my writing, but as a teacher, is just to make us notice things that we noticed, but didn't realize were important to notice. Like to just say if I was teaching a class, like, what do you guys think that a woman who was writing what we could call - even at the time -chicklit, right? Like a woman who's writing - yes, a smart woman - who's writing for other literate smart women, inasmuch as any woman is considered especially smart and literate at the time, who's interested in reading a romantic novel happened to do this. Like happens to mediate this particular story through the experience of a deep privilege? And, what you're saying, which is really the kind of collapse of privilege in one family, right? So, like, and this is where we're going. Just think about that, guys. I'm a new historicist. So I want to know what's going on all around the page. I want to know what helped make the story and I want to know what the story is doing off of the page. And so there is an entire ecosystem around what we can talk about - this really weird thing she did, right? Like, it's just a weird thing! There's a way to have told that story, so that all I needed to do was curl up on my couch and read it and not really have to do any heavy lifting. Not grapple with what it means that there are four lines of silence. I think sometimes I feel like my job as a teacher, maybe less so in my writing, but as a teacher, is just to make us notice things that we noticed, but didn't realize were important to notice. You know, Fanny really is the subject of abuse. … And I think because so many of us read the novel, and so many of us who are doing it outside of the context of the classroom, are doing it for pleasure reading. And ... if I'm reading this novel for pleasure, I don't want to sit with Fanny's pain very long. It is unpleasant. It's really cruel the way she's treated. But if we pause and think about that, that is quite a choice that Jane Austen made: to insist that somebody who wants to pick up the genre that they would expect her to be writing, that they have to walk through that maltreatment. And it's not just, you know, a heroine who's mistreated. She is the subject of abuse. Compared to how people feel about Lizzy Bennet, you know, everyone wants to be Lizzy Bennet, right?Fanny is meek. She is not … as charming. And, you know, she's just coming from a different place. What a heroine she is, right? What a curious heroine she is compared to who we've come to know from Jane Austen's other novels. What do we do with that? What do we make of that? Sometimes I think the most fruitful things come from just realizing that there are questions that we haven't been asking.Plain JaneLet me get to some of your work. Danielle. You are the Co-editor of the most recent issue of Persuasions … and it's a peer-reviewed publication of JASNA, the Jane Austen Society of North America. And it features essays on Jane Austen and her world. Can you tell me a little bit about the most current issue, which is called “Beyond the Bit of Ivory, Jane Austen and Diversity”? By the way, I put the Call for Papers, link in our chat. It's so beautiful, the first paragraph of that. Danielle Christmas I'm so glad that you think it's beautifully written. You know, it was fascinating. We encountered each other through the “Race and the Regency” series. That was a fascinating multi-month journey ... hearing different lectures. But .. because so many of us are asking questions about race, we're asking questions we didn't know we should have been asking .... So that's good and important work then, right? If you sit back and think, OK, we're all kind of engaged in that thinking JASNA has jumped in. Like at Chawton [House], where they were doing the Black Lives Matter to Jane Austen exhibit and all of that. I mean, like, Whoa. Fascinating. Like, who is mad who's yelling? Why? What are the stakes to people? What's happening? … Like, what is that alarmism about? People who have different intellectual stakes in the way that we remember, and read Jane Austen. We're all bringing a different set of thoughts and values and questions to this figure, as an abstract person, as a writer, as a creator of stories. We are mapping on to these stories, all sorts of powers that they may or may not have. So this special issue is an opportunity for us, in this moment, to do some deep thinking about those questions. Fanny is meek. … What a curious heroine she is compared to who we've come to know from Jane Austen's other novels. What do we do with that? What do we make of that? Sometimes I think the most fruitful things come from just realizing that there are questions that we haven't been asking.You know, there are plenty of folks who have been working on the intersection of these questions in these histories and Jane Austen's work for a long time. So it's not as if, you know, finally scholars are coming to ask questions. But for maybe different scholars than before, and some who have been … in this wheelhouse, but different folks who maybe haven't been a part of the conversation yet. And all of us, right, whether or not we've been a part of the conversation, or we're new to it, or having this conversation right now. And now is a different time to be having this conversation. Asking questions about Race in the Regency four years ago is interesting and important. But it's different right now. There is something different happening in the … stakes of the way that we think and argue and remember racial history.Plain Jane  The very first sentence in the Call for Papers [says] “the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, and the pandemic that has disproportionately killed along racial lines have shocked the world into a confrontation of inequities resulting from individual behavior, institutional design, and even attachment to limited and comfortable perspectives.” That's really powerful language to introduce a Call for Papers about Jane Austen and the world of Jane Austen. What did you mean in that first sentence - “limited and comfortable perspectives that we might be attached to”?Danielle Christmas Well, what it makes me think now about is the fact that I think a lot of us, if you read that Call for Papers and agree, like, Wow, that's an important conversation to be having. Then it's likely that at least a little bit, when we read Jane Austen or - heaven forbid - we like go binge a Netflix series, right? So … Why should we be wasting hours doing this, it's purely an exercise in like, you know, self pleasure, whatever?Plain Jane  Well, let's just say what we're all thinking right now, which is: “Bridgerton.” So yes, as we're watching “Bridgerton” …?Danielle Christmas Right?! As we all sit for one day and watch the entirety of the series! We, I don't know, I won't project for lots of others, but I've talked to enough people who are the same people who would read that Call for Papers and think, “This is urgent and important.” And then would would realize that there is some degree of guilt that we feel when we are cozied up right now reading Jane Austen. Like … what does it mean? That we're exercising our comfortable privilege to sit and relax and read a feel-good book, you know? I feel guilt about that. I feel guilt as a person, as a scholar who has a certain set of values. But as a Black woman who understands all of the history that's in the background of Jane Austen, I sit with some guilt about what is and is not there. I think that it's really helpful to see that, and talk about that, and not suggest that, like, that guilt can't do fruitful things. In this Persuasions issue, there are some folks who are not, quote, “scholars,” right? These are not the usual suspects that you would find in a typical peer-reviewed journal. Lots of people submitted, and some of the folks that we're publishing are non-university folks. And … we are all bringing a set of active considerations that typically are dismissed as inappropriate for informing questions and answers, and we're insisting that that's OK. And it's interesting, and it can do interesting stuff. Some of the essays, unlike a sort of traditional peer-reviewed journal, are coming more from a place of practice. Some of them are coming more from a place of intellectual memoir. And ... that is so valuable, especially when we're thinking about what it means to talk about this figure in this time, considering that the passing description of her is a woman in the 1800s, who wrote romance novels, right? Like that's the quick and short version. There's a lot of problems we need to fix right now. And that's really an indulgence and there's something to be worked out. It feels like an exercise in privilege. And that's really [the source of] some of the resistance and alarmism, I think, is that we don't like what it might mean about us if we don't want to think about that. Who wants to think about that, right?! Like who wants to think, “Oh, yeah, there's the Zong crisis, is happening in the background, right? Maybe Lord Mansfield, the real man had something to do with the Mansfield Park.” Like what a terrible … who wants to think about that?!… But if you just read it  - to take away that you feel guilty, there's something wrong with you if you don't enthusiastically embrace the idea of talking about race, slavery and Jane Austen, right? Like you are intellectually dishonest, whatever. I think it's more interesting that, like, none of us really want to do that thinking! That she made it a little difficult to do that thinking. She could have been more explicit. But … an adult mind that's really fully formed and inclined to do critical thinking cannot read her novels and not ask questions about power, money, history, race. Like all of that stuff, the silences and the explicit statements: We have to notice it. We do or don't have to choose to ignore it. … It's not wrong, that on Tuesday, after doing my research on white nationalism, I don't really want to think about that.… I have a lot of students who are inclined to think that talking about this stuff means that a professor's telling them they should feel guilty about stuff. … They're conditioned to think that, like I'm saying you should have been thinking about this all along and shame on you. What I would say to them is, I think the most important thing about consuming any culture - so Jane Austen or any media - is to be deliberate and intentional …  If you sit down and decide to binge “Bridgerton” … I'm gonna have fun. It's Netflix. Like, it's been a tough day. But do that knowing that today, you're … choosing not to think about all of the racial politics that Shonda Rhimes introduced by creating this alternate race history in England. The fact that she … [introduced] the visual politics of having characters of having a Black man and a white woman fall in love -  in the context, just having interracial romance is itself a really political, challenging thing to represent. And to think about, especially now that I live in the south, to look at, to argue about, to remember to [think about] all of that. And Shonda Rhimes is like, “No, no, no. I'm not going to let you enjoy that without noticing what you're not noticing.”So I think it's just fine to decide, I don't really want to do that right now., I don't want to do that thinking. But tomorrow: Do that thinking, or know that it's thinking that needs to happen. And that you aren't appreciating the text for the fullness of what it is. ... You'll actually, I think, enjoy it more. Maybe you consider, like, what a decision she made, right? Like what a fascinating decision she made that we're arguing now, again, about Queen Charlotte and whether she was Black. And our construction of race -  it's fascinating to hear what people have to say about Queen Charlotte being Black, as if race operated in the same way then as it does now. All of that. Plain Jane  And in all of what you just said, something sticks out to me that I want to pick up - which is Jane Austen could have been more explicit. And I want to be careful that when I'm saying, “Fanny Price burns the b***h down!” You know, [that[ I'm not superimposing what I would have loved for Jane Austen to be thinking and saying. I do think, though, the more you hear the more you think, ‘“Yeah, there's that subtext. Maybe even not as subtle as I thought.”And you mentioned something in “Race and the Regency” and your talk on the Zong slave ship - [that] calling Mansfield Park Mansfield Park is a little bit like writing a novel today and calling it Scalia House. There's no way that's not saying something.So anyway, I think it's, it's not politics. It's life. If you think that we need to just sit and escape this, and your students want to just escape, and not look at this. It's not politics they're escaping from, it's basically life. It's just the real world that they're escaping from. But yet you need to escape from it. So do I and we all do that. So it's about life. And it is painful. That's the other thing you said, Yes, it's painful. You know, wherever you're coming from when you're reading Jane Austen. And when you're having these conversations about privilege, it's painful. But yet I feel like the art is what helps us work through it. So I guess that's what I pull away: the art. … But all of that noise, as you say. that loudness … was seeping in. So it's there. And it's just going to be unpacked and unraveled for generations to come.Danielle Christmas Absolutely. You know, and as I'm listening to us, and listening to you and thinking about what both of us are talking about, I think [of] another discomfort: This is really a sacred cow. So I'm spending time with Janeites. And talking about all this interesting stuff and enjoying books. And I think something that we don't like, this group that I've been spending time with ..., is that Jane Austen probably had some racial attitudes that we really wouldn't like. Right? So, really problematic racial attitudes and racial values. And that's hard, right? Like, if we, if we love her work, if we feel like she was doing important, disruptive, interesting stuff, that then challenges us. I think that brings forward ... the stuff that's, like, what does it mean about me? If I like a person, you know, I don't want to admit that about her because it means something about me. … What are my values if I enjoy that?And it is itself a kind of, like: Two things can be true, right? It can be true that she's doing interesting, disruptive, fascinating stuff. And she, I would put money down on her having racial attitudes that were not too awesome, right?I think the helpful thing to remember is we don't know, we'll never know, It's not really that interesting to argue about that. But that actually, I think, is the core of some of that alarmism, the unstated core of it. Which is like, “Are you trying to indict Jane Austen?” No, who can do that? What are we doing? It's so fascinating because I would say to a person who said that to me, like, I'm not gonna indict her, I don't have to! It is almost impossible to conceive of a world in which she would formulate her thoughts of how the world works, and how people work, and that she would think that I, a Black woman, am of equal intelligence.… She might - that'd be delightful! There's no way for me to know that! ...But, you know, I actually think it's not that interesting to acknowledge that she was a person. That's, just a person of her time. And so I want to - even among the people who it's fun to have these conversations with - disrupt the sacred, you know, really kill the sacred cow. … We must admit that this person whose work we love … we're being intellectually dishonest if we refuse that. And I actually think that's something that's really hard for us to do. There are still people who would read that Call for Papers who would share my values or do interesting work, but who will still be unsettled if I say to them, that according to today's values, and the way that we construct the idea of racism, Jane Austen was probably racist. That really makes people uncomfortable. Now, you know, it was my intellectual upbringing, like, how I was trained as a scholar, I was raised to be a little polemical. In some ways, I just kind of want to see what happens if I throw that out. ...If I go into a room and say, “What are you going to do with that? Here's the way that works” But outside of being kind of mischievous, I actually think that's probably true. And that's OK. Like, I don't think it means I shouldn't enjoy her work. I don't think it means anything about anyone who does enjoy her work. I think it means something about all of us. If we are so deeply resistant to a likelihood … I think that requires some interrogation. And that's work that even people who read that call for proposals, lots of those people who are open to different ways of thinking, so they are not themselves villainous. But like, they're not noticing what they're not noticing. Which is maybe their own resistance to the idea that, according to the way that we reasonably assign the label racism, [Jane Austen] is probably racist. What do we do with that? Plain Jane  Well, you're challenging me, Danielle. Because I did have a question on here: In what ways is reading Jane Austen and Jane Austen, you know, of her time, possibly problematic for us? But it was painful to even write that question. And I asked myself, Is that really necessary? And you're telling me, it is necessary. Again, it's another thing that's there or not there, to pull out and talk about, and just make sure, like you say, if, it's uncomfortable, why is it uncomfortable? And it's okay, by the way to be uncomfortable! Something we all need to know. But Danielle, basically, you can solve America, if we can all remember to keep two thoughts in our head. That's the first lesson. And then also just be OK with being uncomfortable. Just if we can all just do those two things. America, we'll be on our way.Danielle Christmas Yeah! To insist that you have some thinking to do does not make you a villain: It means you have some thinking to do. We all have different thinking to do. And then I might not have the same work to do. But I've got my own stuff. It's funny. … This is like when I say this to my graduate students, this is very much me projecting my judgment of myself. In retrospect, I used to call everything “problematic.” My first job out of college was as an organizer. I was a union organizer driving around Missouri - so driving around where you are! - organizing people. Low-income people in downstate Missouri, doing all sorts of, you know, life [challenges.] If I had the mission, my mission was to change the world. Plain Jane  That's a part of your bio I did not know! Danielle Christmas, ladies and gentlemen, driving around the byways, the blue highways of Missouri.Danielle Christmas It's an interesting state. It is an interesting state to be driving around as a 20-something Black woman there to organize low -income folks who are, you know, working their hardest. So that was a formative experience. But because of that quite reasonably, I had an eye for like, everything that is “problematic.” And yes, … and I'm not picking on you for using that word. It's a useful word.Plain Jane  Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I'm around students, and daughters, you know who, yes, find everything problematic.Danielle Christmas It's just, it's lazy. That's the thing to remember about myself, and what I noticed about my students. And the reason that I push them. It's not because they're calling something out that needs to be examined more closely. It's that it's lazy to call it “problematic” and stop right there. It's like, it is an empty explanation that explains nothing.Plain Jane  So you're right. It's kind of jargon and you do a great job of cutting through the jargon. Especially for an academic, right?.Danielle ChristmasSee, that's my dream!Plain JaneOne thing I have to ask along these lines is that you are spending a lot of time, you say, among Janeites. And you mentioned not everyone would love that Call for Proposals. I mean, what do you think, because these conversations are going on in a really dynamic, fantastic way with race and the Regency in the Jane Austen world. But there also people that would like to see - and they're coming out on Twitter and saying, openly and thoughtfully I think, that they would like to see things going faster. They'd like to see change. They'd like to see a more assertive discussion about diversity and equity. But what is your sense of the JASNA community and its take on equity and diversity and approaching all of these questions in the readings of Jane Austen and her world? Danielle Christmas You know, that is a terrific question. And it's a complicated question. I think that  what's good about this special issue is that, this [is] one corner of what needs to happen, which is intellectual work, that we expressed commitment to prioritizing that thinking. So that intellectual work and making that accessible. That is one corner. And that's one corner that I'm excited to participate in. The voices that are saying that that is not enough, are absolutely right. It would be dishonest of JASNA, were anyone just saying, and I don't think they would say, “You know, that's it, we're checking it off.” … So I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of, JASNA's ambition around this, right? … A part of that is the intellectual work, of making that accessible as a publication. But the other stuff the, like, let's revisit infrastructure. Let's ... look at our mission statement. And let's look at participation, the inclusion of other voices in the way the organization is run. All that absolutely needs to happen. And that work always takes longer, right? It's always messier. It's always more complicated. And I understand people saying, like, you know, “tick tock..” What I'm excited about is that this moment is giving us an opportunity to prioritize the discussions. I would actually say of myself that I am, I'm probably unfairly patient. I am predisposed, maybe because of like, the, ugliness that I work with. And my need to like my particular intellectual project or public-facing scholarship is to figure out how to do that, how to make these conversations. possible, not hostile, really interesting, and move at the pace that people can have those conversations, right?So, do I think we should all burn down the system to stop white nationalism? Sure. Is that going to happen? No. So that means that I've got to talk to a lot of people who really disagree with me ... So I have a sense of pace and scale … So I would not call myself the best measure of pace of change, right? Also, I think, because I have the good fortune of doing what I think is this really important part of the work. And that primarily being, I've joined the editorial board of Persuasions and I'm really excited about making sure that this isn't a single special-issue thing. That this conversation continues and expands, that we're not ghettoizing this work. So I know, that's a commitment they have. And I know those other conversations are happening. And I know there's frustration. There's a reason for optimism, because we're having a conversation. And the most important thing - and this does come from my days as a union organizer - is to cultivate allies where we can find them. So I know that there are people who are part of JASNA leadership, who are all about making this happen, even if we're different people in different corners … So make the make noise - because no change happens without noise. Plain Jane  Do you want to say any more about “Bridgerton?” I mean, I know that you saw it as an escape. Does it in any way advance the conversations, on all of these conversations on race and the Regency?Danielle Christmas I actually think it does really important work. Because there are arguments now about casting of Anne Boleyn in an upcoming film production that has her as a Black woman - a dark-skinned Black woman playing opposite a very … expected casting for Henry. There are dozens of future Jane Austen adaptations to come, because we love them, right? They're going to continue. They will be made as long as we watch them. At what point are .. we going to insist that we see that in those kinds of adaptations? I actually think that's really important. If someone told me, this raises the question of whether we're gonna cast Black women as leads in Jane Austen films … I actually think that's really interesting. I think so many of us like Jane Austen because we are Lizzy Bennet, right? We identify. We all want to be the people, we want to be leading ladyl. We're on the adventure, I would say even more so than lots of other works. And Jane Austen's awesome, because she makes that easy. And her stories make that easy. What does it mean for a new generation of viewer if we insist that you can look different? I think part of my grappling ... in my own journey, is feeling frustration and guilt that I enjoy something that insists that I cannot look like the person who is the lead, right? What would it have meant if that wasn't a thing to grapple with? Because people telling Jane Austen stories today already did the work of saying, “No, her stories really transcend that. It doesn't have to look like … we expect it to look.”That would have made a difference. And I actually think that “Bridgerton” is insisting that he next time there's a production, if they decide to insist on a certain kind of casting, they're being deliberate and intentional about that. And that's provocative, right? It means that if you are making the new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility [you remember]…  that “Bridgerton” was super successful, right? If you're a person who wants something super successful, how much of success of “Bridgerton” could be attributed to - at least our interest at first - because of that strange world Shonda Rhimes [made] for us. So it would be shrewd for the future adaptors of Jane Austen's work to calculate on whether there is any value in being equally provocative and making us curious. And actually, I do, I think that's more important than I would have expected. And I think - this is the mischief-maker in me - I think it's good to make a person be deliberate in saying, no, they're not going to do something. .. [If] you're making an adaptation, you should have to tell yourself now that you're only going to cast the usual suspects.Plain Jane  Yes, it's changed the default in a way, maybe forever. And maybe it's been a long time coming. I mean, if you look back on so many adaptations, I think very soon, if we don't already, we'll be thinking, “Boy, that is a white world they created, and that doesn't even seem realistic.” OK, so very much a random aside: When you're reading Jane Austen's descriptions of her characters now with a kind of an ear and an eye for colorism and depictions and descriptions, a lot of her lead characters - I think Eleanor Dashwood - [are] just described as Brown. So does that make it easier for you as a writer, a reader when you were younger? Did you like Soniah Kamal, who wrote Unmarriageable and who I've talked with. She said, from the very first time reading, Pride and Prejudice, it was Pakistani. Do you do make things what you need them to be in your head? I know I do as a reader as well.Danielle Christmas I think that's the only way that I can really enjoy Jane Austen. But I like that she makes that possible. ...  I wouldn't go so far as to say that that is on a top 10 list of what makes her so accessible. … You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I really actually do think it's .. that she is so accessible because she makes it so easy for us to be the heroine. I do, you know, just as a reader, as a person who reads Jane Austen, for pleasure, it is easier to be transported by her work than lots of other things that I read that I would consider comparable.Plain Jane  And we won't give her more credit than would have been deserved. But it I think one thing that's interesting as we talk about … the experience of reading is that it might have been unconscious. 5here are a lot of things that can be unconsciously happening. … But either way, it's interesting. Do you have anything else to add that we haven't covered? Danielle Christmas I don't have anything else to add, It's such a pleasure. These were great questions. I hope that it is entertaining and fruitful for listeners. That too on my epitaph: “She was entertaining and taught us stuff”!Plain Jane  You are entertaining, and you have taught us stuff, Danielle Christmas! Thank you so much for joining us on the Austen Connection.And thank YOU, Austen Connection readers, listeners, subscribers, engagers.As always, if you liked this conversation, or think of anyone else who would find it interesting and, as Danielle Christmas says, “fruitful” - please share it!You can also sign up for the Austen Connection, if you haven't already, to get these conversations delivered right ot your Inbox.Here are some awesome links to the things Danielle Christmas talked about in this conversation. Keep reading, and let us know your thoughts. Cool Stuff/Links:The current issue of JASNA's Persuasions Online:  http://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/volume-41-no-2/editors/Jane Austen & Co.'s discussion series “Race and the Regency” - it's awesome: https://www.janeaustensummer.org/raceandtheregencyMore on Jane Austen & Co: https://www.janeaustenandco.org/NYT on Chawton House Museum and Black Lives Matter:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/world/europe/jane-austen-slavery-museum.htmlMore on Danielle Christmas:  https://englishcomplit.unc.edu/faculty-directory/danielle-christmas/ Get full access to The Austen Connection at austenconnection.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the forth episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Georgia from @gmayreads. In this episode, we discuss the character of Charlotte Lucas from Pride and Prejudice. Charlotte is a complex secondary character who has a very pragmatic view on relationship, she provides a differing approach to marriage to Elizabeth. Despite not marrying for love,  we will discuss how Charlotte is strong, resourceful and is ready to take action when it matters most. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Georgia? Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gmayreads/ Blog: https://thegeeword2.wixsite.com/blog Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Hello, dear friends!It's here! Episode One/Season One of the Austen Connection podcast. You can press play and listen or stream from any device, and it's also available (we hope) on Apple podcasts. Enjoy, and if you like it, share with your Janeite and bookish friends. Thank you for being here and joining this conversation! One of the most exciting things about Jane Austen is how her stories travel - across continents, across cultures, across time. Like her spiritual brother Shakespeare, her stories contain a universality and also a lot of fun of the sort that works like a passport across these boundaries - and perhaps no one else but Shakespeare comes so close to providing us with stories that connect - if you will - so strongly today. And one thing that a lot of us find exciting, as so many of us are questioning and exploring issues of race and inclusivity in all of our cultures - is how this author who is important to us is also important to so many of our sisters and brothers across continents and cultures. It's just downright exciting.So it's a thrill to share with you a conversation that I had with the author of a book that happens to be a favorite Jane Austen retelling of a lot of Janeites, and scholars, and readers alike: Soniah Kamal's Unmarriageable: A Novel.Unmarriageable tells the story of heroine Alysba, or Alys, Binat and the Binat sisters, who live in Pakistan, teach at an English school, and avoid getting married - that is until the arrogant, wealthy and handsome Darsee comes along and shakes things up. I think you know how this is going to go.  When I reached Kamal she was visiting Pakistan, the place of her birth. Growing up, she also spent time in England, Saudi Arabia and currently lives in Georgia. But in this conversation you could hear Pakistan - its streets and soundscapes - in the background. Kamal and I spoke about why Mansfield Park is her favorite novel, how religious communities that teach Purity, from conservative Islam to Evangelical Christianity, make ideal contemporary settings for Jane Austen's themes, and why she says that ever since she first read Pride and Prejudice at the age of 16 she's always known that Jane Austen was Pakistani. This is the first Austen Connection podcast episode - you can listen here and subscribe to the podcast on Apple. Meanwhile, if you prefer words to sounds, here are edited excerpts from our conversation. Enjoy! -------------------------------Plain Jane:Let me start with a really simple question: When did you first encounter the novels of Jane Austen? When and where and how have Austen and her stories shaped your life ever since?Soniah Kamal: I was first given Pride and Prejudice when I was, I think, around 12, 13, 14 ... by an aunt of mine. And what she gave me was, this was I believe, around the ‘70s. And she gave me a really beautiful red leather-bound copy with gold lettering on it. And I opened it up, and I read the first sentence, which is, you know, “It's a truth universally acknowledged …” etc, etc. And I promptly shut the book and said, “OK, I'm not reading that.” … And I remember thinking, “I don't know what this is, what I just read, I'm not reading this book.” And then I think I was 16 when I finally opened the novel, and I like to joke It must have been a rainy day. But I don't know why I opened it. I started to read it, and I read it cover to cover. And it was a quintessentially Pakistani novel. I mean …  it could have been set in Pakistan completely. I mean, Jane Austen didn't know she was Pakistani, and I actually started calling her Jane Khala in my mind - Khala means maternal aunt ... I just loved the novel. And I actually grew up in Saudi Arabia for a while and went to an international school there. And my library had books from the US and the UK … But the one thing that I never could find back then was a book written in English but set in Pakistan, and English is my first language. English is the official language of Pakistan, it became so in 1947, even though we know the origins of it are not that delightful. But reading Jane Austen at that [time] at 16 … what I started to do, in a lot of my reading was flipped settings and stuff. So like bonnets would turn into buttas, sandwiches would turn into scones and stuff. So when I read Austen at 16, it just seemed, you know, it didn't seem other … Which is why I say that it was a quintessentially Pakistani novel. My brain was already doing that, you know … So just seeing the dialogue, the scenarios, the characters, the concerns, the thematic material. And it's all very relevant to today. Plain JaneAnd that is what we do when we're reading novels. We're using our imaginations to recreate our own world, which is what's so powerful about it. So funny to think about a young Soniah Kamal reading that first sentence that we love, “It is a truth universally acknowledged …” I have some teens in my life, and they have emptied my shelves of Jane Austen, because I press Jane Austen on them. But the thing I'm very careful to say, and you're reminding me, as I always say, “She's sarcastic!” Soniah Kamal I think maybe that's what fascinated me, or at least definitely caught me was that … Yes, it's funny. But the humor is … sarcasm, you know, even the irony and sarcasm are closely related. And I think what I had sort of done to be able to survive myself in the society that I found myself living in, was sarcasm also. So Austen, she was just perfect for me. Her wit, her quips, her social insights. But it wasn't just that she had social insights. ... And she has such an astute understanding of characters, of people. She doesn't mock people; she mocks institutions. And her irony and sarcasm are her medium - of her humor … and I really, really related to that. I really love that. But she wasn't making fun of people. She was making fun of the institutions and the ideas that had given birth to these people. Plain JaneLet's tackle that. I mean, she's not just funny, not slapstick funny, as you say, right? She's wickedly funny because she's taking on these incredible institutions. And she's demanding to be listened to. … Soniah, you tackle a lot of themes in the first few pages of Unmarriageable - I could see that you were tackling so many of the themes that people don't actually associate with Austen: Things like you've just mentioned, like class oppression, gender oppression, hypocrisy of society, things that were not only annoying to women in the Regency era, and in Jane Austen's world, but are dangerous - and are still dangerous today. And really, it's all right there in Unmarriageable in the first few pages. So tell me about how conscious this was for you. Soniah Kamal It was very, very conscious. In fact, what I wanted to do with the first chapter was set up all the thematic material that I felt was in Austen, as well as in Unmarriageable. And Unmarriageable works on two levels. It's a completely stand-alone novel. So if you know nothing about Jane Austen or not coming from Pride and Prejudice, it's still a stand-alone novel in its own right. However, it's also an homage to Pride and Prejudice. I mean, it's a postcolonial parallel retelling, and parallel because it follows the original plot and all the characters are there. And it's a postcolonial retelling because I was trying to remap the linguistic history of British Empire. So this was very much a project for me, rather than just something fun that I thought I would do, you know. And I was very intimidated by what I was setting out to do. I don't know if there's any parallel retelling actually out. I haven't come across one -I think this may well be the first one. But because I was taking on British Empire and postcolonialism also, that was intimidating. I was very intimidated by what I was setting out to do. I don't know if there's any parallel retelling actually out. I haven't come across one -I think this may well be the first one. But because I was taking on British Empire and postcolonialism also, that was intimidating. So on these two levels, I had to satisfy two different groups of readers which are polar opposite - coming from Austen, and not knowing Austen at all. And what I brought for the Austen readers though, what I definitely wanted to do was put easter eggs throughout the the narrative, and they're actually nods to all of her six completed novels as well as Lady Susan. And the very first line, my opening for Unmarriageable is a nod to Pride and Prejudice. And those rewrites, those reimaginings, retellings of her iconic first sentence, continue in the first chapter. But also my favorite Austen novel is actually Mansfield Park. And I think the opening for Mansfield Park is fantastic because it just encapsulates what traditionally, and for centuries, women's lives actually were, which was the ring that your finger wore ended up determining your life and the life of your children, your opportunities, your privileges, and Austen depicts that. … A lot of people don't like Mansfield Park. Like when I say it's my favorite, sometimes I get very odd looks, like, “What's wrong with you?” ...Plain JaneYeah, I'm so with you. And that's the one that I tend to press on my teenagers because I say, “Look, this is about a group of young people stuck in a house together.”Soniah KamalYou know, yes. Interesting. It's so interesting, I've never really thought of it like that. …I mean, the beginning, the opening of Mansfield Park are three sisters. And because of who they end up married to - one of them, you know, lies about on the sofa all day long with her dog; the other one needs to suck up to the owner of the mansion; and the third one has to send her kids away because she can't afford their upbringing. And they've all grown up in the same environment. They're sisters; they've come from the same family; but look at what happened to their life, just by dint of who they ended up getting married to. I think the opening for Mansfield Park is fantastic because it just encapsulates what traditionally, and for centuries, women's lives actually were, which was the ring that your finger wore ended up determining your life and the life of your children, your opportunities, your privileges …And in a lot of traditional cultures, that is still the case. You know, and I'm coming from Pakistan where I see this - saw this then, see this today. And I think what I absolutely loved in [Mansfield Park], it was the first time that I had read a novel where family relationships - in Pride and Prejudice and Emma, etc. … are what Austen really picks apart .. the people visiting and … what is it “one and 20 families” and stuff. But in Mansfield Park, like you said, she keeps this group of people in the house. And what she picks apart are relatives and family relationships and what family means. I think I fell in love with that novel because it is by far one of the realest novels … the most honest novels I have still read about what it means to be and to belong to family. You know, just because .. people are your cousins, just because they're your mother, sisters… it doesn't mean anything. They can still be unkind and cruel. And I think Austen is so amazing for what she's done with Mansfield Park. Plain Jane…And you know everything you were saying Soniah, makes me realize I think a lot of people mistakenly sort of, you know … all of our feminist colleagues and friends, I think sometimes might have the question, “What's relevant about Jane Austen?” And I think maybe that's because with the [screen] adaptations, you think that these are novels about marriage. But really, it's about the precarity of women, and that marriage was the option. Marriage was so important for the reasons you're saying.Soniah KamalI mean, yeah, in Regency England and Austen's time, marriage was the only thing women of a certain class would do. I mean, if you came from the servant classes, you could perhaps gain employment as a cook as a maid, etc. But from Austen's own class, you couldn't do that, the only option you had was to become a governess … So you're very in-between; you were neither here nor there. And Austen doesn't seem to be too happy about that. So Regency England was harsh on women… Plain Jane … and harsh on Jane Austen!Soniah KamalRight but she chose those for herself insofar as she said no to Harris Bigg-Wither. … So it's really interesting to see that off the page [and] on the page. … I think that the worst thing per se was once you got married, any property you brought, your kids, everything - you yourself - belonged to your husband. You were their property. So … saying Yes to someone wasn't just a question of, “Oh, are we going to get along and have lovely strolls …”  It was, if you didn't get along with this person, or if he was cruel or horrible, you were in a bad position as a woman. And the fact is, as we know, with a lot of relationships, things don't stay static; people change. So women, the precariousness of a woman's position in her home, or in her husband's heart, or wherever the hell, in Regency England, was not a fun place to be at all. Because they had no power. They lacked complete agency per se.Plain Jane But the thing that I love, that you mentioned, [is] that Fanny and Eliza and Austen's characters are very astute, and I think that's really, really important in these characters - They're judging us. People are judging each other constantly. And the biggest, and harshest judges are Austen's leading ladies and leading men. They are the smartest people in the room. And you really capture this and I feel like, in a way, Austen, I feel like Pride and Prejudice upends Regency values. … And you have your characters [in Unmarriageable], Alys and Darsee, are the smartest people in the room. They're the judgiest two people in the room, and they judge each other. And there's always this opposition. But that's how in these precarious positions women survive, is by being excellent judges of character and of their situations, and also being honest. Do you find that? Soniah Kamal.... Well first, I think it's interesting that you said, you know about pre-judging and everything, because the thing is Pride and Prejudice is prejudice.  … When you break the word apart, it's pre-judge. ...You're pre-judging everyone. And that's exactly what Elizabeth does. But you know, I find, I think for me, Sense and Sensibility, Lucy Steele, the Steele sisters, but especially Lucy - I personally think out of all of her novels, Lucy is the most astute in many ways ...Plain Jane… and you're reminding me while I'm over simplifying it, in many ways, for brevity, really, there's so many nuances to her characters. Let me ask you a little bit about the characters in Unmarriageable. I love it that, you know, there's always this opposition between the leading man and the heroine that we know need to end up together. And so much suspense is created out of that. And there's so much opposition between them, but at the same time, the reader is allowed to see things that they might have in common. And all of this is in Unmarriageable as well. But it's interesting, what you choose to make Darsee and Alys understand about each other, is there's a sort of global citizenship, the fact that they've had this. And then they've had this postcolonial education .... Very English-first, in so many ways. And Darsee says something very interesting. He says, “We've both been educated on the ‘literature of others.'”What did you mean by having Darsee say this and having this as being the thing that the two-people-about-to-fall-in-love have in common?Soniah Kamal My own background came into my mind. I was like, “OK, you know, they're third culture kids, and they've grown up overseas. They've gone to international schools, and this is what they'll connect over.”And I think partly it wasn't just the ease of knowing this world because I come from it, but also because it was very important for me in the landscape of Unmarriageable. Because Unmarriageable is very much an East-West, East-and-West-come-together book. … You know, there's a line in one of Kipling's poems, where he says, you know, “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” I think in Unmarriageable they definitely do, and very purposefully, because of British Empire. In fact, one of my epigraphs is by Thomas Babington Macaulay ... from his 1835 speech to British Parliament in which he's recommending that English replace all the indigenous languages as the official language in Empire. And that is what ended up happening, and therefore English became the language of privilege, power, opportunity. So, because English became this major, important language, everyone aspired to learn it. The twist comes when, in 1947, British Empire left the Indian subcontinent and Pakistan and India became sovereign countries. Pakistan retained English and declared it as one of its official languages. So English is very much a Pakistani language. However, it happens to be one of the only languages, it's actually the only language I can speak fluently for the most part. …  And I did not know the origins of this language that was coming out of my mouth. I happened to come across Macauley's speech … doing some extra reading for myself. And it was really, it was really disturbing to see, to say the least, because as I say in my epigraph, what he wanted to do was create confused people who are brown in skin but white in sensibilities and basically create confusions ....Plain Jane Yes, and what you're saying - because I did read your epigraph as well, and I had a question for you - that must have been incredibly disturbing. And what he was talking about actually was education, right? You quote him as saying English is better worth knowing than Sanskrit or Arabic. So yeah, I think that's astounding and really needs to be pointed out - that this was creating, like you say, chaos, but also privilege - creating layers of privilege ... Soniah Kamal… Definitely. And we see that in contemporary Pakistan also, because one of the themes in Unmarriageable is the class divide between those who come from an English-fluent, English-language background with … what is considered proper accents … versus those who are not. But the thing is, reading that, reading [Macauley's] essay, reading the origins of this, it was, I mean, ...disturbing is an understatement. And I think for the longest time, I couldn't read that quote out loud without just tearing up. But the fact is that English is the official language in Pakistan, and I wanted to fuse the language that is mine and the culture that is mine. And really, a lot of Unmarriagable came from that desire. And actually a professor of mine at Seattle University called Unmarriageable Macauley's worst nightmare. And I don't know if there can ever be a compliment to top that. Because as British subjects, even postcolonial, you were supposed to look up to everything white and British. … And I guess I did flip the narrative on that one, which was the reason for writing it.Plain Jane And, you know, Darsee and Alys in Unmarriageable are big readers, and your novel is really a celebration of books. And it's a celebration of the English writers that you and Darsee will have grown up with, but also a celebration of Indian and Pakistani writers. As you mentioned to Callie Crossley on WGBH, you hear often that people are encountering and discovering Jane Austen through Unmarriageable and the first time somebody said, “Oh, I loved Unmarriageable, I'm going to check out Jane Austen,” you burst into tears!Soniah Kamal … This is where with empire and countries who have privilege and neocolonialism … what happens is that whereas empire and those of us who are brought up on British literature are aware of Austen and Hardy and Dickens, etc. Someone who wants to flip that will not necessarily, I mean, the general public in certain countries will not be aware of the Pakistani writers and stuff. And in fact, I think Darsee, that's what I think Darsee says at one point, which is … “Will there ever be someone doing that actually?” And that's where power structure comes into play. And that's where sort of pop culture and soft power and dominance, domination happens. And that's exactly what Macaulay meant when he meant “brown in skin, but white sensibilities,” which is that these people will grow up on everything British - British literature … Darsee saying “literature of others.” The fact is, I have grown up on British literature and it's very much mine too. But it was supposed to other me from myself. Because having been brought up in English I was not able to really read things set within the culture itself, which is why I had this burning desire to to read a piece of literature which I'd grown up with, within my own cultural paradigm. The fact is, I have grown up on British literature and it's very much mine too. But it was supposed to other me from myself.So all of this comes into play - just identity politics, and who gets to decide how they're going to change people's identities. All the novels and all the short stories that I've mentioned in Unmarriageable reflect the theme of Unmarriageable and the theme of identity. I think the one that encapsulates it the best for me is the Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko. I think Alys makes her students read her short story, “Lullaby.” “Lullaby” is about children who are taken from Native American tribes by white settlers who had come in and sent [them] to boarding schools, and they were not allowed to speak their tribal languages. They were not allowed to wear their native tribal dress. I believe they had to cut their hair. They did exactly what Macaulay tried to do, which is “brown in skin, but white in sensibility.”And Silko's story is so beautiful, because she talks about what happens when you strip away someone's native identity and try to make them other, and what you do to their souls. ...I wanted to do something which fused this language which is mine, within the culture. So I wanted to do something “light and bright and sparkling” with it. Even though it's very, very heavy, and can be very troubling.Plain Jane It's, it's everything. And, you know, I love that you say Jane Austen is mine and Jane Austen belongs to everyone. You mentioned that someone said to you, Sir Thomas Macaulay would roll over in his grave … or it would be his worst nightmare.  But you know, Jane Austen would have celebrated it and loved it. So, you know, we have Jane Austen's permission. Soniah KamalI hope so. I hope so. … I think she would have chuckled.Plain Jane What would you like the Janeite community to keep in mind to make … the discussions about Jane Austen more inclusive? What should people keep in mind when reading and having these conversations?Soniah Kamal I think it comes down to the readers being aware of the space that Austen is writing in, and what she's writing. And for me, [the books] have always, with their thematic content … been universal across time and centuries. And, just as a writer, she has a certain modern way of writing. You know, she doesn't, unlike Edith Wharton, or unlike Dickens, she doesn't … preach. And she doesn't go off into long pages of descriptions and stuff. She's a very modern when it comes to pacing ...Plain Jane Interesting, so I hear what you're saying - that there's so much universality to pick up and to explore.Soniah Kamal There is, which is why I think with Janeites and with the Austen communities … Austen has a lot to offer readers from all communities and … anyone can read her and find something of worth and merit. Plain JaneYou know, you have managed to write, with Unmarriageable - you called it a parallel retelling - a scene-by-scene retelling, which is fascinating. In some ways, that's a challenge, just to show you can do this scene by scene, even though we are in Pakistan, for this story. And we are, you know, in the early 2000s, I think for most of the story. So we can go across centuries and continents, and still do a scene-by-scene retelling with all the right characters, including Wickham… in Pride and Prejudice. But you also introduced some fascinating [contemporary] things. You introduced some body image concepts, lots of talk about premarital sex, abortions, and also colorism ...I would love to hear you talk about these contemporary themes and also your experiences that also go into this very, very close retelling.Soniah Kamal I always meant to do a retelling because for me, like I said, this was a postcolonial writing back to empire. Remapping empire and its legacy. … So a scene-by-scene retelling is is very difficult because contemporary Pakistan is definitely not Regency England. And anyone who says that does not know what they're talking about as far as I'm concerned. Because in contemporary Pakistan women can get educated; … There are women across the board in all sorts of jobs; you can get a divorce, you're not stuck. You're literally not stuck, jobless. … Yes, there is a bit when it comes to morality, because Pakistan and Regency England still expect its women to be good. And you know, but I always think of it in terms of Evangelical Christianity, which also expected its women to be pure, you know ...Plain Jane Let me jump in there and say that I grew up in Evangelical Christianity, and … that is absolutely a contemporary parallel. And something relevant about Jane Austen's world. [And] it's relevant to my world in the 1980s and 1990s.Soniah Kamal Even today, even today! I mean, Pakistan very much has its own purity culture, where good girls are expected to, you know, uphold certain morals. And if you don't do that, you can get into big trouble. And so thematically, doing a parallel retelling for me was very easy, because the morality in which Austen's characters function is very much the morality even today in which Pakistani women are supposed to function. Or at least thrive the best. And if you don't, ... like me, if you're opinionated, if you talk back, if you ask things like I would ask my Dad, “Well, you know, what's wrong with smoking? If you can smoke? Why can't I? Why can guys go out at this time at night? And why can't I?” You know, just to give it just to give very teen-agey examples. So this material, I think, especially with more traditional societies and more religious societies, definitely, definitely resonates. —-Thank you for listening, friends! As always, talk back to us. Wherever you're reading from right now, how do Austen's stories connect with you? Let us know! Comment below, or write me at austenconnection@gmail.com, at @AustenConnect on Twitter, or austenconnection on Instagram. And if you're not yet part of the Austen Connection community, join us with a free subscription, to get every podcast episode and conversation dropped right into your inbox.If you liked this conversation, feel free to share it! Get full access to The Austen Connection at austenconnection.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the third episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Louise from @mrsesluxuries. In this episode, we will be taking a slightly different approach to the first 2 episodes, and we will be looking more closely at the screen. Myself and Louise will discuss the BBC's 2009 adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. Exploring how the mini-series showcases the memorable scenes such as the proposal, how the actors portray the characters and how close this all mirrors Austen's creation. We will also make comparison to other Emma adaptations. This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes.Where can you find Louise? Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrsesluxuries/ Blog: https://mrsesluxuries.co.uk Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

Welcome to the second episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Caily Bridgeland from @half_agony_half_hope. In this episode, we discuss Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility and focus on the character of Colonel Brandon. Brandon is often underrated as a hero, and we will be discussing why we think this is. We will explore the misconceptions about his age and personality, and how the film adaptations exacerbate these misconceptions. We will address how our opinions on Brandon have altered with time, and after listening to this episode, we hope you will join us in reconsidering Brandon as a desirable hero.This podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it! Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes. Where can you find Caily? Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/half_agony_half_hope/Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

In this episode we welcome special guest Bianca Hernandez to talk about current affairs in the Jane Austen fandom, including the push that dedicated Janeites are making to foster inclusion in our online community. Join us to hear about the barriers that BIPOC and other marginalized Janeites continue to encounter in Austen fan spaces, and why representation in Austen adapations is so important to growing a diverse Janeite community. Finally, learn about her upcoming Virtual Jane Con event on May 1-2, 2021!   You can find Bianca online at Bookhoarding on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and check out her new patreon!

Why do Austen’s novels inspire an almost religious fervour? --- “There’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight spot,” declares a character in the Kipling short story “The Janeites”, in which a group of soldiers in the trenches of World War I bond over their shared love of Austen. Today, Austen fandom approaches levels of devotion unrivalled by almost any other author. At the same time, her six novels are often dismissed as “chick lit”. In this episode, Simon agrees (with some reluctance) to finally read Pride and Prejudice - and is surprised by what he finds. Natasha speaks with Katrina Clifford, Dean of Academics at Robert Menzies College and a scholar of eighteenth-century literature, about why so many people over the last two centuries have been so obsessed with Austen. From Mormon or Amish adaptations to the handful of surviving prayers we have from Jane’s pen; from Austen’s male historical mega-fans (Churchill, Tolkien) to the BBC’s famous lake scene; this conversation has something for everyone - whether you’re a diehard Janeite, or need a bit of convincing to give Austen a go.

Hi Janeite and welcome to the What the Austen? podcastI'm your host Izzy and every very month I will be joined by a guest and fellow Janeite as we discuss Jane Austen's work we will be exploring her much loved novels and her timeless characters from the dreamy, the villanous and the slightly strange. I hope you will stick around and join the Janeites tribe as we have the best time discussing our much loved novels. Head over to instagram @whattheaustnen for all the latest updates and for more Jane Austen themed content. Support the show

Welcome to the first episode of the What the Austen? podcast! I'm your host Izzy, and I am joined by my friend and fellow Janeite Ellis Naylor from @historan_ellis. In this episode, we discuss Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, in particular the relationship between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. We explore how their relationship develops and the reflectiveness of the novel. We also throw in the occasional fun adaption reference... remember the running scene in the 2007 film?! What was that all about! LOLThis podcast is about Janeites coming together, discussing Jane Austen's work, and having a few laughs along the way. We really enjoyed making this episode and we hope you like it. Please follow and subscribe to keep up with all the upcoming episodes. Where can you find Ellis? Historian Ellis Blog: https://historianellis.wordpress.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historian_ellis/ Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/HistorianEllis?ref=ss_profileBuzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEAudible | 30 day free trial Izzy's recommendation: The Jane Austen Collection: An Audible Original Drama Support the show

[Warning] This episode contains explicit language and explicit themes. Listener discretion is advised. Jane Austen is without a doubt not only one of the greatest female authors of all time nor English authors of all time by rightfully so ONE of the greatest authors of all time. Her six books are the material of legend and have brought countless hours of historical analysis and pleasure to generations of readers. But are all her books the same? Danny, as someone who has now read all of her work and numerous biographies, would say no. Today's review is bringing light to Jane's most controversial novels. Packed with themes and episodes of religion, slavery, female rights - such as marriage - Jane's extravagant writing shines a focused magnifying glass on her own society and the problems facing the English culture at the dawn of the 19th century. So what does Danny think of the novel that has Janeites split? What does the Tsar thing of the interwoven themes? Find out by listening to this laughable conversation between to classic enthusiasts! ~Follow all the Legionaries on Twitter~ Danny: twitter.com/legionsarchive The Tsar: twitter.com/TsarAlexander6 Allen: twitter.com/blkydpease Spangar: twitter.com/LSFspangar ~Credits~ Original "The Broken Shelf" symbol created and published by Danny Archive. New "The Broken Shelf" symbol created by CMart Graphics - follow IG @cmartgraphics Music - "Roast Beef Of Old England" Artist - The U.S. Marine Corps Band Provided free from YouTube Audio Library Podcast edited by Danny Archive using Audacity. Download Audacity here: https://www.audacityteam.org/ This podcast is fair use under U.S. copyright law because it is (1) transformative in nature, the audio is a journalistic commentary on popular media (2) uses no more of the original work than necessary for the podcast's purpose, the claimed duration is an edited clip for rhetoric, and (3) does not compete with the original work and could have no negative affect on its market. DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the materials (music/artworks). All rights belong to the original artists. If you are the content owner and want to remove it, please contact me at legionssoulfood@gmail.com. Thank you! ~Do Us A Favor~ Hey! At the time of publishing episode eighty of The Broken Shelf, the podcast became available on TuneIn, Stitcher, Google Play, and iTunes. That said, if you downloaded the podcast via anything else other than Sound Cloud, maybe check out our Sound Cloud, give us a follow, and listen to a few more of our other tracks. Sound Cloud was there from the beginning for us and no matter what the others provide it was and is our host. Thanks! Sound Cloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-377177156

Please join us for an interview with debut author Natalie Jenner, whose delightful book THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY was released in May 2020 from St. Martin's Press (NA) and Orion (UK). The book follows a group of unlikely Janeites in postwar England who come together to save Chawton cottage, and wind up saving themselves instead (through reading Jane, of course!). We discuss Natalie's personal relationship with Austen, her connection to Chawton, and what inspired her to create her story and characters. We also delve into some fascinating insights about Austen's work that are woven into the book. As a meditation on what Austen can mean to us through difficult times, The Jane Austen Society is the perfect book for First Impressions listeners, especially those ready to experiment with reading Austen-related fiction. SPOILER NOTE: Although we attempt to avoid major spoilers in this podcast, we do discuss the book's characters and relationships in depth. If you like to be completely unaware of these details when you begin a new book, we recommend only listening to the first 15 minutes or so of this podcast!

Vi kommer ut som aspirerande Janeites efter att ha läst Jane Austens klassiker Stolthet och fördom. Romanen överraskade oss då den visade sig vara så mycket mer än en romantisk bok – den är en skarp och intelligent skildring av en kvinnas liv på 1700-talet.

Hello dear First Impressions fans! We're back with the second part of our discussion of Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe. This time, our discussion focuses on the founders of JASNA and the fascinating history of the organization. After wrapping up our remarks on the book, Maggie and Kristin share their views and expectations about their upcoming trip to Williamsburg - because if adventures will not befall these 30-something women in their own villages, they must seek them abroad!

Join us, listeners, for part one of our discussion of Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom, authored by journalist Deborah Yaffe. As a "a warm and witty look at the passionate, thriving world of Austen fandom," this book satisfied our curiosity about famous Janeites, centered our understanding of our fabulous fandom, and gave us plenty of context for our own Austen-love. The book contains stories from fans whose lives were touched and irreparably changed by their relationship with Austen, and your First Impressions podcasters can certainly relate. [Content warning: Mental illness] Options for purchasing the book can be found on the author's website: http://www.deborahyaffe.com/buy-share-the-book/4572595698

Om het leven van Jane Austen te vieren, ondernemen de 2 grote ‘Janeites’, auteur Kristien Hemmerechts en journalist Flip Feyten, een echte Austen-pelgrimage naar Engeland.

Om het leven van Jane Austen te vieren, ondernemen de 2 grote ‘Janeites’, auteur Kristien Hemmerechts en journalist Flip Feyten, een echte Austen-pelgrimage naar Engeland.

Om het leven van Jane Austen te vieren, ondernemen de 2 grote ‘Janeites’, auteur Kristien Hemmerechts en journalist Flip Feyten, een echte Austen-pelgrimage naar Engeland.

Om het leven van Jane Austen te vieren, ondernemen de 2 grote ‘Janeites’, auteur Kristien Hemmerechts en journalist Flip Feyten, een echte Austen-pelgrimage naar Engeland.

Om het leven van Jane Austen te vieren, ondernemen de 2 grote ‘Janeites’, auteur Kristien Hemmerechts en journalist Flip Feyten, een echte Austen-pelgrimage naar Engeland.

Deborah Yaffe talks about “Among the Janeites,” and Robert Ferguson discusses “Scandinavians: In Search of the Soul of the North.”

While Jeff is on vacation, Rebecca and special guest host Ann Kingman from Books On the Nightstand discuss Ron Burgundy's memoir, the top-earning authors of 2013, libraries on (bicycle) wheels, and more. This week's episode is sponsored by Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffee and Panorama City by Antoine Wilson.

Rebecca and Jeff talk about movie versions of THE GIVER, bookstores that smell like chocolate, Borders bookstore lives on in Singapore, the rise of audiobooks, and the origin of the Playboy interview. This episode is sponsored by Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe.

The Jane Austen Book Club (Putnam) Karen Joy Fowler's comic romance is filled with sly references to Jane Austen's novels. Is Fowler paying homage or challenging Jane with this look at contemporary attitudes toward love and sex among a group of Janeites?