Podcast appearances and mentions of Lady Susan

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My colleague Oliver Traldi recently published an essay called ‘Jane Austen's Virtuous Liberalism'. It's a very nice discussion of the ways in which Austen understand the challenges of character formation.Virtue, as Austen sees it, faces two tough challenges. First, people whose characters are not yet formed must see how to be virtuous rather than vicious. Then, the virtuous must somehow find a way to succeed in their struggles against the vicious without adopting vicious means.In this episode, Oliver and I discussed Austen's ideas of virtue, what that has to do with liberalism, the relationship between philosophy and literature more broadly, as well as poetry and ideas about the Great Books. We also talked about the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice. Yes, we both liked it. Here is why Oliver thinks Jane Austen is so popular among philosophers.TRALDI: And so I do think that even though she's not making arguments, she's not laying out philosophical theories, there is a level of precision in her thinking about virtue, which I do think is something that it took me a little aback.And I think it's part of why—one person who quote-tweeted my article was Daniel Kodsi, who's a friend of our colleague John Maier and his coauthor often. And he runs this magazine called The Philosophers' Magazine, which I had written before. And Daniel quote-tweeted my article with something like, “Add Oliver to the list of all the philosophers who love Austen.”OLIVER: And it's a long list.TRALDI: And I think it's a long list. And I do think this precision is part of it that she does, that it is—again, it's not like a philosophy journal article, but it is an intellectual sophistication that is often not present in novelists that we really appreciate.And here is an extract about Austen, Smith, and the wonderfully fertile period at the end of the eighteen century.TRALDI: But yes, I think it's obvious—without knowing the background, I'm sure there are scholarly questions about, how much Smith did Austen read? And they're both 250th—a lot was happening in 1775 and 1776.OLIVER: Those were great years. Those were the good old days.TRALDI: They were great years. In the great books syllabus, you get to the end of the 1700s and suddenly there's this—you have Smith, you have Kant, you have the American Revolution, you have the French Revolution, you have Burke. Rousseau is right before, Montesquieu is right before. I mean, it was a real—OLIVER: It's a great time.TRALDI: It was a great time. A lot was being done. And obviously, you know, I love the 1800s. I love the Romantics. But you could teach a whole great books course from 1750 to 1800, probably.OLIVER: You've also got all the dictionaries and all that kind of work going on as well. It's a very, very fertile—explorations.TRALDI: Yes, yes. There's all sorts of—yes, it was an amazing time.OLIVER: So did you, having read these two, Austen and Smith, close together—TRALDI: Yes, and I should say that my reading of Austen was much more careful than my reading of Smith.OLIVER: Sure, but you wrote this before you read Smith.TRALDI: Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Or at least you fully conceived it. Do you see a lot of Smith in Austen?TRALDI: “A lot” might be—This was my favourite bit.TRALDI: Yes. But this is one of the great—I know we talked about this, but it's one of the great—you see this in Smith, you see this in Austen—commerce has its own virtues, and they are very traditional virtues. You have to be trustworthy. You have to be pleasant. You can't really be wholly self-interested in every moment because people have to be willing to deal with you given your—I mean, think about Yelp reviews or even just word of mouth. “Oh, that person screwed me over.”OLIVER: There's a discussion in one of Hayek's papers, which is—it's a very Smithian point he makes about, the nature of the knowledge problem means that it's not so much that I'm trying to get information about the thing you're trying to sell me, but I'm really trying to get information about you and whether you are someone I should be buying from. Which is exactly the project that the novelists and Smith—there's a sort of period between Smith and the early novelists, running through Austen to George Eliot, when they're all working on that problem together.TRALDI: Yes. I do think in Austen, it's often—the real puzzle is, how do you make out somebody else's character?OLIVER: Exactly.TRALDI: This is a phrase that Lizzy Bennet does use with regard to Darcy. And how do we actually figure out who the trustworthy and untrustworthy people are?OLIVER: And if you're too philosophical about that, in the sort of analytic sense, I think you can end up not paying enough attention to the particulars of that question.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Because when you actually try and do it, it's really, really hard.TRALDI: Yes. And I think this is the sort of—reading Austen, you get a sense of—and there are very few philosophy papers on things like this. Reading Austen, you get a sense of, what sorts of details in a normal life are the ones that I can extract information from to make out somebody else's character?Oliver is an analytical, political philosopher. You can find out more about his work here. Here he is on Twitter. His Substack is orting. You can watch the episode on YouTube here.TranscriptHENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to Oliver Traldi. Oliver is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Toledo in Ohio. He is my colleague on the Emerging Scholars Program at the Mercatus Center, and he's written a book about political beliefs as well as many other articles for magazines, online.He's got a Substack. He's maybe the most prominent political and epistemological young philosopher of his generation. [laughter] But most importantly for us, he is interested in Jane Austen and the idea of virtue. Oliver, welcome.OLIVER TRALDI: Thank you so much for having me.Reading Austen as a PhilosopherOLIVER: Let's just start—before we get to this article you've written, tell me about being a philosopher but reading Jane Austen, because she's often read and commented on by people who are not philosophers or who are only philosophers by acquaintance or whatever.TRALDI: Right.OLIVER: Is it different reading as a philosopher, do you think?TRALDI: I think yes and no. One thing as a philosopher, there are—contemporary philosophy, we have very exacting standards of rigor and clarity. And when we look for a theory, we want something that's been improved by hundreds of people and thousands of journal articles.And so, if you were to simply extract a theory of virtue from a novel and say, “Does this—is this the end-all, be-all of moral thinking?” obviously you're going to be disappointed. So I think as a philosopher, you have to look for other types of things, other types of sensitivities rather than logical sensitivity.You have to say, how sensitive is the author to the different types of situations where people's virtue can be exhibited or challenged? Or how sensitive is the author to the different types of pressures that a character's convictions can be put under, or the different sorts of compromises that they might have to make, or the different sorts of people who might not be virtuous who they might have to interact with and sort of, you know, contract with or avoid? And what are going to be the impacts of different kinds of choices in those situations?So the novelists, I think, tend—if they do it well, a novelist who's interested in morality will understand living morally probably better than a philosopher, while maybe not understanding, say, arguments about whether morality supervenes on reality or vice versa, or what grounds morality, or different theories of meta-ethics or whatever.OLIVER: I mean, there are obviously some novelists who do have a better appreciation of those things than others, we should say.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's absolutely true. And as I wrote in my article, I do think Austen in particular had an appreciation for this issue that you might call moral disarming or unilateral disarming. You know, does the moral person put themselves at a disadvantage relative to the immoral person? And then how do we actually help—how does morality survive?So that's a kind of philosophical question, but I tend to think—I taught last year—I think we've talked about this a bit. I taught in a great books program at Tulsa.OLIVER: This is the Jennifer Frey program.TRALDI: This is the ill-fated Jennifer Frey program. Jennifer—I don't know if you've met her, but she's an incredibly charismatic person. But somehow the program, despite being enormously successful, did not survive. You know, I was there for a year, and they decided that was long enough.OLIVER: [laughs] You don't think your arrival was the—TRALDI: No, no. I hope not. I most certainly hope not.OLIVER: No. General problems of higher education prevailed. Yes.TRALDI: Yes, many, many problems of higher education these days. But yes, so I think—what was I saying?OLIVER: Well, I think we're getting to this question of, you are not just a philosopher; you teach the great books.TRALDI: Right, exactly. The great books. That's where I was. Yes.Philosophy and the Great BooksOLIVER: So, one thing I'm interested in is that, you know, reading as a philosopher, you get a slightly different perspective on Austen. When you read other fiction, poetry, whatever, is there a benefit to you as a philosopher? Does it broaden you in some way?TRALDI: Yes. I think absolutely, it's broadening, but it's also focusing in a different way. You know, contemporary philosophy is often described or captured with the word epicycles. So what we mean when we say epicycles is, you have some major theory, which is supposed to answer some big question. And then your career as a philosopher—you're like three layers deep in the theory, in some sub-debate, and you're making some really fine-grained distinctions.And if you can make those distinctions successfully, you've had a really great career. But I think it's easy to forget, why are we doing—you know, what attracted us to philosophy? Why are we doing this to begin with?And the great novels, great books in general—one example I always use is the Book of Job. It doesn't really—it's not doing clear philosophy on the question of why do bad things happen to good people. But when you read it, you feel the question, why do bad things happen to good people? You get it, you know? You get why this is a question that people have worried about for thousands of years. You get why it calls out for an answer.You know, there's a lot of truth out there. I'm looking at a set of coat hangers, and I could count the coat hangers. But if you were given the decision, would I rather have an answer to how many coat hangers are across the room from me, or why do bad things happen to good people? You'd probably go with the latter one. There's somehow some kind of depth or importance to that question, right?And I think there's—a great novelist can often generate some vividity to these questions. They can show how these questions are part of a good life, asking these questions, trying to have these questions answered—or a not-so-good life.Certainly in Austen there are a lot of characters who learn to be more virtuous. Probably Emma is the clearest example. But you might also think of Marianne Dashwood. Really—OLIVER: Lizzy Bennet.TRALDI: Lizzy Bennet really learns to be a better person. I actually think her character is rather close to Emma in a lot of ways.OLIVER: Yes, I think Emma's sort of a clear rewrite of Lizzy in some—yes, yes.TRALDI: Yes, and in some ways more evocative, actually. Yes. I mean, we can talk about all these books. But yes, I think there's these things, even—obviously qua literature, they have other virtues, right? Which much philosophy doesn't have; very little philosophy has the literary virtues.But the philosophical virtue that a lot of literature does have is you see, okay, these are the—this is what a life is like. This is what making choices is like. These are the big questions when you decide how to live your life and what kinds of choices to make.And I think Austen—these questions are all through Austen, even though nobody has to murder anybody in Austen. Nobody has to make decisions about war and peace or about, you know, civilizational decline or civilizational progress or anything like that. These people making these small choices in a lot of ways. But those are the lives that most of us lead. And when you read Austen, you think, “Oh, okay, there's a virtuous and a vicious way to lead this kind of rather normal life.”The Good LifeOLIVER: The question of what is a good life, or what is a good life in a commercial society, maybe, is the sort of bedrock of what she's doing.TRALDI: Yes, I think so. And that's why I think Austen—you know, Austen wasn't on our syllabus at Tulsa, but she was certainly discussed. And the “what is a good life” question—to me, it's the big question that a great books program for college students should always come back to.If I didn't know what else to talk about, I would just say, “Well, we just read this book.” You know, we read these old biographies of Charlemagne from, like, Einhard—Notker the Stammerer and Einhard, his adopted son or whatever. I don't remember. But this is like 800s. I'm sure you know more about this stuff than I do.And I wasn't quite sure what to do with them because what do I know about Charlemagne? So I just said, “Does it seem like Charlemagne lived a good life?” And you know, you're off to the races. And I think that's important at that age, because that's the age at which—OLIVER: For the undergraduates?TRALDI: Yes. I think that's the age at which you're starting to make your own big decisions about what sort of life to lead. And I think for me, looking back to myself at that age, I think one thing I did wrong—at Tulsa I was in some ways as much a student as a teacher. I was rereading a lot of this stuff for the first time in decades. And some of it I was reading for the first time. As I told you, I was reading a lot of Austen for the first time for this essay.OLIVER: Right, right.TRALDI: And yes, it was stuff that I had thought about at a theoretical level, you know, like what are the ins and outs of this theory or this philosophical move or something like that. But you feel the question a bit differently when you're like, “Okay, I'm an adult. I have to decide whether to live in this way or that way.”The world is open to you. You could convert to Thomism [laughter] like so many have tried to have me do, or you could become a merchant after reading The Wealth of Nations. Or you could become a revolutionary after reading Marx, or you could become a Nietzschean. You know, there are all these choices open to you.OLIVER: Please don't become a Nietzchean.TRALDI: No, no. That is, I'm a—OLIVER: Keep your children out of school if that's going to be the result. [laughs]TRALDI: Yes. I'm a committed moralist, so I cannot, but he is—he made a comeback, that's for sure.Philosophy and PoetryOLIVER: Now, there's this obviously sort of long-running question in philosophy about, what is the relationship between philosophy and poetry? Are they antagonists, or are they in some way, you know, twins, and each provides one half of what is needed for a complete way of understanding the world? Do you have a position on this?TRALDI: Yes, I mean, I think they're what the kids call twinning.OLIVER: Twinning? [laughs]TRALDI: I think they're twinning. No, no, I think that means something different. I think that means when you're wearing the same outfit or something like that.OLIVER: So we're almost twinning with our stripes—yes, I see.TRALDI: We're almost. We actually—we are stripes and blue. Yes, we're closer than I would've expected.I would say closer to twins. There are a lot of claims that philosophy is at odds somehow with this or that. There's also this—certain people will say, “Well, ever since Socrates, philosophy has been at odds with politics.” And a big part of philosophy is, how do you survive? Well, I don't know. Nobody's trying to kill me. I think of myself as a decently committed philosopher.OLIVER: It seems to me this changed fundamentally in the Enlightenment and with the Romantics, and they see it all much more joined up. It's a sort of ancient-and-modern dynamic.TRALDI: Yes, there may be an ancient-and-modern distinction there. But yes, for me I don't see any kind of contradiction. Now, there are—and I think this comes out of what I said before—philosophical attempts to understand poetry. And certain kinds of literary and aesthetic devices do sometimes fall a little flat.The philosophical literature on metaphor, for instance—I think some theories of metaphor really don't get why people use metaphors. [laughter] So one of the most important theories of metaphor is that they're all just false, that it's like everybody who uses a metaphor is lying. This isn't the full theory. There are bells and whistles added.OLIVER: Sure, sure.TRALDI: But yes, so I think there's no contradiction. But at the same time, they are different modes in some ways, and people who do the one are often trying to do something different than the other.I do think that the desire for rigor and precision and clarity that philosophers have can be a little maddening to nonphilosophers, who see the pull of philosophical questions like, “What sort of life I should lead?” and then see, what do philosophers actually do?And we're doing all this modal logic and all these truth tables and all this very technical stuff that looks like math. And they say, “That can't possibly be the right way to think about how to live.” And it's true that there are these studies of—that suggest ethicists aren't actually very good people and things like that, although you have to wonder what is the background ethical theory that went into evaluating them.So yes, I don't think there's really a contradiction between philosophy and anything else. But certainly, there was a point in my life where I always come back to trying to write poetry and do poorly and then stop. But it was always something where I would say, “Okay, if I'm doing philosophy in the afternoon, I better wait till the evening to write poetry.” You have to sort of reboot and get into a different mode.OLIVER: Iris Murdoch used to write philosophy in the morning and novels in the afternoon. That kind of thing.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's very sensible.OLIVER: And she was upstairs for the one and downstairs for the other.TRALDI: Yes. That's even better, you know?Favorite PoetsOLIVER: Which poets do you like?TRALDI: Geez, I guess for an American, I like Wallace Stevens. I wasn't expecting this question. For a Brit, you know, I actually like Philip Larkin a lot.OLIVER: Oh, yes?TRALDI: I know—what is the opinion of Larkin? Is he considered—OLIVER: Very high.TRALDI: Very high? Okay.OLIVER: Some—there are some dissenters, but basically he's the guy.TRALDI: He's the guy, okay. Yes.OLIVER: Twentieth-century English poetry is like Auden, Larkin, Betjeman.TRALDI: Yes, Auden is—actually, my friend Jane Cooper just wrote something about Auden.OLIVER: Yes, Jane is excellent.TRALDI: Yes, Jane is really great.OLIVER: That was in the New Statesman if you want to look it up.TRALDI: That was in the New Statesman. Yes, yes, yes. But Auden, I don't know quite as well.I mean, poetry is—I think it's interesting the way that we receive poetry now. I think you were talking about this a few days ago, about things like poems appearing as inspirational quotes on social media or something like that, and whoever is the most quotable. And you felt like maybe Dostoevsky is very quotable.OLIVER: Dostoevsky has a sort of screenshot quality.TRALDI: Yes, yes.OLIVER: As does Martin Amis.TRALDI: Yes. So I—OLIVER: Whereas Philip Larkin in a funny way—you know, he has very short poems. You can get the whole poem on Twitter. Like, Robert Frost has that. But something like “The Whitsun Weddings,” it's quite hard to just take three lines out. The whole thing works as a—and that, so that poem gets less—TRALDI: Yes. Which is what you would expect from a good poem, really, that it would form a kind of whole.OLIVER: Exactly. If it's a three-page ode, it should have a continuous quality.TRALDI: Yes, it should have a kind of internal structure. Yes.OLIVER: There are some one-line things and—but I think it's notable that a poet like Wordsworth doesn't seem to get a lot of social media play. And I think probably that's one reason.TRALDI: So yes, I think Larkin is somebody who, I did see some shorter references to him, and I thought I'd better just go and look up a ton of poems by this guy. And Stevens was the same way.Death and Philip LarkinOLIVER: So, which Larkin do you like?TRALDI: You're really putting me on the spot here. [laughter] It has been a little while.OLIVER: I lied to you and said it would be about Jane Austen.TRALDI: Yes, now I'm completely screwed. Well, he has a bunch about death. He has one where death is a ship following you. And he has one where death is, like, a fruit that gets picked or something.OLIVER: Apple?TRALDI: Might be an apple.OLIVER: He decides not to throw the apple.TRALDI: There's one with sweetbreads in it. And now I'm really—OLIVER: The ship one, “Next, Please”—that's excellent.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: He sees the—it's like hearing the music coming, and then the ship.TRALDI: I forgot that that was the title. I forgot that that was the title.OLIVER: And then as the ship goes past, it leaves nothing in its wake. It's very sort of—very gloomy.TRALDI: It's very gloomy, yes. I think I read Larkin in a gloomy phase; it was like Larkin and Radiohead or something.OLIVER: But he's a good example of what you were saying before, that he won't think propositionally. He's logical in the sense that he's sort of orderly, and he goes from one thing to the next. But he's not being a philosopher.TRALDI: No, of course. Yes.OLIVER: But he's very preoccupied with the sorts of questions that philosophers are probing, but has a sort of very meaningful treatment of them.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: And I think in a way, the sharp response that you want from the reader in those questions, Larkin is better at provoking than someone like Bertrand Russell or some other contemporary of his.TRALDI: Yes, yes.OLIVER: Bertrand Russell's a bit earlier, but you know what I mean.TRALDI: No, I think that's exactly right. And I think that is why I'm a fan of the great books pedagogically and not—I don't know if Larkin will be called a great, you know, like, who knows? I don't really understand that designation, but tings like poetry and novels.OLIVER: The biggest dissenter was Harold Bloom, who said Philip Larkin's just a period piece. And he doesn't understand why everyone likes him.TRALDI: Oh, yes, well, I'm not on board with everything. Oh, I've also been—OLIVER: No, you're not very Bloomian.TRALDI: I'm not very Bloomian, I don't think.OLIVER: Either Allan or Harold.TRALDI: Yes. Well, I actually—this is very embarrassing, but I've actually never read The Closing of the American Mind, which I know is—OLIVER: But why should you? I'm not sure it's retained its—TRALDI: Well, it's certainly been received into my circle. But it is like a classic of anti-ideological—OLIVER: Sure. Have you read Adler, How to Read a Book, that kind of great books stuff?TRALDI: No. There's so many things that I haven't read. I mean, I'm just learning how to read. I learned how to read in Tulsa last year, [laughter] in Oklahoma, which is not where most people would go to learn how to read.Jane Austen and the Problem of MoralityOLIVER: So let's move to Jane Austen. Your thesis basically is, many moral theories face this problem that if I believe XYZ theory and you don't believe it, you can get the advantage of me. Because I'll always stick to my principles and you can just be a bad guy.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: So is morality screwed? This is what people say about liberalism. This is what you're arguing. And you think Jane Austen's got an answer to that?TRALDI: Yes, I think she has a kind of answer. And again, one decision I had to make while writing the essay was, am I going to go super—this is a completely philosophically rigorous and respectable answer? Or am I just going to kind of sketch it?OLIVER: Slum it in literary criticism? [laughter]TRALDI: Yes, I wouldn't put it quite that way, but—and I think I went for the latter, where I just wanted to kind of evoke the answer. And I think the answer has something to do with living in a large enough society where—and Austen I think is not the only person to give this answer. But you live in a large enough society where, when people see you acting well and somebody else acting poorly, the disadvantage that you have in that one interaction is outweighed by the advantages you have from the society that you gain from being seen to act well by many others.So one thing I didn't mention here, but a connection I made when I was first coming up with this idea, is that it's actually a lot like what Martin Luther King Jr. says about civil disobedience. So he says, you might think, if you're out there and the police are coming at you with bats, or the white supremacists are coming at you with bats or whatever, weapons or whatever, you might think, “I'm on the losing end of this interaction.”But actually what will happen is that this interaction will be seen by many others. And you, by keeping your calm, will be seen to be the virtuous one, and they, by being violent, will be seen to be the vicious ones. And this can only help your political cause. I'm probably abstracting some of the details of King's presentation.OLIVER: In a vulgar sense, this is the sort of “be the change you want to see” approach.TRALDI: Yes, but also, be the change you want other people to see. You know? Because that's how it gets saved from—and again, one of the ways in which this is not quite philosophically rigorous is because the philosopher can say, “Well, what about an example where nobody's going to see it? Or what about an example where the situation is set up that in doing the right thing, you're perceived to have done the wrong thing?” And you get back into tough problems. And that's why we have philosophy. You know, there's always going to be these puzzles.OLIVER: But we don't get the—I think this is what the novelists are helpful for. We don't get to set the conditions in our lives. You know, when you're doing a philosophical problem, you can just say, “Well, these are the conditions. What happens then?” And what Jane Austen is so good at is saying, “I'm going to take her and drop her in this house, and that's life. And she's just going to—she won't even know what the conditions are for a long time.” That's the novelist's preoccupation.TRALDI: Yes. Yes. It's interesting what you said about not even knowing what the conditions are. It's one thing I love, which is there in, I think, a lot of Austen—and it's done by a lot of my favorite novelists. I think Kazuo Ishiguro is really good at this. It's just novels where you see the characters' growing awareness of their circumstances and—OLIVER: Like in Klara and the Sun or something.TRALDI: Yes, or I think certainly in Never Let Me Go and in Remains of the Day, a lot of the action is in a situation where you understand what's going on better than the characters do.Clues and GamesTRALDI: And I think we talked about this the other day. In Austen, Emma, for example, is this sort of, like, halfway detective where she sees a lot of clues that could help her understand the nature of the life she's leading and the circumstances she's in, but she always misinterprets the clues. But on the other hand, it's not like she misses them entirely. She's kind of on the right track, and at least she's trying.OLIVER: And what I think Austen does so well in that book—I think it's her most important book—is that by putting us, without quite realizing it, with Emma's blinkers on, as it were, and only allowing our perspective to be her perspective, she makes us the detective.But whereas in a detective novel, you know, there's a funny little man and he is a detective, and he says, “Oh, there's a clue in this novel,” the read of—on the first read very often goes straight past what they must later realize to be a clue. And that is such a normal condition of life, that, “Oh, actually, that was one of the conditions, but you couldn't have known it. Sorry.” And you can only work it out in retrospect.TRALDI: Yes. In modern love, these are sometimes called red flags. [laughter] I think it's not quite a precise analogy, but yes, I think it's right. And I certainly—I had read Emma years ago and didn't really notice. As you say, on my first read, I didn't really notice, even having watched—I think it was the, what is it, the Kate Beckinsale version maybe, from ITV in like 1996 or something.It was really in reading it for this essay that I noticed that this feature that, starting on page 30 or 40 or so, there's a—and they're often in games. The clues are often in games. So very early on, Elton is playing some sort of poem game with Emma.OLIVER: The riddles, yes.TRALDI: The riddle game. And you know, Emma already misinterprets his riddles as being about Harriet rather than about her. But then there's also—the riddles also have some relation to things that happen much later.OLIVER: Then there's the anagram game at the end.TRALDI: There's the anagram game at the end. Yes, it's the—and I don't think there are many games like that in any of the other Austen.OLIVER: People play games, but we're not taken into them and have them narrated in that way.TRALDI: And they're not word games in general. There's card games and things like that. And you know, in Pride and Prejudice, Wickham has all these gambling debts and things like that.OLIVER: Yes.TRALDI: You know, in—I don't know if you know Whit Stillman, but for the same magazine a couple years ago I wrote about Whit Stillman, who's a sort of conservative filmmaker who's a huge Austen fan and brings in Austenian themes to a lot of his movies, but writes them about characters in the 1960s and '70s. And one of them was called The Last Days of Disco, for example, about—and some of the broader social themes he talks about are also there in Austen.So one thing that was just on the edges of my consciousness as I read through the novels for this essay was the question of the noble man versus the working man, which I think is very present in Austen and has something to do with her conception of virtue: that the virtuous person will be engaging in commerce in some way.OLIVER: Those moments of the noble and the virtuous man or whatever often take place in a shop, like the drapier in Emma or the jewelry shop in Sense and Sensibility.TRALDI: That's interesting. That's interesting.OLIVER: She's very careful to take us into a commercial situation and contrast.TRALDI: See, that is the sort of detail that I think a philosopher—I think we—the mere—the vibe of, “You're in a shop, and this means something.” I think this is something philosophers are—we can watch for the action; we can judge the characters' actions. But then there are these questions of atmosphere and milieu. And certain things happen in a shop; certain things happen at the seaside. In Persuasion there's an injury by the seaside.OLIVER: Yes. That's one of the most exciting scenes in Austen. Very dramatic.TRALDI: Yes, yes. I think actually Persuasion in some ways is quite different than her other books. It has a sort of—you know, in some ways it feels a little more like Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights at points. There's a little bit of a windblown, dark quality to it at times. It's a little bit bleaker. It's a little hard to explain why, but that's just a feeling that I had reading it that maybe had changed with some of the other literary tastes of the time.Artlessness in Austen's HeroinesOLIVER: Now, the quality that you focus on in the heroines, in this question of virtue defending itself against bad actors who break the rules, is artlessness.TRALDI: Yes. So this is a term Austen uses quite a bit, and almost always, she very much picks and chooses the characters who are going to receive this term. And I thought that this is like—it's not only her artless characters who face this question about how can morality survive, or how can virtue prevail, but I think they're the limit point.Like, if you really are unwilling to use—and I mentioned in the essay, when Darcy describes—I forget what; maybe it's him describing how he found Lydia and Wickham, or it's something to do with Wickham—he said, “I had to resort to arts.” So it must be, the “arts” back then means—one of the meanings of the term is dishonesty or subterfuge or something.OLIVER: Yes, if someone was artful, it could have—TRALDI: Yes, like the Artful Dodger.OLIVER: Exactly. Could have negative connotations for sure.TRALDI: Yes. And so the artless one, you know, they're missing something.So it's the question of, if you view—morality in a way means you're missing something, right? You've taken arts out of your arsenal. You've taken tools that could deal with certain situations, and you've just decided not to use them. So the question is, how can it be an advantage to have less tools?You know, we're here at Mercatus; the economists would tell you it's never advantageous to have fewer choices, right? There's no paradox of choice. It's never advantageous to have fewer choices. And so I think this is the—if morality is a kind of unilateral disarmament, artlessness is the clearest case of that.OLIVER: And you're seeing that in Fanny Price, Elinor—TRALDI: You see that in Fanny Price. You see that in Elinor. Harriet Smith is described as artless over and over again. And then there are these other characters who are described as artful, or other things that are mentioned as arts.I think Harriet, in a lot of ways, is the one who's most often described this way. And it's interesting because you think of Emma changing a lot in Emma, but Knightley actually shifts in his evaluation of Harriet, who he thought of as sort of an unserious person. And Knightley himself comes to recognize her artlessness as a kind of seriousness which makes her a good match, not ultimately for him, but for his dude, Robert.OLIVER: The farmer.TRALDI: The farmer, yes.OLIVER: He doesn't change his view of her social position, though.TRALDI: No, certainly not. But he does change his view of her character, basically. You know, her artlessness is not silliness. It has a sort of depth to it.And yes, certainly Fanny. In the Whit Stillman movie Metropolitan that's part of what set me on this, there's this whole discussion of the book Mansfield Park and this old Lionel Trilling essay about it where he says, how is it—there's this question about how modern people can even like Mansfield Park because we've sort of lost the notion of virtue being exciting or something.One of the most provocative lines to me in Austen was in Sense and Sensibility where it says that Elinor glories in Edward's integrity, which is an odd thing to glory in. You don't glory—nobody is on Instagram showing off their integrity, you know?OLIVER: It's like that René Gerard quote people like to pass around: “Everyone is on diet pills and nobody wants to be a saint.”TRALDI: I like that. That is very Instagrammable.OLIVER: Exactly. Exactly.TRALDI: That's very good, actually. I like that. Yes, so there's something provocative about the notion that virtue can be exciting, and in particular can be romantically exciting.The Importance of IntegrityOLIVER: Or even less than that. One thing I think is difficult for people interpreting Austen today is that virtue, whether it's exciting or romantically exciting, or the notion of integrity is of interest for its own sake.There's a lot of—you know, we have integrity as an organization. It's very important for me to have integrity as a professional. But there's not as much a sense of, just having integrity is the good life. We don't need to be complicated about this. That's just—you should just do that. And Austen's very firm on that all the way through.And criticism wants to pull her towards sometimes feminism, sometimes discussions of slavery, sometimes various other things. And she's just constantly sort of resisting that by saying, “I like integrity. I like good people. I don't think it's that hard.” It's a good line you've picked up on, I think.TRALDI: There's a character in The Wire who says, “A man's gotta have a code.” I think he's Omar, who murders the drug dealers and steals from them.OLIVER: I haven't seen it.TRALDI: So he says, “A man's gotta have a code.” And I think there is a—even in a character who in some ways is bad, we admire the integrity of having a code and sticking to it.There is this debate, I guess in moral philosophy, or at least on the outskirts of moral philosophy, about, “Well, if your code is wrong, maybe it's better not to stick to it.” I don't share that perspective. I think part of the good life is holding yourself to certain standards. And if those standards turn out to be wrong, the holding yourself is still of moral value, right? Not allowing yourself—OLIVER: It doesn't mean they're not adjustable.TRALDI: Yes, no, of course. If you decide the standards are wrong, and in Austen—OLIVER: It's sort of implicit in the idea of having standards that you will be honest and therefore accept when your standards need to be improved or whatever. Right?TRALDI: Yes, I think that's absolutely right. And in Austen we certainly see people shifting their standards. And I think one thing that I—of course, modern readers and watchers of Austen do not quite understand some of these things. But I think in Pride and Prejudice in particular, we're supposed to feel that Lizzy Bennet is quite hard on people and has to learn to improve herself in that way.OLIVER: We're delighted with her when she does that because we think it's sassy.TRALDI: Yes, exactly. If you go on YouTube, you can see all these, like, “Lizzy Bennet owning people's lives for 50 minutes,” these compilations of clips from the various movies or whatever. And she's obviously very, very clever.But she realizes—after coming to understand who Wickham is and feeling that she might not have another chance with Darcy, she comes to realize that she has had certain prejudices, which have made her blind to the realities of the world and blind to what might be her best options.So yes, I was saying I believe in integrity; that's all I was saying. And integrity obviously is adjustable, but I tend to think that it's better—even if the rule is wrong, it's better for the person who has it to hold themselves to it, rather than to adjust to try to get an advantage.And in philosophy, we have all sorts of terminology for these sorts of questions: “Are you an internalist or an externalist about reasons or about rules or whatever?” I think the more literary way to say it would just be that integrity is a virtue. And people should stick to their codes unless they see a good reason to change them.Austen and Adam SmithOLIVER: Now, you have recently been reading Adam Smith.TRALDI: Yes, I did read a lot of Adam Smith for this debate we had last week. Although I did a poor job because I had forgotten that the debate was about whether Smith was a philosopher or an economist. [laughter] I thought it was simply, is he a philosopher or not? So I put myself in the odd position of arguing that Adam Smith is not an economist.But yes, I think it's obvious—without knowing the background, I'm sure there are scholarly questions about, how much Smith did Austen read? And they're both 250th—a lot was happening in 1775 and 1776.OLIVER: Those were great years. Those were the good old days.TRALDI: They were great years. In the great books syllabus, you get to the end of the 1700s and suddenly there's this—you have Smith, you have Kant, you have the American Revolution, you have the French Revolution, you have Burke. Rousseau is right before, Montesquieu is right before. I mean, it was a real—OLIVER: It's a great time.TRALDI: It was a great time. A lot was being done. And obviously, you know, I love the 1800s. I love the Romantics. But you could teach a whole great books course from 1750 to 1800, probably.OLIVER: You've also got all the dictionaries and all that kind of work going on as well. It's a very, very fertile—explorations.TRALDI: Yes, yes. There's all sorts of—yes, it was an amazing time.OLIVER: So did you, having read these two, Austen and Smith, close together—TRALDI: Yes, and I should say that my reading of Austen was much more careful than my reading of Smith.OLIVER: Sure, but you wrote this before you read Smith.TRALDI: Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Or at least you fully conceived it. Do you see a lot of Smith in Austen?TRALDI: “A lot” might be—OLIVER: Primarily from Theory of Moral Sentiments.TRALDI: So I would say that the notion of sympathy as being fundamentally part of how you recognize a good person seems to me to be there in Austen. The characters are—OLIVER: And this is the thing about awareness of other people and learning from that awareness.TRALDI: Awareness of other people and learning from other people and feeling other people's emotions. One thing that is related to sympathy in an odd way—and I think actually Austen and Smith conceive of it a bit differently, but that is there for both of them, in particular in Sense and Sensibility—is this notion of self-control or self-command.OLIVER: Self command. Yes. Yes.The Importance of Self-CommandTRALDI: Now, Smith gives a really odd argument about self command, which is that if you don't have control over your emotions, you will end up feeling or expressing something that other people can't sympathize with. And this is bad because sympathy is good, or something like that. I actually think it's a rather confused argument.OLIVER: I think what he's saying is that if you display a lack of self-command, then no matter what you are feeling, people find it difficult to deal with that sort of uncontrolled behavior. It's not the particular expression of feeling; it's the fact that you are a little unstable or—TRALDI: Yes, I think that's right.OLIVER: —a bit extra.TRALDI: I think what Smith doesn't do is explain quite how that's bad. But what I think is that actually, in Sense and Sensibility, it's a little bit the reverse, where actually Elinor and their mother, they do sympathize with Marianne. They do feel what she's feeling after—who's the other, the w guy in Sense and Sensibility? They're all w's.OLIVER: Oh, Willoughby.TRALDI: Willoughby, right, right. Not Wickham, Willoughby. When Willoughby—OLIVER: You can just say “the cad.”TRALDI: The cad. There's always a cad. So when the cad leaves, Marianne has all these emotions, and you really feel them. And Marianne also has a lack of self-command when Willoughby is there. There's this whole episode, which I didn't quite make the most of but felt very important, where they go to the house of this woman. They just sort of barge into this house, Willoughby and Marianne.And this is really supposed to show something about the relationship. If you and your partner barge into somebody's house, it can't be a good relationship somehow because it's leading you into bad actions. That's my sense of what that episode is supposed to show from the highest possible remove.OLIVER: I think, yes, and I think there are several other instances of that: when they ride in the carriage together, unaccompanied.TRALDI: Right, right.OLIVER: And there's a sort of general consternation about this. And Marianne sort of says, “Oh, well, how can it be a problem?” And they—part of the consternation is, you're breaking the rules in a very flagrant way, but also that you are assuming that it's okay because you'll get married. And this assumption is a very big one.TRALDI: Yes. And obviously there is this assumption that—she doesn't recognize quite how—she thinks her position is much more secure than it actually is, which is how it turns out in the book. But I think we're supposed to think that even if she were right about Willoughby's affection, which in a sense, she—Willoughby—OLIVER: No. Even if they do get married, she's broken the rules in a way that—TRALDI: She's broken certain rules in a way that is—but I think what's different from Smith is, there is sympathy from her family even though she lacks self-command. But that is precisely—so it's sort of a different theory of why self-command is good. It's precisely because her emotional state is actually draining for her family.And then Elinor says—when she learns that Elinor has actually been going through something—OLIVER: The same.TRALDI: —very similar, and maybe even rougher, in this whole thing with Lucy Steele telling her about this, you know, blah, blah, blah.OLIVER: Which is a beautiful name—to steal. I mean, it's great.TRALDI: It's an amazing—honestly, in some ways Sense and Sensibility may have been my favorite. I think it's just lovely.OLIVER: If I just wanted to just read one for fun, that's what I go to. I do, yes.TRALDI: Yes. And there's a lot—none of these things are quite perfectly in there. But I think honestly, everything that's in the other novels has a little part to play in Sense and Sensibility. You know, I think if I were to recommend just one, if somebody was like, “I have time for just one,” I might recommend Sense and Sensibility.But in the end, Marianne says—again, it's one of these amazingly evocative lines. Elinor says, “You didn't act that badly. Do you compare your conduct with Willoughby's?” And she says, “No, I compare it with—Elinor, I compare it with your conduct. You have this self-command.”And it's precisely the fact—it's not—and I think this is why philosophers do like Austen, because it's not—it's still literary, but there is a precision to her moral evaluations. It's precisely the fact that Elinor knew that her family loved her and didn't want to burden—it's all quite conscious. She didn't want to burden her family with her emotions. But you actually see that Elinor has this family trait of having very strong sentiment, which Marianne does, and simply also has this virtue of self-command.And that is—there are film adaptations and TV adaptations that demonstrate self-command, but it's a very hard thing to film. It's something you feel inside. It's a very hard—the actors have to be very good for you to see—you see pieces of it in some of the adaptations of Persuasion and some of the adaptations of Sense and Sensibility, but self-command is very hard to find.Austen AdaptationsOLIVER: Which adaptations do you like the best?TRALDI: I'm forgetting—I often like the long ones that I think were for the British ITV. So I like the—I think Kate Beckinsale was in the Emma one. Although I think there was one of Persuasion, which was also quite good. I like the one of Northanger Abbey. I don't think it's that good, but it's kind of cute, which I think it's probably the cutest of her long novels.Whit Stillman did a very loose adaptation of Lady Susan, which is hilariously funny at times, and also has Kate Beckinsale and some other great actors in it.OLIVER: Did you see the new Persuasion on Netflix a couple of years ago?TRALDI: No. No.OLIVER: It has that—is it Dakota Johnson, the actress, who's famous for other non-Austenian—Fifty Shades of Grey or whatever.TRALDI: Yes, and isn't she one of the Avengers or something like that?OLIVER: Something like that. But everyone was very upset that it was this terrible adaptation.TRALDI: Oh, yes.OLIVER: Didn't—it sort of killed all of Austen's words. She looks at the camera; she drinks from the bottle. I actually thought it was quite fun. On the basis that all adaptations are bad—TRALDI: I think if you allow some looseness, it can be quite fun. So for example, the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, I think if you're just sort of like, “Well, this is just somebody who was inspired by Pride and Prejudice,” you can have a lot of fun with the movie.OLIVER: I think as an interpretation of the book, that film is quite bad.TRALDI: Oh, yes. I think it's absolutely missing the mark.OLIVER: But in terms of like, the countryside and the house and the geese and the food, it's fantastic.TRALDI: Oh, yes. It's lovely to look at.OLIVER: The dresses, right? The clothes are amazing.TRALDI: And a lot of the—and the cast is honestly like—OLIVER: Yes, it's great.TRALDI: The cast is really, really great. And the parts as they are—OLIVER: Rosamund Pike is maybe the best Jane on TV.TRALDI: She's terrific. And who's the one who plays Kitty?OLIVER: Yes.TRALDI: Who is in—and the father is the guy from The Hunger Games. I forget his name, but I think the father is excellent in that. But of course, it's not exactly the father from Austen.OLIVER: No, no, no.TRALDI: But as a movie itself—but yes, I like a lot of these longer TV versions.One odd thing—they make these choices. So there is some scholarly apparatus brought to bear on some of them. So I think maybe it's Persuasion that there were multiple versions of, and some of the adaptations use pieces from the unpublished version, which are interesting. And as I was reading it, I had to Google around a bit and figure out these things.Austen's Moral PrecisionTRALDI: I was going to say about Austen's moral precision, the other place where I think this comes in—and I wrote a bit about this in the essay—is near the end of Mansfield Park, when—the names are what I'm worst at—when Edmund, right, is finally disillusioned with—OLIVER: Mary.TRALDI: With Mary Crawford?OLIVER: Mm-hmm.TRALDI: It's because there was this affair. There's always a sibling or a cousin who makes some horrible mistake, you know? So there was this affair, and Mary Crawford can only criticize it by saying that they weren't very prudent, you know, in prudential terms. They took a big risk. They made a bad decision. You know, they really screwed themselves over.OLIVER: They could have made it work. Yes.TRALDI: Yes. And Edmund realizes that she lacks moral fervor because he thinks the appropriate criticism should be a moral one. And as a psychological matter, it shouldn't even enter your head, I think is the idea. I'm extrapolating a bit, but if you see somebody acting this badly, to then say, “Well, geez, you're doing something that isn't in your interest”—for that to be your first thought indicates that your priorities are highly misplaced in a way that, to him, is quite unattractive.And this also struck me as a moment of—this is something we philosophers talk about. What is the distinction between prudence and morality? They both tell you what you should do, in some sense, but there's different—the shoulds have different forces, right? So Edmund has a certain moral precision and sensitivity which, actually, Fanny is basically the only person he knows—not that everybody in the house is a bad person; his father is a decent guy, and one of the aunts is okay, I think.But yes, there's a real sophistication to this evaluation. And it's funny to me that she actually used this as the—I mean, I suspect that even at the time there were readers who were just like, “Wait, I really don't get what the nature of Edmund's problem is here,” because it's not like Mary—Mary's not like, “Oh, yes, I support infidelity.” You know? She's not like— it's if you blinked, you might miss it, the mistake that Mary has made.And so I do think that even though she's not making arguments, she's not laying out philosophical theories, there is a level of precision in her thinking about virtue, which I do think is something that it took me a little aback.And I think it's part of why—one person who quote-tweeted my article was Daniel Kodsi, who's a friend of our colleague John Maier and his coauthor often. And he runs this magazine called The Philosophers' Magazine, which I had written before. And Daniel quote-tweeted my article with something like, “Add Oliver to the list of all the philosophers who love Austen.”OLIVER: And it's a long list.TRALDI: And I think it's a long list. And I do think this precision is part of it that she does, that it is—again, it's not like a philosophy journal article, but it is an intellectual sophistication that is often not present in novelists that we really appreciate.Every Word MattersOLIVER: I mean, one way people talk about the great books is to say that every word matters. And a lot of novelists will say that about their own. Well, you know, Elizabeth Bowen used to say, “What you're doing is to make everything count.” Austen is one of the examples where it's actually true. Every word is being used carefully.TRALDI: Yes. It's funny, this bears on another Twitter argument I had recently about this phrase logographic necessity. Basically, every word in a great book is there for a reason. I think that's right. Although you have to be careful about—if you were to say, “Well, every word in Plato is there for a reason, so you can't really say he's wrong about every—” you would be kind of abandoning the philosophical mission.OLIVER: I mean it in the sense of what you might call the artistic or structural integrity of the book. Not everything has to tell in the meaning sense. But it all holds as a unit for some—TRALDI: Yes. I think everything is there—there is what we could call an internal reason for everything to be there. Everything is there to hold together—OLIVER: Like the making of a piece of furniture or something.TRALDI: And I think you hear—I think this is one thing that—and not all classical music, but I think it's one thing that distinguishes classical music even from very good contemporary pop music or jazz or rock music, is that you have this sense of, “Yes, every note I hear basically is holding up a larger structure of some sort.”OLIVER: Yes. And Jane Austen is very Mozart in that way.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's right. Yes.Austen's Place in Great Books ProgramsOLIVER: So should Jane Austen have a bigger place on great books programs, based on all these things you've said about her?TRALDI: Yes, this is—so, there was actually a debate—I did not write the piece in response to this debate, but this is—OLIVER: Tanner Greer.TRALDI: Yes, there was—Tanner Greer weighed in on this, and my friend Circe. I think—OLIVER: I think they're just desperately wrong.TRALDI: You think they don't—that she—OLIVER: I think Emma is obviously a book that should be on one of these syllabuses. Maybe Sense and Sensibility.TRALDI: Yes. I think the ones I would consider are Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park. I do think they're actually longer than I realized, which is always—I mean, there are these very practical concerns with putting together a syllabus.OLIVER: Sure, sure. Although I want to ask you about that, because my response to a lot of these debates, which is maybe just because of where I studied, but just make them read more. And if they don't do the reading, that's their, you know—TRALDI: That's true. Well, I don't want to get into this too much. We already make them read a lot compared to—so for example, a year ago, I had my students read two novels in a week, which is more than most courses make college students read.OLIVER: But that's by no means unreasonable.TRALDI: No, no, of course, of course.OLIVER: You know.TRALDI: Well, exigencies of the teenage mind aside—OLIVER: Because I often think this, when people debate how things should be taught and why it's so important to keep these programs, and they'll talk about the importance of writing essays. And then it turns out the students maybe write one essay a semester. And I sort of think, well, who cares? All this rhetoric for one essay.TRALDI: Yes. I don't know if I'm really ever going to assign essays again. It just is—the age of AI is upon us.OLIVER: Sure. But you see what I mean.TRALDI: No, yes, I know exactly what you mean. And I do think reading a lot is the main part of—and certainly, you know, when I read all seven of these in two weeks, that's much more reading than I normally do, as well, to write this essay.OLIVER: But you didn't have to lie on the sofa afterwards with a cold compress. You were fine.TRALDI: In a way it was a really good two weeks. If you get to read—I mean, this is why we have good lives, right? If you get to read Jane Austen and you call that work, it's a nice life.OLIVER: So yes, will you be putting Emma on your program?TRALDI: I would definitely consider Emma. I would definitely consider Sense and Sensibility. I would consider Mansfield Park. I think these are the ones that have—the moral element is very prominent. But it's obviously there in all of her books.OLIVER: You can have a really good moral discussion about Mansfield Park, which is a bigger, broader thing than Pride and Prejudice, for example.TRALDI: Yes, I think so. I would definitely consider—in the 1800s there were—obviously the British novel of the 1800s was a big deal, and there's—OLIVER: [laughs] We did quite well, yes.TRALDI: You all did quite well. So the ones we did at Tulsa—we had Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray. And then we had one Irish, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And I don't think anybody—if you replaced one of those with Emma or Mansfield Park, I don't think anybody would say, “Oh, you made a horrible call.”OLIVER: I think Tanner's point was that you simply don't have that many slots for an English novel that deals with these sorts of ideas, and that it should obviously be Middlemarch because that is the bigger novel. It's about bigger questions of society. It's about the whole—it's got more greatness in it, whereas Austen is sort of more about the individual.TRALDI: So I do think that this question of greatness—I think there are some people who read Austen and they think, “Well, this is—obviously it has all these sorts of themes, but it's not great. It has this littleness to it. It has this smallness to it.”OLIVER: It's domestic.TRALDI: That is not my reading of it. I think if that's the question, I don't feel that way. I think it pulls out these great themes about the nature of virtue and the nature of moral learning, becoming a better person, the nature of love. We read Sappho. We read the Symposium.To me, you read Wuthering Heights and you say, “Oh, this is a really big book because it's about society and how trauma gets passed down, and it has these horror elements, and it's very dark.” But actually, it's quite hard to figure out, how do we turn Wuthering Heights in a discussion about how to live? With Austen, it's just completely straightforward.OLIVER: [laughs] How not to live, maybe.TRALDI: Yes. In Austen, it's just completely straightforward. This is the discussion. This is what she had in mind as well, this question of how to live. So to me, Austen is completely—in terms of her successes as an artist, she belongs. In terms of her themes, she belongs. So I would not rule her out. I think she is absolutely a great, and who knows what that means, but I think she would be completely appropriate on any of these syllabi.Reading PlansOLIVER: Very good. And what will you read next?TRALDI: What will I read next? I mean, our—from the beginning, I'm thinking I should read some more poetry. It's been a while. Actually, speaking of—this is funny. Well, I want to get into William Empson. He had an odd life, which I think somebody should do like a movie about him or something.OLIVER: Yes, he'd make a great movie.TRALDI: I think Empson would be a good movie. So that might be—OLIVER: Are you going to read the poems or the criticism?TRALDI: Probably a little of both, but that's for a while from now. I think, you know, at the moment I'm back to reading philosophy. So what novel will I read next? That's a good question. What should I read next?OLIVER: If you like Jane Austen?TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Maybe read one of the people that she admired, like Samuel Richardson or Fanny Burney, someone like that.TRALDI: You know, I do think—you saying Samuel Richardson reminded me, I've read very little Samuel Johnson. I think reading some of the great critics, I think, writing this piece—OLIVER: Oh, Johnson, yes. You would like Johnson.TRALDI: I think I would like Johnson. I think I would like Empson. The history of literary criticism is something I have very, very little idea of.OLIVER: Oh, well, then, Johnson. I mean, he's the best.TRALDI: Yes, I think I should, I should definitely read Johnson.OLIVER: English literary criticism begins and ends with Samuel Johnson.TRALDI: You know what, this is a little different, but—I might have talked about this with you a little bit—I want to read The Fable of the Bees, Mandeville, because reading about Smith—a lot of the ideas that we think of as Smithian are actually Mandevillian, and he kind of moderated them.OLIVER: Well, he hated Mandeville.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Very hard on him.TRALDI: Yes. So a lot—like the invisible hand, it's only a small part of Smith's thinking, but it was like the entirety of Mandeville's thinking, this sort of dynamic.OLIVER: Well, I think it means different things for them. I think Mandeville, in a funny way, is more philosophical in the sense you were saying, and trying to make these propositions. And Smith was saying, “Well, what about feelings? What about all these funny things that we can't account for? Like, look around. It's too messy.”TRALDI: No, that makes sense to me. Yes, I think between Mandeville and Smith, Mandeville is somebody who thought virtue was sort of like a con.OLIVER: A fool's game.TRALDI: Exactly. You're sort of a sucker if you try to be virtuous.OLIVER: I think he also just assumed that if you were commercial, you were obviously on the get.TRALDI: Yes. But this is one of the great—I know we talked about this, but it's one of the great—you see this in Smith, you see this in Austen—commerce has its own virtues, and they are very traditional virtues. You have to be trustworthy. You have to be pleasant. You can't really be wholly self-interested in every moment because people have to be willing to deal with you given your—I mean, think about Yelp reviews or even just word of mouth. “Oh, that person screwed me over.”OLIVER: There's a discussion in one of Hayek's papers, which is—it's a very Smithian point he makes about, the nature of the knowledge problem means that it's not so much that I'm trying to get information about the thing you're trying to sell me, but I'm really trying to get information about you and whether you are someone I should be buying from. Which is exactly the project that the novelists and Smith—there's a sort of period between Smith and the early novelists, running through Austen to George Eliot, when they're all working on that problem together.TRALDI: Yes. I do think in Austen, it's often—the real puzzle is, how do you make out somebody else's character?OLIVER: Exactly.TRALDI: This is a phrase that Lizzy Bennet does use with regard to Darcy. And how do we actually figure out who the trustworthy and untrustworthy people are?OLIVER: And if you're too philosophical about that, in the sort of analytic sense, I think you can end up not paying enough attention to the particulars of that question.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Because when you actually try and do it, it's really, really hard.TRALDI: Yes. And I think this is the sort of—reading Austen, you get a sense of—and there are very few philosophy papers on things like this. Reading Austen, you get a sense of, what sorts of details in a normal life are the ones that I can extract information from to make out somebody else's character?In philosophy, we do ask, what is a good character and what is the good action in this sort of situation? What is the bad action in this sort of situation? But it's not for the philosopher to say, “Okay, in the sorts of situations you're likely to be in, what do you pay—where do you direct your attention to try to figure out these things about?”And it's not—I don't think Austen—it's not super subtle either. In Persuasion—I mentioned in the essay—in Persuasion, it starts out by saying Anne really cared about paying off the family's debts, and the rest of her family didn't give a s**t, you know? And it's sort of like, okay, so we just immediately are like, Anne's the sort of person who you might want to have a business transaction with because if she has a debt to you, she might actually pay it. And I forget if that's the exact detail, but it's something like that, you know?OLIVER: And there's also the novelist—Jane Austen is very good at what you don't see, which aga

Drift off tonight to a lesser known work by Jane Austen. Support the podcast and enjoy ad-free and bonus episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts. For other podcast platforms go to https://justsleeppodcast.com/supportOr, you can support with a one time donation at buymeacoffee.com/justsleeppodOrder your copy of the Just Sleep book! https://www.justsleeppodcast.com/book/It's the 5th anniversary of the show! If you'd like to share how the podcast has helped you, email me at hello@justsleeppodcast.comI would love to hear from you.If you like this episode, please remember to follow on Apple Podcasts! Also, share with any family or friends that might have trouble drifting off.Goodnight! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

PRESENTACIÓN LIBROS 00:01:40 James (Percival Everett) 00:06:15 Queen Macbeth (Val McDermid) 00:08:00 El accidente (Blanca Lacasa) 00:09:20 Lady Susan. Los Watson (Jane Austen) 00:12:20 Asesinato en Fleat House (Lucinda Riley) 00:14:20 Maggie ve la luz (Marian Keyes) 00:16:45 El secreto de Heap House & La caída de Foulsham. Iremonger #1 & #2 (Edward Carey) 00:21:05 Ojos de fuego (Stephen King) 00:22:50 La princesa de hielo (Camilla Lackberg) 00:24:35 Las estrellas son legión (Kameron Hurley) 00:27:45 Un amor de verano complicado (Ali Hazelwood) 00:29:55 La hija del veterinario (Barbara Comyns) 00:31:30 La casa de mi madre (Shari Franke) 00:34:55 Nada de esto es verdad (Lisa Jewell) 00:36:45 Resolvemos asesinatos (Richard Osman)* PELÍCULAS 00:40:00 Spinal Tap II: The end continues 00:43:20 Train dreams 00:47:20 Blindado 00:49:30 Marty Supreme 00:51:35 Taylor Tomlinson: Prodigal Daughter 00:53:10 Deberes: Bugonia / Valor sentimental / Hamnet / Thunderbolts SERIES 00:59:05: Su peor pesadilla 01:00:50 Las siete esferas 01:02:05 Wonder Man 01:04:35 Take That 01:08:25 Reality check: America's next top model 01:09:30 Sobrevivir al Paraíso* 01:11:35 Pluribus (T1) 01:13:15 A knight of the Seven Kingdoms (T1) 01:16:40 The night manager (T2) 01:18:50 Los Bridgerton (T4) 01:22:15 Deberes: Heated rivalry 01:26:00 DESPEDIDA En este programa suenan: Radical Opinion (Archers) / Siesta (Jahzzar) / Place on Fire (Creo) / I saw you on TV (Jahzzar) / Bicycle Waltz (Goobye Kumiko)

Jane Austen was born in the 16th of December, 1775, which means this month marks her 250th birthday. Jane lived a quiet, mostly happy life in the English countryside, surrounded by the balls, romantic intrigues and family dramas that fill her novels. Her writing was always her true passion. She glimpsed success, with 4 books becoming wildly popular in her lifetime. But she died tragically young, depriving the world of her talent. Her stories have been adapted and re imagined countless times. And in this, Jane's 250th year, she continues to be a mainstay in pop culture. But let's look past the endearing characters and timeless stories, and met the woman holding the quill. Let's get to know Jane Austen... Sense and Sensibility (1811) Pride and Prejudice (1813) Mansfield Park (1814) Emma (1816) Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous) Persuasion (1818, posthumous) Lady Susan (1871, posthumous) Join me every Tuesday when I'm Spilling the Tea on History! Check out my Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/lindsayholiday Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091781568503 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historyteatimelindsayholiday/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@historyteatime Please consider supporting me at https://www.patreon.com/LindsayHoliday and help me make more fascinating episodes! Intro Music: Baroque Coffee House by Doug Maxwell Music: Butterflies in love by Sir Cubworth #HistoryTeaTime #LindsayHoliday Please contact ⁠⁠advertising@airwavemedia.com⁠⁠ if you would like to advertise on this podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Le Royaume-Uni célèbre ce week-end l'une de ses autrices les plus célèbres : Jane Austen, née le 16 décembre 1775. Il y a 250 ans. On lui doit six romans, dont Orgueil et Préjugés, Raison et Sentiments, Emma. De sa vie, on connaît peu de choses, mais son œuvre a chroniqué la période de la Régence anglaise. Une période qui connaît un regain de popularité depuis quelques années, aidée par les adaptations télévisuelles et les séries comme Bridgerton. Comme l'a constaté Emeline Vin à Londres.   À lire aussi«Love and Friendship», la Lady Susan de Whit Stillman

Le Royaume-Uni célèbre ce week-end l'une de ses autrices les plus célèbres : Jane Austen, née le 16 décembre 1775. Il y a 250 ans. On lui doit six romans, dont Orgueil et Préjugés, Raison et Sentiments, Emma. De sa vie, on connaît peu de choses, mais son œuvre a chroniqué la période de la Régence anglaise. Une période qui connaît un regain de popularité depuis quelques années, aidée par les adaptations télévisuelles et les séries comme Bridgerton. Comme l'a constaté Emeline Vin à Londres.   À lire aussi«Love and Friendship», la Lady Susan de Whit Stillman

Lady Susan to postać, która wyprzedza swoje czasy, przypominając **antybohaterów znanych z późniejszych powieści**, zwłaszcza tych męskich, takich jak Wickham czy John Thorpe. Fakt, że powieść została wydana dopiero po śmierci Jane Austen (w 1871 roku), świadczy o jej **rewolucyjnej i potencjalnie skandalicznej treści**. Krytyka często zarzuca brak rozwoju postaci, choć **Reginald De Courcy stanowi wyjątek**, przechodząc od uprzedzenia do zaślepienia, by ostatecznie doświadczyć gorzkiego rozczarowania. Można jednak bronić Lady Susan, widząc w jej manipulacjach **próbę przetrwania w społeczeństwie, gdzie kobiety miały ograniczone możliwości**, zmuszone do poszukiwania bogatego męża. Najbardziej **oburzający w jej postępowaniu jest nie stosunek do kochanków, lecz do córki**. Choć nie wiemy dokładnie, kiedy „Lady Susan” powstała, jej epistolarna forma (pisana listami) sugeruje, że może to być **wczesne dzieło Austen (ok. 1794 rok)**, co byłoby sprzeczne z Twoją sugestią, że to jej późniejsza praca. Pamiętajmy, że sama Eliza Hancock de Feuillide, kuzynka Austen, była pierwowzorem dla tej postaci. Istnieje również **ekranizacja** powieści.

"Lady Susan," una novela epistolar de Jane Austen, que sirve de puente entre sus obras tempranas y sus novelas más maduras. Se describe a Lady Susan Vernon como una viuda joven, hermosa e inteligente, pero egoísta y manipuladora, que llega a Churchill buscando refugio de un escándalo. A través de cartas entre varios personajes, la trama revela cómo Lady Susan manipula a su entorno para asegurar el matrimonio de su hija, Frederica, con un hombre al que ella detesta, mientras ella misma coquetea con un joven. El texto también incluye una breve biografía de Jane Austen, detallando su vida, sus influencias y el contexto de la publicación póstuma de "Lady Susan."Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/audio-libros-master/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Jess and Trisha talk about Jane Austen feelings - yours and theirs! - and then get into Kamila Knows Best for book club. Follow the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. To get even more romance recs and news, sign up for our Kissing Books newsletter! Looking to elevate your reading life? Tailored Book Recommendations is here to help! TBR delivers reading recommendations hand-picked just for you by real human book nerds. You can get your recommendations via email, or receive hardcovers or paperbacks in the mail. And with quarterly or annual plans available, TBR has something for every budget. Plans start at just $18! This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. News: We got all caught up in Jane Austen and forgot to talk about it, but check out the After the End Kickstarter! Books Discussed: One and Done by Frederick Smith Whenever You're Ready by Rachel Runya Katz Jana Goes Wild by Farah Heron Daughter of Tides by Kit Rocha Kamila Knows Best by Farah Heron Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, and Lady Susan - all by Jane Austen Let us know what you're reading, what you're thinking, and what you're thinking about what you're reading! As always, you can find Jess and Trisha at the WIR email address (wheninromance@bookriot.com). You can also find us on Twitter (@jessisreading), or Instagram (@jess_is_reading and @trishahaleybrown), and Jess is even on TikTok (@jess_isreading). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Libros en honor a la belleza de la naturaleza como Anhelo de raíces, de May Sarton; Lady Susan, de Jane Austen, que recupera el género epistolar; y Una temporada en el purgatorio, que nos propone un paseo por las dinastías políticas y su mezcla con el periodismo y la escritura.Finalmente, acabamos con una propuesta de literatura infantil —aunque recomendable para todos los públicos—: La misteriosa y sorprendente casa del abuelo.

With special guest Longinus, the boys drink and review Dad Strength IPA, then discuss a short novel by Jane Auten as part of their "shortcut to the classics" series. After a brief review of Austen's biography, they dive into the first book Austen wrote, but one of the last to be published. Lady Susan is an epistolary novel, meaning that it's composed of a bunch of personal letters, which means you're always getting the story from the perspective of the letter writer. Susan is the most accomplished flirt and manipulator in England. She's also very pretty and looks more 25 than 35. She's a hurricane who leaves destruction in her wake. The novel is a fun romp through 18th century society and is decently portrayed in the movie "Love and Friendship" on Amazon. More at ... https://www.pigweedandcrowhill.com/https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYAjUk6LttQyUk_fV9F46R06OQgH39exQ#Austen #JaneAusten #classics #LadySusan

The complete audiobook is available for purchase at Audible.com: https://n9.cl/p0g1y The Jane Austen Omnibus Narrated by Catherine Bilson, Terah Tucker, Sarah Jane Rose, Graham Scott, Denis Daly and Linda Barrans. Jane Austen commenced writing in her adolescence and continued right up to her untimely death in 1817. Her novels are reflections of the socially constricted world in which she lived, and the plots are built around the search of one or more young women for a suitable spouse. Austen's works are noted for the perceptive elegance of her prose and for vigor and detail of characterization. Celebrated critic F. R. Leavis considered Austen as one of the four great English novelists, along with George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad. This collection contains the following titles: Sense and Sensibility (1811) Pride and Prejudice (1813) Mansfield Park and Lovers' Vows (1814) Emma (1816) Works published posthumously: Northanger Abbey (1818) Persuasion (1818) Lady Susan (1871) Unfinished works: The Watsons (1871); completed by L. Oulton (1923) Sanditon: Fragment of a Novel (1925)

Join Richard Watts for his penultimate episode before he closes out 2024 with his 20th anniversary next week! Details for the live event happening on Thursday 19th can be found here: https://www.rrr.org.au/events/smartarts-20th-anniversary-special Whether you're a Midsumma Festival veteran or you're wanting to go for the first time, Chief Executive and Creative Director, Karen Bryant, is here to give us a 2025 program overview. The theme for 2025 is Collective Identities, and the festival runs from 19 January - 9 February at various locations around the city and the regions. Full program here: https://www.midsumma.org.au/info/program-guides/We've been showcasing the 2025 programs of theatres around Melbourne for a few weeks and now it is time to hear from Red Stitch!! Artistic director, Ella Caldwell, tells us all about what to expect (perhaps the unexpected) next year and a bit about their fundraising campaign, Long Live Big Little Theatre - which you can donate to now to help them get to their multi-year goal of $2 million. TarraWarra Museum of Art Curator, Anthony Fitzpatrick, tells us about the current exhibition, Intimate Imaginaries. Get along to the picturesque gallery in Healesville from now until March 10 to see contemporary and lively art from a collection of 13 artists. Tickets available here.Australian soprano, musical theatre royalty and actress, Marina Prior AM, joins Richard to talk about her latest project with Victorian Opera, Follies. They talk about her character (Phyllis Rogers Stone), what it's like to be a legend among legends, and performing at The Palais! You can catch Follies from February 1-6 at The Palais Theatre in St Kilda.Was ACCA's new CEO and Artistic Director Myles Russell Cook always destined for the job? Myles joins Richard to talk about taking on the role, and The Art of Lazy – an evening with Lady Susan, showing Saturday December 14th, plus gives us some highlights for the year to come at ACCA.

Welcome to the Sir James Martin Fancast, where we're sharing our favorite James Jams from "Love & Friendship," the 2016 adaptation of Jane Austen's epistolary novel "Lady Susan." Also, we're trying to get into the desperately exclusive east coast chapter of the Jane Austen Appreciation Society, so if you know anyone on the inside, please put in a good word, and don't tell them how many of the 10 Commandments we've been ignoring lately. Music credits: "Classical," by Orange Production Special thanks to Baby Bee Carys for the theme music! Subscribe to our Patreon at Patreon.com/BSCCPodcast and support the show at Bit.ly/RattlesnakeJake! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The complete audiobook is available for purchase at Audible.com: https://www.audible.com/pd/Lady-Susan-Audiobook/B0DCGJKYWK Lady Susan By Jane Austen Narrated by Linda Barrans, Denis Daly, Catherine Bilson This epistolary novel was probably written in 1794, but was not published until 1871. Lady Susan Vernon, middle-aged and recently widowed, has retained her looks and appealing vivacity. She makes use of her bereavement and her loss of wealth by imposing herself on the hospitality of relatives, and by amusing herself in flirtation with the various men who fall under her spell. Lady Susan has a daughter, Frederica, who is bashful and innocent—in stark contrast to her unfeeling and manipulative mother. Her mother is anxious to marry Frederica off to a spouse of appropriate wealth and social standing, and also, perhaps, to capture a new mate for herself. The forty-one letters between the various parties in this tale of twisted courtship describe Lady Susan's path to marital satisfaction for her daughter and herself.

Ep. 1 chapter audio starts at 16:30 Ep. 2 chapter audio starts at 8:15 Ep. 3 chapter audio starts at 9:04 We've finally hit the last leg of our wild ride through Lady Susan. Will she get what's coming to her? Will justice prevail? Or will she manage to slip through the cracks yet again? You can watch the video here:

Ep. 1 chapter audio starts at 16:30 Ep. 2 chapter audio starts at 8:15 The tea is hot, the manners are sharp, and the plot is thickening—episode 2 of Lady Susan is now ready for you! You can watch the video here: We hit a snag earlier today so this is the only way we could get the video to you.

Bonjouuuuur ! On a encore été fouiner dans les tops de Sens critique⁠⁠⁠, cette fois on vous parle de celui des "meilleurs livres épistolaires", que vous trouverez ⁠ici⁠. On espère que ça vous plaira, n'hésitez pas à nous donner vos avis, via instagram : @entrenospages, ou par mail : entrenospages@gmail.com Bonne écoute ! Les livres principalement abordés dans cet épisode sont : - Lady Susan, Jane Austen - La couleur pourpre/The color purple, Alice Walker - Le monde de Charlie/The perks of being a wallflower, Stephen Chbosky - Lettre d'une inconnue, Stefan Zweig Et en bonus : - Les détectives du Yorkshire T6 : Rendez-vous avec la ruse/ The Dales Detective Series, book 6: Date with Deceit, Julia Chapman - Capitale du Nord, Claire Duvivier - Fondation T4 : Fondation foudroyée/Foundation's edge, Isaac Asimov - La femme à la fenêtre/The woman in the window, A. J. Finn Music promoted by La Musique Libre Joakim Karud - Canals: https://youtu.be/zrXbhncmorc Joakim Karud: https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud

Chapter audio starts at 16:30. We're not just back; we're back with a bang! And we are excited to kick off a brand new premium audiobook.

Fasching ist vorbei, doch euer Domina-Kostüm muss noch nicht im Schrank verschwinden. Denn unsere Lieblings Sadistin Lady Susan ist zu Gast und erzählt wie das Karnevalsmesser nochmal sinnvoll zum Einsatz kommen kann. Und wenn ihr zu viel Käse im Kühlschrank habt... ach, hört einfach selbst!

We finally dig into a novel by Jane Austen!  So much drama and so many social issues to discuss.  Listen along,  then let us know what you think.

Jane Austen demonstrated her mastery of the epistolary novel genre in Lady Susan, which she wrote in 1795 but never published.Although the primary focus of this short novel is the self-centered behavior of Lady Susan as she engages in affairs and searches for suitable husbands for herself and her young daughter, the actual action shares its importance with Austen's shaping of her characters' behavior by means of their reactions to the letters that they receive.The heroine adds additional interest by altering the tone of her own letters based on the recipient of the letter. Thus, the character of Lady Susan is developed through many branches as Austen suggests complications of identity and the way in which that identity is based on interaction rather than on solitary constructions of personality. Lady Susan's character is also built by the descriptions of the other letter-writers; but even though their opinions of this heroine coincide with the image that develops from her own letters, Austen demonstrates the subjectivity of the opinions by presenting them – primarily – in the letters of one woman to another, thereby suggesting the established literary motifs of feminine gossip and jealousy. Readers recognize these subjective motifs and examine all of the idiosyncrasies of the characters in order to create their own opinion of Lady Susan – as they would of any real acquaintance. (From Wikipedia.)This is a dramatic reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Jane Austen demonstrated her mastery of the epistolary novel genre in Lady Susan, which she wrote in 1795 but never published.Although the primary focus of this short novel is the self-centered behavior of Lady Susan as she engages in affairs and searches for suitable husbands for herself and her young daughter, the actual action shares its importance with Austen's shaping of her characters' behavior by means of their reactions to the letters that they receive.The heroine adds additional interest by altering the tone of her own letters based on the recipient of the letter. Thus, the character of Lady Susan is developed through many branches as Austen suggests complications of identity and the way in which that identity is based on interaction rather than on solitary constructions of personality. Lady Susan's character is also built by the descriptions of the other letter-writers; but even though their opinions of this heroine coincide with the image that develops from her own letters, Austen demonstrates the subjectivity of the opinions by presenting them – primarily – in the letters of one woman to another, thereby suggesting the established literary motifs of feminine gossip and jealousy. Readers recognize these subjective motifs and examine all of the idiosyncrasies of the characters in order to create their own opinion of Lady Susan – as they would of any real acquaintance. (From Wikipedia.)This is a dramatic reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Zzz . . . Drift off to over two full hours of snoozy Jane Austen readings – "Emma," "Northanger Abbey," "Lady Susan," and "Pride & Prejudice" zzz Want to hear the ad-free version of the show? Go to patreon.com/sleepyradio and donate $2! Thanks, sweet dreams zzz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Book Title: Lady Susan Author: Jane Austen Episode: Number 78 | Part 2 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The novella is presented through a series of letters exchanged between various characters, which provides a unique and intimate insight into their thoughts and feelings. Throughout the letters, the reader discovers the devious and calculating nature of Lady Susan, as she attempts to juggle multiple romantic relationships, often with married or engaged men. Despite her selfish and manipulative behavior, Lady Susan's intelligence and charm manage to keep some of her acquaintances spellbound, including her confidante, Mrs. Alicia Johnson. Lady Susan's plans become increasingly complicated and entangled as she tries to secure financial stability and societal status for herself and her daughter, Frederica. While "Lady Susan" is not as well-known as some of Austen's other works, such as "Pride and Prejudice" or "Sense and Sensibility," it remains a captivating and skillfully written piece. The novella provides a glimpse into Austen's early writing style and her exploration of complex female characters, making it a valuable addition to her literary legacy. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ About the author: Tragically, Jane Austen's life was cut short at the age of 41 when she succumbed to an unidentified illness, likely Addison's disease, on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, England. Despite her untimely death, her novels continued to gain popularity in the decades that followed, eventually becoming classics of English literature. Today, Jane Austen's works remain widely read and beloved, inspiring countless adaptations, spin-offs, and devoted fan communities worldwide. Her profound influence on the romance and comedy genres, as well as her exploration of societal conventions, continues to captivate readers and scholars alike, solidifying her status as one of the most celebrated and influential writers in the history of English literature. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Additional Resources: Lay Susan by Jane Austen http://www.loyalbooks.com/book/lady-susan-by-jane-austen  

Book Title: Lady Susan Author: Jane Austen Episode: Number 77 | Part 1 __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lady Susan" is an epistolary novella written by Jane Austen, one of the most celebrated English authors of the 19th century. The novella was likely written in the early 1790s but was not published until long after Austen's death in 1817. The story revolves around the character of Lady Susan Vernon, a charming and cunning widow in her thirties. Lady Susan is a master manipulator, using her wit and beauty to navigate the social circles of the upper class while constantly seeking advantageous matches for herself and her daughter, Frederica. The novella is presented through a series of letters exchanged between various characters, which provides a unique and intimate insight into their thoughts and feelings. Throughout the letters, the reader discovers the devious and calculating nature of Lady Susan, as she attempts to juggle multiple romantic relationships, often with married or engaged men. Despite her selfish and manipulative behavior, Lady Susan's intelligence and charm manage to keep some of her acquaintances spellbound, including her confidante, Mrs. Alicia Johnson. Lady Susan's plans become increasingly complicated and entangled as she tries to secure financial stability and societal status for herself and her daughter, Frederica. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ About the author: Jane Austen (1775-1817) was a renowned English novelist whose works have left an indelible mark on literature. Born on December 16, 1775, in the village of Steventon in Hampshire, England, Austen was the seventh child of George Austen, a clergyman, and Cassandra Leigh. She had six brothers and one sister, and her immediate family played a significant role in her life and writing. Growing up in a household that valued learning and literature, Jane Austen's love for reading and writing flourished from a young age. She received a formal education along with her brothers, which was an unusual opportunity for girls at the time. Her father's extensive library exposed her to a diverse range of literature, including classics and contemporary works. Austen's early literary efforts included composing plays, poems, and short stories for her family's amusement. In her late teens and early twenties, she began working on her first full-length novels, some of which were later revised and published under different titles. In the early 1800s, Austen's literary career began to take shape. In 1811, her first published novel, "Sense and Sensibility," was released anonymously. This was followed by "Pride and Prejudice" (1813), "Mansfield Park" (1814), and "Emma" (1815), all of which earned her growing recognition and acclaim. Despite achieving modest success during her lifetime, Austen remained anonymous as an author during her career. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Additional Resources: Lay Susan by Jane Austen http://www.loyalbooks.com/book/lady-susan-by-jane-austen    

My Pony is over the ocean My Pony is over the sea My Pony is over the ocean Oh, bring back my Pony to me Bring back, bring back Oh, bring back my Pony to me, to me! Bring back, bring back Oh, bring back my Pony to me Du möchtest mehr über unsere Werbepartner erfahren? Hier findest du alle Infos & Rabatte: https://linktr.ee/https://linktr.ee/ab17_studiobummens

Pt III of III Jane Austen (1775-1817)   Novels Sense and Sensibility (1811) published when Austen was 37 years old Pride and Prejudice (1813) Mansfield Park (1814) Emma (1815) Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous) Persuasion (1818, posthumous) Lady Susan (1871, posthumous)   Our favorite adaptations: BBC P&P (1995) - the best! Starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle S&S (1995) - Emma Thompson won an Oscar for Best Adaptation and a new husband   Enjoyable Austen fan fiction: These are the very best: Bridget Jones' Diary (2001) - Colin Firth again! Both a tribute and its own thing.  Lost in Austen (2008) - 4-part BBC TV series: Modern day Londoner switches places with Elizabeth Bennett - adorable!   These are fun too: Austenland (2013)- rom-com about immersive Austen cosplay Becoming Jane (2007) - starring Anne Hathaway as Austen in a fictionalized story about her failed romance with Tom LeFroy Death Comes to Pemberley (2013) - BBC 3-part murder mystery based the book by E. L. James   Darcy in the water statue  Other Music: Excerpts from BBC's Pride and Prejudice (1996). Thank you to  David Plell and Powerbleeder for our theme song "Future Mind" listen here!

Pt II of III Jane Austen (1775-1817)   Novels Sense and Sensibility (1811) published when Austen was 37 years old Pride and Prejudice (1813) Mansfield Park (1814) Emma (1815) Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous) Persuasion (1818, posthumous) Lady Susan (1871, posthumous)   Our favorite adaptations: BBC P&P (1995) - the best! Starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle S&S (1995) - Emma Thompson won an Oscar for Best Adaptation and a new husband   Enjoyable Austen fan fiction: These are the very best: Bridget Jones' Diary (2001) - Colin Firth again! Both a tribute and its own thing.  Lost in Austen (2008) - 4-part BBC TV series: Modern day Londoner switches places with Elizabeth Bennett - adorable!   These are fun too: Austenland (2013)- rom-com about immersive Austen cosplay Becoming Jane (2007) - starring Anne Hathaway as Austen in a fictionalized story about her failed romance with Tom LeFroy Death Comes to Pemberley (2013) - BBC 3-part murder mystery based the book by E. L. James   Darcy in the water statue  Other Music: Excerpts from BBC's Pride and Prejudice (1996). Thank you to  David Plell and Powerbleeder for our theme song "Future Mind" listen here!

Jane Austen demonstrated her mastery of the epistolary novel genre in Lady Susan, which she wrote in 1795 but never published.Although the primary focus of this short novel is the selfish behavior of Lady Susan as she engages in affairs and searches for suitable husbands for herself and her young daughter, the actual action shares its importance with Austen's manipulation of her characters' behavior by means of their reactions to the letters that they receive.The heroine adds additional interest by altering the tone of her own letters based on the recipient of the letter. Thus, the character of Lady Susan is developed through many branches as Austen suggests complications of identity and the way in which that identity is based on interaction rather than on solitary constructions of personality. Lady Susan's character is also built by the descriptions of the other letter-writers; but even though their opinions of this heroine coincide with the image that develops from her own letters, Austen demonstrates the subjectivity of the opinions by presenting them – primarily – in the letters of one woman to another, thereby suggesting the established literary motifs of feminine gossip and jealousy. Readers recognize these subjective motifs and examine all of the idiosyncrasies of the characters in order to create their own opinion of Lady Susan – as they would of any real acquaintance. (Summary from Wikipedia)Cast:Lady Susan Vernon – Kristin HughesMrs. Vernon – rachelellenMr. De Courcy – Patrick BeverleyMrs. Johnson – Kirsten FerreriSir Reginald De Courcy – Simon TaylorLady De Courcy – GesineMiss Vernon – Kara ShallenbergNarrator of the Conclusion – Justin BarrettIntros/outros – Robert Scott --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/librivox1/support

Before becoming the author of such classics as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, Jane Austen experimented with various writing styles as a teenager in the early 1790s. This is a collection of her juvenilia, including the epistolary novels Love and Freindship, Lesley Castle, and Lady Susan, as well as her comic History of England and some shorter pieces. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett) --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/librivox1/support

Lady Susan

Pt I of II Jane Austen (1775-1817)   Novels Sense and Sensibility (1811) published when Austen was 37 years old Pride and Prejudice (1813) Mansfield Park (1814) Emma (1815) Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous) Persuasion (1818, posthumous) Lady Susan (1871, posthumous)   Our favorite adaptations: BBC P&P (1995) - the best! Starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle S&S (1995) - Emma Thompson won an Oscar for Best Adaptation and a new husband   Enjoyable Austen fan fiction: These are the very best: Bridget Jones' Diary (2001) - Colin Firth again! Both a tribute and its own thing.  Lost in Austen (2008) - 4-part BBC TV series: Modern day Londoner switches places with Elizabeth Bennett - adorable!   These are fun too: Austenland (2013)- rom-com about immersive Austen cosplay Becoming Jane (2007) - starring Anne Hathaway as Austen in a fictionalized story about her failed romance with Tom LeFroy Death Comes to Pemberley (2013) - BBC 3-part murder mystery based the book by E. L. James   Darcy in the water statue  Other Music: Excerpts from BBC's Pride and Prejudice (1996). Thank you to  David Plell and Powerbleeder for our theme song "Future Mind" listen here!

This is a LibriVox public domain recording. Jane Austen demonstrated her mastery of the epistolary novel genre in Lady Susan, which she wrote in 1795 but never published. Although the primary focus of this short novel is the selfish behavior of Lady Susan as she engages in affairs and searches for suitable husbands for herself and her young daughter, the actual action shares its importance with Austen's manipulation of her characters' behavior by means of their reactions to the letters that they receive. The heroine adds additional interest by altering the tone of her own letters based on the recipient of the letter. Thus, the character of Lady Susan is developed through many branches as Austen suggests complications of identity and the way in which that identity is based on interaction rather than on solitary constructions of personality. (Summary from Wikipedia) --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/colin-holbrook/support

Devoney Looser discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Devoney Looser, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, is the author or editor of ten books, including Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës, The Making of Jane Austen, and The Daily Jane Austen: A Year of Quotes. Looser, a Guggenheim Fellow and an NEH Public Scholar, has published essays in The Atlantic, New York Times, Salon, Slate, TLS, and The Washington Post. Her series of 24 30-minute lectures on Austen is available through The Great Courses and Audible. In addition to being a quirky Janeite book nerd, she's played roller derby under the name Stone Cold Jane Austen. Find out more at http://Devoney.com. The Porter sisters https://sisternovelists.com Love on the Spectrum https://www.netflix.com/title/81265493 The Church of Stop Shopping and Reverend Billy https://revbilly.com/ The Ring Theory https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-xpm-2013-apr-07-la-oe-0407-silk-ring-theory-20130407-story.html Roller Derby https://www.wired.com/story/womens-roller-derby-has-a-plan-for-covid-and-it-kicks-ass/ Jane Austen's Lady Susan https://www.nybooks.com/online/2016/05/27/love-and-friendship-unserious-austen/ This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

Need a little more Jane Austen in your life but want something a little less mainstream? Check out this week's episode where we discuss Love & Friendship, an adaptation of Austen's Lady Susan. Susan, played by Kate Beckinsale, is a down-on-her-luck widow trying to have to all while finding suitable matches for herself and her daughter. We're pretty sure Lady Susan is a villain but the movie swears she's thoroughly vindicated in the novel. You can watch this one for free on Amazon Prime.Email us at MadeMePodcast@gmail.comFind us on:Facebook: www.facebook.com/MadeMePodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/myhusbandmademedoit/ Podcast artwork by Anna Eggleton of Treehouse Lettering & Design: https://www.treehouseletteringanddesign.com/

In the news Lady Susan resigns after asking an African woman dressed like an African where she is from and Buckinham Palace under woke King Charles gets the vapors. Everything is just a Mao style struggle session. How does Kanye West's evil racism rank against Balenciaga's evil pedo or Biden's evil totalitarianism.

Lady Susan Hussey, a lady-in-waiting to the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince William's godmother, has recently stepped down following allegations of racism. Lady Susan repeatedly asked Ngozi Fulani, chief executive of a UK charity for survivors of domestic abuse where she was "really from", despite Ngozi's insistence that she was from east London.  UK correspondent Enda Brady says that this incident is a bad look for the royals, especially in light of Meghan and Harry's upcoming Netflix documentary. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

La ayudante de palacio, que fuera confidente de la reina Isabel II, dimite por comentarios hechos a Ngozi Fulani en una recepción ofrecida por la reina consorte Camilla.

‘Te ha llegado una carta... Novelas epistolares'. Especial de Patricia del Río sobre esta forma de expresión escrita que revelaba los sentimientos más profundos de quien la escribía hacia otra persona, y que trascendieron en el tiempo. Cartas cuidadosamente redactadas, de belleza poética; cartas que ya no se escriben; cartas que inspiraron a muchos autores y autoras en la creación de sus novelas, y que hoy rescatamos en Letras en el tiempo. En el libro de la semana, conversamos con Susana Baca de ‘Yo vengo a ofrecer mi corazón. Memorias' (Pengüin, 2022). Un libro que recorre la vida y obra de la cantautora, investigadora y difusora de la música afroperuana en sus primeros 50 años de vida, contado en primera persona. El periodista Diego Pajares nos traslada al mundo del cine para invitarnos a ver las películas ‘Cartas desde Iwo Jima', de Clint Eastwood; ‘Cartas de una desconocida', de Max Ophüls; mientras que el crítico literario y gerente de ‘Escena libre', Julio Zavala recomienda tres lecturas sobre la temática epistolar: ‘Lady Susan', de Jane Austen; ‘Tenemos que hablar, Kevin', de Lionel Shriver; y ‘Cartas del fin del mundo', de José Manuel Fajardo. Las canciones que complementan el especial son: ‘Paperback Writter', de Mandy Jones; ‘Boots of spanish leather', de Nanci Griffith; ‘Famous blue raincoat', de Leonard Cohen; ‘Return to sender', de Elvis Presley; ‘Yo vengo a ofrecer mi corazón', con Susana Baca y las Voces de Latinoamérica; ‘PS I Love you', de Billie Holliday; ‘Love letters in the sand', de Pat Boone; ‘Carta de amor', de Juan Luis Guerra. Conducción: Patricia del Río ||| Producción: Amelia Villanueva ||| Edición de audio: Dallan Vásquez ||| Episodio 29 – Tercera temporada.

‘Te ha llegado una carta... Novelas epistolares'. Especial de Patricia del Río sobre esta forma de expresión escrita que revelaba los sentimientos más profundos de quien la escribía hacia otra persona, y que trascendieron en el tiempo. Cartas cuidadosamente redactadas, de belleza poética; cartas que ya no se escriben; cartas que inspiraron a muchos autores y autoras en la creación de sus novelas, y que hoy rescatamos en Letras en el tiempo. En el libro de la semana, conversamos con Susana Baca de ‘Yo vengo a ofrecer mi corazón. Memorias' (Pengüin, 2022). Un libro que recorre la vida y obra de la cantautora, investigadora y difusora de la música afroperuana en sus primeros 50 años de vida, contado en primera persona. El periodista Diego Pajares nos traslada al mundo del cine para invitarnos a ver las películas ‘Cartas desde Iwo Jima', de Clint Eastwood; ‘Cartas de una desconocida', de Max Ophüls; mientras que el crítico literario y gerente de ‘Escena libre', Julio Zavala recomienda tres lecturas sobre la temática epistolar: ‘Lady Susan', de Jane Austen; ‘Tenemos que hablar, Kevin', de Lionel Shriver; y ‘Cartas del fin del mundo', de José Manuel Fajardo. Las canciones que complementan el especial son: ‘Paperback Writter', de Mandy Jones; ‘Boots of spanish leather', de Nanci Griffith; ‘Famous blue raincoat', de Leonard Cohen; ‘Return to sender', de Elvis Presley; ‘Yo vengo a ofrecer mi corazón', con Susana Baca y las Voces de Latinoamérica; ‘PS I Love you', de Billie Holliday; ‘Love letters in the sand', de Pat Boone; ‘Carta de amor', de Juan Luis Guerra. Conducción: Patricia del Río ||| Producción: Amelia Villanueva ||| Edición de audio: Dallan Vásquez ||| Episodio 29 – Tercera temporada.

William Gallagher is a versatile writer. He has written Doctor Who radio dramas, novels, and hundreds of articles about technology, as well as books about writing. He also creates many YouTube videos about writing and technology. Show notes: William Gallagher (http://williamgallagher.com) 58keys (https://www.youtube.com/c/WilliamGallagher/videos), William Gallagher's YouTube channel Three-Biscuit Guide to Scrivener (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d55-sbWMh4) (one-hour video looking at Scrivener's features) Jane Austen, Lady Susan (https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/292252/lady-susan/9780241582527) Learn more about Scrivener (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview), and check out the ebook Take Control of Scrivener (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/store). If you like the podcast, please follow it in Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/write-now-with-scrivener/id1568550068) or your favorite podcast app. Leave a rating or review, and tell your friends. And check out past episodes of Write Now with Scrivener (https://podcast.scrivenerapp.com).

Lady Susan by Jane Austen audiobook. Jane Austen demonstrated her mastery of the epistolary novel genre in Lady Susan, which she wrote in 1795 but never published. Although the primary focus of this short novel is the selfish behavior of Lady Susan as she engages in affairs and searches for suitable husbands for herself and her young daughter, the actual action shares its importance with Austen's manipulation of her characters' behavior by means of their reactions to the letters that they receive. The heroine adds additional interest by altering the tone of her own letters based on the recipient of the letter. Thus, the character of Lady Susan is developed through many branches as Austen suggests complications of identity and the way in which that identity is based on interaction rather than on solitary constructions of personality. Lady Susan's character is also built by the descriptions of the other letter-writers; but even though their opinions of this heroine coincide with the image that develops from her own letters, Austen demonstrates the subjectivity of the opinions by presenting them – primarily – in the letters of one woman to another, thereby suggesting the established literary motifs of feminine gossip and jealousy. Readers recognize these subjective motifs and examine all of the idiosyncrasies of the characters in order to create their own opinion of Lady Susan – as they would of any real acquaintance.

We've talked before about the shaky Oscar history with Amazon Studios, and this episode we are talking about one of their unfortunate misses that happened in the year of their biggest success: 2016′s Love and Friendship. Adapted from the scabrous Jane Austen novella Lady Susan, the film had a much-ballyhooed premiere at the Sundance Film … Continue reading "190 – Love and Friendship"

View our full collection of podcasts at our website: https://www.solgoodmedia.com or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website: https://www.solgoodmedia.com or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website: https://www.solgoodmedia.com or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

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

Lady Susan - Jane Austen - Book 7 Title: Lady Susan Overview: Lady Susan is a short epistolary novel by Jane Austen, possibly written in 1794 but not published until 1871. This early complete work, which the author never submitted for publication, describes the schemes of the title character. Published: 1818 Author: Jane Austen Genre: Romance Novel, Fiction Novel, Novel of Manners, Coming-of-Age Novel, Epistolary Novel Episode: Lady Susan - Jane Austen - Book 7 Part: 1 of 1 Length Part: 2:27:22 Book: 7 Length Book: 2:27:22 Episodes: 1 - 6 of 6 Narrator: Elizabeth Klett Language: English Edition: Unabridged Audiobook Keywords: romance, emma, jane austen, love Credits: All LibriVox Recordings are in the Public Domain. Wikipedia (c) Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. WOMBO Dream. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/free-audiobooks/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/free-audiobooks/support