Live from Pemberley: The Mercenary and The Prudent (Chapters 26 - 28)

Tired of your car insurance rate going up even with a clean driving record? You're not alone. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side-by-side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Switch with confidence.

Download the Jerry app or visit jerry.ai slash ACAST today. Amazon One Medical presents Painful Thoughts. I've been on hold to make a doctor's appointment for 23 minutes now. The automated voice has told me 47 times that my call is very important to them. I'm starting to think that they don't think my call is important at all. you'll get help fast without having to remain on the line to make an appointment. Amazon One Medical. Healthcare just got less painful. Chapter 26

Our love affair with the Gardeners, Mrs. Gardner in particular, continues. Mrs. Gardner warns Lizzie not to fall in love with Wickham. Wickham is great, of course, but the match would be imprudent because neither of them has any money. Lizzie hears her aunt. She says she can't promise not to fall in love with Wickham, but she does promise not to pursue him. And that is enough for Mrs. Gardner for now.

This conversation is striking, at least in part, because it is so different from the conversations that Lizzie has with either of her parents about her future. Mrs. Bennett is all anxiety. and willing to throw Lizzie at Collins. Mr. Bennett is all jokes and encouragement to be jilted. Mrs. Gardner is an adult who seems to genuinely care about Lizzie.

Here is Miriam Burstein on Lizzie's relationship with the gardeners. They are willing to spend a lot of time, that they are deeply emotionally invested, not as... They are a relationship that is by and large founded fully on mutual respect and seems to be always rooted in mutual respect, mutual caring, a kind of.

recognition of equality, right? Moral equality, not so much equality of status. And that is not self-interested, right? That's the thing, right? They don't have to care about Lizzie in the way that they do, but they do.

The gardeners end their visit to Longbourn, taking Jane with them to London. The hope is that Jane will be able to reach out to Caroline and therefore see Bingley again. Everyone is in on this scheme. And it is... wild to me that Jane can't write a letter to Bingley, but everybody agrees it's okay for her to go all the way to London. for weeks and weeks just to try to quote-unquote accidentally run into him. Then a lot gets announced in quick succession. Charlotte...

comes to say goodbye to Lizzie and invites Lizzie to come visit her once she's married. In a vague way that's more like a sure, Lizzie says yes. Jane arrives in London and Caroline is clearly blowing her off. Jane says that if she didn't know better, there would be, quote, a strong appearance of duplicity in the way that Caroline was so nice to her before and how she is behaving now. Here is Ayesha Ramachandran on how Caroline is behaving in terms of Jane.

Caroline Bingley is a great character, in part because I think we're asked to think about, is Caroline Bingley really any different from the Bennett sisters, right? And I think what we're getting is these different social benchmarks or certain sort of points on the social ladder. everyone at whatever point they are is looking up. So in that sense, I think there's a kind of interesting leveling effect that Austin brings about where...

Caroline is no different from Jane, really. And Caroline understands what Jane and Mrs. Bennett are about because she's doing the same thing with regard to Mr. Darcy. I don't disagree with Professor Ramachandran that Caroline and Jane have more in common than Jane wants to admit. But to me, the big difference between Jane and Caroline... seems to be that Jane never feigned care. And that is what hurts Jane the most, that maybe Caroline never cared for her at all.

This chapter ends with Lizzie telling Mrs. Gardner that Mr. Wickham is now pursuing a Miss King who has just inherited 10,000 pounds.

This doesn't bother Lizzie, who says she must not have been in love with Wickham because she isn't sad that he's moved on. Chapter 27 is when Lizzie sets off to visit Charlotte in Hunsford, her new home with Collins. Lizzie travels with Charlotte's sister Mariah and father Sir William. They stop to visit Jane and the gardeners in London on their way.

Mrs. Gardner is bothered by the news that Wickham has moved from Lizzie to Miss King and how quickly he pounced on Miss King when she inherited. Here is Professor Susan Zlotnick on what Austin is doing with Wickham. She's dealing with a world where people are increasingly mobile and where they're moving out of these small villages into London, into these kind of bigger spaces. And how do you know to trust someone? Like, how do you know who to trust who's just...

a good BS-er, which is clearly what Wickham is. And I think she's kind of interested in that, right? That there's something about this outsider coming into this kind of traditional stayed little English village. And the village is it's like a wolf. The village is defenseless because it has no it's trying to figure out how do you evaluate people that you don't know. And that is in some ways that is one of the great.

themes of the later 19th century novel, where urbanization and social mobility is the major topic. Does that make sense? She's beginning to think about it. I don't think it's fully fleshed out. I don't think she's fully realized what the issue is. But I think she's beginning to think about that. Lizzie is not beginning to think about Wickham as potential wolf, though. She still wants to see him as a good guy doing what he's got to do to survive.

As she sulks a bit about Mrs. Gardner's reflection, she is buoyed by an invitation. The Gardners are going to the Lake District in a few months and want to know if Lizzie wants to join.

Yes, she replies enthusiastically. For what are men to rocks and mountains? In chapter 28, Lizzie, Mariah, and Sir William arrive at the Collins' house. Collins is insufferable. Charlotte seems happy enough. Lizzie is eyeing the whole situation closely. The chapter ends with an invitation For Lizzie, Sir William, Mariah, Charlotte, and Collins to dine with Lady Catherine. I'm Vanessa Zoltan. And I'm Lauren Sandler. And this is Live from Pemberley from Hot and Bothered.

Before we jump into learning from you, Lauren, we just want to let our listeners know that Margaret H. Willison, the brilliant librarian and thinker of all things Jane Austen, is leading our Pride and Prejudice pilgrimage. in Derbyshire this coming April. I will be so incredibly jealous of every person who gets to go on this trip. I got to go on it. Four years ago now, and there is a moment where you turn a corner and then Chatsworth Mansion, the inspiration for Pemberley, is just suddenly.

It's suddenly in your sight and it does. It feels like you're Lizzie seeing Pemberley for the first time. Oh my God. To find out more, you can go to readingandwalkingwith.com. Lauren, what do you have to teach us?

Well, you know, it's interesting, this reading, because... We finally leave Hertfordshire, right? We finally are outside of the little tiny part of the countryside where Lizzie has spent her whole life and where she remains stuck, but she's now liberated. She's free for a little bit.

And our world gets bigger and bigger, which means we're seeing and learning about new things. Obviously, she goes to London, but she also goes to visit Charlotte in her new home, which is a parsonage house. And I think that... A lot of us feel like, okay, yeah, we know that's the house connected to a church in some way, but I just wanted to give us a little bit of grounding in what a parsonage house actually is and why it is that we even have Collins in this.

relationship with Lady Catherine, because obviously it's very, very central to the book. And it was also very central to English life. So a living, which is not the same thing as making a living in the common sense, although it did include a salary. was what it would mean to have a vicar or a parson set up within an area of gentry. So these livings were owned by patrons.

Some of these patrons were, you know, were Oxbridge. Some of them were the crown. Occasionally, you know, bishops or cathedral chapters would sponsor these livings, but mainly they were the gentry. Mainly they were the great family. families, the aristocracy.

And the aristocracy would tend to have one and sometimes even two livings at their disposal. That means they would have one or two different churches with an attached vicar who would not only deliver sermons and... the church and maybe do a little light farming at their bequest, but also would be part of the social life of the park, of the home, of the aristocracy.

So Collins, we know, came through Oxbridge straight to Lady Catherine. But often you would advertise in newspapers if you were looking for a new vicar to move into your parsonage house. And I love this detail. The advertisement would include the life expectancy. of the current vicar. So you would kind of have a sense that, okay, I mean, if this guy looks like he only had a few years left, then you needed to be ready to move. Right. I just, I love, I love all of the actuarial elements of life.

In Regency England, the same way that we have with the end tale, right? The Lucases are totally waiting for Mr. Bennett to kick it. And whoever Collins replaced was in sort of the Mr. Bennett situation. Similarly as well, because obviously the vicar doesn't get to pass on the parsonage that goes to whoever is going to live there next. So there's an interesting parallel there, I think, between the Bennets, the Antilles.

and what it means to own a parsonage house that you don't really own it at all. I mean, I feel like so much of what you're talking about, Lauren, is how religion and marriage are... intentionally integrated with capital and the protection of capital and how it gets allocated and that the people are going to financially benefit from living under the strictures of certain social norms.

It's set up like that on purpose. Absolutely. And it has been for a long time. There's tons of medieval writing about this system. But we're coming up into this moment that Austin is inhabiting where all of these things are starting to erode. Yeah. It's the same era in which evangelical faith is really on the rise in England, which of course means you don't really need a vicar.

to interpret faith for you. It's more of a direct relationship between the faithful and their God. And so the notion of what it meant to keep a parsonage house, much less a parson. was something that had really fallen out of favor so much that there was even a clergy residences repair act that went into effect.

about 20 years before Austen starts writing. You know, the fact that the Parsonage feels like such a safe, comfortable place is one that I think readers would understand as being set against the anxiety of the fact that... So many of them are failing right now. And so these things that are representative of stability just aren't representative of stability in the same way anymore. It's just uncanny how much it maps on to what...

culturally is going on with us right now. You know, there's so much anxiety about how many churches are shutting down every year. And as, you know, younger generations are resisting institutions like marriage, getting married. Less and less and later and later. Part of that is because there isn't a benefit because you can't buy a house anyway. Right. Like it's incredible how apt this novel feels for the moment that we're in right now.

And it does make me wonder how many moments it wouldn't have felt out. Me too. I'm like, it wouldn't have in the 1950s. Possibly. But then, of course, like the seeds of the 60s were sown in the 50s. And it's interesting for me as a Gen Xer. Like I always feel like, no, it's my generation who hated institutions. But then I think actually it's the boomers who really started all of that. I mean, the whole erosion of functioning systems and part of that, of course.

or like cultural norms, then part of that's just... I know I'm such a broken record about this stuff, but just it's social policy. It's how we believe we can all exist together to make a functioning society. And obviously, England depended on these structures. for so long. And now that there are new ways to make a functioning society that frankly will work for many, many more people, there's still this pain in that change.

Yeah. I mean, I just love, I love what. You're teaching us as we think about Charlotte moving, you know, Charlotte goes over to Lizzie's and is essentially like, come visit me. I'm moving and I'm not going to know anyone there and the roads aren't very good. So I won't be back soon. And there's social expectations, right?

She says, I won't be back soon. You can imagine. She's like, I'll probably get pregnant. Who knows what it is exactly that she's thinking. But what we're seeing are these social policies impacting this 27-year-old woman. This is it. In order to survive, I have to tie myself to this man and this man has a living and this parsonage, which is over here. And whether or not I get to come home depends on.

Whether or not I get pregnant and what services are available to me in this class as someone who has a, right? Like these social policies are just like being borne out on this, this like small frame. Entirely. And, you know, we learned that. She's been dining with Lady Catherine twice a week. So much of why Collins has married her is because as part of his employment, he needs her employment. He needs a proper wife to be present by his side.

all of these obligations all the time and to sort of be at the beck and call of his patron, who is now, frankly, Charlotte's patron. So wifehood becomes a form of employment, right? Setting up the house, these domestic labors.

things that I think now we see as invisible labor, then I actually think in some ways, maybe it was more visible. Maybe the notion is like, you know, that's what the money's for. Absolutely. I will say, though, it's a work obligation for Collins, but it is also, of course, a great pleasure and an honor to be invited over to Lady Catherine's house. Did he tell you? Did you know?

I believed him when he told me at length about what an honor it is that I've been invited to Rosings. I think another place that we see this constant theme in Austin of. social structures coming up against romantic love, right, is in the conversation between Mrs. Gardner and Lizzie, the repeated conversations between the two of them about Wickham and whether or not Lizzie should.

set her cap for Wickham and not set her cap, but maybe not even remind her mother to invite him for dinner. Maybe not even spend time with him, right? To really try to like retreat because as Mrs. Gardner says, Neither of you have any money. And she says precisely to Lizzie, like, it would disappoint your father. Like, you can't do this to your father, marry someone without any money.

Which I think is so, I think that element is so interesting because she's married into the family through Mrs. Bennett. You would think that her allegiance and her way of calling on that would be to the parent who's clearly most invested in it. this, but she knows Lizzie and I think that she sees what Lizzie sees when she sees this family. Yeah. Yeah. And Mrs. Bennett, even though it wouldn't be economically great, would probably...

We actually know from later, like would be fine with Lizzie marrying Wickham. Right. When Lydia marries him, she's just thrilled that a daughter is married. She doesn't necessarily think it through in the same detail. But. I mean, the most interesting moment of these chapters to me is this conversation between Mrs. Gardner and Lizzie, where Mrs. Gardner is like, you can't marry him.

He's too poor. And then Wickham is pursuing Miss King, who's just inherited money. And Mrs. Gardner is like, I think that's gross. He's going after her. And Lizzie is like, literally, what the fuck do you want? Like you want him to think about money, but not too much. As we explore what is ridiculous in this novel, what I love about this moment is that Lizzie is saying like.

You are being ridiculous to Mrs. Gardner, but Mrs. Gardner is not a ridiculous character. And the reason Mrs. Gardner is being ridiculous is because she is actually articulating and making explicit these implicit norms that are impossible to live out. up to. And so it's the norms that are ridiculous. Mrs. Gardner is just the messenger. I totally agree with that.

I also feel like, you know, it's one of these moments where you can play the like find the feminism game. Where do we locate the feminism in this conversation? Is it Mrs. Gardner saying you can't marry him because he doesn't have enough money? understanding the systemic reality that she's speaking, right? That goes unsaid. Or is it Lizzie saying, why are you making this about...

Men being worse than women when men do what women do all the time, which is a pretty radical statement in terms of gender politics. And I think that that's Lizzie also articulating what it means to live. in a different generation in this moment, right? When people like Wickham are moving up classes, when people like Bingley are suddenly rich, when we have change afoot in these old systems.

And they're actually talking about it. Like, I love your point that she's actually saying the thing. Yeah. And what's at stake in a much smaller way is Wickham's character for them, right? And what's interesting is that Mrs. Gardner's... open to changing her mind. She's like, I really liked Wickham.

But this makes me question that. Lizzie is somebody who forms an opinion about someone and then allows all the evidence to just fall in line with her thesis. Jane is someone who thinks well of everyone and then wants all the evidence. to fit into that thesis doesn't even bother like trying to observe. And now Mrs. Gardner is someone who like admits a certain preferential feeling towards someone. She's like, oh, I like Wickham. He's from my hometown and he's charming.

gets a new piece of information and is like, maybe I was wrong about him. And I feel like this third way is being showed to us through Mrs. Gardner. Vanessa, are you talking about prejudice? That is the exact word I was thinking about that's uncanny.

But you thought about that. But it is really interesting because it makes me think, oh, right. The book was first titled First Impressions. We all have first impressions. Mrs. Gardner admits to having first impressions. But where do first impressions end? And prejudice begins. And I think that's exactly what you're talking about. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, the sentence that we wanted to look at closely this week is sort of in the heart of this conversation. The where's the feminism game. And it is Lizzie saying to Mrs. Gardner, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs? between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end and avarice begin?

What I love about this, I mean, you see like Lizzie, the lawyer, like Lizzie, the solicitor, just like how good she would have been in a profession if she was able to have one. But right. It's like, tell me where am I allowed? to be. Who am I allowed to love? I can't love the poor guy, but I can't go after the rich guy. Jane is being punished for that. Like, literally, what do you want from me? And not just...

society, but like you, my aunt who I respect, like how can I behave in a way that is going to please you? I just feel the like frustration in this so acutely. And I think, you know, the exact articulation here, the words mercenary versus prudent and that she basically lays them out in a spectrum. It kind of makes you think, right, where would you graph all of these relationships?

Is it mercenary of Charlotte or is it prudent of Charlotte to marry Collins? We all know that it wasn't prudent of Mr. Bennett to marry Mrs. Bennett, but that doesn't mean it was mercenary. That was desire. Like, is there the mercenary heart? Is there the avarice of desire that plays into this? Are we just talking about money? Is that all marriage is, is money? Is that also something that Lizzie is pointing to here?

matrimonial affairs is literally like what you call the business arrangement. And is there no other place for the heart within that? Yeah. And what does it mean in terms of self-preservation? Which is, if this is the only way that women can achieve that, where does that land you? Or where does it land a man who isn't born wealthy?

Yeah, I think that this is something that, right, like, this is something that Lizzie is thinking about with herself and Wickham, but she's also been thinking about it with Charlotte and Collins, and she's thinking about it with Jane and Bingley, and she's, right, like, you're just feeling this, like... What you were asking from me is impossible. Like, what do you want from me? And yeah, I don't have anything wise to say except that I really feel for her. One thing that I find.

a little mystifying, but I want to get your read on it. The way that Austin presents all of this information about Wickham, it's like this kind of quick aside. And then Lizzie makes meaning of it. But it's nothing that Austin presents us in dialogue, in a scene. There's no, there's no. moment in which we discover...

this for ourselves in narrative in which we witness Lizzie discovering any of this. It's so interesting to me, specifically in the reading that we did for this week, how there are these really big moments that one would think would be... fully written out. And they're just sort of like, you know, they're like separated from the rest of a sentence by a semicolon, right? I mean, Charlotte and Collins get married and that marriage, that wedding doesn't even receive its own sentence. Wickham...

totally jilts Lizzie for Miss King. And it's like, we find out in a, by the way, in a letter, it's so bizarre to me from, from a craft standpoint, from a writing standpoint, it makes me. feel like upon first reading, like, okay, she like had little notes about what she wanted Lizzie to say about it all. And then like, was too fed up with herself, too exasperated to even write it out.

But then you realize it's not like she wrote this the way that, say, Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre, like in a fever where she was just drafting this. I mean, she really, really labored over this. And so we can really think about these. choices as incredibly intentional. And one thought I have, just tell me what you think about this theory, is that the less we get of these scenes with like, with men and emotion.

About anyone who isn't Darcy, the more they get weighted towards the end, the more we feel them when they actually happen with Darcy. The more a wedding means, the more a moment of real turmoil feels. Like if we actually... spend the narrative on these moments when it isn't about him? Where are we actually going with this? I'm compelled by that. My theory is a little different, which is that the reason that it's an aside is because the emotional punch.

is elsewhere, right? The shocking thing is that Collins and Charlotte were gonna get married. Now they're married. And that's almost an afterthought, you know, and there's that great line of like, as much was talked about it as usual, you know, like nothing remarkable happened. The remarkable thing is that they got engaged and got married. And then the thing.

about Wickham going after Miss King is, first of all, they're not engaged. I'm not quite sure what is happening. He's set his cap for her, right? Like, it's very vague what is... actually happening. It sounds like Lizzie has noticed a transfer of attention, but that's it. And the remarkable thing is that Lizzie doesn't give a shit.

And like, that's what's interesting is she's like, oh, I must not have been in love with him. Like, he's very charming. But and so, again, I just feel like nothing actually happened and much would have been made of it. If Lizzie, it turned out, was jealous, then I feel like a lot would have been made of it. But Lizzie, it turns out, doesn't care. And that's what's interesting. But isn't...

Isn't it curious that that isn't something that we get in narrative, that it's one thing to get this stuff from Jane, who's in London writing letters like Lizzie isn't there to witness it. But if we're mainly reading this book from Lizzie's perspective, it's so interesting. to me that we get this in a letter to Mrs. Gardner instead of in a direct experience. I wonder, Lauren, I mean, like I, you know, I obviously have no idea. My only theory here is that.

I think that so much of the joy of Austin's life and of Lizzie's life is talking to other women about what happens. And like what is actually interesting here, what Austin is showing us here. are two things, right? She's catching us up on the news of what happened, these plot points, but she's building the intimacy between Mrs. Gardner and Lizzie. And that is a really important relationship that...

needs to be developed in order for the rest of the plot to matter so much that Darcy is going to be so kind to the gardeners. The gardeners are going to say nice things about Darcy. She really has to show us how intimate. Mrs. Gardner and Lizzie are. And so these letters are doing two things at once. They're revealing the plot points, but they are also building the relationship between Mrs. Gardner and Lizzie. That makes so much sense to me.

Not every sale happens at the register. Before AT&T Business Wireless, checking out customers on our mobile POS systems took too long. Basically a staring contest where everyone loses. It's crazy what people will say during an awkward silence. Now transactions are done before the silence takes hold. That means I can focus on the task at hand and make an extra sale or two. Sometimes I do miss the bonding time. Sometimes. AT&T Business Wireless. Connecting changes everything.

Are you noticing your car insurance rate creep up even without tickets or claims? You're not alone. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry handles the legwork by comparing quotes side-by-side from over 50 top insurers, so you can confidently hit buy. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Jerry even tracks rates and alerts you when it's best to shop.

Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Don't settle for higher rates. Download the Jerry app or visit jerry.ai.acast today.

We have to talk about something so horrible happening to Jane that she's almost willing to think ill of someone. I have to tell you, my margins of this book are literally covered with the words oof. And oh, Jane, over and over and over. Jane even says to Lizzie, I know you won't have the mean, I told you so response. And it's like, we're all having it. And yet we can't be mean about it. Like we're all Lizzie in this situation where it's just, oh, honey, we saw it.

so sorry and I still want to defend Jane in terms of like what could Caroline's motivation possibly be Right. I mean, like other than the fact that she's like vapid and she was bored in the suburbs and so was like, I'll become best friends with the girl next to me. And now it turns out that being best friends with the pretty girl isn't giving me anything. And so fine, I won't anymore.

And I'm wondering what you think about her devastation about it suddenly becoming clear that she's not going to get Bingley or this betrayal about Caroline. Because this was the first time that I read the book and I was like, oh, she's sad. She's sad about her friend even more than about Bingley. Yeah, I mean, the Caroline thing, it's tough, right? Because obviously... We all want to feel like the people who say that they care for us care for us.

There's actually sort of an interesting parallel here between Caroline and Wickham, right? You know, this is another element of what's mercenary versus prudent. Where's discretion versus avarice in this? Caroline thought she was going to be stuck at Netherfield for a long time and there was like nothing going on there. So of course she found the prettiest girl in town who could reflect her own value as much as she thought anyone there could.

used her as a play thing in that very, very limited sphere and then moved on. And I feel like she did this in like the most high school mean girl way possible, right? Where it's like... Oh, all of my friends are off at Model UN, so I'm alone in the lunchroom. And you pretty girl, who I previously would have never paid attention to, come be my friend until they come back. And once they come back, I'm going to pretend.

We never had lunch together. And it just sucks. It sucks. And Austin is so good at making us feel it through Jane's heartbreak and embarrassment. But you were talking about how the loss of Caroline feels perhaps more painful than even the loss of Bingley. And I think that she actually got... to write letters with Caroline, you know, because they were too...

female-sexed people in Regency England, they were allowed to develop a relationship. It wasn't this ridiculous thing where she can't even friggin' write Bingley when she's in London for a month. Yeah, I love that argument that she actually does know Caroline better. That when Jane gets invited over to hang out at Netherfield, it's Caroline and Mrs. Hearst that invite her. It's not Bingley. She gets to see Bingley, but that's not who invites her.

And whether or not this is all, according to Mrs. Bennett, angling for Bingley, you know, Caroline was the conduit. Caroline was the person who she actually spent a lot of time with. And I don't know. I just think also with Bingley. She isn't being blown off by Bingley. He's ghosted her, which to me, and I know I've said this before, but to me, the worst feeling in the world is feeling stupid and that other people knew that you were the chump.

And Jane is the chump here. Like Caroline is blowing her off to her face and it's embarrassing. And it makes you question whether or not you can read any situation correctly. And of course. This is something that Lizzie could choose to do now, right? Like, Charlotte has fallen in her favor. She no longer needs her as the friend next door. Charlotte is now an inconvenience. She has to go all the way.

to the parsonage to see her and put up with Collins and do these things that just feel odious to her. And I think that there's an interesting relationship between. How someone who feels like they've lost some status and caused some element of displeasure and is no longer, you know. a value add in a relationship can be treated. You can either pull a Caroline Bengley or... Or put up with Sir Lucas's nattering on for God knows how many hours on end to go see this person who you've just rejected.

And his wife, who was until recently your dearest friend. I mean, like that is maximum awkwardness and inconvenience. And yet it's the opposite of what Caroline Bingley would do. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, should we talk about... The brief amount of time that we are spending with Mr. Collins and at Huntsford. I mean, the best thing to me is that Lizzie thinks that Charlotte is managing it all very well.

Lizzie is like, okay, Charlotte, you're pulling this off. You're not rolling your eyes at him, nor are you swooning and nodding and being like, yes, isn't my husband so wise? You're sending him out to spend time in the garden. You're like, you're managing. the situation really well. And again, I just think it's the anti Caroline Bingley, right? Like it's these women are cheering for each other and like really rooting for one another. And I love it.

I mean, and that's also something I'm sorry, this is out of out of order, but it's also something Lizzie says about Miss King. Right. Like she's like Miss King seems like a really nice lady. Right. Like she's not willing to talk shit about Miss King. There's just so much like. positivity and goodwill amongst these women. And I'm obsessed with it.

I agree. For Lizzie and Charlotte, though, I see it a little differently. I don't see her cheering her on out of the gate, but I see this as a process in which we're seeing Lizzie. maturing, finally, where it is this moment in which Lizzie is being presented with evidence that somewhat complicates what she anticipated and she's taking it in. And to me, my favorite little moment in that chapter is when she describes lying awake at night and really meditating on how and why Charlotte...

seems happy and okay. And there's something about that, about taking in information and really thinking about your friend, really examining the evidence in front of you that helps explain their motivation. and why what might have been unrecognizable actually rings true to you in some way, that process is exactly the erosion of prejudice, right? And so this is how she is growing up.

in a way that, as we know, will manifest ultimately in the ability to read people differently than she thought she might. I mean, a woman she's not rooting for is Anne DeBerg, though. I mean, she's not rooting for Anne because she's not rooting for Darcy and she thinks that they're essentially engaged. But, right, Lizzie like goes down and sees Anne in the carriage. And first of all, it's like, why is everybody making such a big deal about this like tiny?

Not remarkable woman. And then she's like, so glad Darcy's marrying her. Life of misery ahead for both of them. I love her in that whole section about the morning where it's like, come quick. come quick. And she's like, oh my God, I at least had hoped that like some pigs had gotten out. It's just this like tiny cross looking girl who obviously is going to make this miserable man miserable for the rest of his life.

I love it when we feel the Lizzie who is not always so beneficent. And it's, you know, the Lizzie who's just like leaning up against the lamp pole with the cigarette and the look on her face. And I just feel like. I want to light that match for her. Well, Lauren, next week we go to Rosings. We're going to meet Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the saint, the genius, the beneficent beauty. We are all invited to dinner.

Next week, we're only doing one chapter. So we are going to hear Lady Catherine de Burg wonder about Elizabeth Bennett's education. I am so excited to discuss her with you. I'm really having a moment recording this episode where I'm remembering as, I mean, I feel this every week, but especially this week, like, right, this is why we read together. This is why we discuss things.

together. These are the things that get to come up in each other's minds and excitement. She's going to be the most delicious character to discuss with you. I am very torn about her. I'm very torn about her. Exactly. Again, we'll get to play Is It Feminism so much.

So I can't stop thinking about Lizzie's line to Mrs. Gardner saying, you didn't want me to marry him because he didn't have enough money. And now he's interested in Miss King for her money. What's the difference? And it really had me thinking, how often did men marry for money? Is this some radical act of feminism in some way for Lizzie to make this equivalence? What would readers have thought?

And it seemed like a good idea to call up a historian. We got wind of a historian who had written a paper called The Ménage à Trois and Other Controversial Relationships. about relationships in this era. And I regret that that is not what we will be talking to her about. Her name is Natalie Hanley-Smith, and she's a historian at Oxford at Brooks University, where she's on the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. She has also written...

How can we infiltrate fashionable circles, inclusion and exclusion in elite society circa 1780 to 1830, which feels... spot on for Pride and Prejudice and for Wickham in particular. So we wanted to call her up to see her thoughts on the matter. Hi, Natalie. Hi, Lauren. Thank you so much for joining us. Lovely to see you today. So here's my first question. Did men marry for money in the age of Austin? Well, they definitely did, yes. They did marry for money.

But it's something that was increasingly frowned upon. So I think Lizzie's attitude towards Wickham's decision to marry for money or the fact that everybody knows that that is what he's intending to do is a bit flippant and definitely was supposed to kind of provoke the audience. thinking, is that okay though? Do we really believe that's okay?

Though I wonder if that's really all that different than what Mrs. Bennett is teaching her girls to do. Yes. So the women, there's a realization, I suppose, that the women need to marry because they cannot be economically independent. rare for women in this period to be economically independent. But there is an understanding that men can actually work for money. Wickham has a role. He's an officer, isn't he? So he has other ways of making money. Marriage is not the only.

the only option for him. So it would be acceptable for women to marry up, less so for men? I wouldn't say that. It really depends on kind of where exactly we're talking in class terms. So, for example, a very, very important heiress in the early 19th century was Lady Sarah Fane. And she was the granddaughter of Robert Child, who's from Child's Bank. So she was worth a lot, a lot of money.

And when she came onto the marriage market, funnily enough, she had a lot of suitors chasing her because I think she was worth something insane, something like £600,000 was kind of flying around as a number. And she ended up with... two main suitors that kind of emerged out of the race of men who were pursuing her. One of them was the fifth Earl of Jersey, and the other was a man called Lord Granville Everson-Gower. And at one point they thought that...

Granville Everson-Gower seemed to be her favourite and there was all the gossip around that actually she's probably going to choose him. And a lot of people were feeling sorry for Jersey because they suggested that actually Jersey truly loved her.

whereas Grandfather Leverson Gow was just hunting her fortune. So they were aware that men might want to kind of bag you know very wealthy heiress you might not necessarily have exactly the same kind of credentials as them socially but that was kind of accepted

It feels like there are such contradictory messages about romantic love and money and marriage that in so many ways, marriage was simply a way to organize an economic unit. And to maintain one's standing. And yet there's still a reference for romantic love. Yeah, definitely. Towards the end of the 18th century, really, we see the kind of rise of an ideal that we call companionate marriage. So it's this idea that they've not necessarily...

given up with the idea that marriage has to be about economics, that it's about social status, the idea of forging two different families and making a new economic unit. But at the same time, it's increasingly distasteful.

to think about marriage in mercenary terms and there's the idea that even if you're not necessarily in love with your prospective partner but there should be affection there there should be some sort of common ground that's going to bring you together and make your marriage last because otherwise you know we've got some

really horrific examples of scandals in the late 18th century where men have married very wealthy heiresses that they are really not compatible with. And then kind of all sorts of scandal ensues. I have to ask if you'll tell us a story of scandal. I can tell you lots of stories of scandal.

I think when it comes to heiresses, there's some very sad stories. I mean, you think Austen's readers would have been aware of some of these real life heiresses that have been seduced by what they call fortune hunters who have tricked them into marrying under kind of false...

pretenses that they love them and that they you know they're going to be they're very respectable men that perhaps just don't have kind of the same level of means but they're going to make a good husband i mean i think the worst example for the period is probably the countess of strathmore who is duped by, funnily enough, a lieutenant in the army, so another military man called Andrew Robinson Stoney. And he...

Pretends that he's fought a duel for her honour. He's injured. He's on his deathbed. And so she marries him because he says this is you. This will make him happy. This is his kind of dying wish. But then he makes a remarkable recovery and makes her life hell. For years involving kidnapping her and domestic violence, a really, really horrible man. But he lives a debauched lifestyle. He had lots of gambling debts. So for him, really, he wanted to control her fortune.

Why he kind of seduces her and tricks her into marrying him. So there's a lot of warning stories.

No, I love it. Does that predate the publication of Pride and Prejudice? Is it possible that he was a model for Wickham? I mean, he could have been. I think Wickham's a little bit less horrific, a scoundrel. But yes, he might well have been. I can't help but wonder if it was incumbent on women to love and feel romance, and men were supposed to be more practical caretakers, and if there was a double standard around what was...

on the rise in terms of a companionate marriage versus more of a financially motivated one? Yeah, I mean... For men, becoming a husband meant attaining full adulthood, really. It enabled men to be able to embody the kind of manly virtues of independence and responsibility and being that kind of person. paternal figure, the head of the household. But they were supposed to have an affection for their wives. They were supposed to have that kind of, not necessarily...

romantic love and passionate love in the way that we might perhaps understand it. But that kind of still familial love and a love that kind of sustains was very important. And how much do you see pop culture in literature and plays, etc., driving what people are allowed to feel and desire and what feels mercenary, what feels appropriate? Well, I think you do see quite a lot of, because I do a lot of work on the history of adultery.

And you do see people having passionate affairs, a passion that they perhaps haven't found in their marriage because they've probably got married for different reasons. For one, one of the relationships I've looked at is Countess Bespra and Lord Granville Lieber-Singhauer. And she's very much, she's quite tormented and anguished in her letters because she has this great passion for Lieber-Singhauer.

that makes her really happy, makes her really anxious. She's got that kind of, you know, she's completely lovesick over him. And she acknowledges that in one of her letters that she doesn't, she just doesn't feel that way about her husband. you get the sense that that's kind of, it was lacking from her life and she read a lot. So she's reading about these great romances. We know she read Pride and Prejudice and she's not, she doesn't have that in her life, in her real life. So it's, yeah.

Quite sad. When your reality and your ideal don't quite meet. It is quite sad and so familiar to all of us. I mean, no matter how good you've got it, do you ever get it like the best novel feels? No. I don't think you do. Well, thank you so, so much for joining us. It has been a pleasure. And I'm hoping that we will have an opportunity and a book in the future to discuss the menage a trois with you. Yes. Dangerous liaisons, maybe. A favorite.

You've been listening to Live from Pemberley. Some of you have recently joined our Patreon and we are so grateful because we are a small show. So we do need your support to run. Right now we're running a campaign to try to reach 1000 patrons. We are well on our way, but are not there yet. So if you can, please consider supporting us on Patreon, where you get all sorts of delightful bonuses at patreon.com slash hot and bothered rom pod. And if you sign up this month, you get a beautiful.

with our amazing logo for Live From Pemberley. by the wonderful artist Ariana Martinez, whose art you can check out all sorts of places. We are a Not Sorry production. Our executive producer is Ariana Nettleman, and we are distributed by Acast.

Thanks, as always, to our Jane-level patrons, Viscount Elise Kennegarotnam of Unicornia, Baroness Gretchen Snigas of Breakfast Carbston, Knight Molly Real of Worcestershire Sauce, the Countess of Kristen Hall, Dame Leah B. of Pickleshire, Dame Becky Boo, of Tiara Landia and Duchess Biddy Higgins of Bubble Bath.

Thanks this week to Ayesha Ramachandran, Susan Zlotnick, and Natalie Hanley-Smith for talking to us. Laura Glass, Gabby Iori, AJ Aramas, Julia Argi, Nikki Zoltan, Hannah Rehack, Stephanie Paulsell, and all of our patrons. Earn your applied bachelor's degree in as little as three years fully online with Unity Environmental University. Gain cutting-edge skills in less time with less tuition while learning on your own schedule.

Visit unity.edu slash career edge to get started. Hi, everybody. I wanted to let you know that it is your last chance for a Harry Potter and the Sacred Text in-person live show. Coming at you February 6th. It is me, Vanessa Zoltan, my former co-host, Matt Potts, and our dear friend, John Green in Indianapolis, Indiana. There's a virtual option for this. There's also a virtual live show with me, Casper, Matt, and Ariana in February.

But if you want to see us do our very last in-person live show ever, ever, ever. Come to Indianapolis on February 6th and come and hug us and see me and Matt and Ariana will be there and John Green. We're reading the epilogue through the theme of hope. Road trip. get on a plane, come see us. I will be crying the entire time and I already have my outfit picked. Go to notsorryworks.com.