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- [00:00]
Afua Hirsch
We will answer your call as soon as we can.
- [00:03]
Peter Frankopan
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- [01:25]
Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Legacy. I'm Peter Frankopan.
- [01:29]
Afua Hirsch
I'm Afra Hersch.
- [01:30]
Peter Frankopan
And this is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.
- [01:46]
This is part two. Proud or prejudiced.
- [01:57]
Afua Hirsch
Do you actually enjoy reading Austin? I know you said that you've kind of discovered her as a result of adaptations have awakened the curiosity that was kind of kept from you when you were growing up.
- [02:09]
Peter Frankopan
Well, I kept it from myself. I mean, I don't think I was smart enough to realize what I was missing. No, I think Austen is a fantastically easy writer to read because she also makes you laugh. You know, apart from the ways in which the plots unravel. You know, she's. She's very shrewdly asides the kind of. In the breaking the fourth wall of trying to, you know, you can hear Austen's voice through it. So. No, it's a joy to read. I mean, it's. And you know, I don't know whether you've tried writing fiction afwa, but to write like that, it's really hard. I mean, have you tried experimenting with fiction writing?
- [02:40]
Afua Hirsch
I do write fiction and I. And it's one of those things that the easier an author makes it look, probably the harder it is. I mean, her fiction just seem so Effortless. The characters are so real, the worlds are so immersive, and her voice is so clear. And those are the kind that's the kind of writing that lulls you into a false sense that anyone can do this. Then you try to do it. It's really, really hard. And I think, you know, I was thinking about this as people who live in Britain, like, you can't escape the class system. It's still so pervasive. And one of the things I love about Austen is that this was a time when it was much more transparent. Everybody knew the hierarchy, they knew where they were in it, they kind of acknowledged how it worked. And I think many of those structures survive, but now we're not comfortable with acknowledging it. It's more hidden and coded and it's actually. This is going to sound counterintuitive, but there's something weirdly refreshing about a world where everything is like it does what it says on the tin and you can see all the divisions. And of course, being Jane Austen, she's critiquing them in the snarkiest, most cutting way. All this satire, but kind of sometimes hidden in romance and story. And it's just really enjoyable to read and to be able to join her making fun of some of the absurdities of English society, because it is completely absurd.
- [04:05]
Peter Frankopan
But one of the funny things about Austen is that that absurdity from her point of view is mocking the social structures of people above her and how the kind of punching down of the wealthy, the great and the good and the pompous. But Austen herself doesn't look in the other direction. She doesn't look at people who are servants or tradespeople or members of the working class. You know, they don't appear in her books, or if they do, they don't have any speaking lines. Their character development is more or less non existent. So she doesn't sort of see herself as being part of a kind of continuum where it might well be that she's luckier than many other people, even though she feels that she's being put down by people above her. So I wonder what you think about that, Afwa, about her conceptualization of society as a whole and her own place in that.
- [04:49]
Afua Hirsch
I think it's quite complex. So, for example, even though she's writing about the gentry, landed gentry, basically part of the elite, I mean, there are about 30,000 families belonging to the class of the gentry in the early 19th century in England, she's not interested in the royals at all, even though the Prince Regent is Actually a fan of her work, as we'll see later. She's not particularly a fan of the monarchy. She's not very interested in them or even the aristocracy. So she's interested in her world, which is this specific class of the gentry. But it's fair to say she's also not interested, as far as we can tell, in people in lower positions on the social rung, as you said, Peter. And I'm not just talking about, you know, the poor, the destitute or even the working class. She's not even very interested in people just one class below her, people who are in trade, who run businesses and, you know, of course, the class system. Even if those businesses are successful, they could even have more money than a gentry family like her own. They're still considered beneath them because of the way they make their money and the way they work. But there are barely any speaking lines for any character belonging to the trades class in any of her books. The only exception, I'd say, is maybe Robert Martin in Emma, who's a gentleman farmer. And Emma's character regards him as beneath marrying her friend Harriet, and she tries to sabotage that marriage because she thinks it would be a step down. And Robert Martin is shown in quite a bit a favorable light. He's smart and he writes well and he seems very genuine, but there's just not a huge amount of curiosity into the kind of interiority of a character like him. And apart from him, there are basically no people with speaking lines. And in Pride and Prejudice, there's a housekeeper who has a few lines who works for Mr. Darcy and says how wonderful he is. But it's definitely safe to say that she. She doesn't spend any time really with people beneath her on the social ladder. And should we judge her for that, Peter?
- [06:46]
Peter Frankopan
No, but I suspect that's one of the reasons why she's so popular. I suspect it's that people who read Austen since the 19th century and today feel those class structures and they feel that there are people above them putting down, but it doesn't sort of strike them that they might be guilty of the same things themselves. So I think it's quite canny in a way, that. And one of the explanations why she's. Why she read so widely is that you can pick out the snobbery and the ridiculousness of other people while being sort of quite comfortable stewing in your own soup. And, you know, one of the things we talked about last episode, Afro, was about Austen writing about things that she knows and sees. But, you know, Lots of her books have long courtships. They have lots of stores set on how you fall in love, who you marry and so on. Tell us a little bit about Austen and her own love life.
- [07:39]
Afua Hirsch
That will be very quick because there isn't much to tell, and what there is, we know so little of. Yeah, it is one of those great ironies that the author, who is centrally preoccupied with romantic love, in whose novels, without exception, marriage is the ultimate happy ending, didn't have, as far as we know, a particularly eventful love life. She never married herself, but who knows what loves she experienced or frustrated loves. She grieved. This is what we do know about her. She had a brief flirtation with an Irish man called Tom lefroy in around 1795. She was 20 at the time and living in Hampshire, and he was visiting relatives. So they met locally and apparently they liked each other. But it never went any further than that.
- [08:30]
Peter Frankopan
Yeah, I think that's one of those, you know, you see someone at the bus stop and quite like the cuffs of their gym. But I think that there's been widened into something that sort of makes it sound much more dramatic than it ever really was.
- [08:41]
Afua Hirsch
Yeah, there's no there there. In 1802, when she was 27, she received a marriage proposal. So this is a much bigger deal. He was called Harris Big Wither. That sounds like a fictional thing.
- [08:54]
Peter Frankopan
Jane and Harris Big Wither invites you for their Christmas drinks. Yeah.
- [08:58]
Afua Hirsch
And Jane accepted his marriage proposal. So that was the closest she got. And then.
- [09:05]
Peter Frankopan
Well, she sort. She sort of accepts it. Afraid. I mean, she accepted it.
- [09:07]
Afua Hirsch
No, she accepted it.
- [09:08]
Peter Frankopan
And then.
- [09:09]
Afua Hirsch
And this is very Austinian, the next morning, she changed her mind and retracted. So you can only imagine the kind of turbulent night she had this one night as an engaged woman and woke up the next morning and was like, no, this is not the one. And it's, you know, it's an interesting thing because there was so much pressure at the time to marry. It was the respectable thing to do. It was conceived as the primary function of a Gentile woman. It was to marry, have children, become a kind of respectable Christian wife and mother, the head of a household. So to shun that life is not a small thing, especially when you have a viable offer. And it can't have been that bad an offer or she wouldn't have briefly accepted it in the first place. So she definitely seems to have chosen to remain single. Whether that was like a real choice, whether, you know, she really liked the proposed of marriage she had. We don't Know, but there are many characters, notably in Pride and Prejudice, where people who have no romantic feelings for a man marry him anyway because, you know, it's the best they think they can do and they need a husband. I'm thinking of Charlotte marrying the awful Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice because, you know, she says, well, romantic love is overrated. You know, the most important thing is to just find a husband who's decent and reliable and you can spend your life with as a respectable woman. So Jane Austen herself is not prioritizing that over her own happiness.
- [10:30]
Peter Frankopan
Well, that's because the choice you have if you're a woman is bleak. You know, you become a seamstress or a governess, you know, or worse, you know, So I think it's, you know, Jane, I think, is obviously quite self contained, but it's reacting to the fact that, you know, this. It's like being traded as a good, you know, that somebody asked your hand in marriage and they make the best of it, you know. In 1814, she writes a letter to her niece who's asked for romantic advice, and she says, don't think of accepting him as husband unless you really do like him, you know, and then she says, anything is to be preferred or endured than marrying without affection. And I think that that process of trying to look for somebody who you've got something in common with, you actually like rather than you're going to make do with speaks to Jane's. I mean, people call it romantic tendencies, but it just speaks to the fact that, you know, why would you set your life alongside somebody you barely know, let alone like? And I think that that's the. The withdrawal from Harris Big Wither.
- [11:26]
Afua Hirsch
But I think it is romantic. I mean, in many cultures today, and certainly in England in her class at that time, marriage was primarily a transactional deal. It was about securing your position, securing your income, protecting yourself and your family from destitution, protecting your respectability. You know, it wasn't just about feelings or whether you were attracted sexually or whether you liked the person. It really was a much more transactional idea. And so I think it's more radical than it might seem now that she prioritized genuine affection, that she thought you should only marry somebody if you wanted to spend time with them, if you felt compelled in that way. And there are so many characters in Austen who, you know, make the point that the majority view was that this was something you did because it needed to be be done. It's not about, and, you know, it's not the world we live in now where you have these expectations of romance and sexual fulfillment and date nights and you both go to the gym and admire each other's hot bodies. You know, it's not that world. It's a very different idea about what marriage is. I'm obviously describing your marriage here, Peter.
- [12:32]
Peter Frankopan
No, no, I was thinking I've seen Colin Firth jump into the lake at Chatsworth, and, you know, it had me look at each other's hot bodies. But I think that there are times when that all looks slightly unusual and different. And, of course, this is a world in late 1700s, early 1800s that's going through huge amounts of change. And Austin, that context, he doesn't really ever talk about it, but it's always there in the background about this massive amount of geopolitical reconfiguration of what it means to be a man, what it means to serve your country, what it means to be thinking about social stratification and about wealth, because it's a world that's on the move.
- [13:08]
Afua Hirsch
Okay, let's talk about the world. Because Austen could not have been living through a more dramatic or tumultuous time. I mean, it's actually impossible to think of a more interesting era. So she's born in 1775. That's one year before the start of the American Revolution. She begins writing seriously in her teens, in the 1790s. This is the period in which the King, George III is declared mentally incapacitated. So the Prince of Wales takes over as regent from 1811. So it's the Regency period. But that's just in England, and you know, that that's a fairly dramatic series of events, but globally, Peter, we've got the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the movement for the abolition of enslavement, the movement for women's rights. I mean, everything.
- [13:58]
Peter Frankopan
And then on top of that, and you got the Napoleonic wars, which is the sort of the most important driver of demand for manpower, where all men are being asked to come and serve their country, not just in, you know, on ships with Nelson, but in the Napoleonic wars that ravage and redraw all the boundaries of continental Europe. So this is a world where there people who disappear for months on end, for years on end, there are people who come back on, people who don't come back. That sense that the world is constantly changing is something that, on the one hand, you could say you don't notice it in Austin. Sometimes people are critical about that. I mean, for what it's worth, you Know, if you watch some of the big TV programs today, you know, the Traitors was a big thing early this this year in the UK or, you know, any of the big Netflix series you might be watching, Slow Horses or whatever it might be, you know, that's Apple, Peter.
- [14:49]
Afua Hirsch
Come on.
- [14:50]
Peter Frankopan
Okay, but all of these. All of these things that have been popular, and you say, well, where is the digital revolution? Where's the bit about AI? Where's the bit about China on the rise? You know, you go, well, that'll not mention either. And with Austin, I think it's because she doesn't need to mention it. Everybody realizes that this is what's going on. I remember Jill Hornby talking about that. And, you know, her point is that Austin doesn't need to explain that the Napoleonic wars are going on, but all these men keep turning up in military uniforms, and it's because everybody realizes that that's what's going on. So you don't need to set it all out. But like you said, Afro, it's a time of multiple interlocking revolutions and huge, huge change.
- [15:25]
Afua Hirsch
And, you know, there have been some suggestions that she was a bit ignorant or unaware of what was happening. That's completely wrong. For example, if you just look at her own family, two of her brothers start serving in the navy age just 12. So they will be close up against the Napoleonic wars, the transatlantic slave trade. This whole era of naval colonial expansion, of which Britain is a central player, is affecting two of her siblings directly. Her brother Henry, who she's very close to, is a military officer before he's a banker. And then we've got the fascinating idea that the French Revolution is also close to home because her brother Henry marries a widow whose French husband was guillotined during the reign of Terrace. She's a fascinating figure, Comtesse de Feuilly. And she's far from being cowed by this trauma. She's a very charismatic and flirtatious woman. And it's been suggested that Mary Crawford in Mansfield park is actually based on the Contest of Feud. So this is part of the Austin intimate world, these tumultuous experiences that are happening around the world.
- [16:34]
Peter Frankopan
And there's race as well. Afwa. You know, I think that that's important. It's particularly noted here in Sanditon, but we're going to talk about that a bit more. But tell us about Sanditon and why that's important from the idea that it's not just parochial Hampshire life, but the context is much more global.
- [16:48]
Afua Hirsch
Yeah, like everything With Austen, there's so many layers, and race is, I think, the most layered subject in her books. There are not many direct references to black people, to enslavement, but there is one character of color throughout the entire canon in Austen, and that's Sanditon, which is the unfinished novel she wrote during the illness at the end of her life, where there's a character called Ms. Lamb, who's a mixed race heiress described as a young West Indian lady of immense fortune who is half mulatto. Now, mulatto is a derogatory term that we wouldn't use now, but everyone would have known what it meant at the time. And it's actually weird to describe someone's half mulatto because mulatto in itself meant someone who is a mixed race. So by describing Ms. Lamb as half mulatto, she's saying that she would have had one mixed race parent and one white parent. But of course, in the very racialized world of the Atlantic slave trade at the time, just to have one black grandparent to be one quarter of African heritage is to be racialized as black. And it's obviously a very charged racial context so that Ms. Lamb stands out. And it's interesting that right at the end of her life, she was more directly leaning into exploring the character of a. A black woman or a woman racialized as black. But I think that race is one of the biggest.
- [18:08]
Ghosts throughout Austen's work, and I'm looking forward to having a full conversation about that in due course.
- [18:15]
Peter Frankopan
Well, let's top and tail this up about Austen and her life before we talk about her work and some of these big themes. So by early 1816, Austen is quite unwell and her health begins to deteriorate. There's been lots of speculation about what exactly was wrong with her. Most biographers think that there's, you know, accepted diagnosis of Addison's disease, although her final illness has been described by some as resulting from Hodgkin's lymphoma. But Austin continues to work through her illness, and famously, she starts Sanditon, which is legend, which is initially titled the Brothers. And one of the characters, Diana Parker, has been described as an energetic invalid, which is, I guess, how Austen sees herself.
- [18:54]
Afua Hirsch
She's only 41 when she dies, so even by the standards of the time, you know, that's young. And even though life expectancy was so much lower in Jane Austen's era, that's primarily because of the high rates of infant mortality. You know, once you kind of make it into adulthood, it's still quite unusual to die at 41, outside of childbirth or major outbreaks of disease. So that's why there's all this speculation as to what was wrong with her. But by the time she died, she was in a lot of pain, and there are all these descriptions of her kind of welcoming death and being quite peaceful, about the prospect of passing. And as a result of her brother Henry, who by now has all these clerical connections, she's buried in Winchester Cathedral, although, interestingly, her epitaph expresses many of her personal qualities, but not her achievements as a writer. Peter.
- [19:45]
Peter Frankopan
I mean, it's amazing, that one. But, I mean, it's a good bet that her brother does. I mean, Austen's grave in one of the great cathedrals in England is absolutely by chance. It's through. Through his connections rather than. Because how she's admired as one of the greatest living writers. But it's only after her death in 1818 that a biographical notice is even produced about her, about her brother, explaining that she's an author, and that serves as a. What's called a loving and polished eulogy. But you mentioned that Cassandra, her sister, destroys lots of her letters and why she did that. But Austen's legacy over the next 200 years that have followed has been immense. So in 2017, the 200th anniversary of her death, her image appears on the bank of England £10 note. Tell us what Mark Carney, who was then governor of the bank of England, said.
- [20:33]
Afua Hirsch
Yeah, he's now the Canadian Prime Minister, but that was his role. Then he said, our banknotes serve as repositories of the country's collective memory, promoting awareness of the United Kingdom's glorious history and highlighting the contributions of its greatest citizens. I'm always a little bit reluctant to describe anyone's history as glorious, but anyway, that's for another episode. Austen's novels, he continued, have a universal appeal and speak as powerfully today as they did when they were first published. But, Peter, I think someone made a mistake in the way.
- [21:06]
Peter Frankopan
Go on, tell us why.
- [21:08]
Afua Hirsch
Well, there is a quote from Austen on the £10 note, if anyone's got one. I've actually got one. I should dig it out. The quote is, I declare, after all, there is no enjoyment like reading. Now, that is a quote from an Austen character, but it's Caroline Bingley in Pride and Prejudice. Anyone who has properly read Pride and Prejudice knows she is one of the most unlikable characters. And when she says that, it's not because she genuinely likes reading, it's because she's sucking up to Darcy and as Elizabeth Bennet's rival and wants to pretend to like reading to try and get his attention. So I just feel like that's a strange quote to attribute to Jane Austen as evidence of how much she herself likes reading because it's said in such a disingenuous way. And actually I don't want to attribute this to the bank of England because I don't think it was on purpose. But there is a way you could see that as quite fitting because it's the kind of sarcasm and irony of Jane, who really did love reading, being quoted via one of the most unlikable but very compelling characters she created, pretending to like reading in a book that makes all of us like reading. So maybe it works out in the end.
- [22:26]
Peter Frankopan
I think there's something in that. I think it's quite amusing. It's why context matters. But I mean, well, the funny thing is is that I wonder how many people have ever read that quote on a ten pound note in the first place. And the irony that where you're reading it is on something you're going to hand over to somebody else any minute in itself tells its own story. Listen, when we come back we're going to talk about Austin's literary contribution and to think more about the five completed novels.
- [22:59]
Afua Hirsch
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- [23:29]
Peter Frankopan
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- [23:46]
Afua Hirsch
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- [23:49]
Peter Frankopan
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Afua Hirsch
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- [24:11]
Peter Frankopan
So Look, I guess A.F. austin's books in one way they're all comedic novels that typically end in a happy marriage and with kind of all the strands all very nicely Tied together. And they're usually about a girl in some sort of precarious situation with her own family or her social standing, who meets a boy and then ends up with the best possible version of her future. To talk us through how that looks in some of the novels, just also to remind some of our listeners about what all these different books are about.
- [24:38]
Afua Hirsch
Okay, so just to quickly run through the completed novels, because everyone hasn't read all of them, maybe some of you haven't read any of them, but they're quite. I mean, obviously they're incredible detail and they're a lot of fun to read, but there is quite a quick way of summarizing what they're about. So Sense and Sensibility, which was the first one to be published in 1811, is about two sisters, Eleanor and Marianne, who are put in a precarious position along with their mother when their father dies because he leaves his estate to their half brother. And even though that half brother promises he'll look after them, he has a mean wife who persuades him to basically cut them out. Eleanor and Marianne have to contend not only with basically being dispossessed, but also falling in love and becoming heartbroken. Marianne is histrionic and self obsessed, but Eleanor remains cool and faithful to the needs of others. Marianne's in love with Willoughby. He turns out to be a rogue, and she actually dodges a bullet when he runs off with another woman. But she finds second love with Colonel Brandon, who turns out to be a much more grown up partner with a lot of integrity. And Eleanor discovers that the man she loves, Edward Ferrars, who she thought had abandoned her, is hers after all. And they both live happily ever after. So that's Sense and Sensibility.
- [25:50]
Peter Frankopan
You've then got Pride and Prejudice, which is the sort of gateway drug to Jane Austen. And it's incredibly crowd pleasing. It's got a fantastic portrait of the Bennet family with the useless father and the hen clucking mother trying to get the five unmarried daughters.
- [26:06]
Afua Hirsch
The father's not useless, Peter, you don't. Don't be mean about Mr. Bennet. We love Mr. Bennet.
- [26:11]
Peter Frankopan
Okay, we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. I can promise you we got some good material about Mr. Bennet, but the heart of the book is about the relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy and his own imperiously arrogant temperament. Whether that's a state, whether it's an act, whether he misunderstands what's going on. And Pride and Prejudice is one of those things where all of the threads come together where Austin allows the reader to see what all the kind of problems are and then the resolution of how things all end up happening. It's incredibly skillfully put together. And of course it's dotted around with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who you'd have heard me act as in the last episode, but also other absurd comedic characters, which is a polite way of saying awful. People like Mr. Collins, who you know is just proud, conceited, obsequious. But Austen draws these pen portraits incredibly skillfully to paint her cast of characters into an ensemble. It's a bit like. A bit like a play. And how this all resolves at the end, it's just spectacular.
- [27:18]
Afua Hirsch
Mr. Collins also has the incredible accolade of having made the worst marriage proposal in the history of English literature. So you'll have to read Pride and Prejudice to enjoy that for yourself. Next published was Mansfield Park. This centers on Fanny Price, who we mentioned briefly, and she's an interesting departure from the typical heroine of a novel because she is very quiet and timid. She's not a great beauty when we first meet her and she's just 10. She's very upset at being moved out of her parents home, even though it's very overcrowded and impoverished, into the great Mansfield park of her wealthier relatives. But that construct of this child being moved in with the rich cousins sets up a great construct for Austen to explore class power, family dynamics and enslavement. Because this is the novel where we have an overt plantation adjacent character. So Thomas Bertram is away at key periods in the plot because he's dealing with his estate in Antigua, which readers would have understood to be a slave plantation on this colony in the Caribbean. And I think it's probably not a coincidence that Sir Thomas is basically a corrupted character. His son, his eldest son, who also helps him on the sugar plantation, is also a corrupted character. And there is a moment in Mansfield park which we'll come back to, where Fanny Price tries to ask her uncle about this business of slave plantations, sugar and the Caribbean colonies and is met with this famous silence. So that's the closest we get to a kind of direct interrogation of this hidden economy that was really underpinning so much of this world of the gentry, the source of the income that allowed them to have these balls and marriage engagements and unfortunes that they enjoyed.
- [29:10]
Peter Frankopan
Now there's Emma, which I know you don't like Afro, so I have to choose my words quite carefully.
- [29:14]
Afua Hirsch
Not a big fan?
- [29:15]
Peter Frankopan
No, no, you're not so, you know, but it's based on Emma Woodhouse, who's rich, pretty spoilt, and sees herself as a kind of Cilla Black, aspiring matchmaker who can help other people find their own happy ever after.
- [29:29]
Afua Hirsch
I don't think Emma would approve of that reference, by the way, because she's an incredible snob.
- [29:33]
Peter Frankopan
She's an incredible snob, yeah. Okay. But, you know, but she, she thinks that her job is to. To wave her magic wand to create happiness for other people. She takes a young woman called Harriet Smith under her arm and, you know, tries to find a way of finding her place in polite society. And I suppose I'm sympathetic because I've always read it as Jane Austen, sort of wishing that she had someone who had taken her under her own wing and managed to find a place for her with the right kind of person who loved her and et cetera, et cetera. But I know you think it's a toxic female relationship and there's probably something in that.
- [30:07]
Afua Hirsch
And I mean, that's not a bad thing. I love a literary depiction of a toxic female friendship. It's always quite stupid, stimulating to read, and obviously Austin probably wouldn't have described it that way, but it is that. It's the friend that wants to help you so long as it doesn't make you outshine her. It's like she wants you to rise, but not too much.
- [30:27]
Peter Frankopan
Right.
- [30:28]
Afua Hirsch
She doesn't want you to sink so low as to then be an inappropriate companion for her. And even though I live so far away from the world of the 18th century gentry, I can actually relate to some of this female behavior and I'm sure many listeners. Cannes. So that's. It's interesting to read. It's just that Emma is too annoying to be redeemed, in my opinion. But that's my subjective view. I'm sure there are any people who love her and if they haven't read it, maybe loved Gwyneth Paltrow's depiction in the famous Oscar winning movie adaptation of Emma, which brought a whole new audience as well.
- [31:01]
Peter Frankopan
Did you say spoiled? Pretty rich and then Gwyneth Paltrow in the same sentence?
- [31:06]
Afua Hirsch
Oh my God. Imagine strange casting. Northanger Abbey. I just read for the first time. I hadn't read it earlier, and it's the gothic one. Austen is playing with the gothic genre, which I think is quite audacious and fun. The gothic genre would have been a big deal when she was growing up and she read a lot of gothic novels and they're often quite binary. You know, these basically villains and heroes, and the villains are really evil and the heroes are really great. And Austen, in her subtle way, kind of problematizes that. She makes it much more complex. She centres on this heroine, Catherine Morland, who has these loving parents, but is a little bit sheltered and makes a frenemy called Isabella, who she thinks is her friend, but actually another toxic woman who's very fake, whose shenanigans end up compromising Catherine's love interest, the second born son of a gentry family called Henry Tilney. And when the Henry Tilney's father finds out that Catherine is not as wealthy as he thought she was, he banishes her from the family home without even an escort or a proper carriage. And while Catherine's staying in the family home, she also cooks up all these Gothic fantasies about how he might have murdered his first wife. And there are literal skeletons in the closet, but the reason it's playful is that actually a lot of this is a figment of Catherine's imagination. So she's kind of slightly making fun of the Gothic genre as well as leaning into it, which again, sounds maybe straightforward but is very hard to do. And it's a tribute to her skill that she pulls that off. And it's not the most believable of her books, but it's a really great read.
- [32:44]
Peter Frankopan
It's also about men and male power and patronage as well. And that's one of the themes that you have in Persuasion, the last of her five completed novels about Anne, who's the daughter of an irresponsible and vain baronet, calls to Walter, who's busy blowing the family fortune and living above his means, and falls in love, or I think she falls in love with a guy called Captain Frederick Wentworth, who proposes to her, but her family look down on him. It doesn't all go to go to plan and then they fall apart. They don't see each other for eight years and when she reconnects with him, she is generally worried about the fact that she spent her time with people who don't really care about her or anybody else, and that they've stood in the way of her, of her happiness. And this book, I mean, it has the closest reference to the Napoleonic Wars. The last line of it, in fact, talks about how the dread of future war is all that could dim her sunshine. So, as we mentioned already that the context of the Napoleonic wars are there too. But again, I think this is the autobiographical of Austen about the regret, perhaps for her own relationships, or semi relationships, if you even call Them that about, you know, what have you actually spent your life doing and have you been there to support other people and had nothing back in return too? So Those are the five completed novels.
- [34:01]
Afua Hirsch
And as a woman in my 40s, I have to say I found this really interesting commentary, Persuasion on aging because even though Anne's only in her 20s, you know, at the time she was considered to be getting to the end of her marriageable age, of her youthful bloom. There are lots of references to her kind of losing her bloom and this idea that she might have missed the chance to find happiness when she was younger and prettier. And she's grappling with that, trying to reconcile that with her values of doing the right thing and being loyal to your family. And it's interesting to read Jane Austen, who herself was getting older and unmarried when she wrote Persuasion. Kind of entertaining those ideas. And you know, there are things that the context and the social class experience changes so much for a modern reader. But those ideas about a woman's value being linked to her appearance and her youthfulness are very enduring. So I found that quite powerful when I read it this time.
- [34:58]
Peter Frankopan
So when we come back, Afra, I know you want as a trained lawyer to have a kind of not exactly a trial of Jane Austen, but to kind of to make the case for and against her books. How to understand these. Are these sort of trivial bits of fluff? Are they sort of enjoyable reads or are they more serious commentaries? Where do they fit within ideas about novels and of great literature and to kind of get a better sense of evaluating Jane Austen? So we'll take a look through that when we come back.
- [35:35]
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Afua Hirsch
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- [36:17]
Okay, so Peter, I want to give a bit of air time to the younger you. You were a teenage boy who had this perception that Austin was not for you. It was kind of all romance and domestic life and marriage, which by the way is not necessarily an unreasonable perception because the fact is she was writing about the small things, the world of the home Women's loves. Her protagonists are women who fall in love, who want to marry a man, but have all of this jeopardy and their own doubts. And I can see why, for male readers, for readers who aren't from that world of privilege and marriage, that might seem frivolous, remote, trivial, mundane. And these are all criticisms that have been lobbed at Austen. So I think it's important to kind of entertain them and see how much merit there is in those perceptions, whether it's fair to regard her writing as trivial or as her staunch supporters say. And there are many that actually this is really substantive commentary about power, class, gender, social structures, you know, whether they're actually really important interventions on big themes.
- [37:27]
Peter Frankopan
Well, I mean, let's start with that one. I mean, the idea of the novel, you know, so sort of established the idea about fiction and why people read today. But, you know, at the time, you know, novels are, you know, they're not the most popular form of reading. People are reading books so they can learn great things about the past and about history and about the classical world. Austin is definitely a pioneer in the sense that as a woman writing in the first place, and to be generating the kind of readership that she gets. The Prince Regent himself is a fan and asked for one of her books to be dedicated to him, which Austen does, but slightly through gritted teeth, she says she can't stand him. But, you know, there is, I think, something about how one sees social history in England in the early 1800s through the lens of Austen. But I wonder what you think, Afra, about this idea about trivial and about whether that's even a fair word, because it seems to me that that's doesn't get laid at the feet of male writers. And it feels that there's a sort of context where whatever a woman writes is going to be dismissed that way, and that men get a free, free pass. Is that. Is that fair?
- [38:33]
Afua Hirsch
Well, let's just look at the context in which she was writing. So just the novel itself was a slight rarity at the time. So, for example, it's estimated that in the 18th century there were 10,000 histories of England published, which is mind blowing, by the way. I wonder how many of those anyone still reads compared to 3,000 novels. So the novel was the minority character in this literary world, and the history of England was regarded as the serious work by the serious author that had real social and historical merit. You could argue that just the existence of Jane, the fact that she was a woman writing the stories she wanted to write with her own Voice and her completely kind of uncensored. That in itself was quite a radical thing because it was so rare for women to have a voice and have that platform and that centering the female gaze was also quite a radical thing. So data analysis of her novels has found that she is the only writer among considered notable greats in the English canon who never wrote a book that use the pronoun he more often than the pronoun she. So she really stands apart in prioritizing the female voice, the female lens, and that even though she's dealing with these themes of romantic happiness and choice in marriage, that that is exposing the built in unfairness of courtship, that, you know, women have to wait to be chosen, that's dependent on their looks and how well they sing and dance, that even their accomplishments in their education are kind of turned into marriageable ornaments for the enjoyment and appreciation of men. And that in itself is an idea that draws quite heavily on the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, who was writing at the time, whose book A Vindication of the Rights of Women was published in 1792. Just kind of as Jane is coming into her conscious writing era. And Wollstonecraft's big argument was that it is not for the benefit of society that that a few brilliant men should be brought forward at the expense of the multitude. She advocated education for girls and women, and she was very insistent that education for girls and women was not just to turn them into ornaments, that it should be for their own intellectual development for them to become contributory members of society. So Austen, you could argue, is kind of hiding these quite radical political ideas for her time in. In the world that was acceptable to readers, which was one of politics and relationships and love and domestic life, and that that was the kind of world that was available to her, that was the one she knew. She took that canvas and painted onto it in sometimes subtle colors, these much more political themes of power and gender.
- [41:19]
Peter Frankopan
But then we talked about this Afra before we recorded. And you want to talk about Austen and the role of the era of trad wives in the manosphere, you know, and the fact that Austen is writing about romance, about class, about morality, about money, about marrying the right person and living happily ever after, you know, how does that sit within the world? Isn't this a very familiar, comfortable world that's not challenging any boundaries?
- [41:44]
Afua Hirsch
Yeah, it's an interesting time to be reading Austen because I think if we were doing this five years ago, it would have been like, gosh, these ideas are really outdated. You know, that A woman's main object is marriage and that a woman belongs in the home. It's just a question of how much agency she has within that home. Now those ideas feel newly weaponized. You know, there are huge social movements supported by people like the President of the United States, as we record, who are really interested in this idea that we should go back to an era that I often feel is a romanticized version of the one Austen was living in, where a woman knew that marriage was her goal, that she knew that her place was in the home. Yes, she could have a voice and she could read and she could have things to say, but this was all to make sure her husband had an acceptable companion and her children had a well equipped mother, and that men went out and fought the wars and were the leaders and had the income and managed the money and women didn't trouble their pretty little minds with things like that. Because the truth is that while Austen is exploring these ideas of power and gender, she's not deeply questioning the construct. All her heroes, all her heroines end up achieving marriage. That is the goal, that is the ideal outcome, and that's not really in question. And so I don't think we can blame Jane Austen for the fact that we seem to be regressing back to a world where that again has new relevance. But it feels the case. And I can't read her now without seeing the ways that contemporary actors are trying to glorify that past where women were not equal and they were confined in such a restrictive way.
- [43:31]
Peter Frankopan
And I guess Austen, if you look at it that way, then the fact that Elizabeth Bennet refuses Mr. Collins's offer of marriage and in fact turns down Mr. Darcy, even though he's minted first time round, is showing agency. It's showing that a woman shouldn't just be packed off and married for money. You know, I suppose there's some of that, I think the kind of the knocking and the, and the hitting at slobbery and people punching down is also really important in a world that today is highly stratified. That's probably one reason also, too, why Austin is so popular today, because that process of trying to break down boundaries is something that Austen rails against in all of her books, too, about how to protect the middle class from treating them badly from above. Even though, as we mentioned, that maybe could be applied downwards too. But I think that that idea about disconnecting wealth from character, turn the tables on hierarchy speaks to quite a subversive part of how Austen thinks about the world around her. And even things like virtue and poverty, you know, the. Many of the most economically defeated minor characters are maybe even too perfectly virtuous and good and kind and generous to her faults. But those are better than people who are interested in the alternatives, their own status in luxury and in showing themselves off. What about colonialism? Afro? You touched on that a little bit, too. How do we think about that?
- [44:49]
Afua Hirsch
Yeah, I've got a lot to say on that, but for now, I'll say there is a case that could be made that she is trying to comment critically on people who are directly involved in colonialism and enslavement. She makes those characters less attractive characters to some extent. And the way that when Fanny questions Sir Thomas Bertram, there's a silence is quite a profound moment that kind of is loaded with the guilt and complicity of that silence. But I don't think you can take it that far. I don't think you can project onto Austen that she is using her work as any kind of reformer or abolitionist, even though, by the way, privately she did support abolition and she was interested in those movements. Her novel's characters are complicit in that world in a way that doesn't really criticise them. And even, actually, if you look at, for example, persuasion, Mrs. Smith, who is Anne's friend, old friend, who's fallen into destitution, the happy ending for Mrs. Smith is that Anne is able to help her get back her income from the West Indies that she lost when her husband died. You know, so there are all these characters that are very positively portrayed who are just kind of like, quietly, passively enjoying the riches of their role in enslavement and colonialism. And I. I don't feel that Austen is really interrogating that now, how we should judge her. You know, the famous argument that she's a product of her time, et cetera, et cetera, I think we should come back to. But I think there's a limit to how much you can argue that she is trying to be a radical reformer. I think that you have to accept that Austen is writing about the world that she lives in. That's what writers often do. That's what they should be free to do. You know, none of us should tell writers what should inspire them, but I also think we should be a bit slow to project onto them all of these, like, big social missions that they weren't necessarily assuming for themselves. Which leads us to the case against Austin. Peter.
- [46:51]
Peter Frankopan
Well, you know, I think we've covered a lot of that about. About, you know, the themes that Austin talks about. I mean, the bit that I'm most interested is how Austen's work was characterized during the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, where Austen's writings were banned for being too frivolous and the product of a bourgeois British imperialist. That's a pretty decisive view on what it is that Austin is writing about and how valuable it is. I think that Austen is quite helpful because you can project so much onto her whichever way you want to do it, and that probably is one of the reasons why she has such a wide appeal, is because you can turn her into whatever it is you want to make of her. The Chinese Communist Party took a particularly stringent view. For what it's worth, Pride and Prejudice more recently in the last 10 years, has been voted one of the 25 most important books ever translated into Chinese, alongside other classics like the Great Gatsby and a book called the Silk Roads. So, you know, there is a space.
- [47:51]
Afua Hirsch
Now, I don't know about the others, but I've heard of the Silk Road.
- [47:54]
Peter Frankopan
That's a mic drop, little mic drop there. But so there is a way in which, you know, China's Chinese society in the last 20, 30 years has lots of those elements that appeal to, that Austin's talking about, about lots of wealth, about urbanization, about social stratification, about, you know, people having a sense of entitlement, and also about what it is you should do. I mean, one of the things that Austin seems to project is that the best possible thing you could have in life is an income and then just time to play cards and to dance and to relax and not have any kind of job or employment or meaning. What do you think?
- [48:31]
Afua Hirsch
Afra, let's be real. You cannot read Austen without having to wade through a lot of different types of fabric, different card games, arrangements for dinners, menus, balls, invites, walks in the countryside, types of carriage, the necessity to be polite at all times, the mundanity of the rules around manners. And like, actually, much as I do enjoy reading Austen and I love a love story, I'm a helpless romantic. I can get so into that there is a level of exhaustion of just having to deal with the mundanity of that world and how stratified it was and how many requirements there were for just meaningless conversations about the weather and what people are wearing and who's marrying who, and it's just. It feels stiflingly trivial. I'm not saying that's not an accurate reflection on the world it's depicting. It probably is. But how much do I value that now is a question that I grapple with. And part of me finds it very frustrating and actually quite tedious. And then there's also the way in which this world is just so privileged. You know, even we're talking about the younger sons of the gentry who aren't inheriting a lot of land and wealth. They're still seeking a sinecure. They're seeking this idea of a living, which is a kind of title, like a role that comes with a regular salary, without actually having to do very much, sometimes without having to do anything. And that's kind of perfectly acceptable in this world. And actually, one of the biggest problems that the characters in Austen novels have is what to do. They just genuinely have nothing to do. It's like, should I go and stay at this friend's stately home? Should we go hunting? Oh, no, it's raining. We'll have to just sit around playing cards today. I find in this world where we're so conscious and aware of all of our problems because there's so much information and we're so socially connected and networked, it's really draining to imagine people sitting around wondering what to do while they just kind of live off the work of these unseen others. Whether that's the working classes in England, whether it's children going up chimneys, whether it's enslaved people in the colonies. So that can be quite hard. And I can see why that puts people off.
- [50:50]
Peter Frankopan
Austin, for you could look at another way. You know, there's lots of discussions, debates today about people spending too much time on their screens and how they've forgotten to talk to each other. And in fact, isn't one of the best things to be stuck in a drawing room when it's raining outside or sitting rooms where it's raining outside, and to be bored out of your tiny mind? Because then that's how you write novels. That's how you think of games to play. That's how you keep yourself entertained. So in a way, even that world, which looks stultifyingly dull, there are kind of calls in today's world to say, we need more of that, actually. Because if you could just sit down and play Candy Crush and, you know, and waste your time on your.
- [51:23]
Afua Hirsch
What are you writing about? You're writing about.
- [51:25]
Peter Frankopan
That's a different story. Yeah.
- [51:26]
Afua Hirsch
You sit indoors and have nothing to do. And yes. I mean, there was a study I read recently about how boredom in children is so important for creativity that all of the children that go on to become creative problem solvers, artists, people who invent and do interesting things, were bored as children and had to fill their minds with their own imagination. And I think I fantasize about being stuck indoors in a drawing room with nothing to do when it's raining outside because I could get so much work done.
- [51:52]
Peter Frankopan
But the reason Listen, we should just tell our listeners we're both stuck indoors. It's raining outside today and we decided to turn our boredom into a podcast so you know good things can come of strange events. Listen, it's been fantastic to talk about Austin and her work. It's going to be really interesting.
- [52:09]
Afua Hirsch
Anything but boring.
- [52:10]
Peter Frankopan
In our next episode, we're going to talk about the legacies of colonialism and slavery and also about adaptations about how Austin's work has been seen over the last couple of hundred years. But so, yet again, thank you for a terrific discussion. Thank you for listening to Legacy.
- [52:26]
Afua Hirsch
Don't forget to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player. You can also watch all our episodes on YouTube, so make sure you're subscribed there too.
- [52:35]
Peter Frankopan
And of course, we're on all the socials and the links are in the show notes for this episode or just search Legacy Podcast. I'm Peter Frankopan. I'm Afua Hirsch and we'll see you for the next episode of Legacy.
- [53:04]
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