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The Book Review
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Pride and Prejudice'
01:05:14
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” So opens Jane Austen’s Regency-era romantic comedy “Pride and Prejudice,” which for centuries has delighted readers with its story of the five Bennet sisters and their efforts to marry well. On this week’s episode, Book Club host MJ Franklin discusses the novel with fellow Book Review editors Jennifer Harlan, Emily Eakin and Gregory Cowles.
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- [00:00]
Wayfair Announcer
Wayfair loves fall. The crisp air, the cool nights, and of course, the seasonal lattes. And as your trusted destination for all things home, Wayfair's got everything you need to cozify your space, from comfy recliners to warm bedding and autumn decor. Wayfair even has espresso makers so you can make that latte at home. You know the one? Head to Wayfair.com today to shop curated collections of easy, affordable fall updates. That's W A Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home.
- [00:42]
Gilbert Cruz
Hello everyone. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review podcast. As we do every month, we have a book club episode, and for this month's Book Review Book Club, we're talking about Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. We chose this book because this year 2025, is the 250th anniversary of Austen's birth, and to celebrate that occasion, we decided to dive into one of her classics, Pride and Prejudice. It's an obvious pick. It's one of the most beloved books in the English literary canon. If you need proof, you should look at the Passion in the comments section of our announcement article for this book club. For this episode, we're going to do things slightly differently than how we've done it in the past. As usual, of course, NJ is going to host our typical group discussion about the book, but that's going to happen a little later in the episode. Before that, he spoke to Sarah Lyle, our resident Jane Austen expert here at the Book Review for a quick Austen primer. Austen as a literary figure lives so large in the public consciousness, but we want to know who she was as a person. So MJ's going to start with Sarah. After that, he'll jump to our panel conversation. It's all going to be great. Without further ado, let's jump to it.
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MJ Franklin
Jane Austen as a literary figure lives so large in the public consciousness. But who is Jane Austen as a person? So before we dive into Pride and Prejudice itself, we just wanted to explore what background do we need to know that will give us a greater understanding and appreciation of her and her books? So we'll start with that primer and then we'll go to our panel conversation. Thank you for embarking on this Jane Austen adventure with us. And without further ado, let's dig in. I am here with Sarah Lyle, a colleague here at the Times who wears many, many, many hats. Sarah is a writer, so you can find her writing fantastic pieces across many desks at the paper. Sarah is our Thriller columnist at the Book Review, and she is also our resident Jane Austen expert. Sarah, welcome.
- [03:04]
Sarah Lyle
What a pleasure to be here.
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MJ Franklin
I'm so excited to talk to you because for book club this month, we're reading Pride and Prejudice, and I'm putting my cards out on the table. While I have read Pride and Prejudice once before, I read it on my own. I never had to read it in school. It wasn't on my high school curriculum. It was never on the syllabus for any of the class I took as an English major in college. And so because of that, while I have a rough familiarity with Jane Austen and her life and her work and some of the novelistic innovations that she pioneered, I just don't have a full picture of her, to use a metaphor. I feel like I see and recognize some individual stars in her career, but I don't know the whole constellation. And so I wanted to talk to an expert, and that's you. You literally wrote the guide on Jane Austen for the Book Review.
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Sarah Lyle
Well, I'm an amateur expert, but what a great topic to be able to read up on and happy to answer any questions.
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MJ Franklin
Thank you. Thank you. So I guess before I get started, I just wanted to ask broadly, how did you come to Jane Austen?
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Sarah Lyle
You know, I was thinking about that. I can't really remember. I think I must have read one of them in high school, but I don't really remember. And I think for many years I'd mostly like a lot of people. I'd read Pride and Prejudice and maybe Sense and Sensibility or Emma, but not all six of them. And then just in the last few years, I went back to them all. I listened to some on tape. I read them. And I'm now in that group of people who's, I think, gonna read at least one or two of them probably every year. They're so fun to return to. And you really pick up something different each time you come back to them.
- [04:42]
MJ Franklin
What was it about the past few years that made you revisit in the first place?
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Sarah Lyle
I don't know. I mean, they. When you go back to any book that you've read before, you get that lovely sense of continuity of going home. It's very reassuring. You know the charact very well, and you're delighted both by knowing how the book will end, but by getting to go on that trip through it once more. And I have to say, I have started to think of Jane Austen as so helpful when I'm in social situations. If you go to a big dinner party, for example, and you're sitting next to somebody who's just a windbag or who brags all the time or who name drops all the time, and it's not very fun to sit there, and maybe they're not even being very nice to you or they're ignoring you. And what I do is I take refuge in thinking, how would Jane Austen describe this dinner party?
- [05:37]
MJ Franklin
I love that.
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Sarah Lyle
So good on people with weird foibles that are annoying to other people. And I promise you, it gets you through almost every situation.
- [05:47]
MJ Franklin
So Jane Austen has impacted your life. I hope she'll impact my life. I'm gonna be thinking about this now while reading Jane Austen, but I wanted to dive into Jane Austen's life. So I guess to start, I wanna. Probably will sound like a silly question, which is, who is Jane Austen? And by that I don't mean, like, Jane Austen was an author who wrote blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, can you give us some biographical details about the person behind this mythic figure? Was she from a big family or a small family? Did she grow up rich or poor? Did she always want to be a writer? I just want. Can you give us a little primer of who Jane Austen was as a person?
- [06:24]
Sarah Lyle
No silly questions. So just briefly, she was born in 1775. She was the seventh of eight children. Her father was a clergyman. She died at age 41. In the early 19th century, she wrote six novels. Money was always an issue for the family. Her father died young. She and her mother and her sister had to depend on the financial support of male members of the family. She never married. And she had a very, very rich writing and intellectual life. She wasn't educated in school for more than a year or two, mostly at home. But her father had an unusually extensive library and really encouraged her writing. And she was writing from a young age. She had copy books filled with short stories and sketches and things. She wrote hilarious letters. Not enough of them survive. Her sister burned a lot of them after she died, and then one of her nieces burned more of them later. Well, the feeling seems to be she was really quite tart in her responses to things, as you can see from her books. And the feeling is that she might have been too critical about members of the family or been too sharp about people they might have known. And it was considered, you know, they didn't want it put out there.
- [07:47]
MJ Franklin
I was gonna ask if it was a protective thing or a vindictive thing to burn off letters we don't know.
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Sarah Lyle
No, I don't think it was vindictive. I think it was protective. And some of her letters do survive and they're very, very funny and sharp. So it' a great pleasure to go and read those as well. Many people have pointed to the fact that she was a spinster and felt sad on her behalf, especially because in all her books, the female protagonist finds a husband by the end. But there's some evidence that maybe she actually didn't want to get married. She really liked her independence. She liked making money. She made a little bit while she was alive, but she didn't live to see her great success. And she was proposed to at least once. She accepted and then changed her mind and rejected him. And she really did believe, we know from letters that people should really marry somebody they loved, not just get married out of convenience.
- [08:42]
MJ Franklin
And so I am going to do the thing that authors really hate. I'm sorry, Dane Austin, which is to say how much of her novels, her fiction, is her life.
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Sarah Lyle
I don't think very much at all. I think what you get out of the novels is her observing society around her. So provincial society in the late 18th and early 19th century, what it was like just to be in a small family member of the landed gentry, whether you had money or not. And what it was like, what the finances were like, what the social life was like, what your internal life was like. She was an amazing observer of morals and manners. And that's another thing that's fun to read, fun to pick up when you read, is that she can take a little, little thing going to the store, calling on a friend and turn it into the most delightful descriptive passage. And it's like taking a small life and making it big because of your imagination and the way you can describe it.
- [09:49]
MJ Franklin
So with that, I want to pivot to the books. And she wrote six books you mentioned. And we could talk, I feel like, extensively about all of them.
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Sarah Lyle
Yes, we could.
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MJ Franklin
But for the purp of this conversation, this book club, I want to focus on specifically, Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen's second book. Correct. Sense and Sensibility came first.
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Sarah Lyle
She wrote a bunch of them over many years, but four of them were published in quick succession in the last years of her life, and the last two were published after she died.
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MJ Franklin
So can you situate Pride and Prejudice in her oeuvre? Like, I know her books are frequently described as social commentaries or comedy of manners or love stories, but what is out of her catalog? What is Pride and Prejudice, doing that's unique. What stands out? Does it set the ground for other books? Does it riff on others? Can you. Can you situate us in how Pride and Prejudice fits?
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Sarah Lyle
I'm not sure that's exactly how I would frame that. She wrote her first four books over several years, and except for her very first one, Northanger Abbey, which she began when she was very young and is. You can tell it's a more unsophisticated book than the other ones. I don't think you see a massive progression of sort of style or themes from book to book. I think they're all on such a high level. And the reason we're talking about Pride and Prejudice, I think, is that it's really the gateway drug for Jane Austen. It's the one most people find the most interesting, the most fun. It has a terrific plot that's so well organized. Just the way it's paced is perfect. The characters are really funny, but also really poignant. And Elizabeth Bennet, who's the heroine, is probably the most likable and the most delightful of all of Austen's heroines.
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MJ Franklin
So that's how Pride and Prejudice has been embraced by the culture at large. But do we know how Jane Austen herself felt about the book?
- [12:01]
Sarah Lyle
She loved her character. She loved Lizzie Bennet. And we see in one of her letters that she actually said that. She said something like, she's about as delightful a creature as I could think of. And Elizabeth Bennet is a very lively person. She's quite acerbic herself at times. She has very strong opinions about people. She's very witty, but a good person at the same time. And this is really. People also, I think, make a little mistake to say that the thing about these books is they're all just love stories. They are. But each one is about something slightly different. They really are different from each other. But this one is. If this were being published now, you'd say it was Enemies to lovers or whatever it is, Hate to love, because it just starts off so well with Elizabeth Bennet and the sublime Mr. Darcy hating each other on first sight and being so rude and mean to each other. And the progression of how they fall in love is so much fun.
- [13:08]
MJ Franklin
In the book, you just said that, which I found really interesting. You mentioned a lot of people characterize this as a love story, as a romance, and that's not quite right. Can you frame this book a little bit for us? How should we be thinking about it? Can you key us on some things that we should be noticing?
- [13:25]
Sarah Lyle
Well, I think it is a romance and in the end it has a great happy ending. They all find love. Whoever deserves it finds love. But it's also about class. It's about Elizabeth Bennet's family being lower ranking than Mr. Darcy's family and how that plays out in the society at large. It's about money and the fact that when you're a young woman in this milieu with a father who doesn't have a great fortune, so you don't have much to look forward to after his death, you really need to get married in order to be financially secure. So people often comment that these books show everyone to be very mercenary, especially in matters of marriage, but they've had to be. And also it's really interesting how everyone just talks openly about how much money everyone has in New York City. People might say, how much do you rent? Do you pay for your apartment? But it's still slightly rude, but back then they would just say openly, oh, well, he has an income of 20 and she only has 80 pounds that her father gave her. But you have to know, because it really directly affects how comfortable you'll be and how independent you'll be.
- [14:43]
MJ Franklin
That's how Jane Austen approached class. And it sounds, as you mentioned, fizzing under the surface. There's a lot of social commentary just buzzing, which is what made this book and Jane Austen's books at large so enduring. But I also understand that she was a really big advocate of the novel as a form and she really did help pioneer some techniques. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. Jane Austen and the novel writ large. I feel like that could be a college class on its own.
- [15:13]
Sarah Lyle
Absolutely. And I'm sure there are so many different college classes on Jane Austen and any approach you could think to take, they take them. So if you go back to her first novel, Northanger Abbey, it's a sort of pastiche of a gothic novel and a bit of a send up of Gothic novels. And it has a heroine who reads Gothic novels and has a sort of fantasy about living in a Gothic novel and ends up at this great castle and she imagines the proprietor has killed his wife or stashed her in some room somewhere and there's a cupboard and she thinks, what letters are secreted here? And that book also directly talks about novel reading and novel writing. And it makes a real case for why the novel is a great form of literature, much more than history or other sorts of work. It really plumbs people's emotions and their philosophies and their daily lives. And it's much more heartfelt than those other types of books. And it shouldn't just be like, oh, girls read novels and men the way they described it, then read literature. So there's that. She also perfected this technique called free indirect style. And what I mean by that is you have an omniscient narrator, but as you move through the novel, the narrator takes on the voice and opinions of different characters. Usually in Pride and Prejudice, it's Lizzie Bennet, but you'll see stuff written that isn't attributed to Lizzie Bennet, but it's obvious it's what. Or you should think it's what she's thinking. So when she first sees Mr. Darcy, the feelings she has about him, the opinion she has about him, could be put into the narration, but they don't come from her voice. And this allows the narrator to inhabit all sorts of different characters. And Austen wasn't the first person to do this, but she refined it and popularized it. And it's very common now. But back then, it wasn't common at all. It was really innovative. And so maybe this is helpful. You might even say that the very famous first line of Pride and Prejudice, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. So that is slightly an example of this in that obviously the narrator herself or himself, the omniscient narrator, isn't saying that. That's his or her opinion. What you realize right when you read this next paragraph is that this is parroting view of mothers of single daughters throughout the region. And so that's an example of it. It's really funny. And that's one reason it's funny, is because you get into it a little bit sideways that way.
- [18:14]
MJ Franklin
I'm glad you mentioned that, because that's one thing that I'm so fascinated by and that I really wanted to make sure was in our book club conversation, which is so many people come to Jane Austen for so many reasons, because of the love story, because of that it is painting, because they've read it before and it's like comfort. But I wanted to make sure that we got in just the skill and the craft and the, I keep saying, innovation of Jane Austen. And I wanted to make sure that that was a part of what we.
- [18:46]
Sarah Lyle
Take away sentence by sentence. It's so well written. And go to any of her comic set pieces, like when she puts dialogue into people's voices, it's so, so funny. And think of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the chatelaine of this massive estate, who's such a snob and utters things like, well, if my daughter had studied music, she would be very proficient. And then you get Mr. Collins, who proposes to Elizabeth and is so awful and so full of himself and he just. The way he talks is so, so funny. And it takes a lot of skill to write like that, but you also have to have a really sharp satirical eye to even think about things that way.
- [19:31]
MJ Franklin
I love this. And unfortunately, we're running out of time for this primer. So I guess my last question is, is there anything that you think every Jane Austen reader, every Pride and Prejudice reader should know? This could be like a fact or just like something that you love about the book.
- [19:48]
Sarah Lyle
I think everyone should read it again and again. I really do. I think it really, really rewards rereading. And so I urge even people who think they know it really well. It's really great to go back to.
- [19:59]
MJ Franklin
A. I just want to say a huge thank you. Thank you for this primer. I'm going to be calling you Professor Lyle from here on out. We are going to jump back to our overall panel book club conversation about Pride and Prejudice. But first, I think we should take a quick break.
- [20:18]
Wayfair Announcer
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- [20:52]
Jen Harlan
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- [21:27]
MJ Franklin
Montblanc invites you to use life's quiet moments to pause, reflect and put pen to paper.
- [21:33]
Sarah Lyle
Chapter one oh no, no no. No.
- [21:36]
Jen Harlan
Part one.
- [21:38]
Emily Aiken
Perfect.
- [21:39]
MJ Franklin
The mountains are impressive. Oh, I wish you were here to see them.
- [21:44]
Jen Harlan
Dear Diary, meet my new writing companion, the Meisterstuck.
- [21:49]
MJ Franklin
For every journey, the perfect companion awaits. Montblanc. Let's write. Visit montblanc.com for exquisitely crafted writing instruments, leather goods, and more. Welcome back. I'm MJ Franklin, and this is the Book Review podcast. Before the break, we spoke to my colleague Sarah Lyle for a primer on Jane Austen. And now onto our book club conversation, let's dig into Pride and Prejudice itself. Joining me for that are three of my fellow editors here at the Book Review, all returning book clubbers. Jen Harlan. Hello.
- [22:24]
Sarah Lyle
Hello.
- [22:25]
Jen Harlan
I am so thrilled to be here.
- [22:26]
MJ Franklin
Welcome back. Greg Coles. Thank you for joining us.
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Greg Coles
Thank you for inviting me, mj.
- [22:31]
MJ Franklin
And we have Emily Aiken. Hi, Emily.
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Emily Aiken
Hi.
- [22:34]
MJ Franklin
I'm so excited to get started. It feels silly to say, can someone give us an elevator pitch of Pride and Prejudice? Someone pitch me this book. Is it gonna land? So I'll say instead, can someone set the table for us? Who can take it away?
- [22:46]
Greg Coles
I can set the table.
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MJ Franklin
Thank you. Sure.
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Greg Coles
So if you have not read Pride and Prejudice but have heard about it, I feel like I should start out by saying there are no zombies in the book.
- [22:56]
MJ Franklin
Not Pride and Prejudice. And Zombies. A great adaptation.
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Greg Coles
Yeah. No, Pride and Prejudice is the original. Will they or won't they? Enemies to lovers. Regency romance. It tells the story of the Bennet family of Longbourn Estate in Hertfordshire, England, and their five daughters, who are nearing an age when they need to consider their marriage prospects. And even though the book opens with the arrival of an eligible bachelor to a neighboring estate, Mr. Bingley, who takes a quick interest in the oldest Bennet daughter, that's actually a bit of a fake out because it is really about, very famously, the second oldest daughter, Elizabeth Bennet, and about Mr. Bingley's best friend, Darcy. And. And the book just. They get off on the wrong foot.
- [23:45]
MJ Franklin
Famously, and they spend the rest of.
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Greg Coles
The novel finding their way to their true destiny in each other's arms. And along the way, there's a lot of comedy about social manners and pompous people, and there's a lot of just effervescent wit.
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MJ Franklin
Stunning.
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Jen Harlan
Effervescent's such a good word for this book, Emily.
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MJ Franklin
Jen, would you add anything to that setup?
- [24:05]
Jen Harlan
Greg alluded to this a little bit, but the focus is on Lizzie and her relationship with Darcy. She's the sort of the main narrator of the book. Although there's also some at the time. Really innovative stuff that Austen did with the narration that I think we'll probably get into. But you also do spend time with some of the other sisters. You have Jane, the eldest daughter, who's the sort of like, beautiful, more reserved one. And then a lot of the. There's a lot of drama also involving the youngest daughter, Lydia, who is kind of a mess, kind of a mess, a hot mess, and the regiment of soldiers who come to town and quickly draw her and Kitty, the next youngest daughter's interest.
- [24:44]
Emily Aiken
Unless it sounds frivolous. I guess we should also add that, of course, marriage was high stakes in Regency England for. Especially for young women. Especially for young women in a family of five girls whose parents did not have a big fortune.
- [24:58]
Jen Harlan
And also who. Because there are five daughters, that you find out pretty early on in the book. Part of the reason that the stakes are so high is that their estate, their family home, has been entailed, which means it will go to the next living male relative when Mr. Medit dies. And so his wife and his daughters will basically be out of luck, out on the street and out of their home. Yes.
- [25:18]
Greg Coles
I'm glad we jumped into this part of it right away because it's something that you don't see much in books today, which is the economics of it all is really foregrounded. She doesn't dwell on the first sentence. Do you want to tell us the first sentence, Emily?
- [25:33]
MJ Franklin
Oh, yeah. Dramatic reading of the first sentence, please.
- [25:36]
Emily Aiken
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man of large fortune must be in search of a wife. Something like that. Someone else read off the Dome.
- [25:46]
MJ Franklin
You have copies? And I thought you were going to consult your book.
- [25:48]
Emily Aiken
I thought you guys were.
- [25:49]
Jen Harlan
That was very close. We've got. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
- [25:58]
MJ Franklin
Iconic. Iconic. Well, to guess. To dive in properly into this conversation, I want to start with you, Jen, because you are the person who flagged me months and months and months ago, that this year Jane Austen would be turning 250. That there are gonna be.
- [26:14]
Jen Harlan
Happy birthday, Jane.
- [26:15]
MJ Franklin
Happy birthday. That there would be celebrations of Austen and her work, and that we should read Pride and Prejudice for the book club. So I just wanna ask. Tell us your thoughts about the book and then just generally, what is it about it? There was a level of passion there that I wanna dig into. Talk to us more.
- [26:31]
Jen Harlan
I think I'm one of many people who came to this book at a formative age. I read it Also not for school, but just on my own. I fell pretty hard for the Jo adaptation, which came out when I was a teen and then decided I needed to go read the book, and fell just as hard for the original as well. And I think what struck me the first time I read the book and has struck me every time I've reread it since then, is that 250 years is a long time. This is not a new book, but there is nothing about this book that feels fusty or old or dated. I mean, the circumstances are very different. The costumes and the language feels very elevated, but the concerns and the embarrassments and the irritations and the infatuations of these people in this world, which is so fully imagined, feels so fresh and present and funny and swoony and all the things that you want out of a really great romance novel or novel in general.
- [27:33]
MJ Franklin
Greg, you are in the studio nodding along. Tell us your thoughts.
- [27:36]
Greg Coles
It's funny. I have notes to this effect. One of our, our commenters online, one of our readers, Nora Odendall from Pennsylvania, said almost exactly the same thing in the last paragraph of her commentary that this book, unlike other 19th century novels, there's something that feels very fresh and not dated at all about Pride and Prejudice. And so I was thinking about that while I was reading it. What makes it so fresh? It still matters who we date, who we end up with as romantic partners, even if the methods have changed, we still, it still matters that we share values, that our family approves, the economic security factor of it. Like all this stuff that she's writing about, even if we're doing it now through dating apps or through a friend's introduction or through meeting in college, like it still matters. If you go against the prevailing orthodoxy, the way that Elizabeth does even more.
- [28:28]
Emily Aiken
Broadly, the study of human relations, so that each character has to make these assessments about the others. And there's so much self deception and deception and constant reevaluation of who people are, what their intentions are. This is the human social game that we're all playing even now in 2025.
- [28:47]
Greg Coles
I think also there's a second reason that it feels so fresh, so of the moment, which is that she really invented a genre and it's a genre that still thrives today. The romantic comedy, the Happy Ever After.
- [29:01]
Emily Aiken
The marriage plot.
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Greg Coles
The marriage plot, exactly right. And so it just, it feels familiar to us reading it. It feels like, oh, I know what this is.
- [29:09]
MJ Franklin
So were those things that you picked up on the first time that you read this or what were your initial thoughts?
- [29:14]
Greg Coles
Yeah, I mean, the first time that I read this book, it was for high school and it maybe felt a little old fashioned to me then in the language and the manners. I was a huge reader, but I resisted required reading. And a huge reader.
- [29:28]
MJ Franklin
And a rebel.
- [29:29]
Greg Coles
And a rebel, yes. And so the first time that I read it, I maybe didn't get everything out of it that I might have Then probably about 15 years ago, I went through a Jane Austen kick and read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility and Emma. I think just those three, but read them all digitally on my phone, like during my commute in quick order. And they're just delightful, all of them. And I fell into all three of those.
- [29:56]
Emily Aiken
Well, it's interesting, Greg, Cause I too read it as a teenager and I think then I too fell in love with it and have reread it frequently since then. For me, I remember the first time I read it, it was the novel for me was a celebration of romance as repartee. There had never been dialogue like this. The pursuit of love through the sparring of wit was just the most thrilling thing to watch on the page. There's not a poorly turned sentence that comes out of anyone's mouth, but especially Dar and Elizabeth. They are equally matched. And to watch that verbal sparring, it basically was a brilliant testament to the double entendre of the word intercourse. So, right. This is Regency England. There are lots of rules about behavior between men and women. Men and women are policed for their decorum. And there's a lot of sexual sublimation going on through language. And Jane Austen depicts that brilliantly. And that's what the novel was for me. It was language at its most erotically charged.
- [30:58]
Jen Harlan
See, you went in a very like, like literary and esteemed direction. My immediate thought was Love island, which is not a show that I really watched. But I was like, they have such good chat and good banter in this book and that really does make the difference.
- [31:11]
MJ Franklin
So it sounds like everyone here has read the book multiple times. Yes, I'm curious and Greg, you mentioned it a little bit. But like, I'm curious how this book has evolved for you upon subsequent readings.
- [31:23]
Jen Harlan
I think, yeah, this is probably the fourth or fifth time that I have read it and I think every time I read it first, I find myself like bowled over every time by Jess, what we've just talked about, how. What an amazing writer she is, and especially how funny she is. I find myself laughing at different moments each time for me, one of them on this read was there's a moment where Jane and Lizzie come back from being away for a little while. And Lydia and Kitty meet them at the Stagecoach Inn in town. And they have ordered a large cold meat lunch. But they immediately tell the older sisters that. They're like, look, we did this wonderful thing for you. And also, you need to pay for it. Cause we spent all of our money on hats at the shop in town. And then as they're finally getting in the carriage to go home, Lydia has this line where she talks about, oh, I'm so glad that I bought a hat, even just so I could have a hat box in the carriage. Because it's so fun to be, like, really crowded in the carriage together. I'm like, she's just ridiculous in the most fun way. And something that struck me this time. I've read the book many times, both in a digital format and physical, but this was the first time that I listened to it. And the audiobook was.
- [32:35]
MJ Franklin
Which audiobook did you listen to?
- [32:36]
Jen Harlan
I listened to a version. I think it's like 10, 20 years old, maybe at this point. That's narrated by Kate Redding. And she is a, I think, just a professional audiobook narrator. And she is so good. And I found it so transporting just walking around my neighborhood in Brooklyn. But listening to the witty banter between Lizzie and Darcy and the descriptions of the fields of Pemberley and Netherfield, I was completely transported.
- [33:02]
MJ Franklin
That sounds delightful. And Emily, you listened in audiobook?
- [33:06]
Emily Aiken
I did too. I listened to Rosamund pike reads all the parts, so she does all the voices. This is not a small cast. And she played Jane BENNETT in the 2005 film adaptation, the one known as the Muddy Hem adaptation for its naturalism. So you see Elizabeth and Jane traipsing across the fields to Netherfield hall, and their gowns are, as you remember from the book, are covered with mud. And Darcy and Ms. Bingley find that a little appalling. And so she knew the book very well. And she is a wonderful, wonderful embodiment of every character. And I was just. I was enchanted when I got to the end. I started back at the beginning.
- [33:47]
Jen Harlan
I really want to go back to listen to it again just because I really want to hear, like, her Darcy and her Mr. Bennet. I think that would be really fun.
- [33:54]
MJ Franklin
I'm going to add this to the show notes. But in 2015, Rosamund pike joined the Book Review podcast to talk about her process of adapting this for audio, about her process of reading the audiobook. And then she was Also, Yeah, in that 2005 adaptation, too. So that's in the archives for you.
- [34:12]
Greg Coles
I also listened to it this time. I listened and read simultaneously. And the version that I listened to was a third one and read by the British actress Kate Beckinsale, who also inhabited all of the characters wonderfully and.
- [34:25]
Jen Harlan
Has also been in some Austen adaptations, I think, too. Like, she was in Love and French a couple years ago, which is based on one of Ossett, like, not completed works, but one of her. It's like one of her short stories or unfinished novels.
- [34:37]
Greg Coles
She is just great with the tone of it all. She really draws out the comedy, especially of some of the more ridiculous characters, of Mrs. Bennet, of Lady Catherine.
- [34:48]
Emily Aiken
MJ, I'd love to hear what you thought about the first time you read the book.
- [34:53]
MJ Franklin
Yes. So again, I mentioned that I read the book just on my own, and I think that can be hard to approach a classic by yourself. I feel like I felt so guilty about not having read it before, and also intimidating. How do we approach this? So you get everything that you could possibly pick up from just reading on your own. And my solution is I just had fun with it. I think this is a funny book, but I would go home to my partner and I'd be like, have you heard the news? And he'd be like, what is going on? And I say Netherfield is let into a gentleman of some £4,000 a year. Like, I just had my. I got swept into it. And everything that everyone said about the dialogue and just these silly plot points felt so energetic to me. And the other thing that I had going on in my head was Greta Gerwig's Little Women, because there is that great Florence Pugh speech about how marriage is an economic proposition. And of course, this is a big.
- [35:54]
Jen Harlan
Thing, especially for women.
- [35:55]
MJ Franklin
Especially for women. And that was in the back of my head as I was reading about both these. This family kind of sort through both marriage for love and then also marriage for financial and life stability. I will say one of. We talked about tropes before. One of the tropes I really dislike quite a lot is the miscommunication trope. Just as a communicator, I'm just like, oh, just say what you think and just like, why. And yet I feel like here that felt so rich and dynamic and didn't feel frivolous. And you get these great monologues about what it means to misread someone and to live with pride and with prejudice, you might say. And so for me, I Just had a blast reading this. Then the second time I read it for this book club, and the thing that captured me was just the language. I really. I've been thinking, I'm gonna sound stodgy, but I'm like, I miss the great literary monologue, and I miss great dialogue, and I just. I really appreciated these great sweeping passages of confessions of love or thoughts about regret and feeling wrong. And for me, this time around, it was the prose itself that really captured.
- [37:18]
Jen Harlan
When I think of the phrase the OG and also the goat, like both of those, I'm like, that's Jane Austen. Like, she did it. Everyone has just been trying to live up to her game.
- [37:29]
MJ Franklin
In the announcement article, it was really hard for me not to say Jane Austen is the blueprint, but she is the blueprint. She is that girl, as they say.
- [37:37]
Jen Harlan
She is that girl.
- [37:39]
MJ Franklin
250 years later.
- [37:41]
Greg Coles
I wonder if one of the reasons that the miscommunication works in this book, that it didn't put you off, is so much of it is not misunderstanding each other, but it's the role that gossip plays in the book, that people have the wrong idea about each other because they hear it from a third party. And it's when they finally have the chance face to face. When Darcy delivers a letter to Jane. I mean, I'm sorry. When Darcy delivers a letter to Elizabeth explaining himself, well, you had the wrong idea about me. Here are the facts that then that kind of opens her eyes. I had forgotten until this reading how much letter writing plays a role in the book. There's a lot of travel to other states, and there's a lot of letters, the kind of explaining. And Darcy wins her over with a letter. His aunt, Lady Catherine, who's quite this kind of pompous figure, drives him further into Elizabeth's arms with a letter against the union.
- [38:37]
Emily Aiken
I'm glad you brought up letters, because it is remarkable. They don't travel quite as fast as contemporary text messages, but, boy, back in 1811, news moved very quickly. It's a reminder of how effective the British postal system really was. Letters move back and forth within an afternoon. It's interesting, Greg, that you say a lot of the misreading may have to do with gossip, because on my. I don't know how many times I've read the book, but three or four on this latest read, I was really conscious of how much darker the novel seemed to me on this issue than my first encounter with it, and that the levels of deception. Everyone is deception. So Elizabeth is deceived by wickham Wickham, being a captain she meets in the local militia, who has a relationship with Darcy and tells stories about him that turn out to are very defamatory and not true, but which she believes because her first impression of Darcy is he's a jerk.
- [39:37]
Jen Harlan
And also because Wickham is hot.
- [39:39]
MJ Franklin
Let's face it, Wickham is hot.
- [39:41]
Emily Aiken
He's very charming. He's very charming, very manipulative.
- [39:44]
Jen Harlan
A lot of pretty privilege in this book.
- [39:47]
Greg Coles
And.
- [39:47]
Jen Harlan
And sister Wickham is the embodiment of that.
- [39:51]
MJ Franklin
Have you seen those memes that go around? It's like a photo of a hot person that just says, I'd let them ruin my life. That's what.
- [39:59]
Emily Aiken
And he does ruin someone's life. The little sister Lydia, is also deceived by Wickham, ends up marrying him in a marriage that turns quickly, very sour after the initial infatuation wears off. And we could go on and on. I mean, one of the chapters I'd never really paid attention to begins with a description of Mr. Ben and reflecting on his marriage to his wife. And Jane Austen is saying, based on the example of connubial felicity that the Mr. And Mrs. Bennet provide, Elizabeth would have a very poor model because he's married to a woman he can't stand, having been infatuated with her beauty and youth. He's now stuck with this woman who's not very intelligent, who annoys him, who badgers him.
- [40:43]
Jen Harlan
I will say on this reading, I feel like I. Mr. Bennet, I think when he's been portrayed on screen, they tend to make him a little bit, like, warmer and more sympathetic of a character. But I found myself really resistant to him on this read. I'm like, yes, Mrs. Bennet is flighty and obsessed with status and would be annoying to have as a mother or as a wife. But he is also judgmental and sexist, and even the daughters that he thinks he likes, of the women of his family, he's not even that kind of.
- [41:15]
MJ Franklin
It's funny because he can be so acidic. To what? To all of them. And then. Yet he's like, of course I set up that meeting with Bingley. Of course I did this. You don't have to worry. And yet it's classic toxic relationship.
- [41:28]
Emily Aiken
Toxic dependency. Yeah.
- [41:30]
Jen Harlan
Toxic masculinity.
- [41:33]
Greg Coles
He's a fascinating character. Elizabeth is his favorite daughter, And Elizabeth is Mrs. Bennet's least favorite daughter. And Elizabeth has some of his tartness and acidity kind of skepticism about that. They play the social game, but they're aware that it's a game. They don't really buy into it, but.
- [41:51]
Jen Harlan
They both play it begrudgingly and thinking that they are above it and yet they are so engaged. Yeah. Completely entangled with it as well.
- [42:00]
MJ Franklin
I feel like the passion in this room about this book and Jane Austen is palpable. We are going to continue diving in, but first I think we should take a quick break. And we're back. This is the Book Review podcast. I'm MJ Franklin and I am with Greg Coles, Emily Akin, and Jen Harlan. And we are talking about Pride and Prejudice. So we've been going around throwing about a bunch of different ideas and storylines that we've noticed, but I'm just going to ask directly, are there other character storylines that really stand out to you that you particularly love? Like, I'm gonna start. I love that great show between Lizzie and Lady Catherine where Lizzie is taking no bullish from anybody. And the way she stands up for herself, the way she stands up for her family, the way she refuses to be cowed or intimidated. And again, talk about great monologues. There are these great sweeping scenes of her kind of professing her rebellion and saying and really challenging Lady Catherine. So that's one of my favorites. But I'm wondering if there are other storylines or characters that really stood out to you.
- [43:18]
Emily Aiken
I love the few scenes that Mary has. Mary, being the bookish daughter, Austen, being a huge lover of books, actually has fun mocking Mary, whose knowledge of human beings comes entirely from books. And occasionally she'll intervene with some bookish knowledge that she wants to impart that is intended to illuminate how men and women should interact about the fate of men and women in marriage. And it's always way off base. And I loved that she has so much. Books are not gonna be our salvation.
- [43:51]
Greg Coles
Mary is also the source of one of the great comic moments in the book where she insists on singing in front of company and she's terrible at it. And Elizabeth is just cringing with the kind of mortification of the shame on her family. There's a lot of family cringe moments in this, usually at Mrs. Bennet's expense, but in that particular case, it's at Mary's expense. Probably one of my favorite comic scenes in the book is when Mr. Collins, the cousin who is due to inherit the Longbourn estate, proposes to Lizzie as a way to try to keep the estate in the family. He thinks he's doing this great thing and Lizzie is horrified and says no, and he's completely complacent he says, of course I know you don't mean that. Women never do. And it feels so contemporary in this kind of male entitlement. And he's oblivious. He says, oh, you're playing hard to get. And she's like, why would I ever.
- [44:59]
Emily Aiken
Is another example of deception, this assumption that, oh, this is how women do it. They say no and they mean yes.
- [45:06]
Jen Harlan
I was also going to say that Mr. Collins is. He's truly one of the best pompous, oblivious, odious characters in literature. I think Austen is so good at writing these completely lampoonable figures. It makes me think of Mr. Elton and Emma as well. But yeah, on this read I found myself really enjoying the completely complete ridiculousness of him and the way that he moves through the world and all of his obsequiousness to Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
- [45:37]
MJ Franklin
So piggybacking off of that. We've mentioned these characters and these odious figures that stand up or how Jane Austen has tapped into like male ego. That feels so contemporary. And I was wondering, one of the things I really am curious about and that I love is how this book has endured over the years. It was published over 200 years ago. And one of the things I'm wondering is just how and or what does it mean to read Jane Austen now? Are there things that this book has helped you understand about today? Are there ideas or perspectives from today that you bring to this book? And one of the reasons why I'm asking this too is we got this really, really great reader comment from a teacher who said she's been teach this book for years and years and years to high school sophomores. So I asked, has your students perceptions changed over the years? And she said, interestingly, one thing that has changed is that students don't appreciate the physicality of the romance as much anymore that the great party scenes where the characters are finally together but across the room, they don't get the charge of that because right now so much romance happens online. She also mentions that, like Charlotte's marriage, her mercenary approach to marriage resonates more now. So that's a little bit of a perception change. And I'm curious, what does it mean to read Jane Austen today? That's a long winded and very lofty question, but I'm just gonna throw it out to the table.
- [47:06]
Jen Harlan
I think for me as someone, I read a lot of contemporary romance novels, a genre that I really enjoy. And I think reading it on, on this reading of Pride and Prejudice, something that really struck me was just how Many of the elements that we see in romance that's written today, you can really trace back to this book. Like, I made a list of all of the contemporary romance tropes that you can see in this book. Enemies to lovers is the probably most obvious one. But you also have he falls first. You have miscommunication. You have a bad first impression. You have a romantic lead who has sworn off relationships. You have people from different worlds. I think you can make an argument that Darcy is a proto shadow daddy, which is a popular trope in books now.
- [47:48]
MJ Franklin
Wait, what's a shadow daddy?
- [47:49]
Jen Harlan
Like, a dark, brooding, male romantic lead. You see it mostly in Romantasy now, But I think Mr. Darcy qualifies who has a sort of, like, cloud of, like, antisocial and, like, cynicism, maybe a bit nefarious surrounding him, but then when he meets his match, he melts.
- [48:08]
Emily Aiken
Yes.
- [48:09]
Jen Harlan
The light shines upon her and only her.
- [48:12]
MJ Franklin
I love this so much. I know the trope and the type. I did not know the term shadow daddy. That makes me very happy. That's.
- [48:17]
Jen Harlan
I'm happy to introduce you and more listeners of the New York Times to this term. So, yeah, I think I was just, like, really struck. And I think that's part of what makes the book feel so, like, fresh and relevant and alive still, is just how much you can see these elements that are still at play and that people are still using to craft these compelling books now she was doing 250 years ago.
- [48:39]
Emily Aiken
I guess, for me, the questions that I think are at the heart of the book are still the questions that we're asking when we enter a relationship. Like, how much weight should we put on attraction and sexual passion? I mean, we have Lydia and Wickham who impulsively run off together, and then we have a portrait of their marriage within months where they can't stand each other. Right. And then we have Elizabeth and Darcy. Darcy saying, Elizabeth isn't handsome enough. She's tolerable, but not enough to tempt me. And this idea that there are these other traits and they have to do with virtue and integrity and intellectual vivacity. We hear about Elizabeth, and are those the ones that we should elevate and put front and center? This is the universal, timeless dilemma of people through the ages. And I guess it leads me to. I want to ask you guys, do you think that this book ultimately is a conservative book on this issue or a liberal book on this issue or on romance?
- [49:40]
MJ Franklin
That's a great question. And I feel like, so working backwards, my assumption has Always been like, we are so much freer and more upfront with our desires and our approach to love now than we have ever been before. And yet hearing you speak just now, as you mentioned, how just clearly expressed thoughts about desires and sex and sexuality are in this book makes me realize that, like, it bursts my perception a lot, maybe. To answer your question, this book isn't necessarily conservative. These characters do feel, in their own way, free to express themselves and their desires and their approach to romance, both men and women. But it just appears in a different way. Am I answering that correctly? I feel like this is a long way of saying I feel like reading this and having this discussion is making me think that this book is a portrait of how liberal some of these values and approaches actually were. While we assume that they were very buttoned up and stayed.
- [50:47]
Jen Harlan
I think it's also part of why Elizabeth in particular is such a beloved literary heroine and has been throughout the ages, that she is someone who ultimately does choose a fairly like, traditional ending, love and marriage, but chooses it because she wants it, not because it is the expected path or the only path for her. Like, I think she. She goes in thinking, I'm gonna be independent. I don't need this. And it's only because she meets someone extraordinary who she really falls for that she opts in for this. And I think that's part of what I think for the time was really, like, surprising and fresh about her and continues to make her so relatable and compelling.
- [51:24]
Greg Coles
I think that's a really insightful observation. I think that every happy ever after romance is a little bit conservative and is upholding the social order. You're marrying for love, and you know that it is within a very conservative framework. But Elizabeth as somebody who speaks her mind and is independent, it is by nature a progressive, a liberal figure choosing a conservative path that way.
- [51:52]
Emily Aiken
Exactly. I think there's so much feminist literature about this novel because Elizabeth refuses to conform to social convention. She refuses to conform to class conventions. She tells lady de Bourgh she speaks her mind to her class superior, and.
- [52:08]
Jen Harlan
She goes walking through the fields for. There's also something that really struck me. You know, I'm like, I live in New York City. I walk a lot. But they're like, oh, is that. That's a long walk? No, it's only 10 miles. They're like, great, we'll go for a stroll around the property.
- [52:22]
Greg Coles
The walk through the fields. When Elizabeth goes to visit Netherfield because her sister Jane is sick there and she needs to check in on her and she traipses across the fields. There's something of the manic pixie dream to her in that she's just, oh, stomping through the puddles.
- [52:39]
Sarah Lyle
It's muddy hems.
- [52:41]
Greg Coles
Yeah, the muddy hems, exactly.
- [52:44]
MJ Franklin
So I feel like we could continue talking about this book all day. We have a fun third segment which is recommendations. Before we pivot to that, I do want to read some reader comments because we have been talking about this book online with our New York Times community up right now. There is an article headlined Book Club Read Pride and Prejudice by Dane Austin with the Book Review. People have been talking about the book all over the world and here are just comments that I wanted to share. Beth from Oak park writes, this is my second reading of this book. I have a radically different view this time around. I read it maybe 20 years ago when I was in the throes of motherhood and a demanding career. I didn't like it and couldn't relate to it. The slow pace of the characters lives which felt so different from my own. I am now 66 and newly retired. I enjoyed the book immensely. I felt plunged into the world of 18th century England, while I recognized truths that still resonate it today. The dialogue was witty and funny at times and the characters so interestingly drawn. Time really can change your perspective on a book. Someone who just goes by Dee from the broad United States writes One of my favorite things about Jane Austen's book is that beyond the romance plots, the books are brilliant and enduring studies of human nature, character and social relations. They're about discovering yourself and understanding others. The elegance of her writing is also the perfect example of Stunk and White's maxim to quote omit needless words. Each sentence is perfectly structured and designed, forming a complete and tightly woven tapestry. And then one more it's kind of long, so I'm just going to read excerpts, but someone who goes by PM Brigg from Massachusetts writes first. I am a 76 year old man and I love this book. Its structure is a delight, interweaving the various characters, themes and plot lines like a carefully written symphony. The narrative voice is a delightful combination of irony, dry wit, incisive observation and wry comment. The characters are finely drawn and coherent depictions of people one might have known without sermonizing. Austen shines a critical light on the predicament of women in the early 19th century and even our current age. I reread it about once a year and I have done so for two decades. I love that those are just some Reader Comments I wanted to share again. Go continue the conversation online. Before we get to recommendations, I just want to ask the table Last question. Any last things you want to mention about Pride and Priority Prejudice?
- [55:06]
Greg Coles
Can I mention some things that bothered me? Of course.
- [55:09]
MJ Franklin
There's a book club.
- [55:12]
Greg Coles
It's a perfect book, of course. But I thought both that Ms. Bingley and that Lady Catherine were maybe both a little villainous, a little too caricatured as villains in it. And also Jane's initial illness that brings Elizabeth to Netherfield for an extended stay felt maybe contrived as a plot device. I was like, how sick is she really that now suddenly Elizabeth is there for days upon days.
- [55:40]
Jen Harlan
I don't know what the experience of having a common cold was in the early 1800s. It does feel a little extreme. But you also have to wonder how much of that is because they wanted her to stay under Mr. Bingley's roof for a while.
- [55:55]
Emily Aiken
Don't we get the sense that she's improving a little bit faster than her mother wants to admit?
- [56:00]
Jen Harlan
Her mother pays about her mom. Yes.
- [56:01]
Emily Aiken
Oh no, no, no. She's not doing possibly send the carriage.
- [56:04]
Jen Harlan
She needs to stay another night.
- [56:07]
MJ Franklin
I got no response other than please direct her pitchforks to Greg Cole.
- [56:14]
Jen Harlan
One thing that I alluded to at the beginning, which Sarah may have touched on already in her primer, but one of the things that feels very like normal to us now, but was actually pretty radical at the time that this book came out, was this the way that the narration works. She uses free indirect discourse where the narration moves in and out of a lot of different characters minds. And I think that's also part of what makes it such a delicious and immersive read, is that you do get lots of people's perspectives. And especially for a book that is so much about how our impressions of people and their behavior might be misaligned with their true intentions. It works so well because you as the reader can see what's happening behind the curtain and inside people's heads all throughout the book. And that only adds like more texture to the scenes of dialogue when the characters are interacting.
- [57:04]
MJ Franklin
Yeah, we spoke a lot about like our impressions of scenes, but like the technological and literary innovations of this of this book. I think should be noted that Jane Austen wasn't just writing about love, but she was also pushing the novel as a form forward.
- [57:19]
Emily Aiken
I want to pick up on one of the comments one of the readers made about the efficiency of her language, that there is not a single word in excess. I felt that as an editor, we're all editors here, One can't help but read with a little bit of the editor hat. And I marvel at the economy and elegance of literally every sentence.
- [57:41]
Jen Harlan
I feel like that's a good pitch too for people who might be resistant to reading the book because they think, oh, this is an old novel by a reader that people have to read in school. The language is probably really flowery and fusty and that is just not the case at all.
- [57:54]
MJ Franklin
Well, with that out of the way, we're saying, readers, go pick up this book if you haven't already.
- [57:59]
Jen Harlan
And even if you have already, go pick it up again. You'll find something new.
- [58:02]
Emily Aiken
You can't stop it just once.
- [58:03]
MJ Franklin
But speaking of picking up books recommendations, I want to know what books would you pair with Pride and Prejudice? This could be a retelling that you love. This could be a book that tackles similar themes. This could be an Austen contemporary that you think readers should read too. This could be a book that will help readers dive further into Pride and Prejudice or Jane Austen. I defer to you. I just want to know what books would you recommend readers pick up next? I'm going to start with you, Jen.
- [58:28]
Jen Harlan
Well, as I mentioned, I as a romance reader, I feel obliged to make some more recent romance novel recommendations. If you love Pride and Prejudice, there are a lot of pretty direct retellings that adapt the book into our contemporary world. The writer Sonali Dev has a series that are retellings of a bunch of different Austen novels, but the first one is called Pride and Prejudice and Other Flavors. And this is a sort of gender swapped version of Pride and Prejudice. The Elizabeth character is Trisha, who is a neurotransmitter neurosurgeon who comes from this very wealthy, successful Indian American family in the Bay Area. And the Lizzie Bennet character is DJ Kane, who is a chef who comes from a much less privileged background. And you have a lot of the same tropes that you will love from here. There's this enemies to lovers, navigating class differences. The ways that economics play into romance is a big part of the book. And it's also just a really delicious sensory read. There's some great descriptions of food and tastes and aromas. The other book that I kept thinking of while I was reading this is by Emily Henry, who some people might say is the Jane Austen of today or one of them. And her book, Book Lovers, which is my favorite of her novels, is about Nora and Charlie, who basically Emily Henry said she wanted to write a book that was about the brunette career woman back in the big city who gets dumped in all of the, like, Hallmark movies where the guy goes to the small town and falls in love with the gingerbread bakery owner. And so Nora is the prickly big city New York book editor who, Sorry, book agent. And Charlie is a book editor who has a reputation for being rude and proud and standoffish. And they both find themselves in this tiny town in North Carolina for the summer. She's spending the summer there with her sister. So you've got sister relationships too. And he's helping out his family and they have a delicious, wonderful enemies to lovers story.
- [60:21]
MJ Franklin
That sounds lovely. And also I love that trope of the mean brunette from New York. Cause it's always like, I'm mean and I'm from New York and I have to answer emails. I'll never be in love.
- [60:32]
Jen Harlan
I'm wearing heels and talking on my cell phone. Will I ever find love?
- [60:37]
MJ Franklin
Are you having a pajama party or like drinking hot cocoa? I have to wear a pencil skirt.
- [60:45]
Jen Harlan
Yeah. Justice for brunette New York City women with careers.
- [60:50]
MJ Franklin
What about you, Emily? Any recommendations that you would.
- [60:53]
Emily Aiken
Yeah, I just want to recommend a different book than I thought I would recommend. Well, I'm sitting here, I'm thinking, I want to recommend the Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.
- [61:01]
Jen Harlan
So good.
- [61:02]
MJ Franklin
Greg is nodding a lot.
- [61:04]
Greg Coles
All right, find something else.
- [61:06]
Emily Aiken
No, actually Greg and I can both talk about this because this book is set in the 80s at a moment in the academy at Brown University where Geoffrey Eugenides went to school. And it features a young woman who loves Jane Austen. She loves these romantic 19th century novels. She loves the marriage plot. And she's going to school at a time of high theory, when books like Jane Austen's novels are being deconstructed and looked upon with suspicion for their literary conventions and their class politics. And basically this young woman is trying to figure out how to go through her life and negotiate her romantic relationships. And should Jane Austen be her model or should these nihilistic French theorists be her model? And it's just, it's a wonderful send up of the academy, but it's also a kind of a love letter, I think, to Jane Austen and her ilk. I just, I love the novel.
- [62:01]
Greg Coles
Yeah, I mean, I, I can't add to Emily's description of it except to second her recommendation. It is winking great to read after reading Jane Austen because of course, it's very much in conversation with that and is playful about the act of reading and the act of Thinking about what you're reading. I said, okay, then I'll have to recommend something else. You couldn't do worse than reading Jane Austen herself. I mentioned Emma, I mentioned Sense and Sensibility. If you love Pride and Prejudice, there is more. Not a lot more. She died young. She was 41. But if you're celebrating her semi quincentennial.
- [62:42]
Jen Harlan
What we have all learned this year.
- [62:45]
Greg Coles
And of course, there's also kind of a long tradition of English social comedies. The Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor, Muriel Spark, and any of those would also be good companion novelists.
- [62:57]
MJ Franklin
Go check those out. I'm also glad that you mentioned. Go read more Jane Austen, because I have that on my list. I literally wrote. Is it cheating to recommend another Jane Austen novel? Because I want to recommend Persuasion, which is my personal favorite.
- [63:11]
Jen Harlan
Funnily enough. I think Persuasion is like a lot of people I talk to who are Austen fans, that it's like your, like you say, like your favorite artist. Favorite artist. I feel it's like you're like Austen friend's favorite Austen. I just think, like, the yearning and the payoff of the love story in that one is so satisfying. And has one of my favorite heroines in all of literature.
- [63:32]
Emily Aiken
She's really complex. It's her last finished novel, I believe. And the heroine, anne Elliot, is 27. She's an old maid by Regency standards, and she's turned down a proposal from someone she deeply loved. And she's nursed privately this love for years and then has a chance to meet this man again. And so it's a very mature novel. It's not light and sparkly as Jane Austen described Pride and Prejudice.
- [64:00]
MJ Franklin
We should do a separate Persuasion book club. The fact that it's mature and a little bit heavy is why I think people should read it. I think it pairs really nicely. It's like a counter melody. It's grappling with real regret and grief about love lost. And there's. Yeah, there's so much mourning in it in this really fascinating way. And then one like sub bullet point to this recommendation is the writer Brandon Taylor wrote this. This really great essay on his substack about Persuasion. He wrote it after he saw the 2022 Netflix adaptation of the book, which he hated. In fact, the headline of that piece is persuasion 2022 is a hate Crime. But what follows is this really impassioned defense of the heart and spirit of the novel and what that's doing and how that's not just like panned directly to camera to deliver winks about this love, but just the maturity of it. And that essay, what made me pick up Persuasion, another book that kind of is similar. I don't know why I went dark with this, but I kept thinking about largely because I just read it earlier this year for totally unrelated reasons. But that's Washington Square by Henry James. This is about a wealthy New York aristocrat who falls in love with a poor man. But then the woman's father believes that the man is just using his daughter for money, so he works incredibly hard to keep them apart. And it's just about this woman torn between wanting to follow her heart and wanting to follow her father. And it is really sad. I'm just gonna put that out there. But I kept thinking, what if these characters did fall under the social pressures that they faced and didn't pursue love? And this is what you might get. And then I just wanna throw in some contemporary fiction. Go read Sally Rooney all of her books.
- [65:53]
Jen Harlan
Yes.
- [65:53]
MJ Franklin
I'm not saying that Sally Rooney is a modern Jane Austen because I think that she taps into different traditions.
- [65:58]
Greg Coles
Also a lot of letters off of.
- [66:00]
MJ Franklin
Letters, but I think we love an.
- [66:02]
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Epistolary romance in her own ways.
- [66:05]
MJ Franklin
Her books are novels of manners that use love to open up social critiques. And then to that same end, I'm recommending Such a Fun Age by Kylie Reid. Not necessarily a direct comp, but what a fun, sharply observed, like social commentary. I loved it. So those are my recommendations. Unfortunately, that's all the time that we have for today. Jen, Emily, Greg, thank you so much. This is really fun.
- [66:29]
Jen Harlan
I loved this discussion most heartedly.
- [66:33]
Emily Aiken
Thank you mj.
- [66:34]
Greg Coles
This was great.
- [66:35]
MJ Franklin
And thank you to everyone who read with us online. Keep up the conversation again. We have an article up headlined Book Club Read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen with the Book Review and you can continue discussing the novel in the comment section there. And then as promised, the review of our October book. In October, the Book Review Book Club will be reading the Buffalo Hunter X Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. It's October. Halloween is on the horizon in we thought let's read some horror. We hope you'll join us right now. And there's an article up on the New York Times headline Book Club Read the Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones with the Book Review. Join the conversation there. We will also be discussing the book on the podcast that airs on October 31st, Halloween itself. We hope you'll join us. We can't wait to get spooky with you. And until then, happy reading.
- [67:30]
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