← The History of Literature
The History of Literature
706 Living with Jane Austen (with Janet Todd) | A Listener Changes His Life | Bored Parents
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- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.
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Jack Wilson
Hello. When it comes to observations about people, it's hard to imagine better credentials. For more than 200 years, Jane Austen's novels have resonated with readers who believe that Jane gets it, quote unquote. She sees the hopes and dreams and aspirations. She sees the foibles and hypocrisies.
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Janet Todd
She sees, in short, the things that.
- [01:28]
Jack Wilson
Men and women want and say and think and do. And so we read her novels and think wwjad what would Jane Austen do? What would she make of this situation or situationship or relationship or potential relationship that I find myself in? Now we'll talk to Janet Todd, who's been thinking and writing about books for more than 50 years about her book Living with Jane Austen, which shows us why the novels of Jane Austen continue to speak to us even after all this time. All that and more today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I am Jack Wilson. I'm so excited people. Oh, I'm your host too. Almost forgot to add that part because I'm so excited, so excited to be here today with you talking about Jane Austen. And I am sitting on top of a volcano of news that I can't wait to share. We're getting close to some making some big announcements here at the Humble Little Podcast, so stay tuned for those. In the meantime, I'm also excited to bring you a bit of news today. Let's start with a check in email from a longtime listener who has updated us from time to time over the years as he makes his way on his Journey Through Literature and Life Listener Nate he writes Subject Dostoevsky fan checks in Hi Jack, it's the Dostoevsky fan from the smallest town in the smallest state. It seems absurd to think that I was 19 years old when I first wrote to you. I'm 25 now, and it's been a couple of years since I've reached out. Last time we spoke, I was entering a PhD program in Comparative Literature. To keep this brief, the PhD life is not for me. It has nearly sucked all the joy out of reading for me. I haven't read a book or a poem voluntarily in months. It's not just the work of writing essays that takes the joy out of it, but academia has been a disappointment as well. I feel like I lost a piece of myself when I lost my joy of reading. But then after stopping for a couple years, I returned to your podcast and you have given me my strength back. I wish professors and academics could talk about literature the way you do. Not discuss just the political and high intellectual theory of linguistics, but put emphasis on the joy and beauty of words and stories and literature. I wanted to say thank you for this, and so I have decided to leave my program and focus on my own writing and music and travel the world. I've been offered to do some commercial fishing in Alaska for salmon season, and I think that'd be a good move in an effort to start living again, away from desks and screens and to live while I'm still young. Something tells me Hemingway would surely encourage me to do this, and then he'd encourage me to write about it. Yours, Nate. Well, Nate, I'm flattered and honored and thrilled and, if I'm being honest, a little anxious. Maybe more than a little anxious. I hope I haven't sent you down the wrong path. Literature in the academy is a different kind of thing. I know it well, myself, having lived through it while Emma. I was adjacent while Emma was getting her PhD. There are positives and negatives to it. Four for sure. It sounds like for you, the negatives outweighed the positives, and you found what I think is probably the right litmus test, which is that you did not enjoy reading very much anymore. I think it would be difficult to teach a subject where you had lost your passion and difficult to attend department meetings or do research or do any of the other tasks of a successful academic. If you've lost your love for the stuff that's at the heart of it all, the novels and plays and short stories and poems, there are better ways to earn A paycheck. Commercial fishing in Alaska might be one of them, but it's also dangerous. My cousin did that for a while, and I was planning to do the same. But in the end, I followed him to Taiwan and taught English instead, which was a much better fit, I think. One word of caution for you as you head up there. My cousin had a dangerous job processing fish in icy water, and it left his hands and wrists with permanent nerve damage. So do what you can to minimize that risk. And the second lesson is one that's a little less specific to Alaska, but.
- [06:22]
Janet Todd
I've never forgotten it.
- [06:24]
Jack Wilson
He was asked to wash this big truck with some kind of power sprayer, hose it down, get all the dust and dirt, grime. Alaskan roads could kick up some major mud, as you will find. So he was hosing down this truck, including the front of it, and he trained the spray on one of the headlights, and it shattered. The force of the water coming out of the sprayer was too much for the glass. So he noticed that and thought, oh, no. Wow, that sucks. When I'm done here, I'm going to have to tell this guy that I just smashed one of his headlights. So then he was finishing up the job, and he happened to spray the other headlight too, and that one smashed as well. And then he thought, well, I could have. Could have told him with a straight face that I smashed the first one. But how can. What am I going to say now? How can I possibly say I broke them both? What do you say to that? I broke them both. He had to tell him. Of course the first one was a mistake. The second one launched everything into kind of an absurdity. You have to confess and take your medicine. But that's a much tougher conversation to have to say. Not just that I. I made a mistake and broke a headlight, but 10 seconds later, you made the same exact mistake again. What do you say? I learned nothing. And now, my friend, you have a truck with no working headlights at all. Undrivable. So that's the lesson or lessons. Take care of your hands and try to learn from your mistakes. And good luck to you, of course, I hope you are well, and I hope your love for literature remains a steady constant, a positive force in your life, as it has been for me. Moving on. We have some troubling news from the survey folks at Nielsen and the publisher, HarperCollins. This comes to us courtesy of the Guardian newspaper headline, most parents don't enjoy reading to their children. Survey suggests report from Nielsen and HarperCollins shows that parents see reading as a literacy skill rather than something to encourage their children to love. End quote, first paragraph. Less than half of parents find it fun to read aloud to their children. New research shows only 40% of parents with children aged 0 to 13 agreed that reading books to my child is fun for me, according to this survey. Now, there's other results here too, showing that reading to children is down since 2012, and less than half of all parents agreed also agreed with the statement that reading books to my child makes me feel close to them. And so on. The overall impression left by the article reporting this survey is that parents of young children today tend to view reading as a skill to be learned and not a fun activity. The fun stuff is all digital now. No doubt that's true. Or there's truth in it. If you're by yourself, the pleasures of reading might come in second to the pleasure of whatever you're doing on your phone. A game, a puzzle, checking social media, looking at photos and video, that colorful buzz that serves as a jolt. And parents, I get it. You're tired. You could use that jolt. Could use a little break. And I'm going to have a big, big caveat here before I say anything else, which is that I learned as a parent that people who criticize parents and parenting from the outside are often wrong. Often, often wrong. Kids have their own minds and their own personalities and their own needs. Some kids will sit still and color for hours. Others will eat the crayons and go running off to look for something else to do. A lot of parenting is figuring out the right fit of interest and activity with the child. And I want to acknowledge this even before you probably know where this is headed. I'm going to make the case for reading. Because some kids might just jump out of the chair when you try to read them a book, and you might be lucky to get a whole page done, and that's fine. Maybe they have something else going on right now. Maybe you try to sneak some audiobooks in the background or when you're in the car. Maybe that'll click with them and maybe they'll come to books later. Maybe you won't have an experience like mine, which I'm about to describe. I might have been lucky. I started reading books to my older son when he was still in the womb. Why not? My wife and I wanted to spend time together, and she could barely move, she was so uncomfortable. And I was right there. And so I read A Wrinkle in Time, a book we both liked. It was fun to hear it aloud and to read it aloud. The little guy inside seemed to like it. Other books. We read a lot of other books too, but that's the one I remember the most. And then we were lucky that when he came out, he was just a kid who liked books from a very early age. He would sit patiently when he could sit up without toppling over, and he'd stare at the pages while we read the words. He would do it as long as we wanted. Then he learned how to turn the pages himself. And he would insist on turning them even when he was too clumsy, his fingers were too clumsy. And he ripped the pages.
- [12:05]
Janet Todd
We have a set of books from.
- [12:06]
Jack Wilson
Those weeks or months that are all taped up because he ripped every single page. Now, like I said, every kid is different. My second son could never read a book in order. He'd read one page and he'd grab the book and want to jump to a page at the end. And then he'd go back to the beginning and then the middle and he'd jump around and it would kind of drive you crazy because everything was all out of order. But it was still time we were spending together. I plunged in, read things his way for a while. It was still time we were spending together. That's the key. I can remember when my oldest niece came along. She was the first one of that generation. And there were all these grown ups. There were about 10, she was one and a half or two. And there were a big group of grownups in the living room, all the couples a couple of generations ahead of her. There was probably 10 of us. And she would try to pull a grown up by the hand, push people down a hallway into a back bedroom where she had some. Some games and some books because she wanted some uninterrupted time, some focused attention in the living room, which frankly was much more fun, more fun place to be talking with the grown ups. But out there she was surrounded by people talking and laughing. But none of it was about her. None of it was anything she could really participate in. She just wanted one person that she could commune with. One person face to face, eyes to eyes, smiles to smiles, surprises to surprises. Little kids are like flowers. They're astonishing and beautiful as they grow. It's a miracle to see it happen. You have to make sure they're fed. That's number one. They need those nutrients, just like flowers need to take in nutrients from the soil. And you have to keep these little ones protected against the wind and the elements and let them have enough water. But not so much that they flood. And you have to give them sunlight. You have to give them energy, warmth, light. And the source of that with kids is you. They will thrive when you young parent or grandparent or caretaker. They will thrive when you radiate energy toward them. And they'll soak it all in. And I watched it happen. It's the most gratifying thing you can possibly experience. And I was lucky in one sense. My wife and I and our generation had flip phones, but we were at the very end of the generation that did not have a smartphone when my kids were really little. And I know that when I was on the subway, I'd have been tempted to pull that thing out and look at it. And my little kids with their giant eyes would have watched me and my face staring at that electronic device as I got my little fix of emails or texts or news headlines or whatever. Something to release the burden of the long hours of boredom that parenting often is. The pain of hauling a stroller up and down a set of subway stairs and jamming yourself onto a crowded train or walking too many blocks with groceries on the handles, dangling from the handles. Or insert your your other difficulty here. There are long and boring stretches of parenting. It's so dull sometimes grownups need grown up things too. That's their sunshine. But the pleasure of being in that communion, person to person, with a growing little mind, be that person's sunshine if you can. Sharing those expressions, seeing them watching your face and listening to your words and how they soak all of it in. And when it's nighttime and you're settling down, a long day almost over. Or if it's a rainy afternoon, or if it's morning and quiet in the house. Anytime at all, really pull out those books and see if you can find some magic inside, a picture for them to look at while your voice reassures them and takes them on a little journey with some friends. The characters and things inside those pages and the imagination that makes it all light up for them, spend that time. It goes so fast, but there's so much richness in there. It will help make those children into the people they were born to be, and maybe even a little better than that. And you will grow too. They'll radiate their love and attention back at you. Grown up things, refined things, conversations and all that. That's your sunshine. But there's light and warmth coming back from those little faces too. Their appreciation, their sense of wonder, their growth and their love. Bask in that. As long as you can. Don't miss the chance to take as much of that into your soul as possible. So that's little Jack Wilson advice. Unsolicited, I know, and kind of annoying for all of that. But hey, surveys can be a little scary sometimes. I read the news and I couldn't stay quiet. I think our world would be improved with more parent child time reading together, and I hope other people think so too. And then when the kids grow up and don't know where to turn for life advice and if they've stopped listening to you, maybe they'll listen to Jane Austen instead. What will they find there? If they do, we'll ask author Janet Todd after.
- [18:15]
Janet Todd
Foreign.
- [18:21]
Alan Sisto
I'm Alan Sisto, the man of the west here at the Prancing Pony Podcast.
- [18:25]
Sean Marchese
And I'm Sean Marchese, the real life Lord of the Mark.
- [18:27]
Alan Sisto
Every week here at the Prancing Pony Podcast, along with Sean or other co hosts, I explore the works of J.R.R. tolkien, author of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, bringing along lots of pop culture references, plenty of nerd humor, and the occasional bad pun.
- [18:39]
Sean Marchese
It's just a couple of friends hanging out at the pub talking about our favorite books. We cover just a few pages every episode, reading important sections of the books and having a chat about what we've read.
- [18:49]
Alan Sisto
We do a ton of research for each episode so that we can bring as much background information to our conversation as possible. We do all the heavy reading so you don't have to.
- [18:56]
Sean Marchese
It's a great way for first time readers to learn the basics of Tolkien's world, while for Middle Earth veterans it's a deep dive into their favorite stories.
- [19:03]
Alan Sisto
The Tolkien fandom is like no other, so we spend time in the community community, giving talks at Tolkien events, recording live episodes, and hanging out with our listeners on Discord to engage with our audience every chance we get.
- [19:13]
Sean Marchese
So if you're ready to dive into the most beloved world in fantasy literature.
- [19:17]
Alan Sisto
And become a part of a vibrant, active community of listeners, then look for.
- [19:20]
Sean Marchese
The Prancing Pony Podcast wherever you listen.
- [19:25]
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- [20:38]
Jack Wilson
Okay.
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Janet Todd
Joining me now is Janet Todd, who is a professor emerita at the University.
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Jack Wilson
Of Aberdeen and honorary fellow of Newnham College.
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Janet Todd
She's written works of memoir and biography, as well as books about authors including Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Aphra Behn, Byron.
- [20:55]
Jack Wilson
And members of the Shelley Circle.
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Janet Todd
She's here today to discuss her new book, published in honor of Jane Austen's 250th birthday.
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Jack Wilson
Living with Jane Austen.
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Janet Todd
Janet Todd, welcome to the history of literature.
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Listener Nate
Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here.
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Janet Todd
So your introduction has an arresting sentence where you say that in this book you try to stay with Jane Austen's writing and you say, and control my desire for intimacy with their authority. What is it about Jane Austen's works that make us desire this intimacy?
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Listener Nate
I think it's the extraordinary heroines she creates, and we think of her as in these heroines, particularly somebody like Elizabeth Bennet. And we do want them almost as friends, just as we want to be them in some way. But I think there's one other thing I want to stress, and that is the narrative voice of Jane Austen, who think of as the author. And this voice is ironic and knowing and clever. And there's a point where she's writing to Cassandra. She says, I don't write for such dull elves that don't have a great deal of ingenuity in themselves. I mean, she's quoting Scott, but the idea is, you know, you've got to be bright to get the whole point of her novels. And I think when we read them and we think we get them, we feel bright. We feel, you know, we feel we're on a level. And I think she's flattered us in some ways, intellectually.
- [22:33]
Janet Todd
I think that's right. And she always seems to be a little bit standing above the characters, even the ones that are the popular, the protagonists. It doesn't feel as if she herself is totally identifying with them and trying to put them forward. She's willing to tweak them a little bit, too, and show us their flaws. And it makes us think well, the person who is really ideal here, the one that I most want to meet, is the person who was able to create these characters.
- [23:02]
Listener Nate
Exactly. The person who knows a bit more than characters know and can judge them, especially if you're a bit older. You know, here we are reading about very young people of 18 and 19 and 20, and I am not 18, 19, or 20. And so we both love those characters, but we also like that clearly older voice, looking at them and watching them develop. It's very clear in the. Particularly in Sanditon, the very last novel she was writing, where the young protagonist is. She's very taken with a handsome young man who's very stupid but is paying compliments. And the narrator comes in and said, well, it would be very odd at her age if she were not taken with a handsome young man paying compliments and also with a title. But she herself is, of course, above that. And so we're with her and with the character, and I find that's all very, very attractive.
- [23:59]
Janet Todd
Yeah. And it does seem to make her transcend her era, that it's not just that she's observing the individuals and the clothes they wear and the style. You know, it's not like just a visual observational power that she has, but the psychological observational power makes us think, you could set Jane Austen down at a party in the 21st century and she would, you know, be able to see through people. And if someone is too conceited or if someone is eager to please or, you know, that she would be able to have a kind of insight into those people that we surround ourselves with every day.
- [24:41]
Listener Nate
I think so. I think she'd probably best now keep her views to herself, since we tend not to like that kind of criticism. But she does transcend. She writes about human nature, and human nature, with all our technology surrounding it and all our cultural changes, doesn't alter so amazingly. We still want to be liked, want to find partners. We want to have other people see our. See our value. We're still greedy and vain and needy and all these things. And she captures all this and laughs at them. She writes comedies of human folly. And I think she's very good at letting us see the folly in other people and in ourselves, but in a very light and amusing sort of way. And I mean, culturally, she would find our era most peculiar, but in terms of the basics of human nature, I think she would understand exactly where we are.
- [25:44]
Janet Todd
Yeah. Now, on the other hand, even as we think that she is a little more wise and knowing than her characters, and she. We are flattered to think that we are in that same category and we're kind of on the same level as Jane Austen and seeing the truth of those characters. She also seems to resist at times the idea that she's a particular guide to life or I mean, she says in her character, Fanny Price, that our best guide is in ourselves. Oh, absolutely, yeah.
- [26:17]
Jack Wilson
What do you think she would make.
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Janet Todd
Of the self help books and all the things that say, you know, Jane Austen's guide to romance or Jane Austen's guide to Success or the idea that we could use her novels as how to books. What do you think she would make of that?
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Listener Nate
Well, I imagine if I can presume to think what she would do, I think she would laugh heartily at us because we are funny. I mean, that quote that you gave from Fanny Price I think is probably very close to what she does think the guide in ourselves is conscience. I mean, it's quite clearly what she's meaning. And when she shows in her character, when she shows in the books, people trying to get guidance from works outside, it's always comic. Lydia Bennet can't even sit through listening to Mr. Collins read an edifying book. I mean, she can't bear it. And it's true in Catherine Morland, her mother, when she sees her sitting there and dolefully lovesick, her mother tries to bring some articles that will help her understand that she must get on with her sewing. But it's clearly again, comic. Jane Austen seems to think that we all really know what the commonsensical view is. And if we think a little about it, we can probably get to it. So the idea of seeking it outside ourselves, except as a child, she thinks children need guidance. Clearly, I think anything else is pretty funny in many ways. Part of what I'm doing in this book is so teasing out a little bit of, I suppose, advice for living. And I think she would find me just as funny as she's going to find all those authors of Jane Austen and romance and Jane Austen on how to eat and how to cook, you know, all the other things. Yeah.
- [28:15]
Janet Todd
How did she respond when people asked her for help in her actual life?
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Listener Nate
One of the most attractive things I think about Jane Austen in the last years is her relationship with her nieces and nephews, whom she had a great many. And two of them start writing novels in emulation of their famous aunt or their clever aunt. And she gives them very good advice. She says, think about the particulars of what you are writing, be detailed, get the geography Right. Get the human manners. Right. But when it comes to matters of the heart, I think she pulls back. You only have to think of Persuasion, where Lady Russell gives her charge advice that was probably right at the time from her position, but which almost blights Anne Elliot's life. To Fanny Knight, her niece. She does make the point that it's not necessary to marry a man just because he loves you or wants to marry you, because nobody dies of a broken heart. But beyond that, she really doesn't go.
- [29:25]
Jack Wilson
Right.
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Janet Todd
And also because so many matters of the heart can turn out poorly, or you don't want someone to be in the position where they would regret having.
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Jack Wilson
Followed your advice, where they would wonder.
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Janet Todd
Was that really the right thing to do?
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Listener Nate
I think she is very careful with that. At the same time, she amuses herself with the flirtations and love affairs of all these nieces and nephews. I mean, she takes huge joy in the lives of these young people. I think it's very lovely to see, actually. I love those letters to the nieces and nephews.
- [30:01]
Jack Wilson
Right.
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Janet Todd
And they loved her.
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Jack Wilson
Right. They looked to her.
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Janet Todd
They did, As a particular font of wisdom, or I guess a kind of. They got that she was a little bit different from other people they had in their lives.
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Listener Nate
I think they did. I don't think Jane Austen is particularly keen on small children. She certainly thinks if they're out of line, they need a good spank. You know, she's not maternal in that way at all, but she really does like the adolescent and early youth. She joys in them and treats them as equals.
- [30:36]
Janet Todd
Now, there's another kind of advice or a kind of use of Jane Austen's wisdom that I wanted to ask you about. What we've talked about is how I think most people will think of it initially, which is you can read Jane Austen or any great novel when you're in the thick of some dilemma, and then the novel will give you some. Some insights or understandings and kind of a path forward and lets you clarify the choices you're about to make. But there's another use, which is to look back on one's life in retrospect.
- [31:12]
Jack Wilson
And to try to make sense of.
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Janet Todd
The decisions that were made and the things that happened to you. And you can kind of use the novels to help you clarify that and.
- [31:23]
Jack Wilson
To make sense of your past.
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Janet Todd
And I was wondering if you find yourself using Jane Austen's lessons in the moment to help you make decisions about the future, or is it that you are more likely to apply the lessons you've learned as you try to make.
- [31:39]
Jack Wilson
Sense of your own past.
- [31:42]
Listener Nate
Well, I don't think I have many years of future.
- [31:45]
Janet Todd
By the nature of things, you're not at the ball deciding between the captain and.
- [31:51]
Listener Nate
Exactly so. And I am twice her age when she died.
- [31:55]
Janet Todd
Right.
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Listener Nate
But yeah, I do do think I look back over the past and I'm interested in the fact that I didn't like her as a young person, that I didn't get her at all. She didn't speak to me and I wish very much that she had because I think I would have made some life choices that were really more sensible and instead of following the romantic, you know, capital R romantic of taking risks and changing my situation when I didn't like it, of moving on and seeking and striving and all that. If I had looked around me and seen the value of what I had, the value of home, the value of the place you are, the value of the people you're with. I think I might have made some better life choices actually.
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Janet Todd
Right, right.
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Listener Nate
Looking back on it, I wasn't ready for Jane Austen, but I very much wish I had been. In some ways it was hard for me to come to her because I was an only child and we moved all the time. So I had a very lonely childhood. And her books are all full of social worlds.
- [33:03]
Janet Todd
Oh yeah. And the family, so they're just bustling with energy and.
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Jack Wilson
Yeah.
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Listener Nate
So, you know, it took me a while to realize what she was saying and how you can be alone within a family as well. I mean, as her characters are and as she is. And so yes, I think out of it, I now get somebody who has a kind of wisdom and who is telling us to look at what we do, have, enjoy it, make the best of it and find it amusing and not always think that there is something better and easier somewhere else. You get this very heavily, I think in Emma where Emma talks to Frank Churchill and he says you're just tired of England, you're tired of things. But no, this is it. Highbury is where it is.
- [33:48]
Janet Todd
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:50]
Listener Nate
With all her self regard and her self importance and her general wrong headedness is somebody who totally makes the best of it.
- [33:59]
Janet Todd
Yeah. Do you think she teaches us more by the negative examples than the positive ones? I'm thinking of characters who start out following bad advice or are mistaken about other people. They, they think they're getting what they want but they actually aren't and so forth.
- [34:17]
Listener Nate
She's got loads of negative people and we tend to think we aren't Those people, but they're the funny ones and they're greedy and avaricious and mean and spiteful and all these things. Or just pompous like Mr. Collins. But sometimes they strike a chord. I found that with Mrs. Elton. I've always had a soft spot for Mrs. Elton because she is absurd and rude and generally vulgar. But I think I must come across a bit like that when I go into a new place I had been in my earlier life, constantly in different cultures and trying to fit in and not always succeeding. It seemed to me that Mrs. Elton is a bit like that. She arrives in Highbury and it's quite genteel and very close knit and she pushes forward far too much and she gets everything completely wrong. And so I sort of feel a little bit for her, while at the same time she's dreadful and I laugh at her. But Jane Austen's positive characters, her heroines, have a great deal to show us. I mean, I mentioned about Emma and her domestic arrangement. I mean, she puts up with a huge amount from this valetudinarian sort of, well, endlessly tiresome father, and she never turns against him or criticizes him in any way. And she puts up with her rather difficult brother in law, that sort of sense of tolerance within the family or community and the need to live with the community. And of course, her great failing is when she actually breaks that community by being rude to Ms. Bates, somebody beneath her in social structure. And she learns. And I think that's the thing with all the characters. They're good, but not ridiculously good. I mean, sometimes Dickens, for example, will create good characters who are sentimentally good and you have to take them as almost allegorical. You can't take them as real. But her characters are not like that. Well, they're women who would like to be better than they are and they strive towards that.
- [36:40]
Janet Todd
Yeah, Persuasion is one that comes to mind too. I mean, the character is so good and the advice she takes is well meaning and you can understand why she took it and so on, but you.
- [36:54]
Jack Wilson
Feel like, oh, if only we could just remove this obstacle to her happiness.
- [36:59]
Janet Todd
And if she weren't quite so selfless. But she's a character who is steadfast and is talented, but she deals with so much. But she also. It's not as if that's set forth for us as the admirable and necessarily.
- [37:19]
Jack Wilson
Happy way to live.
- [37:21]
Janet Todd
It's a very real possibility that she won't find that happiness.
- [37:26]
Listener Nate
I think so. As for Anne Elliot, she's a very difficult character. I think she's hugely attractive. You feel for her. You see her struggling to control the feelings that she has, the fact that she often is the person on whom everything falls, all the domestic duties and so on. But at the same time, I mean, Jane Austen does say that she finds her a little bit too perfect at one point. And I have a feeling there's more irony in that book than we like to know, or we can take it in both ways. We can be moved to tears by the great statement, and it's almost like an operatic aria where Anne Elliot says, women love longest when hope is past. I mean, it's beautiful and it brings tears to the eyes, but you can't say, oh, goodness me, that's a bit odd, isn't it? What on earth is the point of loving when hope is gone? I mean, it makes no sense at all. And earlier in the book, it's been said that the best solution for a failed love is another one, is a second attachment if you lose the first. So you have in that book all sorts of possibilities, and I think we can read it and hold in mind both ways of looking at the same time. At least I try to do that. The book has some very odd bits about it now. I happen to think, as many people do, that it's probably unfinished. Even when the great love has happened, when they've come together, she has some very odd writing. I mean, this control of memory, which is something that I've written about in the book all the way through, is something that goes through all the novels, I think. But here it's very strong. They, in a sense, rewrite history and see it as, now Anne becomes young again, a bloom returns, and he thinks he's loved her all the time. So it's a very interesting book. At the same time, there in it is this extraordinary love, and it's very difficult not to take that as a very striking and very wonderful romance.
- [39:42]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [39:43]
Janet Todd
Do you think. I mean, we started out the conversation talking about our desire for intimacy with Jane Austen. And she is one of those authors who. People maybe, because they can quickly make their way through the novels and then start to look for biographies and so on and letters and everything. Do you think her life is an example that people use to try to. To find the pathway to happiness or regret or contentment or romance, or a negative example of romance. I mean, what. How do you think we should use Jane Austen's life? Or how do you see people using Jane Austen's life and is the way that they use her life Is it.
- [40:31]
Jack Wilson
Do you think it's fair?
- [40:34]
Listener Nate
Well, I guess. I don't know, really. I don't know how much people do. I feel she's unknowable in the end, but her genius is, I think she's really very clever when he's not on her level. So I can't know, nor do I know, understand what it would be like to be in a family at that time. I think where the novels are transcendent, the actual character, Jane Austen, is not. She is a person living in that time. You know, she's an Anglican, she's living by the tenants of the Church of England. She lived by the seasons of the Church of England. She's a Tory. Her family are politically what we would now call small C, Conservative. She would not be in fashion in her way of being nowadays, so I'm not sure we can do much with that. But same time, all we've got to go on, really, are a few remarks from other people, but essentially letters. And the letters are mainly to her sister, Cassandra. So they're letters written within a very close relationship and we're overhearing them and I'm not sure, therefore, how much we can get out of them. To me, the one place where I do find myself admiring and wishing I could learn from her is actually her death. It wasn't a. An easy death and I wasn't there and I have no idea what it was really like. And nobody gives a full description of it. And there's just been recently a TV series made of a novel by Joe Holtby called Ms. Austen. And in that she has a very peaceful death with her sister. Well, that is not quite what I have got out of it. I mean, she had a very agonising death at the same time, only really very shortly before she wrote a very funny poem about the Winchester races and about it was going to rain and all the things that you would not absolutely expect. And it was so considered, so odd that her nephew, when he was writing the biography of his aunt, when he was now a high Victorian gentleman, you wanted to suppress it because it didn't go with the image of this ladylike, now, great writer. But I think it's sort of wonderful. Here she is, very close to death, in pain, and she's bothering to amuse other people and herself, because this is a poem that presumably is for the people taking care of her as well as amusing herself by writing. So the fact that she's. Well, she's not probably writing it. She would have dictated it. She couldn't now, I think, hold a pencil. But that she is bothering to use words magically towards the end in this way is to me something very admirable. And also the other thing that comes through and people said about her and who knows how true this is, is that she wanted to be as little trouble to other people as she could be. And that's actually very admirable. As somebody who is prone to talk about ailments, you know, I think she's salutary to hear and see Jane Austen as somebody who did suggest that a certain restraint is appropriate on these occasions and who thinks about other people even to the end. I find that very admirable as well as terribly touching. And when I just wrote about it and all I was doing is taking material out of the letters, I found myself tearing up because it is, to me, of course, it's also the sadness of the death of such a wonderful person so young.
- [44:29]
Janet Todd
Right. She's such a great author of relationships and of finding the right way toward a relationship. And then she's unmarried. And I'm wondering, do you think people view that as saying it's okay if you don't find the right match, or do they look at Jane Austen and say, physician, heal thyself. Did you not take the right risks? Did you not make the right choices? How is it that you weren't able.
- [44:58]
Jack Wilson
To find a life partner?
- [45:01]
Listener Nate
Well, I think she certainly had a chance to marry, as we know, and probably more than one, as presumably did Cassandra. They were nice looking, clever girls and presumably much desired by young men. Even though they didn't have particularly great dowries, they were pretty eligible. I think in the end, perhaps she didn't find the very right man, but I'm not sure if she was looking. I mean, we go back to the love between the sisters, and I don't mean it in any kind of erotic way. I mean love in all of its big meaning of affection and so on. I think that relationship was considerable and of value. And I also think she did see a great deal of other people's relationships with all those brothers she saw them marrying, and she also saw what marriage meant. And it meant pleasing the man, whatever. And it also meant childbearing. And they were a very fertile group of people. The brothers had sort of 8 and 9 and 10 and 11 children. The chances are that she also would have had a great number of children immediately she was married. And she does say it about her niece, who, the one who wanted to write fiction. She says, well, you know, poor thing, you know she'll be worn out by the time she's 30. The childbearing was just relentless. And it was something that. And the fact that a woman should be available sexually to a man when wished. I mean, this was the world she was growing up in. I think she did see this as something slightly worried. Well, more than slightly worrying. People died in childbirth as well. Not usually at the beginning, but they did after the 10th and 11th child. And then what sort of life is that? And I do also think that she knew that she had a huge talent and that marriage would not work with her writing. I think it is a choice. And I think she does suggest to us that there is happiness. There's clearly happiness in a wonderful relationship, probably the best. But there's a great deal of happiness outside of that kind of single partnership. And there is happiness in external work. I mean, where that work is going to be writing, or whether it's gardening or sewing or whatever. She tells us that. So I can't think that she loses much by being what would have been termed a spinster. And I've always rather envied that final little world she lived in, not only with her sister and perhaps the mother less welcome since she did rather regard her as a little bit of a hypochondriac, but also with a very close friend. I mean, it's pretty ideal in many ways, right? It's a really interesting community. And then on top of it, you just always have to remember this great big kinship of family so that in the letters, people always coming to stay, coming through. She was in the swim of things. She was not cut off from life by not being married.
- [48:20]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [48:21]
Janet Todd
Okay, let's take a quick break and come back with more from Janet Todd.
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- [49:42]
Janet Todd
Foreign okay, we're back. So, Janet, let's talk about your book. How did you organize the book? What was your approach to the topic, and what are the individual chapters about?
- [49:58]
Listener Nate
Well, the idea was to have a book that I was just asked to do it as an accompaniment of an edition that Cambridge University Press is bringing out for a general audience as opposed to a strictly academic one. And so I thought, well, I could collect some of my old essays over a long period. But the reader who has encouraged me in this thought that it would be more interesting to see how these essays or how these thoughts fitted into my life, how I changed as I went through. And the idea grew on me. I didn't have much time to write it, so I was writing it top speed without going back to any other criticism. So I I say in the book, you know, I apologize for any plagiarism. It wasn't intentional. But I think what I wanted to, by the end to do was show the changes of culture through the criticism and appreciation of Jane Austen through the 60 or so years that I've been reading her. And so that became the focus of the book. At the same time, I put into it the areas that I now find so interesting. So the first part is a bit on Pride and Prejudice, which is what I suppose I started with. But I then became more interested in her views on nature, the way she deals with that, the way she does deal with advice, the way she thinks about the mind and the body, how it interacts with how much we should give to the mind, how much to the body about illness, about how we fancy ourselves ill, about nerves, about so on, and then about death. So I've got it now, the book structured, I hope, with certain themes, one of which is certainly memory and our control of memory. And the other would be, I think, the mind and the body and how that interacts, which is why I brought in another character, Mary Wollstonecraft. I have written a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, and I edited her complete works with Marilyn Butler many, many years ago. And she fascinates me hugely. And there I do feel a kind of real intimacy with the character of the writer in the way I have never done with Jane Austen, because I feel I'm temperament like her and some of her life choices and her way of looking at herself are very close to what I fear mine have been. But I wanted to bring her in as a sort of structuring element to show what I meant about Jane Austen living first of all, in a particular moment. It's a moment after a great upheaval, It's a moment in wartime very different from the world of Mary Wollstonecraft, who still has a sort of utopian excited view of what politics can do. Jane Austen is in that period of far more caution. She's seen what excessive ideas can do, both in a person and in terms of culture and politics. And so she has a very different take on life from the one that Mary Wollstonecraft has. I also wanted to suggest or have some kind of purchase on the notion of Jane Austen as a feminist. When I first got into Mary Wollstonecraft, I would have called her a feminist as a certain Enlightenment figure who believed in the equality of men and women, both politically as well as intellectually and socially. Now, Jane Austen, I think, is in many ways also feminist, but she certainly does not go as far as Mary Wollstonecraft in thinking you can change manners in a quick way and in so hopeful a way as Mary Wollstonecraft. I also wanted to use her as somebody who battled with the problem of emotion and what is called sentiment. At the time, this was such a. It was such a trap for women. It had been so emphasized that women were more emotional than men, had more sentiment than men, and that it was a value to be delicate and feeling and self regarding and sort of emoting, expressing yourself all over the place. And Mary wasn't caught within this for a while until she sort of backtracked on it and then perhaps went to too great an extreme and insisted that only reason mattered until she learned that that wasn't the case either. So she really does vacillate in a really very useful and interesting way. But Jane Austen comes after this. And so the caution that you see in somebody like Eleanor in Sense and Sensibility, which is precisely about this, comes from a different era, from Mary Wollstonecraft. And I wanted to suggest that because in some ways we. A similar thing is happening today. I mean, we are insisting on self expression, aren't we? Where all the stress is on expressing ourselves, on memoir. I mean, I'm a good one to talk a lot of my intellectual life into this, but we think that we should do this and that it's good to constantly look within and try to almost to psychoanalyze ourselves. And that expressiveness loving ourselves. All this comes right at the beginning. I don't know. Does it make us happier? I'm not sure. But I think that Jane Austen has come after such a period and has moved a little away from it, perhaps, and she shows it. I mean, after all, many people find. Many readers find. Even in Sense and Sensibility, which is perhaps her bleakest book, they find Marianne, the one who stands for, to some extent, sensibility and emotion. They find that more attractive than the caution and repression, perhaps, of Eleanor. And there's a point where Marianne almost screams and the point in agony at being abandoned, but it's almost screamed she doesn't actually scream. And the repression of that scream is something that I think we see and we worry about now because we do think that people should perhaps express more of themselves than they thought in the past, and which I was brought up with. So, to me, the Eleanor figure is somebody much closer to my own upbringing. But I feel entirely ambivalent when I see those two sisters and listen to them.
- [57:00]
Janet Todd
I think you're really shedding some light on something for me that I need to include more of, because I see it in my own life or as I look around at society. And it's very easy to kind of see that the 1960s were so influential.
- [57:20]
Jack Wilson
With all of the ideas.
- [57:22]
Janet Todd
But then for those of us who came after the 1960s, it was, you know, there was already kind of, I don't know if backlash is the right word, settling in, but maybe a recognition that things weren't going to be as simple as they might have seemed, and change was going to be a little more, you know, happening in fits and starts rather than a sort of smooth transition. And of course, there's the example of divorces happening in the 1970s. And then a lot of people my age are kind of reacting to having been the children of divorce, and there's been a kind of correction that way. And so it makes sense to view Jane Austen not just as kind of, you know, a person outside of time, but of someone who's a product of a certain decade or a certain generation that may have been either at the advancing ideas or responding to the ideas.
- [58:20]
Jack Wilson
Of the generation that came before.
- [58:23]
Listener Nate
I totally agree with that. I mean, I'm pre the 1960s. I mean, so my generation is earlier. I didn't come to maturity in the 60s. It was just that little bit earlier. Because the 60s are really the late. When we talk about them, we're talking about the late 60s and into the 70s. But I was completely overwhelmed by the feminist movement in America. I went to America as well. So I was overwhelmed by America and the feminist movement. And I bought it very thoroughly. And to be so honest about it, I also got divorced. And I don't think we thought about the children in the way that we should have, in the way that I would do now and in the way that my own children think of their children. I think there has been a change. And so I go back to the earlier stage which needed some kind of balance because I was brought up with far too much stress on repression and looking for a man, looking for marriage, the need to, I suppose, to learn how to control yourself in society and avoid too much self regard. I mean, that was very much the message that I had as a child. And then comes the 60s and you throw it all overboard and you start expressing yourself left, right and center. And it's not necessarily a very good way to go, but at the time I thought it rather was. And this is why I find the life of Mary Wollstonecraft so interesting. Because within her life she does almost that. And she becomes, having insisted on total rationality in human love. And in fact she says the best parents are people who don't exactly erotically love each other and concentrate on their children. And I thought that's a terrible idea. But then she actually has a kind of overwhelming love affair with Gilbert Imlay, an American in revolutionary Paris. And she throws all the caution to the wind and falls totally forgetting, well, not forgetting, but not taking into account the great difference between man and woman. And that she is going to be a mother and he will never be a father. And so there she is, an unmarried woman and the world changes and she's with it. I mean, she doesn't, sadly, she doesn't live long enough to see, for us all to see where her thinking would go. But she is something of a trailblazer. I mean, she saw herself as somebody, as a signpost to the future and somebody who was splattered by mud and so on from passersby. And I think she's a bit like that. And she's hugely admirable because she is so clear thinking at every stage. I don't know whether Jane Austen actually read much of her. She would have known of her. And some people think that the depiction of Marianne might have something to do with the depiction of Mary Wollstonecraft that her husband, William Godwin, very unwisely made of her shortly after her death, in which he described her illegitimate child, her love affairs outside marriage to a very Shocked public, which he had not anticipated. I think that might be. That she might have. Jane Austen might have thought a little of that when she was portraying Marianne, who is saved, after all, by a loving family.
- [62:04]
Janet Todd
Mm. What do you think Mary Wollstonecraft would have thought of Jane Austen?
- [62:08]
Jack Wilson
Do you think she would have seen.
- [62:10]
Janet Todd
Her as her sort of the spiritual heir of the next generation of women? Or do you think she would have been disappointed in what she saw there?
- [62:19]
Jack Wilson
Or how do you think she would.
- [62:20]
Janet Todd
Have viewed Jane Austen as a person?
- [62:26]
Listener Nate
I think they'd have. If they'd actually met each other, I think they'd have had absolutely nothing to say to each other. I think there would have been a terrible meeting because Jane Austen would have sat silent and rather sour looking at it. And Mary Wollstonecroft would have gabbled on in the way she did when she had been very opinionated, in the way she was when she first met William Godwin, who apparently he said, well, she talked right over Tom Paine, who I'd come to hear, and nobody got a word in. I imagine it would have been a bit like that. I can't imagine they have a lot to say to each other, actually, but I like to think Mary Wollstonecroft would have appreciated the value of something like Pride and Prejudice. Had she read it. Aesthetically, though, I think she'd have found that central depiction of Darcy something pretty repellent, because she's so against the idea of privilege and primogeniture and the power of a single person simply because of who they were born to. So that extent, I think that would not work very well. Now, Jane Austen on Mary Wollstonecroft is a difficult one because the times have changed so much. Mary Wollstonecroft is that pre revolutionary period and she's an internationalist. And Jane Austen is clearly, you know, is English and she has a sense of England. After all, her life is set against 22 years of war. It would be a little odd if she were not influenced by that. Whereas Mary Wollstonecraft is looking at a country that she thinks can be changed and ought to be changed thoroughly and should have a revolution, until she actually sees a revolution and realizes that it's something rather uncontrollable. So I don't think I can easily answer that one. I have a feeling that she would feel that Mary Wollstonecraft might have been happier had she been a little more cautious in her life. And they would certainly have been a bit chalk and cheese as people in the same room.
- [64:33]
Janet Todd
Yeah, right. But there is a defense of Jane Austen's novels that I suspect Jane would have advanced if, to take the Darcy example of criticism of Darcy. And it's the same defense that I feel myself making if people were to accuse Pride and Prejudice and Jane Austen's works in general of valuing money and valuing birth and status and so on. And that is to say, well, as.
- [65:01]
Jack Wilson
Much as we might wish it otherwise.
- [65:03]
Janet Todd
The world is the way that it is, and those things do still matter.
- [65:07]
Jack Wilson
Or maybe we're glad we live in.
- [65:09]
Janet Todd
An era where it doesn't matter quite so much, but at the same time, it's one of those things where we can't just wish it away. Somebody's family status or the money they have, it changes their personality and the.
- [65:23]
Jack Wilson
Way they're able to live their life.
- [65:24]
Janet Todd
And it is a factor when we think about who we're going to marry and how marriages are going to work out and so forth. And so in some ways, it feels like Jane Austen is just willing to not try to create an idyllic life or idyllic world, but trying to deal.
- [65:43]
Jack Wilson
With the world as it exists.
- [65:46]
Listener Nate
Well, that's interesting, but I don't think I'd go as far as that. I think what you say is true. If you take all her novels, and I think it's true of the others. No, it's absurd. And she keeps on saying that it's absurd to marry without any sense of the material life that you will have. That is certainly true, and it's true of all of the novels. But Pride and Prejudice, I think, is. Well, it is unique, giving so much to the hero. And I don't think any other canonical work really does it again either. I mean, there are plenty of romances and escapist fiction that goes on doing it, but I can't immediately think of anything that does it quite like this. I mean, there is a bit where Elizabeth Bennet says, just think of how many people are under his control. And that, I think, is too much, because he's got that through what Mary Wollstonecraft inveighs against all the time, privilege and primogeniture. And the idea that. And Mary Wollstonecraft's point constantly was that the country that allows those who have been born to privilege is going to be an impoverished one. The point is that really, that in that Darcy isn't your average aristocrat. I mean, he isn't quite an aristocrat in there, but he's given the glamour of an aristocrat at the same time, he doesn't act like one really, but I think he's unique in Jane Austen, and I don't think you get that same idea in the others. Certainly she stresses that marriage without bit of sense of finance is a great mistake.
- [67:29]
Jack Wilson
Okay, so what do you hope listeners.
- [67:31]
Janet Todd
Will take away from reading your book?
- [67:34]
Listener Nate
I hope they will take away my huge enthusiasm for Jane Austen. But of course, if they're reading it, they will already like her books. And so maybe I hope that some of my ideas will spark in them and make them think of other ideas and so get a little bit more out of Jane Austen. But I actually also think that's a huge privilege to be read by anybody, and I'm hugely grateful to people who read any of my books because it's allowing me to talk to them, and I think that's absolutely wonderful.
- [68:14]
Jack Wilson
Well, the book is called Living with Jane Austen, and the author has been my guest.
- [68:18]
Janet Todd
Janet Todd. Thank you so much for joining me.
- [68:20]
Jack Wilson
On the history of literature.
- [68:22]
Listener Nate
And thank you for hearing me.
- [68:28]
Jack Wilson
Okay, there we go. My thanks to Janet Todd for joining me. You can find her book Living with Jane Austen in bookstores everywhere.
- [68:36]
Janet Todd
And my thanks to listener Nate. I hope things are going well for you, Nate.
- [68:40]
Jack Wilson
Stay safe up there in Alaska. And of course, my thanks to you, dear listener, for your patience and kindness. I truly do appreciate your checking in with us and following along as we enter the summer months. We'll have some Mike Palindrome soon and some black American humor. That's a fun one. Emily Bronte, Icelandic folktales, the Odyssey, Christopher Isherwood, Emil Zola, Mark Twain, Dickens, Poe. There's so much good literature on our calendar. Makes me excited just to think about it. So there you go. Excited at the start of the episode, excited at the finish. And then the music will end and I will go back into my closet where I hibernate until the owners of the podcast break the glass and trot me out again for another hour with you. I live two hours a week. Did you know that? I'm only alive when this show is on. The rest of the time, I'm behind glass, thoughtless and inert, waiting for your ears to give me life. Oh, my. I guess that's true in a certain sense, but it's actually not true in most senses. True in a. In an uncertain sense. Maybe I should have said an untrue in the most certain of senses. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening. And.
- [69:59]
Lee C Camp
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- [70:30]
J
Lee C Camp Here. If you've been enjoying this show, I think you might enjoy my podcast, no Small Endeavor. Produced by Great Feeling Studios and prx, no Small Endeavor explores what it means to live a good life. We sit down with courageous, impassioned people like actor Martin Sheen or civil rights hero James Lawson to ask what it means to live a life worth living. Follow no Small Endeavor wherever you get your podcasts. Living a good life is no small endeavor and we would love to help.