782 Consent in the Regency Novel (with Zoë McGee)

Summary

The History of Literature: Episode 782

Consent in the Regency Novel (with Zoë McGee)
Original Airdate: March 9, 2026
Host: Jacke Wilson | Guest: Zoë McGee

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the concept of consent in the Regency novel, exploring how literary depictions of agency, resistance, and gendered power in the early 19th century both reflected and critiqued contemporary social attitudes. Host Jacke Wilson is joined by scholar Zoë McGee, author of Courting: Reading Between the Lines of the Regency Novel, to discuss how landmark novels—from Jane Austen to Samuel Richardson—navigate the intricacies of consent, sexual politics, and societal expectations. The episode draws connections between historical norms and present-day issues, shedding light on persistent challenges and the roots of modern conversations about consent.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Zoë McGee’s Introduction to Regency Literature

• Zoë’s first experience with 18th-century literature was reading Pride and Prejudice, which she picked up thinking it was Jane Eyre at age 7 or 8. Initially confused and unable to fully grasp the content, she was enticed by the book’s design and continued her interest after watching the 1995 BBC adaptation.
  “I didn’t really understand any of it, but I liked it because the writing was very, very small and it had these sort of very fancy letters… So I felt like I was really smart for trying to read it.” – Zoë McGee [04:53]

• She reflects on how encountering “grown-up” books as a child allows one to approach them with fewer preconceptions and less fear of failure than adults often have.
  “Almost coming at it as a child, you don’t have that same fear of failure… you just kind of get these preconceptions about what things are supposed to be like or feel like to read, and that can get in our way in a way that we don’t do as much as children.” – Zoë McGee [06:06]

2. Literary Terrain of the Regency & 18th-Century Novel

• The Regency/late 18th-century is characterized as a time of literary experimentation, diversity, and innovation. Novels were a new form, largely shaped, consumed, and authored by women.
  “We joked about it being like the miscellaneous drawer in the filing cabinet… you’ve just got so many very different things going on.” – Zoë McGee [07:51]
• Women were prominent readers and writers, especially before the Victorian era codified novelistic norms.

3. Consent, Agency, and Gender in Literature

Mr. Collins’ Proposal (Pride and Prejudice)

• Zoë relates a modern university consent workshop to the infamous proposal scene in Pride and Prejudice, where Mr. Collins refuses to accept Elizabeth's “no”—mirroring contemporary challenges in recognizing and respecting boundaries.

  “He's just too dense and poor Lizzie has to fend him off. But… it is unbelievable how many times she has to tell him no, and in such different ways.” – Jacke Wilson [13:07]

  “This is Lizzy, right? She's so good with her words... there's a world where she very easily could end up needing to marry Mr. Collins. And he's going to be like that all the time.” – Zoë McGee [14:24]

• The episode explores how, in Austen’s time, marriage signaled legal surrender of a woman’s sexual consent. Marital rape was not criminalized in the UK until the 1990s.

  “If she had married Mr. Collins, that would have been handing over her consent to him... he would be doing something he was legally allowed to do. But it’s not a situation you want to be in as the other party…” – Zoë McGee [15:16]

Richardson’s Clarissa

• Richardson’s Clarissa is central to academic discussions of consent because it dramatizes the constraints of legal definitions and the role of victim-blaming. Lovelace, the villain, rapes Clarissa after drugging her, making her inability to ‘resist’ a pointed critique of the period’s laws.
  “For something to be classed as rape, you have to have resisted with all your strength... Clarissa’s been drugged, so she’s unconscious, and she can’t resist.” – Zoë McGee [17:52]

• Richardson was exasperated by readers’ fascination with Lovelace and resistance to his condemnation.

  “He went back and edited the manuscript... to be like, this man is not a good man. We do not want to redeem him.” – Zoë McGee [21:17]

• The double standard of demanding women be perfect “victims” recurs in modern narratives about violence against women.

  “You don’t have to be a model to suffer. You know, you’re not more harmable the more perfect you are.” – Zoë McGee [22:31]

4. Social and Legal Contexts

• Zoë’s research included analysis of 18th-century court records from the Old Bailey. Findings revealed:

  • Extremely low rates of rape prosecution and conviction (24 convictions for rape in 50 years; 284 murder convictions in the same time span).
  • Most rape cases that succeeded in court involved children (below the age of consent) or extreme physical violence—drawing a clear link between societal conceptions of harm and legal recognition.
  • Women of higher status rarely used the courts, as the damage to their social and economic position would outweigh any ‘justice’ the courts could provide.
  • The cases underscore how the blame for violence was often placed on the victim’s behavior or status.

  “You'd be in this room full of people... a lot of the medical exams were brutal and re-traumatizing. And so you’re not going to do it unless you think there’s a chance that you’ll win.” – Zoë McGee [49:52]

5. Systemic Patriarchy and Marriage as Transfer of Agency

• Marriage at the time was likened to “electing a monarch for life” (Mary Astell)—a loss of legal identity for women.
• Marriage functioned as a form of trade, often forced, involving property, social mobility, or debt payment.
• Parental control and social norms left women with the illusion of choice rather than real autonomy. “You’re conferring the legal right to hurt you to somebody… Married women couldn't bring a case to court, so they didn’t exist as individuals in the eyes of the law.” – Zoë McGee [31:20]

6. The Danger of Romanticizing the Regency

• Jacke and Zoë discuss the risks of idealizing the “simpler” past as depicted in Austen adaptations—ignoring the restrictions, lack of agency, discomfort, and peril most people (especially women) faced.

  “If we were in Jane Austen’s time, we wouldn’t be those people… Even Austen’s heroines are not all hugely wealthy… Lizzie and Elmer, they’re bored a lot of the time.” – Zoë McGee [57:04, 58:03]

• The fantasy of marrying a “Darcy” masks the underlying social fragility for women:
  “You don’t want to be in a position where you’re dependent for safety, if not even happiness, on finding the Darcy in a sea of Collinses.” – Zoë McGee [60:46]

• The idealization also overlooks the strict social rules, the lack of autonomy, and the constant policing of women’s behavior.

  “A lot of the behavior that women were supposed to exhibit... it's all coded as being consenting… It kind of gets thorny when you want to disagree with someone or when you want to say no. And I think we still do that, to be honest.” – Zoë McGee [62:48]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On why Mr. Collins’s ‘proposal’ endures as a disturbing scene:
  “It is unbelievable how many times she has to tell him no, and in such different ways and with increasing agitation and directness and still he refuses.” – Jacke Wilson [13:07]

• On societal victim-blaming:
  “You can’t be complicit in your own murder. You can’t ask for an assault… The only person who can make the choice as to whether someone is attacked or not, is the person attacking them.” – Zoë McGee [22:30]

• On Regency fantasy:
  “Here is something where you see beautiful people. They don’t have to work, they've got money. I mean, that's… a significant part of the fantasy.” – Zoë McGee [57:04]

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Key Timestamps

• 03:45 – [Zoë’s First 18th-Century Novel]
• 07:51 – [The “miscellaneous” 18th-century literary scene; rise of novels and women as readers/writers]
• 09:44 – [Modern consent workshops and Mr. Collins’ proposal]
• 13:07 – [Host’s reaction: reading the Collins scene through today’s lens]
• 17:26 – [Clarissa as a touchstone novel for consent]
• 21:17 – [Richardson’s struggle with readers’ misreading of Lovelace]
• 31:20 – [Legal and economic realities for married women]
• 45:09 – [Research with Old Bailey court records]
• 49:17 – [Elites avoid the courts; most cases involve young, working-class women]
• 56:06 – [Modern romanticization of Regency; costs of nostalgic wishfulness]
• 60:46 – [Dangers of depending on ‘finding a Darcy’ for safety or happiness]
• 62:48 – [“Pleasantness” as code for female accommodation]
• 64:04 – [Closing thanks and wrap-up]

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Further Reading

• Courting: Reading Between the Lines of the Regency Novel by Zoë McGee
• Old Bailey Proceedings: oldbaileyonline.org

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This episode paints a nuanced picture of literary history, probing the intersection of gender, law, and narrative, and offering a reminder of both progress made and challenges yet to overcome in the representation and reality of consent.

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.

[Zoe McGee]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Zoe McGee]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Zoe McGee]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Zoe McGee]

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[Jack Wilson]

Hello. We begin today with a quote from poet Adrienne Rich. Quote. I believe any woman for whom the feminist breaking of silence has been a transforming force can also look back to a shock of recognition at certain lines, phrases, images in the work of this or that woman long dead, whose life and experience she could only dimly try to imagine. End quote. It's one of the great pleasures of reading to see that we are not alone, to see that our troubles are not new, that others have faced them and persevered and triumphed. Except sometimes these pleasures are more like pain. My goodness. You mean this is still happening? Clear eyed Writers, famous and revered writers, pointed this out to us hundreds of years ago, and it's still happening today. Will the problem never end? Ah, humanity. I say pleasure and pain, but really, the adjective I should have used is that it's compelling, illuminating, edifying, inspiring, consoling, thought provoking, and today, discussion provoking too. Our guest has looked back at the novels from the Regency period. That's the era led by Jane Austen. And she's looked at a particular topic, consent. When women said no, how did men react in the novels of this era? What fates befell the characters afterwards? Where were our authors in all this? What did they think? And how does any of this relate to the issues that are still so present in our society two centuries later? Zoe McGee, today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. We have another Letter by Chekhov for you today. But let's go straight to the Talk with Zoe McGee and use our Chekhov letter as a kind of interlude. It's a fun one. He describes the experience of seeing one of his plays performed and does not go as well as he might have hoped. But first, let's hear the first half of our conversation with Zoe McGee about consent in the Regency novel. Okay. Joining me now is Zoe McGee, who has degrees from Queen Mary, University of London and the University of Oxford. She's here today to discuss her new book, Courting Reading between the Lines of the regency novel. Zoe McGee, welcome to the history of literature. Hi.

[Zoe McGee]

Thanks for having me.

[Jack Wilson]

So what was the first 18th century novel you read? How old were you and what was your response? I guess the big question on the table here is, was Jane Austen the gateway to the Regency period for you?

[Zoe McGee]

She was, and it was completely by accident. So I was too young really to be reading Jane. I was sort of at school, I think I was 7 or 8, and I had one of these collections of extracts from worthy books to try and get kids interested in reading sort of past their age group. And so it had a bit from Little Women, which deeply confused me because it was the section that was only from Amy's perspective. And I started reading Little Women being like, why is it not about the character I read? But it had a bit from Jane Eyre, which was sort of when Jane, right at the beginning of the novel, kind of goes off to boarding school. And so I read this and went, ah, Jane Eyre. This is clearly a boarding school book. I should read that. That'll be fun. So I went looking for Jane Eyre and picked up Pride and Prejudice in a secondhand bookshop and thought, oh, yes, that's the one I was looking for

[Jack Wilson]

Jane somebody or other.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah. And picked it up by accident and then proceeded to try to read it. I didn't really understand any of it, but I liked it because the writing was very, very small and it had these sort of very fancy letters at the start of each chapter. So I felt like I was really smart for trying to read it, didn't understand it. And then I watched the 1995 BBC adaptation, which suddenly made it make a whole lot more sense. And I went back and Colin Firth. Yeah. And Jennifer Ehr. So I went back and then, like, read it, having watched it, when I kind of then knew what was happening. And that was sort of how I. How I got into it.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right. Okay. So it's so interesting you say that about almost Getting, like, the feel of it just from the font and the. And the text. And maybe some of the language was coming at you that way too. And. And we maybe don't give enough credit to that. It's almost like, you know, all those things would. Would have the same effect on adults, but we just wouldn't register it. We would just absorb it. But it's still there. It's still part of the appeal when you crack open one of those books is just the kind of feel of it that gets us into the mood.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah. And I think there's something as a kid, you feel like you're kind of stepping in somewhere where maybe you're not supposed to be. Whereas I think as an adult, there can be that fear that if it feels different or hard, maybe you're failing somehow. And so I think almost coming at it as a child, you don't have that same fear of failure. I know with some of the books I was reading, I really put off actually opening them because I kind of felt like, even as someone who studies. Studies literature, I thought, oh, it's going to be. It's going to be a bit dull. I don't know. I think I was put off by some of the covers. And then I read some of these books I was thinking of particularly, like, Belinda, which is a Mariah Edgeworth novel. And it's so funny and it's so good, and I was so hesitant to read it because I was convinced it was going to be really dull. Yeah. I think you just kind of get these preconceptions about what things are supposed to be like or feel like to read, and that can get in our way in a way that we don't do as much as children.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And I can just feel the angst of all of the high school teachers of literature who are kind of like, no, no, just give this a try. You don't understand. It's not boring. It's about war or it's about sex, really. You know, just trying to. Trying to spark that interest in kids who maybe come at things and say, well, since it's required reading, it's going to be boring, it's going to be dry, it's going to be a bunch of old fuddy duddies and so on. But, okay, so eventually you decided that this was the period you wanted to really dig into. What is it that appeals to you about the Regency period in particular and the novels that come out of this period?

[Zoe McGee]

I think it's such an interesting time. I feel like you get different moods in different sort of literary periods. Like, a lot of the Victorian novels have quite a specific feel to them. And I feel like the 18th century is sort of like, we joked about it being like the sort of miscellaneous drawer in the filing cabinet, because you've just got so many very different things going on. You've got the Romantic poets and you've got the satirists and you've got these really bizarre, like, narratives of coins going through people's pockets or like the life of a flea. And you've got novels. And novels are kind of get invented at this time, so no one really knows what they look like yet. And people are sort of iterating them and working out what they could be. You kind of get a lot of. There aren't as many rules and they haven't sort of slotted in quite to what they're going to be yet. I think that's really interesting. And also because it was still such a new field, like a lot of the working writers and a lot of the main readers were women in a way that was less common by the time you got to the Victorian period. So that's also quite interesting to me is that while it's a less prestigious art form, like who's writing, who's reading, it's a way of talking to people that's very personal but also removed. You wouldn't have been able to speak to people across the country and there'd be people you would probably never meet, but you could still communicate with them through these books.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, That's a great answer. Let's move a little bit to the topic of your book. And I was really struck by the anecdote you conveyed in your book about the consent workshop you attended and how it kind of brought back for you a particular scene in a Jane Austen novel.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah. So it's funny because the consent workshops weren't really a thing when I first went to uni, but afterwards they really started to take off after we kind of started talking a bit more about why consent was important and kind of the cultures that went on at university. And there was this moment where there were quite a lot of news stories, like national headlines, about consent workshops. It wasn't one. It wasn't actually a workshop. I was at myself, but my friends and I were kind of reading all these headlines about kind of the consistent storylines coming out with sort of students being offended at being invited and saying, like, I shouldn't have been invited, I'm not a rapist. And you're kind of like well, if it was that easy to actually be at sort of, oh, yes, we'll invite you. You clearly need it. You're going to be fine. You probably wouldn't. It would be much easier to kind of navigate through life because you know who was dangerous. But actually everyone's got the capacity to be dangerous and there's nothing wrong with going and learning more about how not to hurt people. So it was also this kind of, we were kind of laughing at this sort of baffling like, entitlement, this kind of unwillingness to see things from someone else's point of view. Like, why should I be inconvenienced by attending like a half hour or an hour session that could help me reflect on how I'm interacting with people. No, that's the real injustice. Not the fact that there's a need for this, there's a reason it's been put in place. Not the fact that I have the potential to do harm to people and I wouldn't want to do that. So absolutely, I'll think about how not to do that. And I think it was that kind of just complete cloistering inside their own heads that really reminded me of this scene from Pride and Prejudice. So Elizabeth is our heroine and she's been proposed to by Mr. Collins. He's really obnoxious. He's very much in this sort of entitled mindset. He's also quite young, like he's about 25, but he's very self important. He's very kind of in awe of his own position. And when she says she doesn't want to marry him, he is completely baffled as to how that could be possible. Like, yeah, her prospects aren't amazing. He's offering her money, a house, a connection with this noblewoman he kind of reveres more than God, if possible. And she's saying no, and it doesn't make sense to him. So the only thing he can think of is that she must actually not be saying no. It couldn't be because she dislikes him. It must be because she's just trying to make him love her more. And women don't want to say yes too quickly because then they look too eager. And so it's part of this playing, it being not hard to get necessarily, but just showing an appropriate amount of modesty. And so he kind of starts saying, oh, well, I know you're saying that you don't want to marry me, but we all really know what you mean. And she gets more and more blunt. Yeah, and he just won't Listen. And you can see he's starting to find it quite hard to try and make this fit. But he can't accept that she doesn't like him. And in the end she actually leaves the room and she has to kind of get her father to just to borrow his authority to say that she's not. That she's not interested.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. She basically says she does everything you can imagine to say no. And I've never, you know, I've never really thought about this in terms of a consent workshop setting or those themes. But when I reread it with that in mind, it was unbelievable to me how differently I was reading the chapter. I think a lot of this, a lot of times Collins is kind of played in the movie. This exchange would be kind of a sort of a. He'd be kind of a figure of fun that he'd be. He's somebody who just doesn't get it. He's just too dense and poor Lizzie has to fend him off. Luckily she's so quick witted and, and so on that she's going to be able to put him in his place. And we kind of enjoy her rejoinders and everything because she's so quick witted and all of that. But when you read it in the book, it is unbelievable how many times she has to tell him no and in such different ways and with increasing agitation and directness and still he refuses. And then she says she has to go get her father because clearly he's not going to listen to a woman. And it really is a striking passage.

[Zoe McGee]

And this is Lizzy, right? This is, this is one of the heroines who is like, she's so good with her words, she's so fast.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Zoe McGee]

And if you imagine like there's a, there's a world where she very easily could end up needing to marry Mr. Collins. And he's going to be like that all the time, Right?

[Jack Wilson]

That's the other thing. I mean when you said that about people who didn't want to go to the workshop and said, well, I'm not a rapist, you know, Collins isn't either. But still the way he is diminishing her and refusing to hear the words that she's saying and she just. And he says like at one point he says, I shall choose to attribute your rejection to your wish of increasing my love by suspense according to the usual practice of elegant females. And she's just like, do women like that exist? And if they do, I am not one of them, you know.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah, but I think it's hard to write him off as well, because he. In this time period, and why I think these novels about marriage are so key to consent, is that you handed over consent at the point of marriage. So marital rape wasn't a thing. Like, it wasn't a crime. It definitely happened, but it's not something. Actually, in the UK, it didn't get criminalised until the 1990s. So if she had married Mr. Collins, that would have been handing over her consent to him. And you can quite imagine that, like, while some husbands would have understood, actually, I'm not really in the mood tonight. This kind of conversation of, oh, well, actually, I think you'll find you are. It's kind of an echo of what the marriage would be like as well. And he wouldn't think he was doing anything wrong. He would be doing something he was legally allowed to do. But it's not a situation you want to be in as the other party in that situation. Right.

[Jack Wilson]

And you don't get the feeling when you're reading this passage that Jane Austen is saying, look at Mr. Collins, I found this unbelievable specimen. You would barely think such a man even exists. But I'm going to, you know, I've created a cartoon for you to set some kind of example or to show something. It feels like Collins is speaking on behalf of a lot of his generation men and probably even a lot of women who have absorbed some. Some of these same kind of truisms or folksy wisdom or things like that. But it does feel like Lizzie is fighting against a dominating sentiment of her time.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think your point about women being kind of complicit and bought into this is absolutely right. We often buy into the ideals of our time and the kind of the norms of our time. And I think, just as, you know, we have people who will talk about why they're wrong, and we have authors who are kind of advocating for change. But you also have authors who are saying, well, it's regrettable, but it is the way it is and you've got to make the best of it.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Okay. So you also, in your book, write, it is a truth universally acknowledged that if you read any academic book on consent or rape in the 18th century novel, it's going to talk about Clarissa. So what was. I think listeners would probably be familiar with Clarissa. Maybe not quite as familiar as they are with Pride and Prejudice, but what was Clarissa and why is that such an important book?

[Zoe McGee]

Well, there's a glib answer, which is that it's written by A male author. And the Victorians did a very good job of constructing the literary canon around books primarily written by men. So it's one of the works that survived and survived to be studied and has had more academic work done on it than a lot of female authored novels, which criticism kind of begets criticism. And so things that get written about get written about more. And so that is one part of it. The other part is that Richardson was a very popular author, Samuel Richardson. He wrote Clarissa. He also wrote a book called Pamela and he wrote Sir Charles Grandison, which is one of Jane Austen's favourite novels. Pamela was his kind of first big book and it was unbelievably popular. Like people were walking around carrying copies of it round the park so that everyone would know it was their favourite book. People have written quotes of it on their fans so that they can look really cultured while they're in the ballroom. It was hugely in vogue. And so Clarissa comes after that. And so it's also, you know, it's very, very popular. And it does a thing that's really, really interesting with regards to consent. So Clarissa is this very young, beautiful, moral heroine. She kind of is set up in this position where her family want her to marry someone she doesn't want to, and she ends up kind of being abducted by the villain of the book who takes her away, locks her up and. And is trying to convince her to submit to him. He doesn't believe in morality, really. He's trying to prove that you can corrupt anybody. And she happens to be part of his social experiment. In the end, he drugs her and rapes her. It's one of the few books that kind of has a very obvious sexual assault in it, which is, I think, partly also why it gets studied and talked about in this context. Like it's actually, you know, you've definitely got it happening. You're not having to read between the lines quite so much. But in the 18th century, for something to be classed as rape, you have to have resisted with all of your strength. And in this situation, Clarissa's been drugged, so she's unconscious, and she can't resist. But you also can't manufacture a storyline where she's consented because someone has literally knocked her out. And so Richardson sets up this conversation that's kind of challenging what the law was saying at the time about rape. You know, here is this. We know she's great, we know she's moral, we know she hates this man, but she didn't resist. So what does that mean? And the other thing I think is really interesting about this novel is that people really liked the villain. His name's Lovelace. And people really bought into him as, like, a kind of rake bad boy. Like, they wanted Richardson to redeem him at the end and have them get married, have him learn his lesson, and then live happily ever after. And Richardson was like, no, no, you're missing the point. And he went back and he edited the manuscript and kind of added in footnotes and more and more bits to be like, this man is not a good man. We do not want to redeem him. And trying to get people to let go of the kind of sexy, dashing idea of the villain made good and actually concentrate on what he was doing to this woman who definitely didn't want to end up married to him at the end of the.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Richardson seems almost like he designed this to force this question on people of, look at these horrible laws and the position that is putting these women in, and we should do something about it.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah. It's hard to speak to design, but I do think he's someone who. He feels very sympathetic in his writing, and it feels. It feels very much like he understands Clarissa's headspace through this. It doesn't feel like it's to titillate or to, like, make fun of her or to objectify her. She feels very human.

[Jack Wilson]

Because another thing that Richardson does is he wanted to show that Clarissa wasn't 100% blameless by the standards of the day, that she. She agrees to elope with him, she's going to meet him in the dark and so on. But he's saying, even so, that doesn't excuse drugging her and raping her.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah. I think as a reader today, it's hard to see her as accountable just because, you know, she's not really done. She's not really done anything that we think of as being problematic.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Zoe McGee]

Obviously, for the time period, it puts her in a slightly different social position. So she. She has agreed to meet Lovelace at night and have a conversation, but he convinces her that they have to run because people are chasing them. And so they. She's terrified of her family. She's terrified of what they'll think if they then see her there with him. So she does run, and he drags her into this carriage and she starts screaming like, no, no. And there's this line in it where Richardson says, you know, actually, I don't think that is Richardson. I think that's a critic. And I've just internalized that. But they Talk about how even though she's screaming no, she remains accountable because she kind of did take these steps to meet him in the dark, which, you know, isn't the perfect thing to do. So there are points that you can dissect in her conduct. Oh, if you hadn't done this, this couldn't have happened. But I think he doesn't suggest that she would have had a happy story if she had sort of acted, quote, perfectly, because her family are also being horrendous. I think what he's saying is that she's unquestionably a victim and yet has also made mistakes. And it kind of takes on that idea of, you don't have to be a model to suffer. You know, you're not more harmable the more perfect you are. And I think that's something we've really. We're still kind of fighting. It's that narrative today. So I talk a bit in the book about when a woman called Sara Everard was murdered by a police officer when she was walking home. And this line kept coming up in a lot of the news footage that she was just walking home and, like, what happened to her was. Was terrible. It would also have been terrible if she was doing something else. And I think we kind of use this narrative of, like, there are things you can do that are more innocent or less culpable people. You can't be complicit in your own murder. You know, you can't. You can't ask for an assault. So if. But. But if we tell ourselves that there are sort of better things to do, you know, like, they're sort of safer, more innocent things to do. It helps us feel in control. It helps us feel like we won't be the target. You know, it's the same thing with. If you're dressed a certain way, the idea that you're maybe inviting assault with your clothing. I mean, it's a skirt. It's not talking. It can't consent on your behalf. But if you modify your skirt, yours then won't be the shortest one, so you're less likely to be the target. So maybe someone else will get targeted. And it's sort of almost like a safety mechanism, but it obscures the fact that there is someone targeting. You know, that's the person who can choose whether something happens or not. Not you with your outfit, not you with your walking home, not you kind of being pulled into a carriage. It's, you know, in every case, the only person who can make the choice as to whether someone is Attacked or not, is the person attacking them.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Zoe McGee]

And we. We see that even in Clarissa. You know, there is a scene where she's in her nightgown and she's there with Lovelace, and he starts thinking, oh, maybe now is the moment, and she is trying to put him off, but she. She can't. Nothing she says. And Richardson kind of tells you this, like, nothing she says is going to make the difference. And Lovelace decides not to attack her that night and leaves. But it's very clearly his choice. And I think that, like, illustration of how much the decision of whether to harm is a choice made by the perpetrator and not something that's brought about by the actions of the victim. That's something that Clarissa does in a really kind of strong way.

[Jack Wilson]

It's his choice. And there's almost nothing short of this drugging. There's almost nothing that would make it possible for him to be prosecuted. As you point out, that law where you. The victim has to show not only that they resisted, but that they resisted enough. I mean, there's. You can imagine a defense attorney just saying, well, did you, you know, there was a. There was a heavy limp nearby. Did you grab it and try to hit him over the head with it? Or, you know, you could always find some way of. Of arguing that the person should have resisted more. And that's why the, the dialogue with Collins is so frustrating, because it's kind of like she must say no 10 times in that conversation, and still he's just not in a world where he's willing to accept no. And you can imagine that playing out with, you know, more serious physical consequences in something like Clarissa and her exchanges with Lovelace. But. Okay, so let's move forward a little bit in time. Although I don't want to skip over, there's some other 18th century novelist too, but I'm kind of wondering after Clarissa. And then when we talk about female authors, in particular Jane Austen and Fanny Burney, I mean, some of these people are writing 40, 50 years after Clarissa, and it feels like things haven't changed and maybe public sentiment hasn't even changed yet. Are they now saying it's time for us to really challenge some of these views that we've been reading about in these novels? Or are they advocating for change? Or are they just trying to accurately represent what the views and some of the hypocritical views were of their time? Or what. What actually were they trying to do in their novels?

[Zoe McGee]

I think it's one where it does vary by Individual. Right. So some of these novelists are trying to earn money and they're writing about women, probably because that's what they know. Others are writing to make money, but also to make points. We have some authors like Charlotte Smith, who is short on money but also has a really poor relationship with her husband and is very angry at the way that he's acted. And so she's sort of writing about that in her books. You've got authors like Mary Wollstonecraft, who we know best for her political writings like Vindications of the Rights of Women. But she wrote a novel called Maria, which she describes in the introduction as a history. And she says it's not about anyone in particular, but these are kind of real events, they're just not real characters. And so she's very much treating the novel as a tool to shine a light on these particular kinds of mistreatment. I think Frances Burney is interesting because she writes these wonderful novels that are very deep and rich and full of internal life. And I think what you. I don't even know if she's actively pushing. I don't know what she's trying to do, but what she is unquestionably doing is highlighting kind of how important education is as education and respect for female capacity, how much that impacts the day to day lives of women. She has these characters who are smart and moral and do try to make good choices and who are kind of buffeted about by kind of the Collinses of the world and are left stuck because they don't have power. So in her book, Cecilia, our heroine, she's got money, she's privileged, but she doesn't have access to it. And it's kind of her access to her fortune and that independence that that represents is kind of blocked by these three guardians who are all useless in different ways. And every time she tries to do something as simple as buy some books, like she has to kind of get their permission, she's constantly, like her word is being ignored, constantly. And she needs male figures in the novel to stand with her for anyone to pay attention to it. And you kind of see the frustration that she's clearly the most competent character in this novel. She's surrounded by, yeah, all these people and she's not able to guide her own life despite being in as privileged a position as she is. And there's a real frustration there.

[Jack Wilson]

And it wasn't new. I mean, Mary Asthal wrote the treatise Reflections on. You pointed this out in your book that she wrote the treatise called Reflections on marriage back in 1694 and said it's like electing a monarch for life.

[Zoe McGee]

Well, it's so dangerous. Like, if you think about what you do in. In signing that marriage document, you're conferring the legal right to hurt you to somebody. You're giving up your legal identity. You know, married women couldn't bring a case to court, so they. They didn't exist as individuals in the eyes of the law. They were literally, like, covered by their husband. They didn't have the right to their children. They didn't have the right to a lot of independent finances. They were just. You choose somebody who you will be tied to forever, who will control how you live and is allowed to do that and is allowed to make choices and is allowed to hurt you, to ridicule you, to kind of push you away. They dictate everything about your life. And I feel like we wouldn't willingly do that. Now. Even with someone that you love and you think is a wonderful person, it's an enormous amount of power to give to someone.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Zoe McGee]

And you can never take it back. It might be better than where you were living previously. It might be better than being under the control of your parents, because that's also, you know, it's a.

[Jack Wilson]

They could be abusive or there could be. You could be impoverished, or there could be lots of reasons why you would need to escape from a situation like that. Yeah.

[Zoe McGee]

And marriage, you know, marriage has often been a form of trade. You can effectively be sold by your parents to somebody else to cover debts or to secure land or to get a title or to just, you know, kind of make a good business deal. You're a commodity in that regard. And often what you bring is the prospect of children. You know, it's a way of cementing ties, and it's an offer of sex. And it's kind of. You're not really a person in that equation. Apart from the 18th century is at a point where this idea of marrying for love has become more trendy. I guess the kind of companionate mode you should be marrying because of your feelings. You shouldn't be marrying for mercenary reasons. However, you probably should take those into account. And the reality is still that it's this sort of practical consideration. But the fashion is that you should be thinking about sentiment. And so there's this moment where society says, oh, you should get to make this choice. As a young woman, you should be making this choice. It shouldn't just be entirely dictated by your parents. However, as an obedient young woman, you probably should do exactly what they tell you. But this moment of choosing a husband is the moment of choice in your life and you're choosing the kind of future you'll have. And do you actually. Do you actually get to have that choice that you're supposed to have? Or are you just being pushed into something that is going to make your life unbearable?

[Jack Wilson]

Let's take a quick break and come back with more from Zoe McGee. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail]

[Zoe McGee]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full [e-mail] I'm Alan.

[Jack Wilson]

And I'm Sean and together we host the Prancing Pony Podcast. Every week. I explore Middle Earth with Sean or with other co hosts lately with in depth analysis and plenty of nerd humor from the Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings and more. It's a great way for first timers to experience J.R.R. tolkien's captivating world, and for longtime fans, it's a deep dive into their favorite stories. So if you're ready to take the next step into the most beloved world in fantasy literature and become a part of a vibrant, active community of listeners, then look for the Prancing Pony podcast wherever you listen. Safeway and Albertsons have made saving easier than ever with great savings on family favorites this week. 16 ounce sweet strawberries are 2 for 5 doll, and don't miss the incredible deal on Signature select boneless skinless chicken breast value packs for $2.97 per pound limit one plus medium avocados or mangoes are five for $5 member price. Fresh and delicious savings for every meal. Hurry in. These deals won't last. Visit Safeway or albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. Okay, that was Zoe McGee. We'll have the second half of our conversation in a few minutes, but first let's hear from Chekhov, the playwright. This comes to us via the book Chekhov on Writing the Mentor, the Self Critic, Literary Questions and Fictional Writers, which is a nice Dover Thrift edition edited by friend of the podcast Bob Blaisdell this letter that I'm going to read today was written from Chekhov to his brother Alexander. We've heard one of those about a week ago as well. This one was written on November 20, 1887, which is one day after the premiere of Chekhov's play Ivanov. That was. You might have seen that play. Actually, Chekhov was commissioned to write a comedy, but of course, being Chekhov, he turned in a drama instead. He'd written it quickly, in only 10 days. And this first performance was kind of a disaster. You might have seen the play. Well, you probably didn't really see this play that Chekhov's about to describe in this letter, because Chekhov revised it. The version you've seen is the one that later became a hit and started Chekhov on his path to being a famous playwright. But this was the initial performance. Chekhov was 37, but he was not a young 37. He'd been a famous writer already for years. He had a lot of reputation at stake, and we're almost at the end of his life. He would only live another seven years, but in those seven years he would establish himself as a master playwright with the Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and the Cherry Orchard. All are wonderful. All of those are still ahead of him at this point. Nobody knew he had those in him. He was a successful short story writer, a famous one, a celebrated one, but this was his first produced play. Let's hear him tell the story of what happened. Quote well, the first performance is over. I will tell you all about it in detail. To begin with, Korsh promised me 10 rehearsals, but gave me only four, of which only two could be called rehearsals for the other two were tournaments in which the artistes exercised themselves in altercation and abuse. Davidov and Glamma were the only two who knew their parts, and the others trusted to the prompter and their own inner conviction. Act 1 I am behind the stage in a small box that looks like a prison cell. My family is in a box of the Benoire and is trembling. Contrary to my expectations, I am cool and am conscious of no agitation. The actors are nervous and excited and cross themselves. The curtain goes up. The actor, whose benefit night it is, comes on his uncertainty, the way that he forgets his part and the wreath that is presented to him make the play unrecognizable to me from the first sentences. Kiselevsky, of whom I had great hopes, did not deliver a single phrase correctly, literally, not a single one. He said things of his own composition, in spite of this and of the stage manager's blunders. The first act was a great success. There were many calls. Act two. A lot of people on the stage, visitors. They don't know their parts, make mistakes, talk nonsense. Every word cuts me like a knife in my back. But, oh, Muse, this act too was a success. There were calls for all the actors and I was called before the curtain twice. Congratulations and success. Act 3. The acting is not bad. Enormous success. I had to come before the curtain three times and as I did so, Davydov was shaking my hand and Glama, like Manilov, was pressing my other hand to her heart. The triumph of talent. Virtue. Act 4, Scene 1. It does not go badly. Calls before the curtain again. Then a long wearisome interval. The audience not used to leaving their seats and going to the refreshment bar. Between two scenes murmur. The curtain goes up fine. Through the arch one can see the supper table, the wedding. The band plays flourishes, the groomsmen come out. They are drunk. And so, you see, they think they must behave like clowns and cut capers. The horseplay and pothouse atmosphere reduce me to despair. Then Kiesalevsky comes out. It is a poetical, moving passage. But my Kiselevsky does not know his part is drunk as a cobbler and a short poetical dialogue is transformed into something tedious and disgusting. The public is perplexed. At the end of the play, the hero dies because he cannot get over the insult he has received. The audience, grown cold and tired, does not understand this death. The actors insisted on it. I have another version. There are calls for the actors and for me. During one of the calls I hear sounds of open hissing, drowned by the clapping and stamping. On the whole I feel tired and annoyed. It was sickening. Though the play had considerable success, theater goers say that they had never seen such a ferment in a theater, such universal clapping and hissing, nor heard such discussions among the audience as they saw and heard at my play. And it has never happened before at Korsha's that the author has been called after the second act. End quote. Marvelous. We go from the late 19th century back to the early half of the 19th century. Zoe McGee and the novels of the Regency period. After this,

[Zoe McGee]

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[Jack Wilson]

MGLIS Lebricizumab LBKZ, a 250mg per 2ml injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebglis. Before starting ebglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.

[Zoe McGee]

Ask your doctor about ebglis and visit eglis.lily.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545.

[Jack Wilson]

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[Zoe McGee]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Zoe McGee]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Zoe McGee]

Experian.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, we're back. So, Zoe, I was really struck by what you were saying at the end there, that I think sometimes I tended to think of this as women were not respected because they were viewed as intellectual inferiors or silly or, or capricious or, you know, the Collins view of, well, you're, you're clearly just trying to flirt with me and when you say no and you're trying to, you know, that kind of thing, but this has really deep economic underpinnings of kind of the whole view of what marriage is and should be and for it to be about childbirth and, and that it's this economic decision and that often the women lose agency because they're basically being traded from their parents to, you know, some new suitor who both of them have kind of an economic view of the transaction. And, and it made me Think about another area of your book, because as you point out that the 18th century, as you're studying it, there's a lot of, as you put it, the elephant in the room is that the 18th century is not very good at allowing anyone other than wealthy white men to talk about. And so you were able to find these novels written by women, but also you looked at court records. So what court records were you able to review as part of your research and what were those cases and what did they tell you?

[Zoe McGee]

So there's this really fantastic resource called the Old Bailey Proceedings, which is all online and it's sort of a database of records from the Old Bailey courtroom in London. Cases from the Old Bailey were publicised in newspapers in the 18th century. You'd get write ups and they'd usually everything in the write up would have been said in the courtroom, but they didn't write up everything that got said. So they tend to cut out a lot of the kind of legal technicalities, a lot of the back and forth. They'll also cut down a lot of what the guilty party says because they were worried that people would learn how to like crib a successful not guilty plea from studying these, these cases. But you've got this database that kind of has the write ups of these cases that were going out in the newspapers of the period. And so I was looking at those. That's like this is what kind of anyone reading the newspapers would be seeing and would be hearing about. So it kind of, it offers an insight into what was going on without having. It's a slightly easier entry point than having to wade through all of the kind of legal backwards and forwards. It makes, it's a bit shorter, it's much easier to kind of access. And that was fascinating. So I went and I took like a 50 year window of time because I wanted to get a sense of what was happening in the Old Bailey. The Old Bailey is such a kind of major court in London. And so it was saying, let's look at what's happening here. And at this point in my research I was kind of assessing, is it worth taking this in a direction of then going, expanding that and looking at lots of other courts. And as it happened, that wasn't the way that we decided to go, but it kind of gave us this really clear snapshot of what was happening in microcosm. And what was fascinating was in this 50 year window in this major court in London, you have 135 people brought on trial for rape, which is very few and of that only 24 are found guilty in 50 years. In 50 years, which. That was where it started for me. I was like, well, clearly, like, it is absolutely unreasonable to believe that in London there were 24 rapes in 50 years. That's, that's just unfeasible. And if you look at something like. So I went and looked at what the, the rates were for murder because I was like, this is, you know, this is the cap. This is a huge crime. Is that. That. Surely that's got to be lower. You know, if we're thinking this is a real number, then surely there would be fewer murders committed. And actually it was. There were, you know, there were 404 people brought to trial for murder and 284 of them were found guilty. So you go from 24 guilty verdicts in rape to 284 guilty verdicts in murder and you're like, well, did we just have like 10 times as many murderers? Probably not. So I was looking at, like, who were these cases? And were there any things in common? And it was really interesting. I'd kind of, I think, assumed that they would be wealthier. And actually most of the people using the court were from this kind of particular area. They were kind of servants, people working in pubs, people who earned enough money to get to court, but not so much money that their dowries effectively would be damaged by a court proceeding. Because what we found is that a lot of the people who are the subject of the novels, they're not using the courts at all. That's something that either you pretend didn't happen or you marry them to the person, you cover it up.

[Jack Wilson]

You don't want the scandal for the family.

[Zoe McGee]

You don't. No. It will damage the victim in a way that would then have economic consequences, basically.

[Jack Wilson]

And you have leverage. You have, you know, a wealthy, a well to do family. We see that throughout Jane Austen too. Right. That a well to do family would kind of be able to pull some strings and make some arrangements and make sure that the marriage happens or find kind of a suitable solution or that kind of thing that wouldn't be available to someone who is maybe from the working class.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah. The other thing that was quite interesting was that a lot of the cases, the people were all very young. And what I kind of could really see is that this question of consent, and consent in law really impacted which cases were being brought because it did still cost money to go to court, you know, and it was deeply unpleasant. You'd be in this room full of people a lot of the medical exams were brutal and re traumatizing. And so you're not going to do it unless you think there's a chance that you'll win. And what that.

[Jack Wilson]

I was going to say that probably you didn't even see any instances where it was a woman who was alleging it against her husband. Because that wasn't even a thing. That wouldn't even have been recognized as a crime.

[Zoe McGee]

No, it wouldn't. That would be completely legal and wouldn't

[Jack Wilson]

have been recognized as a crime in the UK until 1992. Unbelievable.

[Zoe McGee]

I mean, it's still not criminalized everywhere today.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, so back to the cases you were looking at. You were about to mention what types of cases were being brought.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah. So we talked a bit about this, like having to resist with all of your strength and how challenging that is to do. And you do see that in the cases with older women and by older, like, they're still all. Broadly, I say broadly, not all of them say how old they are. The ones who say how old they are are kind of late teens, when they're early 20s, as they're older people. But we don't know how old all of them are. But you see some of these talking about, like, oh, well, I tried to call out and they say, well, there was a window, surely people would have heard you. And they kind of do this discrediting thing to try and argue that. And it's much harder for those women to get those convictions because there's all sorts of sort of folk tales about, well, you know, you should have this physical reaction if this has happened to you or you shouldn't. I don't want to go into loads of detail because it's quite unpleasant, but they sort of have ideas about how much physical harm you should sustain depending on your age and whether you're sexually active or not. And if you don't fit that, like, preconceived idea, that's often also used to discredit your claim.

[Jack Wilson]

And I'm guessing they probably have some details in there, like, well, what were you doing out on the street at night anyway? Or why were you, you know, the things we talked about before, why were you wearing what you were wearing, or why did you invite this person into your room and that kind of thing.

[Zoe McGee]

I mean, often the other thing that you really saw was that it's usually people they knew. So it's often this is someone who worked in the pub with me, or this is someone like, they're not necessarily being found on the street. They're often like, oh, I went upstairs to get this, and I was then like, this happened.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Zoe McGee]

But what it meant was that most of the people bringing the cases. What it meant was that most of the cases involved people below the age of consent. Well, certainly a lot of them did, and a lot of the ones that got guilty verdicts did. Because if someone's below the age of consent, you only have to prove that it happened and that this is the person responsible. You don't have to prove consent itself, which is the harder thing to do. So a lot of these cases involve children, and a lot of these cases also involved venereal disease because, again, that. That kind of could provide evidence that there had been some kind of sexual activity. And it was honestly really challenging to read through these. One thing I noticed was you kind of get desensitized a little bit reading through kind of all of these documents. And part of that happens because the language is very euphemistic. It's very vague. It's very bland, I guess is the best way of putting it. You know, it doesn't. It's not sensationalised, and it's not. It's not storytelling, really. And looking at it, suddenly things would jump out as you're reading that were just very stark and would kind of tell you actually how horrific the level of violence was for this to make it to court. You kind of get distracted by the bland language. And then someone would say, oh, actually, after this victim left my house, I have to get a mop for the blood. And you're like, oh, God, that's. That's a lot. You know, So I think I took away just yet the scale of the. I mean, obviously rape is always a violent act, but there was a lot of quite extreme physical signs that it happened. And so that kind of said, okay, it's got to be at a point where people view it as harm. I know that sounds silly to say view it as harm because we are much better today at recognizing that it's harmful in itself, but that it would.

[Jack Wilson]

There would be something so shocking about it that they couldn't just pigeonhole it as they were with so many other types of rape, that it would be almost like, well, this is something that's. That's reached the point of being barbaric.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah, you see, with some of the ones I was talking about where the women are a bit older or have been sexually active already. I remember one where they said, oh, but why were you freaking out because you knew it wasn't going to kill you, you've done this before, so surely you should have known you'd be fine. And it kind of calls back to this time where rape used to be characterized as a burglary crime. So it was sort of like damaging property and sort of the damage would be in like, have you reduced the value of this woman by taking away her virginity? Have you potentially fathered children? Like it's that kind of thing. Rather than this act is violent and harmful in itself. So you kind of. I think they're still leaning on cases that don't rely on the act itself being violent, but that have additional violence sort of along with it. The venereal disease is. It just kind of follows a. Helps you track that this has happened, but also was sometimes a cause of violence as well because people didn't have great health care. And there was sort of a belief that you could cure your USD by kind of having contact with an innocent, which kind of. You see a lot of these judges actively like asking the doctors about this because they're trying to get in print. This is not a cure. Please stop doing this.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah, it was challenging.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. So moving forward to today and people who are reading these Regency novels and there's such a feeling of, oh, I wish we could return to the past or those values of the past. Jane Austen's world in particular seems like one that people miss and they kind of miss these courtships and this period of, you know, all the genteel language and the dances and I guess a world that just feels simpler and more innocent and all of that. What do you think is behind that longing and what does that longing overlook? We've talked about some of those things, but I was wondering if you just had any thoughts on why it is that we, we sort of elevate this period and we almost idealize it. Why do we want to do that and then what do we risk when we do that?

[Zoe McGee]

It's interesting. I think a lot of us come to it through these adaptations which are beautiful. You know, the landscapes are gorgeous, the houses are great, the clothes are great. And we're sitting here with our emails going off every 30 seconds and with kind of 24 hour news cycles and, you know, the world is a scary place at the moment. It's chaotic and dark and everything is overwhelming. And here is something where you see beautiful people. They don't have to work, they've got money. I mean, that's. I think that is a significant part of the fantasy. It's like if we were in that, if we were in Jane Austen's time, we wouldn't be those people.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. You get partway through a book and you think, oh, if only I had 10,000 pounds a year. 10,000.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah. But, you know, we wouldn't be the people going to the balls and we wouldn't be even. Austen's heroines are not all hugely wealthy. They're sort of genteel, middle, you know, they're not the aristocracy.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. We watched Sensibility the other day and they're talking about how devastated the family is that they have to live in this little house and they're being shamed for it and all of that because of their circumstances. And my wife and I were like, that house is nicer than ours.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah. And they've only got a couple of servants.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Right.

[Zoe McGee]

And I think we overlook, like, a lot of those sort of things, like, who would we actually be there? You know, those. I mean, also, even if we were those people, like Lizzie and Elmer, they're bored a lot of the time. They're. I mean, if you take the Bennet girls, like, they are stuck in a house with parents who don't get on with nothing to do. And this is something that a lot of the authors talk about is part of why education is so important, because they just kind of tie themselves into these knots of having no outlet, no way to be useful. But, you know, if we were there, we'd be dealing with the fact that, you know, all our light is from candles, which means once it gets dark, it's quite hard to do very much because, you know, you're dependent on a really low light source and everything smells a lot more. People don't show. You don't have a shower. You know, you're going to be washing with bowls of water. And people really did smell quite a lot. There was a period known as the Great Stink when the Thames was reeking with sewage. And your healthcare would be much worse. You wouldn't necessarily just be able to take a painkiller if you had a headache, you'd be kind of much more at the mercy of the physical and the cold and transport would take so much longer. I think we romanticize a lot of carriages. They seem great, but actually they're bumpy and uncomfortable and you lurch around a lot and you're crammed in with your siblings and you're dependent on the needs of the horses and you have to stop because it's going to take you multiple days to get anywhere. So it looks great, but it also then can cut to when they arrive at the house.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And we think, well, you know, you find your Darcy, and it seems like, well, Lizzie's going to sort of be able to really realize who she is when she's in that marriage. She's gonna have a chance to shine, and her. Her opinions are going to be valid and she'll become the best version of herself and all that. And maybe. So. Maybe that is the happily ever after. But that's just. You're really spinning the roulette wheel and hoping that that's what happens. Because for women, even the marriage that looks like a good match, they have to give up so much that they're just. They'll only be lucky if they get to really live like a real person.

[Zoe McGee]

Yeah. And I think that's. That's the thing. Like, I think, you know, Darcy's great, and we see. You know, we see a real contrast between him and Collins with the way that he takes Lizzie, turning him down. He gets immediately that she's said she's not interested in him, then they have a row about other things. But you don't want to be in a position where you're dependent for safety, if not even happiness, on finding the Darcy and the sea of Collinses. You want to be able to be yourself. There's a simplicity to the idea of someone else making decisions for you and to the idea of there being a social order and a particular way of doing things that can feel comforting and safe.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Zoe McGee]

But there is also a kind of you give up autonomy when you submit to someone else's instruction. And it's one thing to kind of choose to do that, but it's another thing not to be able to stop. And I think that's sort of where we sleepwalk a little bit. Like, I think we. I don't. You know, I feel like it's. It's one thing to be like, oh, it would be nice to. To get. To wear these dresses and to go to the balls and to do this.

[Jack Wilson]

But they have all these rules, you know, they have all of these. These defined rules of who dances with who first and what that means, and. And when you're old enough to be launched and to be out in the world and out in society and all of that. But as you're saying, those are rules made by somebody else. And if you don't quite fit into those rules, you're kind of headed for disaster.

[Zoe McGee]

There's a great book by Sarah Fielding called the History of Ophelia, and in that she goes to a ball and she doesn't know any of the rules. And, you know, one thing you learn from that is she. She doesn't want to dance with somebody, so she says no. And then the guy comes up that she would like to dance with, but she's not allowed to dance with him because she's turned someone else down. And you're actually, you can turn someone down who asks you, but only if you don't dance anymore that evening.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Zoe McGee]

If you're going to keep dancing, you've got to dance with whoever asks you. So there's also rules to, like how much you're allowed to say no. And I think one of the things that you really see is that a lot of the behavior that women were supposed to exhibit and the kind of the ways they were supposed to be polite and the way they were supposed to be socially, it's all coded as being consenting. It's all coded as being obedient. It kind of gets thorny when you want to disagree with someone or when you want to say no. And I think we still do that, to be honest. I think it's not to the same extent, but we still socialize girls to be pleasant and accommodating and to not make people uncomfortable and to try and sort of do the social. The sort of little jobs that make things tick over to do the emotional labor. But it's quite hard to seem pleasant when you disagree with someone because people often don't like to be disagreed with. And so often being likable and being pleasant is code for being accommodating and doing what other people want.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Okay. Well, the book is called Courting Reading between the Lines of the regency novel. Zoe McGee, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.

[Zoe McGee]

No, thank you for having me. It's been really fun.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, there we go. That's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. I hope you enjoyed it. My thanks to Zoe McGee for joining me. Oh, listeners, it's good to be alive. Hang on to it as long as you can and squeeze it for all it's worth. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

[Zoe McGee]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Zoe McGee]

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