Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Persuasion by Jane Austen with Andrew Hunter Murray

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

This week's book guest is Persuasion by Jane Austen.Sara and Cariad are joined by incredible writer, podcaster and comedian Andrew Hunter Murray to discuss Lyme Regis, Prince George, morality and sailors. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you! Persuasion by Jane Austen is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.You can buy Andrew's books The Sanctuary and The Last Day here or on Apple Books here.Sara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded by Ben Williams and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdo's Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but it doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdo's Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is Persuasion by Jane Austen. What's it about? Persuasion is about Anne Elliott, who years after breaking off an engagement finds herself having to encounter her ex and he's even fitter and wealthier. What qualifies it for the Weirdo's Book Club? Well, the truly strange thing about this novel is that at the age of 27,

and is considered really bloody old to still be on the shelf. In this episode, we discuss Lime Regis. Prince George. Slippy cobstones. Hot looks. Sailors. And hot men writing hot stuff down in hot letters. And joining us this week is Andrew Hunter Murray.

Andrew is a polymath of talent, a QI elf, a globally famous podcast host with his award-winning show No Such Thing as a Fish, and a Sunday Times best-selling author with his books The Last Day and The Sanctuary. His new book, A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering, will be. published in 2024. Thank you for joining us, Andy. Thank you for having me. We're so excited you're here. When this author came up, there was only one person we could think. Yes.

That could have possibly studied her at Oxford in the level that you have. I know for a fact that you know at least two people who've done that. But yes, yeah. But just for our listeners, I mean, you don't have a casual interest in Jane Austen. Either of you. Yeah, no, that's true. You've made quite a lot of money out of... We have dug up that corpse and improvised on top of it for some time.

Because that's my first question to you both really is. Oh, yeah. And I think lots of people listening. Is it where is Austin Tash is available to watch? It's on it the answer to every Monday, Sarah. Okay. Okay. My second question, and I think lots of readers, if they were discovering Austin for the first time now, if they were forced perhaps to read for school or in a syllabus, I think.

Is she funny? Go on, Andy. She's very funny. She's so funny. In fact, it gets funnier the more you read it. That's a really interesting thing. There are some gags which are obvious, and there are some gags which are just pure character moves and there are some which are so subtly layered in that actually we went to it we went to an

event where they were reading the whole of Pride and Prejudice at Bath library yes over the course of about three days including some of the cast of the best adaptation the 1995 BBC PMP so mr Bingley what's his name crispin Bonham Carter christened Bonham Carter some relation Rachel Parris got a picture next to him we were so excited I had no idea this is going to be such a dwee bov I don't know why you're surprised all of us reading it and I think a few of us read a chapter each and you know and the weird thing is more jokes came out of the text as as we read it live reading i'd already read it a couple of times by that point and yet when you read it really closely it gets funnier and funnier because the author is always she's always in there or the

narrator rather she's always in there gently reminding you of her presence and observing things that you can observe too if you if you're minded to it's constant observation and it's constant character observation and watching people and then they stand up but i would say that we're dealing with persuasion today. We are dealing with Prudges. This is far bittier in those character observations. Oh, I don't know. Pride and Prejudice, I felt like she twinkled.

It was that kind of comic. Yeah, I know what you mean. She stands up comedian. Whereas this one, she was, there's a couple of people she absolutely roasted. She roasted them. This is the last novel she wrote. She was dead when it was published. Yeah, it was published in December 1817, along with Northanger Abbey,

six months after her death. And she tied at 41, which. She's younger than me. That's your age, Carrie out. All right. I need to write some more books. Also, imagine the weirdness of getting persuasion. And Northanga Abbey.

And Northanger Abbey at the same time, which she wrote when she was about 17. I thought that. I was like, you'd be like, this author's really weird. It's a slightly sort of kooky, gothic comedy. But so I read another interesting thing that most of her novel, she revised and revised and revised, apart from persuasion, which was written in the last two to three years. And she did edit it. So she would have revised this.

So Brian Phaj was revised for like 10 years. So like this was like only for about two years And they still have some of the edits And you can see like handwritten what she was How she was refining the comedy And refining the writing basically But this was the last one And it's always

It's famous for being her most mature novel And most you know It is about older characters It is about older romance That will come back to the older word But yes compared to Pride and Prejudice I would say Pride and Prejudice It's frothy

It's champagne It's delight, it's joy This is A Nogroni A Nogony A dark whiskey, yeah, like it's, it's, it's, um, dark and stormy. It's rum. It's someone who's had too many drinks, guys.

Yeah, and it's like, let me tell you. No, no, I like her. I like her. What I don't like, she's got that tooth. What's that, what's going on with her wrist? Yeah. Her description of Mrs. Clay, I was like, you'd be cancelled now for saying, for saying, oh, this person is not just unattractive.

Let me list their faults. There are some really unbearable rudeness in there. And in fact, it's got, I think, one of the only really, really cruel comments in the whole of Austin's canon, which is about a mother who's lost her, I think son at sea. Oh my God, yes. She says, with a woman this fact,

she should be much jollier. That character who is dead, who we hear of a couple of times via his mother's grief, and Jane Austen's narrator saying, nah, it's rubbish. He wasn't much good. Well, it's a dick joke actually as well.

I mean, I didn't know that... She covers all bases, go. I didn't know they did dick jokes back in the day, but his name was Richard. They'd been calling him poor Richard. Poor Richard been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name,

living or dead. Their son died, don't care about that, he was rubbish. That's what she says, and I was so shocked. You tricked us, you said, is she funny? And we went, yes, and then you've bought up all the things she said that should be cancelled. There are more jokes in persuasion, which would get a kind of a Jimmy cast. style, laugh, then, oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think the thing with Austin often is that you have these concentric circles of reality and character depth. The heroines are obviously the most real people. They're drawn with the most depth and warmth, and often their close family are drawn with a similar amount of warmth, not really in this case, and then you get these concentric circles of more and more absurd characters around them stretching into the distance.

Which Pride and Pace is a classic example. Yeah, exactly. You like, and then the parents are mental and then the other characters are. Exactly. The Reverend Collins, nut job. Lady Catherine Deberg, really nuts. They're allowed to be comic characters the further away they are from the sort of iron core of the novel. Lots of the family are just in that slightly more absurd outer circle. Because so much of it is about her father, Sir Walter Elliot.

Her dad's so vain. It's so funny. I mean, I didn't think that men at the time had such an important, placed such importance on their appearance. But from the very first page, Sir Walter. The first thing you know about him, she doesn't read books. It says, um, he's so vain. Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliott's character. Vanity of person and of situation.

Just, I love, few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did. Nor could the valet of any new-made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. It's just like, it's so damning. I know. But then it's not just, oh, he likes how he looks. He's so judgmental about all men, especially sailors. And when he goes to Bath, he keeps calling women frights down the street. saying there aren't enough pretty women.

I read an interesting thing that he, which I don't know if I agree with, was supposed to be a metaphor for Prince George, the region. That is this character that is, it wasn't too vain, and that's spoiling the country, and that's the problem.

And he doesn't support the Navy, which apparently Prince George was very rubbish at. And then when they defeated Napoleon, he took the credit, whereas everyone was like, it was a Navy, mate, not you. Well, two of her brothers were in the Navy. Yes.

So that ending of the book where it's like this one goes out to all the troops. Let's hear it by the book. And the fact that so often they kept talking about the great characters of the Navy. Whereas the dad is keep saying things like, oh, they should all be knocked on the head. Well, yeah. Because there's this thing about an Admiral who looks 62 and he's only 40. I know because it's a vanity.

But there's a whole passage, which is not a character. It's the narrator. Oh, which goes on about the Navy. But how all jobs make you ugly. Is that bit? That bit. Well, I'll find it for you. I think that's a character.

I think it's... It is a character, you're right. Maybe it's Anne's oldest sister. Or it might be Mrs. Clay. Oh, it's Mrs. Clay, the manipulative hussy of the book. Oh, Mrs. Clay. I loved Mrs. Clay. And she sort of has to, like, mysteriously get, yeah, removed every now and again.

She can sense everyone realizes she's trying to shack up with the dad. She does seem to be, yeah. It's page 21. So it's pretty early on. It is Mrs. Clay. And she's saying, I've been long convinced, though, every profession is necessary in its turn. For those who are not obliged to follow any, who could live in a regular way in the country.

choosing their own hours, following their own pursuits and living their own property, without the torment of trying for more, it is only their lot to hold the blessings of health and good appearance. Don't get a job, or are you going to get ugly? She says, and all you know about her, she's covered in freckles. Yep. And considered very unattractive. Well, it's interesting as well, because the Navy at that time,

again, something I was reading, is a meritocracy. So someone like Captain Wentworth, who we haven't mentioned, the dashing hero of the piece, Captain Frederick Wenworth, is able to... It's not my hero. Not your hero, okay. But he's able to make his money in a... way that her father is completely of the baronet, is, you know, inherited. Well, the Navy at that time, you could get prize money.

That's what her brothers did. They made prize money. They shared it with their other sailors. So this is a whole new class developing. That Anne is pro. And also those people had just one feet in the podium. But the other characters are kind of sniffy about. Oh, yeah, it's definite sniffiness.

But it's interesting that our character, Anne, you know, Jane's voice in this is, is not sniffy about it. And is pointing out, like, we just won a war. We just stopped the French invading us because of. of these men. And so, so Walter explicitly says, I disapprove of the Navy because you might, you don't know who you're going to have to salute. Yeah, yeah. You might have to salute someone whose dad, your father wouldn't have given the time of day to. This is outrageous. So it's interesting that, again, it's why I love Jane Austen, because it's funny, it's thoughtful

and unthewoken in very sadly. It's a complete class debate going on of like, what does it mean to be, you know, part of a society, a hierarchy? And we have this person, you know, her father who is, is, you know, everyone should, you know, doff their cap to him, but he's vain and stupid and useless. Also, he's run out of money. He's got no bloody money. So his snobbery about people who have gone out and worked for a living, not just worked, worked honourably and, you know, saved us from Napoleon and inverted commerce.

That's the phrase I used. I mean, he did, he did save us from Napoleon. Is this a pro-Napoleon podcast? Because I would never have said you after a period. I support the troops, all the troops, both sides. Okay. We'll be recording from a small island and Mediterranean. Sorry, this is now a complete tangent, but that was the big threat that Napoleon posed, particularly in England, was that he represented a more meritocrat.

I mean, as ever with dictators, they all go tonto and then try and make their sons the subsequent dictator. But Napoleon in the early days was seen as a meritocrat. And France post-revolution was not a safe place for people who didn't, hadn't worked, to achieve their station in life. So that is an interesting sort of sign point to this. But the point about money, and Jane Austen often does this to show us weak men. Same with Elizabeth Bennett's father, later on with the Mr. Smith that we hear about. But, you know, our main vain character can't afford to live in his house anymore. And won't sell it out of pride.

Won't solve the problems. Yeah. Yeah. And it's still so proud that it's making other people sort of out for him. I know. And the fact that he's sort of, he read so he can't, you know, if you haven't read it, he can't afford to stay in his house. So they rent it out to an admiral.

But they have to sort of trick him and manipulate him into it. So that it's sort of an admiral that's okay, even though he's an admiral because everyone, and he's sort of polite and everyone likes this admiral. They're really funny bits where the poor land agent, the guy who's actually running the estate, Mr. Shepherd, is having to persuade Sir Walter, firstly that you have to rent out your house. And secondly, well, obviously we won't advertise it.

You know, we will sort of let it be known that if someone wants the great privilege of renting out your house and saving your bacon, maybe we'll let them do it. With a number of restrictions. You won't be allowed to go into the pleasure garden, of course. You won't be able to go to. You can't look at those flowers and you can't go in that bit. It's really funny.

What I love later on is when the tenant is reflecting on his time at the house and how many mirrors the guy has. Yeah, yeah. Yes, he says, because he talks about like Sir Walter's changing room, doesn't he? He's like, oh, we had to get rid of all those mirrors. It was a bit weird. It's a bit much. And they're like, you know, and they sort of assume it's one of the girls, don't they?

And like, Anne is a bit like, oh, God. He's a fantastic character, Sir Walter. He's brilliantly drawn. He's so funny. And the book starts with him. He is in a way the main character, not really. but he sort of sets up the initial debate and the world and the world and the questions that Austin's looking at particularly in this one because all of Austin's novels are dealing with similar questions but sometimes particular ones are more sharp but yeah we also need to find her family flawed so that the decision she made eight years ago when she turned down the suitor which is you know the romance which is my next question is this a romance if you find it romantic so we have to judge them as people who would make wrong decisions or would yeah the answer and

right and they're wrong. But then it's what I love about, I love about Jane Austen. I think she's a genius is you have this horrible father character, these awful sisters. So her older sister sort of, you know,

also vain and just has slipped into the role of mother. Her younger sister Mary married this other person and thinks she's better than everybody. Eight years ago, Anne had an engagement offered. And she was in love,

more importantly. She was in love. She was in love. And engagement was offered as well. Yeah. particularly by the awful family, but by a dear family friend, Lady Russell is Lady Russell.

Yeah, it is. And that's what I think is so good about Jane Austen because it would be, if it was just like, oh, my dad told me to say no to Captain Wentworth because he was poor and a sailor and my dad's an asshole. It's like, well, that's one,

that's the kind of level of storytelling. Like, okay, fine. But what she does is gives that decision to someone that Anne loves and cares for and is respected. So you see the torment of like, my replacement mother, my mom dies at 14,

my replacement mother who is the only member of my extended family who thinks I'm worthy, thinks I'm interesting, cares about me. But Lady Russell was protecting the family's status. Yes. It wasn't about, you know, happiness. No, no. It was just. But as Anne says she was wrong, even though Anne is very polite about it and it's like,

oh, it was still the right decision. And, you know, she doesn't go around to Lady Russell being like, fuck you, you ruined my life. She doesn't bear a grudge. And that's really interesting because, again, Austin's heroines, think there are loads of ways you can divvy them up but one of the key things about lost interoines is they're either usually flawed or pretty well flawless yes so so Elizabeth Bennett is flawed she has to overcome her judgments of darcy and and so on so but then you've got someone like fanny price in mansfield park yeah he doesn't really put a foot wrong

for the whole novel yeah yeah and i think ann elliott probably is in the flawless camp as well although i'm interested to hear you say that you think she's flawed yeah i do what flaws do you think she has. Well, this is what I found, having read it the first time years ago, when we were in, ostentatious every Monday at the arts theater, I read it much more as like a typical Austin woman who's very lovely and genteel and reads books and is kind and her family just almost Matilda, her family don't notice that she's in the wrong family. But rereading it, I was like, she describes so much all the time with her family a judgmental and this, she's so quick to judge people. Now, she does it in a really intelligent, funny way. But she often is wrong about people.

And there is a bit at the end where I think it's Wentworth or Mr. Elliott says, like, that your expectations are too high to her. And she often heard description of what she expects of people, even though I'm not saying, I'm a fan of Anne, she's kind, but the way that her, I think her standards are almost perfectionist. So I think I'm more on the Andy Campa, I think the way that the narrator tells us, the way that the narrator tells us that Anne is worthy feels unrealistic.

even to the point that her rejecting Wentworth, which was a mistake in terms of her own happiness and his own worth, and she's had to live with it for eight years. And actually, if this was a realistic book, she'd never get him back. They still go, isn't it better to be persuaded than jump off a wall twice and break your head? It's like, come on. I've been to that cob. We went to the cob.

We had a gig down in line readers, and we all went and took pictures. Is it as fashionable, as the back of this book tells me? It's exciting. but we were in Regency dress on the cob joking around then we all went, actually just get off, this is a bit scary. It's very high. It's really high. Did anyone think you were ghosts?

No, it's Limey. Just lots of people look dressed in regency gear. So let's talk about Anne and Captain Wentworth. Okay. Number one, she's 28 and they're acting like she's 105. Well, in Regency Times, yeah, that is 105. But that is basically a huge thing in the novel that at 28, it's over. You're on the shelf, time's up, you didn't marry in time.

And it's quite a big thing that her younger sister is, married over the older sisters. So for her and Elizabeth, that is a bit embarrassing. Gawling. It's galling. Even though she, as we find out, actually rejected her sister's husband. Yes. So he wanted to marry her.

And all his family keeps saying, we wish she'd married you because your sister's such a pain in the arms. And also they seem to get on really well. They get really well. But she didn't want to take him on. Fair play. He's a bit annoying. Charles Musgrove.

Yeah. Yeah, he's a kind of gently benevolent, but slightly inadequate. He's not up to Anne's standards. She tells us he doesn't read, which is the pointer in this book. She either tells us a character reads lots but too much poetry or they don't read. Yeah. And so Charles Winnow doesn't read, but he's all right. So Anne is, so she rejects Captain Wentworth at a point in his career when he's basically not very rich.

In their 20, yeah. He goes away to see he ends up fighting a lot of battles, getting a lot of money, coming back and everyone's like, oh shit. And then he bumps into Anne, they have this moment of like, but it's so painful because it's awesome. in times that nobody says, oh my God, I haven't seen you for ages. They just have to not have conversations while being aware of each other in the room. And the narrator stresses that lots of people don't know that they were attached to historically. It's only there, Anne's father and older sister. Even a younger sister doesn't know about it.

And on his side, it's only his brother who's now left the country. So it's a completely unacknowledged relationship and nothing is sexier. Which it has to be. Do you think it's sexier? It's so the... I found it heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking. And that's what makes you turned on.

But it's, in terms of romance, because all her previous novels, it's about whether two characters will or won't get together. Here, the fact that two characters so nearly did, they so nearly formed, and they're so right for each other. They love it. They loved and love each other. And yet it didn't work. And it is heartbreaking.

It's really, and there's a really beautiful quote on page 59, which, I mean, feels just as modern, because it's all exes, really. Once so much to each other, now nothing. And then now they were strangers, nay worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement. So that's the situation she's set up for us. Listen to this one.

She'd been forced into prudence in her youth. She learned romance as she grew older, the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning. Well, that's so fascinating, because that's the lodestone of this book. So there's a little quote next to it, a little number. So Cassandra, and she read the first draft of this, so Jane Austen's sister, she wrote next to that, like, oh my God, like this is so heartbreaking.

This is the thing. Because this is Jane Austen's story. That's what we need to talk about. This is what happened to Jane. So that's the quote. Jane Austen fell in love and was sort of connected to Tom Lefroy and his family said she's got no money, you can't do it, and they broke it off. And this is the fantasy of a 40-year-old.

But I think that's what I love again about Jane Austen. I think she's telling, like all good writers, the same story over and over again. And this could be viewed as pride and prejudice if they didn't get together. And it was like eight years on. If they'd met and it hadn't happened. Oh, if she had allowed herself to be steered away from him. Yeah, if she'd gone, yeah, if someone had said, oh, Darcy's awful and she didn't. But I think she's always telling the same story, which is her story.

And it is this heartbreaking that she didn't marry again. She never found, you know, that kind of romantic happiness. So of course, who better to write these novels that make us believe that even if after eight years and he comes back rich, he won't have married someone else. I was going to say, I think the story she's telling again and again is a fantasy about men, which is if you are a good enough woman, they don't move on. So Wentworth does have this whole speech about, you know, it was just you and I've only loved you for eight years. He would be riddled with venereal disease. Come on. He's a sailor.

He's been away. He's been on ship. He's had the icon of her... No, I believe in Wentworth, even if some of us around this table don't. I believe in Wentworth? I do, I do. Have you ever met a man, Andy? Andy's met him, he's basing it on his own gallant self.

It just seems likely. I know what you mean. It's funny because I think it's inevitable we will try and put our interpretation because we know about what happened in Austin's life. And I'm sure that some of that went into it. I don't know if she and Tom Lefroy were, I don't know how. close they were they engaged and then? It was, it was a, you know, regency engagement.

Were they fully engaged? No, it weren't fully. I think they were promised. Yeah. And then his family basically. I think they wanted to. Yeah. And then he was the Lord Chief Justin.

She was engaged. She was engaged to someone else with a mad name. Mr. Mr. Harris Bigwither. Harris Bigwither. She could have been Jane Biggwether. She, that was for 24 hours and she broke it off. She accepted them.

She accepted the day and then woke up and she was never regretting that. No, that Harris Bigwether. No, I don't. Oh, imagine poor Harris Bigweth's book. I know. It's really interesting. He became an in-cell. He started using neurolinguistic programming to manipulate girls into bed.

Yeah, I wonder how much of Austin's real life did make it into, particularly this story, because we know it's about someone who had a connection and then it was broken off. I mean, she was also just a brilliantly creative person, and this was her palette of drawings. Her sister, Cassandra, was betrothed and the fiancé died at sea. Yes. So I think it was for both of them. There was this pain. of reflecting back on a life

when you think nothing's going to happen for you now. And the powerlessness of women at that time, that's it. You know, once his family said no, that's it. That's the end of that engagement. But Austin had her, Austin's creative life makes her very different to almost all women at the time.

And Amy from Ostentatious and I, we visited their house at Chorton. Oh, yes. And it's where she was living with her sister and her mother in the later years of her life. I mean, not later because she died at 41, but they lived there. Austin worked on her books. There were sort of, they had lots of family connections.

They had one of their, the Austin siblings, had become incredibly wealthy and lived down the road. They're one of the brothers, yeah. I think it's Edward. He'd basically been adopted by the Knight family, and he had become mega rich, as in they were, they were so, so Austin visited, she was a devoted aunt to those children, and she had a big influence on their lives. And this might be me just desiring.

a happy settled state for Austin, but she and her immediate family were in a pretty good place. I know what you're saying, but the woman who wrote this book, her heart is not happy. Actually, there's a question that the introduction of this book poses,

which maybe you two could tell me how you feel about it, which is that even if Wentworth and Anne didn't get together, that Anne would have been happy, and that is sort of suggested in her life. Yeah, I do think that... Which would sort of ring to you what I'm saying. Yeah, I think that's why, again, I think the character of Anne is interesting

because you're not reading someone who will be completed by Wentworth. She has completely accepted that that love is gone. She's never going to have it. There are other people that are interested in her, but she's like, no. She's just playing piano in the corner, unnoticed. Her little fingers racing up and down. She reads her poems and she's happy.

And I definitely think she's not looking for a man to complete her. She's a fully formed character herself. But she loves Wentworth. That's the sort of irrationality versus rational. But what we don't get told in this book, which we do get told a lot in Pride and Prejudice, is that where are the daughters going to go when Mr. Elliott inherits their house?

She doesn't have a plan. No, that's true. But she does have the Muzgoes. It's never raised as Jeopardy, though. It's never raised as a serious concern. Well, Lady Russell is her friend. The Muzgoes like her. You definitely get the feeling there's a network of support.

She'll sofa surf. She'll sofa. Jill Hornby is a writer who's written. She's written a book called Miss Austin, which is about Cassandra in later life. And it's looking back along the vista of her life and to when Jane was alive. And it's about, because Cassandra burned basically all the correspondence between the two of them.

So we'll never really know what they said to each other. And that would have been the most open. It's sisters. It would have been, why have you got my shoes? Have you seen my mascara? I just want to read, this is depressing. But it just for me, talks of the tension that Austin's characters have, because you're right. They are happy, they're okay, and they're also broken, which I think is humanity.

So that's my day. Wentworth says to Mary that you were so altered, he should not have known you again. And Mary says this really casually, and Anne is like, what? And so she doesn't say anything to Mary. She's like, all right. And altered bond beyond his knowledge,

Anne fully submitted in silent deep mortification, doubtless it was so, and she could take no revenge, for he was not altered or not for the worse. She had already acknowledged it to herself, and she could not think differently. No, the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing manly open look

in no respect lessening his personal advantages. Like, what she's talking about is women aren't allowed to age when men but also. He's been at sea for 10 years. He would look like an old piece of leather by now. Between the lines of this is he got money now. Oh, do you think I read, do you know what I read? He's so attractive because he's written. No, I don't think so.

She's got a nice tan. Her self-esteem is on the floor. So even though she is obviously clearly from everyone's description, a lovely, nice, genteel woman, great to have around. I think Anne thinks she's a piece of shit. And I think that's connected to her teenage grief and her family controlling her. If you go up in a family where they basically ignore you.

Jane has been writing about you, Carrier? Because I think that just became a little bit too autobiographical. Look, if her big brother was like really loud and like way funnier and she had to develop, look, there's a bit where she goes to an improv class. Yes, we are, this is the beauty of Jane Austen. You get everyone can put herself on it. So why do you think it's all for the money then, Sarah?

Because what's really exciting about Jane Austen is finding human truths in her now, all these years later. But there's this other side, which is there are so many things that you sort of have to look over, which is the fact that this is a love story because he's rich. And I don't enjoy that. Oh, do you think? It's otherwise it's not a love story. It's another tragedy. But they found the worth in each other when he was poor.

Yeah, she liked him before he was famous. There is always, that's kind of it. There is always for women in these books a sense of where is the security going to come from? Because you don't want a sofa for the rest of your life. It's precarious. And you have nothing else. I mean, if you're born into a certain class, there's nothing else you can do. Exactly.

Jane Austen wrote. Yeah, and even that hadn't earned her huge amounts of money. 10 pounds, her first publishing. Yeah, by the time, by the time this happened. She could have got some mascara for that. The brilliant thing about this one, And it's why I think it's a lot of people, Austin fans' favorite. Yes, yeah, yeah.

She has had... Because it's so rich compared. She had, yeah, she had this love. It was taken away from her. This sort of terrible wound was inflicted on her, which then sort of was courtiered, healed over. And then he comes back and it's as though the thing starts, it starts tingling again.

She thinks... And she's going to watch him marry someone else, actually. Yeah, one of these flighty musgroves. It's... Is it... Louisa and... Louisa and Henrietta Musgrove, who are the sort of...

They're her in-laws, aren't they? And they're lovely girls. They're lovely girls. They're a bit, they're a bit kind of, they're a bit like Charles Musgrove. They don't really read very much. They're not, they don't have a life of the mind in the way that Austin depicts them. They like dancing. Yeah, they like going to dances.

I mean, you know. And they're young, they're young and flighty. Exactly. They're not having, everyone's within a decade of each other. Yeah, yeah. Well, she, to be fair, she's 28 and they are, they definitely come across as like 18. 18, 20. Yeah, yeah.

And one of them's already portrayed to a neighbor anyway, which Mary Musgrove is hilarious. She is so funny about how much she hates them. one she's got, oh, this is a certain name Hater is a bit heavy as well. Is he the Reverend, the Reverend Hater? Oh yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Brilliant.

Yeah. But yeah, I just, and there is this amazing, poignant moment where she, he wentworth writes her a note and this is, this is the conclusion of the book says, to look away now. Like Pride and Prejudice, when you have the note from Darcy, she does like her letters to cause the plots to change. Yeah.

And he writes her this note saying, look, I am half, hope, half agony, you know, you pierce my soul. Please tell me if you feel. remotely the same way and it's you know as a writer i'm going to ask you about this letter writing because when i got to that section of the book i felt like she as an author couldn't show me what she needed to you know like in the films the tv adaptations they have incredible actors and they do the looks that you can project onto yeah and then they play those moments beat by beat with music which is so atmospheric and a writer only has words and it sucks and and and you can't have a character

being interrupted or him stumbling or being shy. So she has to write those letters because she has to give them essentially a monologue. Yeah. I think that's, it's a good narrative device, isn't it? It really allows them to. It works. It works in pride and pride. We do it in ostentatious.

And she then sort of glosses over the walk they have afterwards. Don't they immediately bump into someone? Yes. They immediately bump into someone and they have to not say anything. And it's one of the, it's very funny when you read it. This is the emotional climax of both their lives has just happened. And then they bump into someone and they have to not talk about it. He's very jolly.

It's some admiral in the party. But it felt like it was in a moment that she was so desperate to want, she still couldn't actually visualize it happening. I felt it was skimmed over. You think she cheated and copped out. Yeah, you think she did a letter. You think she did the, it was all a dream. But I think it's such a literacy-based society.

One of the main occupations in the evening was reading to each other. So I think it, as a pure expression of someone's in most heart, they do, when you write a letter, you do have the chance to set down your feelings as best you can. At the time, you couldn't really do looks. There's people all around, this shack, like, that's not ladylike. I think people could look at each other. No, it wasn't allowed. And Prince Regent outlawed it in 1819.

So just to flip back, because we mentioned the Prince Regent. She was made to dedicate one of her books to Prince Regents. She hated him. She was not a fan of Prince Regents. It was Emma or Mansfield Park? I think it's Emma, isn't it? I think it's Emma. But she didn't like him.

He was not popular with anyone. Oh, really? He was a very overweight, vain, spent all the money. But Regents Park? I don't think they were so into that. I think a lot of London was green. So they didn't need another fashion. I was like, thank God we've got this.

No, he was not a popular figure at all, at all. At the beginning? No, still not then? No, because he was considered like it was a tragedy. Like the king is being handed over to this idiot son. It's blackhander, basically. Like that's the truth that he was not popular. I think as he got older, I think he was slightly more respected,

but it's definitely a tone of like that he hadn't supported the Navy properly. He'd gambled. He was having affairs. He wasn't a proper man. Like, as in proper. Sounds proper to me. While we're talking about men. Yes.

I want to talk about the incredible section at the end where she discusses men versus women. Yes. Just suddenly we have this absolutely fucking brilliant conversation. And then I was like, yeah, they'll always stick a bit of feminism in there, won't they have in a nice time enjoying a love story. They're just having this conversation and it's her and Captain Benwick who has sort of, we thought he liked her, but then he's gone off with someone else, but she was very kind to him. They both like reading.

So we know in Austin World he's a good person. Well, actually, what I loved about what happened with her is so he's very recently, seven months ago lost the love of his life. So he's grieving. And so she's saying, don't read those long, sad poems. Here's some recommendations, which is a bit like the School of Life with the sort of books of therapy. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, definitely. At certain points in your life, books can be very, very helpful. And is this here I'm talking? No, it's Captain Harville. Oh, let's see. Other Captain is she talking to? I think, yeah, sorry, apologies. It's Captain Harville, and they're discussing Captain Benwick,

who was grieving for Captain Harville's sister, but now has met someone else and is very happy. And there's a little bit of, as ever with grief. Everyone's a bit critical. Did he move on too soon? Is it true love if you could get over it? He'd get some tweets now. He'd get some tweets, yeah?

Is it true love if you can get over? it and Captain Harville is saying a woman wouldn't have done that, woman wouldn't move on and my sister would have been true and they have this man versus women conversation and the bit that just I almost clapped is they're talking and

you know about men versus women basically and Captain Harville starts saying you know he basically says well look songs and proverbs all talk of women's fickleness but perhaps you will say these were all written by men's they're having a very sort of lovely conversation and she says

perhaps I shall. Yes, yes. No reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree. The pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything. From a writer saying like, no, like a female writer at that time being like, don't, it's such a modern argument. Like, don't come to me with your, oh yeah, but it's always been like,

like there's loads of examples of women doing that. And her being like, no, because you've always been telling the story. The pen has always been in your hand. That's incredible to slip that in your novel. I know, it's incredible because the argument he uses beforehand is that men have stronger feelings because they have stronger bodies. So our bodies are strong, our feelings are strong. Rich Andy, I know you're, you still follow that, yeah?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's part of the reason I exercise is to try to strengthen my feelings. How strong is your sadness? It's really strong. It's not that strong, actually. Can I give you another, just a bit from the other end of the novel? I know some of the characters are caricatures, Walter Elliott, among them. And to a certain extent, Elizabeth, who's Anne's older sister,

and who is really a personality-wise, a carbon copy of her father. She's good-looking, quite icy and quite aloof, and has never really been a true friend to Anne in the way she deserved. And she only cares about where she fits in stages-wise. Even then, you will get these moments of really piercing humanity that Austin just casually throws in. You know, so she's writing about Elizabeth. about the family, about her, Elizabeth's awkward flirtation with her cousin, Mr.

Elliott, in an attempt to keep the name and the money in the family, which hasn't worked out. So here we go. Such were Elizabeth Elliott's sentiments and sensations. Such the cares to alloy, the agitations to vary, the sameness and the elegance, the prosperity and the nothingness of her scene of life. And it's just... She's so dumbing. This is why this character is pretty cold because she has prosperity and nothingness.

she hasn't been made fully human by her whole life. And it's like Anne slash Jane Austen's ability to see people. It's like she sees through people that sometimes makes her very, very funny because she can see what someone is really doing when they're trying to be polite or they're trying to be funny. But she can also see, I feel like, she pinpoints people's sadness very, very clearly in a way that you can in a novel that you, like you said, in a film, and all the adaptations, even though I think romance is often stronger than adaptations,

the subtle inward life is lost. Yes. I would say, though, if we're going back to describe Jane Austen as a comedian, I do think it's very one note. I think... One star if you had a comedian, I'm in the future. No, no, no, it's not one star. You're talking about one of the greats here.

When you get... If you are summarizing a whole human being in a sentence, I think comedian's not fair, like it's not enough of her. People are a whole spectrum. Even her... I think they are caricatures. I think she's very good at observations. She has the microphone, so she's able to say whatever she wants about them and drop the mic.

Isn't that stand-off? Isn't that how stand-off work? That's what I mean. In order to be funny, with her central characters, she allows complexity, and with those ones that you said, sort of outer circle, she doesn't have to. But that, no, I mean, that description of Elizabeth, I think, is a brief, full insight into a whole life, which she doesn't have the pages to do a novel about Elizabeth Elliott, but she'll say, and this is the real core of this person, by the way, just so you know, bang.

And then you can have comedy about that person later on, but I think completely, my hackles are all up now. I know what you mean by one. I do know what you mean, but I think she's not, she's interested in characters and interested in people. And she's constantly observing and the humour comes from observation of characters talking and how people interact. She's not particularly interested in like funny situations or like, you know, funny things happening or funny things people say. She's interested in listening too hard to how people talk and what they really mean. And actually, I see what you mean in the one note sense because she is painting on a really small canvas. And it's a very, very intricate painting.

But as exactly that, the events in Austin's novel, pretty few are far between. Someone falls off a cob here. I know. She loves a light injury or a cold. She loves a letter. A debilitating cold. Cold, falling, bang your head. That was the stuff of life.

Particularly if you weren't engaged in fighting the Napoleonic Wars because of your sex. And so that's the canvas. And yet on that, she's painted with such intricacy. One of the amazing things at her house, actually, when I visited, I got to see the table that she wrote her novels on. Tiny, isn't it? It's the size of a big saucepan. It's so many. They had it at the British Museum for a while and it just made you, it.

It was like this symbolic of how little room, how the whole space a woman could take up. It's honestly like if you went to see a guitar owned by Eric Clapton and it had one string, how have you done that? It's extraordinary. There's a reflection right at the end when we're sort of saying goodbye to the characters.

So Mrs. Clay has... He's been sniffing around Sir Walter. Freckles dodgy. Yeah, freckles dodgy, little funny tooth, snackle tooth. She's had to go, she's gone to London now with Mr. Elliot. She's been sort of manipulated that way. That way is... But she's missed by the father and Elizabeth because, and as Jane Austen says, it's only fun, clearly they've got the very rich cousins, it's only fun sort of following someone around if someone

is following you around and expecting you. And that feels, I mean, again, I still think it's because we only hear negative things about them. I think this is the thing when I say, in this book, you are going to get cancer by the Austin Society. In this book, when Jane Austen wants me to think a character, is brilliant, like Captain Wentworth. She will give me an example of him, you know, letting a woman sit down because she's tired and I'm supposed to lose my mind.

And then when she thinks the character is bad, she will say something, which again just feels very human and that humans can have both things in them. They can sometimes think their sore throat is worse than everyone else's, but they can have redeeming features as well. But I think she does that. What's redeeming about the dad and the daughter and her sister is? Well, that's what, like Elizabeth, that quote from Elizabeth at the beginning,

like she has nothing in her soul. It's basically what Anne said. That's not redeeming. It's seeing how people got the way they are. And I think that is a really core element of, you know, to understand all this to forgival. It's that which Austin does so well. And when you read Austin's contemporary authors, no one was doing anything of the kind.

You read people like Fanny Bernie who wrote Evelyn or a number of others. Okay, but her name is Fanny Bernie. I know. I've just heard that she existed. So of course she's bitter and upset. Or even the Samuel Richardson who, you know, who did less than 1,500 pages than Austin did in too. Yes, no, this is true.

I know what you mean. I think, you know, with all authors, if you love them, you forgive them for lots of things. And there's definitely times when you'll do something that I'm a bit like, what? And then I'm like, I don't care. I want Captain one word to fall up. It's more that I was sometimes going, okay, Jane, good character, okay, bad character, okay, I see it. Rather than, I mean, what's sometimes really pleasurable, and it is a much more modern thing, is bad characters doing redeeming things.

And, you know, are people having more complexity? She is painting in a palette we don't have. and I think when she does that it's really subtle and I can only think at the moment Pride and Prejudice but like you know Mr Collins is an absolute comic cameo but she gives him this absolutely poignancy and pain

that his boss hates him and thinks he's irritating and every time you're laughing you then think oh god like I actually feel sorry for when I wanted to go away because it's so painful and I think the way she does those characters I think what you're saying it sounds a bit yeah maybe a bit modern judging of it so with Anne Yeah, little Miss Prissy Perfect.

She said the night's out now. So she goes to visit a friend, three years older, an ancient 31-year-old, Miss Smith, who's been, you know, disabled by a cold. Yeah, that was a bit hilarious, the Miss Miss Miss Story. And because of, you know, everyone's like, why are you going to see that person? They've got no rank or status.

And she's like, oh, you know, loyalty. And then because of that character, she finds out all of this stuff about Elliot. Actually, it saves her bacon. It saves her potentially marrying a very wrong person. And then the narrator says, like, see, that's why you talk to common people, because sometimes they've got some gossip. And it's at moments like that where I'm like, people aren't that black and white.

But that's why I think Anne is flawed. Right. Because I think Anne says to everyone, I'm doing out of loyalty. And there's a bit of her that feels smug. And that's why I think that's an interesting, but I do think that makes Anne an interesting character. Because the people around her are saying, don't go and visit this person, she's got nothing to offer us socially. Yeah, true.

But also... Like Bath in the early 19th century, this is mean girls. It is... That's how society is functioning because those are the metrics. And those are the metrics that people like Wentworth are challenging. Yeah.

But Anne definitely gets her internal status from not being her sisters or our father. That is true. And she's a little, dare we say it, a little smug not to be them. And sometimes I was like, look, you know what? Yes, they're awful, but they are playing the game that exists.

Whereas Anne is very like, well, I'm not going to play that game. And sometimes you're like, Anne you might need to fucking play that game. Also, it's very easy to be, I'm not going to play that game if you're immensely privileged. Hang on. We seem to be recasting, Anne Elliott, one of my favourite women in fiction, as basically a spoiled, smug. Privilege doesn't have to be spoiled. I think we find this more interesting than Anne is this perfect one-to-one who's just walking around Bath being lovely. Like, that's a boring Austin character to me.

And that's what I thought, a bit more persuasion of like, oh, she's really lovely. everyone's mean to her and I reread it and was like no Anne has got layers and his pride prideful Anne is smug sometimes she's very confident she's very like like he looked at me I can see he likes me twice or three times she she absolutely is assured okay he does her feelings yeah so I thought she seemed quite confident I think that's good writing I think if she was just oh goodness my family are awful then we're reading Mansfield Park who is who is the least enjoyable of Austin Tyroway's and that's why I love Anne Elliot because I think sometimes you know sometimes you see her father's pride in her.

But just in a different way, that she's proud that she goes and visits common people. It doesn't, like, it's still a bit, okay. But then it's the narrator who tells us that even some people who just have proper jobs do have value because they've got good characters. The narrator is, I think she's always joking, though.

Really? Yeah, there's, very often there's a good old layer of irony on top of it. Oh, I see. Yes, I definitely think that often it's with a raised eyebrow. She'll muck around. Okay. You can't trust her. We are coming to the end of such a good chat about persuasion. So I actually thought what we could do for an ending.

You don't have to read the whole thing, because we have a man, Andy, I thought if you could read a little bit of this letter, because it's just... It's so fantastic. So if you could read it up to understood my wishes, let's have a lovely chunk of someone declaring their love. All right. And he writes the letter and then he leaves the room.

He's in the room with her. She's talking to someone else. She can see him writing. And then he writes, he goes out, he's left. Her eyes are devouring it. Her eyes are devouring it. R be and you be the man. Oh, it's very nice talking to you.

I don't know what's happening over there at all. Scruble, scribble, scribble. She goes to the very spot where he had leaned and written. He's written. I can no longer listen in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.

Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you. again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that man forget sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath.

For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood by wishes? Oh, come on, Sarah. That is pure. That's not about his money. I'd never said. It wasn't also one.

I also think it's a fantasy. I think that is a form of love that we all fantasize someone who will one day feel about us because they've seen us across a drawing room. And he makes his living, capturing French ships and taking all the treasure off. You fancy him. I do.

I fancy him. Sarah Wood. But also the ending is about how, you know, it's really great being Maritime Navy. Unless you go to war, they're probably going to get hurt. Okay, good luck everyone. Andy, thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Thank you. What a drink. Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. You can find Andrew on Twitter at Andrew Hunter M, and his books The Last Day and the Sanctuary are available to buy now, and his new book, A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering, is available for pre-order now. Next week's book guest is Y-N by Esther You.

Sarah's novel Weirdo is available to buy now, and so is my book, You Are Not Alone, both available in shops that stock books. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.