Throughline - Pride, Prejudice, and Peer Pressure

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Rund takes Ramtin on a tour of the enduring world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice... and our two hosts make a bet.Guests:John Mullan, professor of English Literature at University College London and author of What Matters in Jane AustenDevoney Looser, professor of English at Arizona State University and author of Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive and Untamed JaneLizzie Dunford, director of Jane Austen's HouseTo access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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See one of my daughters happily settled and all the others equally well married. I shall have nothing to wish for. Okay, Romteen. Where are we right now? I'm going to let you into a secret room in my mind where this book by Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, lives rent-free. I mean, I've never read the book, but I've heard of it, obviously, like, everyone else. I also know you're obsessed. Yeah, I mean, look, it's a book that I've loved since I was a teenager, for sure.

Sure. And we're getting into sit-by-a-fire and read season, in my case, you know, a virtual fireplace on my TV. And I've been revisiting it. So let me take you there. Let's go. We're in a small town in southern England, turn of the 19th century, lots of green and rolling hills, think great British bake-off, but more corsets and candles. Christine. Yeah. And we're at a ball. To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love. Since this is a public ball, the room is packed with local townspeople. There's a small band of musicians playing in the corner. But our real focus is the Bennett family, five sisters who are at the dance with their mom, Mrs. Bennett. Their dad, Mr. Bennett, stayed home because he hates things like this.

That would have been me. 100%. I'm Mr. Bennett. The sisters, they're all really different. Lydia and Kitty, the two youngest, are attached at the hip. They're both boy crazy teens. Then you've got the middle sister, Mary. She's a little quirky and wants to play the piano all day.

And then we get to the two oldest sisters who are very close, Jane and Elizabeth Bennett. Elizabeth Bennett, I know that name. She's the driving force of the story, and she comes up in our pop culture, like almost as much as Hamlet or Scrooge. So as the sisters are mingling, their mom is getting drunk and loudly talking about how they need to find a husband.

And then... Queue that scene you've probably seen in a million movies, the gust of wind, the door swing open, and in walks... Vampires. Get out of here, Ramty. Anyway, so these two guys walk in who catch the eye of the Bennett sisters. Mr. Bingley... Good looking and gentleman-like. He's a solid, nice guy, maybe a little boring.

But more importantly, he's just bought the biggest estate in town, so he's loaded. And his buddy, Mr. Darcy, who... who's actually even richer than him. Okay. The ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley. But Mr. Darcy lacks people skills, to put it mildly. And he also refuses to dance. What a contrast between him and his friend.

Mr. Bingley eventually goes over to him and is like, there's so many cute girls here. But Darcy doesn't agree. You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room. Mr. Bingley's been dancing with Jane Bennett. But okay, he says, what about her sister, Elizabeth? She's not too shabby. then Darcy turns to look at Elizabeth and within her earshot says

She is tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt me Savage. If I heard a guy say that about me I'd probably wallow for a while. But Elizabeth... She told the story with great spirit among her friends for she had a lively, playful disposition which delighted in anything ridiculous. Basically, she laughs it off and vows never to dance with Mr. Darcy.

But you get the sense that on some... Some level, it really hurts her. And this is kind of the foundational scene of the book, the beginning of the relationship between Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. The pride and the prejudice are set. That was actually more fun than I thought. It was going to be honestly. But like, why are you bringing this up now? You know, I've actually thought about this since I was a teenager.

That's when I first read Pride and Prejudice, when I sort of fell in love with the whole Jane Austen universe. And, like, as I've gotten older, being a first-generation immigrant, being the daughter of Palestinian refugees who fled a place that had been, you know, colonized at one point by the British, it made me like, I had a little bit of an identity crisis. Yeah. Why am I, like, so into these stories that this British woman who was born in the 18th century wrote? It's like what part of has always kind of turned me off from this genre, actually. Very, very fair, right? But, like, I know I'm not alone. I know there are millions of other people who are also hooked.

Yeah. And then I saw that, you know, December 16, 2025 is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birthday. So I was like, okay, let me use this as an excuse to finally look into this. I'm down. Oh, good. I should say there's going to be spoilers, obviously. I'm going to keep it real. I'm not going back to read all these books.

So I'm up for the spoilers. I'm here for the journey, okay? Okay. I actually assumed you were going to say that. So my pitch to you is if by the end of this episode, you are a Jane Austen convert. Okay. You have to choose one of the adaptations to watch. Okay.

And then you have to geek out about it with me on a ThruLine Plus episode. All right. I'm hesitantly down for that. Let me walk you through just a few of them. Okay. So there's this classic 1995 one. I have every reason in the world to think of you. Bridget Jones Diary. I'm afraid I'm a bit hungover.

There's a Bollywood version. I hated seeing you with Wickham in India. There's Akira Knightley version. I wonder if you first discovered the power of poetry and driving away love. There's one with zombies. You're undead. And there's one that takes place on Fire Island. Fire Island?

Uh-huh. I'm trying to see the Bollywood one. It's called Bride in Prejudice, by the way. All right. I'm excited. Here we go. Hi, this is Jules from Toledo, Ohio. You're listening to Thruly, from NPR. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe.

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world anew. Radio Lab. Adventures on the Edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. Part one. Can we trust a first impression? The truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. This is the very first line of Pride and Prejudice. It sounds familiar. What a hilarious sentiment, right? Today. It's so characteristic of Jane Austen that she starts with a sort of ironical version of that world where everybody's desperate about getting married. Jane Austen is saying that, but she's laughing at it. Oh, did I mention I'm going to have some experts slash Austin superfans helping me out today.

His name is John Mullen. Okay. I'm professor of English literature at University College London, and I'm the author of What Matters in Jane Austen. John has spent years dissecting every word Austin has written. When I was a teenage boy, I didn't quite realize how wonderful she was because nobody got shot and, you know, nobody traveled down the Congo River and nobody hunted. a whale in the southern ocean. You know, it's just some people making mistakes about who fancies who and who doesn't fancy who. I bet that's what you thought when you were a teenager around teen. Well, look, when John finally gave us in the time of day, he realized this focus on

ordinary people living ordinary lives was their greatest strength. That's kind of liberated the novel, I think. Let's jump back into the world of Pride and Prejudice with John as our guide. My dear Mr. Bennett, said his lady to him one day. Have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last? Mr. Bennett replied that he had not. But it is. Mr. Bennett made no answer. In the first chapter after that famous opening sentence,

what you get is almost entirely dialogue between these two people you've never met before, Mr and Mrs. Bennett. Do you not want to know who has taken it? cried his wife impatiently. You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it. This was invitation enough. It's pretty clear to any intelligent reader that he is sort of teasing her, but she doesn't understand.

And the subject of the conversation isn't the arrival of this rich young man in a neighbouring estate. What is his name? Bingley. Is he married or single? Oh, single, my dear, to be sure. A single man of large fortune, four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls. How so?

How can it affect them? How can you be so tiresome? You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them. The Bennetts have five daughters. None of the daughters are going to inherit the estate because it's left to a male descendant. Mr Bennett, he hadn't made sufficient provision for his wife and daughters. I think it's a mirror.

I think it's a mirror to her reality. Who's this? Lizzie Dunford. She's the director of Jane Austen House, which is the actual house where Austin lived the last decade of her life and finished writing Pride and Prejudice. I tried to coordinate a visit, but, you know, it's not in the budget. Anyway, so Lizzie, you know, she told me that the book is really reflecting the world

that Jane Austen actually lived in. where women like her and like Elizabeth Bennett can't inherit property, can't work in most professions, and mostly depend on the men in their lives for economic security. How do they deal with that risk? How do they find a safe and secure home? They do it through marriage. Basically, Jane Austen is creating these characters

that are in the same situation she's in. I mean, similar situations. So here's what we know about how she grew up, what her life was like. She wasn't actually super wealthy, which surprised me when I found that out. She only went to school for a year, but her father taught her, and she began writing short stories at age 11. She just had this natural gift. And her father was loving, like Mr. Bennett, but also like him, didn't have a lot of extra cash.

So when he died in 1805, Austin and her mom and sister, Austin was 29, relied on her brothers for support. And that's a big difference from the Bennett's. sisters who had no brothers. And she's 29 and unmarried? She and her sister never got married, actually. But she's got to be unusual to be unmarried at 29. Was she actually able to make money from the stuff she was writing? So it's interesting.

She was writing for a long time, decades before she started publishing around her mid-30s. But it wasn't actually enough to live off of, even though they were very popular books. And that's pretty much what we know about her. We've got around 160 letters that she wrote and some collections of memories and anecdotes from people who knew her or say they knew her. That's it. Okay. There were more letters, but her sister actually burned them. What do you mean burned?

Threw them in the fire. Likely to protect her privacy. Okay. But there is this small part of me that wonders if maybe she was covering up a scandal. But that's totally fan fiction. Ah, yeah. That's the aster. Yeah, you're such a conspiracy theorist.

I love it. I love it. Okay, with this stuff, yeah. But, okay, so I see this, like, kind of parallel in the book with economic struggle, the kind of social chess game these people were playing. You're picking up what I'm putting down. I try. And even just from those first few pages in that conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, you're getting a good amount of this. I'm going to keep it real, though, right now.

And maybe because as, like, a guy with a family, you know, now. I don't know about Mr. Bennett, Ron. Mm-hmm. Okay. Tell me more. Okay, like, he's kind of funny. But like, come on, man. How are you going to leave your family out to drive?

Like, there's some about that doesn't stick right with me. Yeah, yeah. I have a very different read on him now versus when I was 15. When I first read it, I liked him. I thought he was funny. He reminded me a little of my own dad. Yeah, he's got the hokey dad thing going on, right? Yeah, he didn't like take all the marriage stuff so seriously.

And for me, at that time, I was, like, growing up in a conservative with some household. You know how it was. Yes, of course. Marriage was not this far-off thing. Right. It felt like something that was very serious. So anyway, I liked him then. When I reread it a few weeks ago, I had the exact same reaction to him as you do, which is like, dude, you need it to step up.

Yeah. You didn't. So now they have to rely on marriage as a last resort. Interesting. It's like Mr. Bingley, Mr. Darcy. In a way, they are like lifelines, like potential lifelines for the girls. Exactly. And all of it depends on if the Bennett sisters can win them over, which, as we know for Elizabeth Bennett, doesn't get off to a great start.

She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me. And I think what Austin is really pushing us to do in these early chapters is take a closer look at how first impressions are formed. We all have this instinct. Yes. When we meet someone, we're making a snap judgment. And that really shapes, like, how we interact with people. It's the foundation of dating now, right? Like you get on the app and you have like literally a second going through pictures, quick blurbs, boom, boom, boom or whatever.

So everything is about the first impression now. In some ways, we're still navigating a version of the same social chess board that Elizabeth Bennett is navigating, right? And like we know for her, Mr. Darcy gives her the ick, like right off the bat, right? But she's then playing the field and she meets this other guy, Mr. Wickham. What a name. Remember his name? Okay, Wickham. I'll remember that.

He makes a really good first impression on Elizabeth. He's a man in uniform, a soldier who's passing through with his regiment. He's handsome and smooth talking, and they flirt and laugh. And he talks a lot of ish about Mr. Darcy. So he's got beef with Mr. Darcy. Oh, yeah, yeah, they got beef. Mr. Wickham, he tells Elizabeth that they grew up together, and Darcy's father liked him, Wickham, more. And when he died, Darcy cheated with him.

Wickham, out of his inheritance, out of jealousy. So he's basically setting up Darcy as this, like, extremely sketchy guy. Yeah. Okay, so if you're counting, Elizabeth now has two potential suitors. Darcy, who she hates, Wickham, who she's into. And then she gets a curveball, her cousin, the heir to the Bennett home, Mr. Collins. Her cousin. Yeah, we're not going to get into all that rompteen.

It's a different time. I'll just say it. Mr. Collins is a silly man. Austin describes him as a mixture of servility and self-importance. Like he thinks he's more charming than he is. Yeah, and he decides Elizabeth should be his wife. But, by the way, only after finding out her prettier, older sister, Jane, is already expecting a proposal for Mr. Bingley. Long story short, he proposes.

Almost as soon as I entered the house, I singled you out as the companion of my future He tells Elizabeth all the reasons this marriage would be a good deal for her. Like, obviously, financially. Yeah, he knows she's not inheriting anything, but she can't bring herself to make the practical choice and rejects him. Her mom's going to crash out. She does. She calls her Headstrong.

Headstrong, foolish girl. With no idea what's best for her. But I will make her know it. Then she runs to Mr. Bennett, screaming. Oh, no. Oh, Mr. Bennett, you must come and make Lizzie marry Mr. Collins. Mr. Bennett raised his eyes from his book as she entered. And what am I to do on the occasion?

It seems a hopeless business. Speak to Lizzie about it yourself. Tell her that you insist upon her marrying him. Mrs. Bennett rang the bell, and Miss Elizabeth was summoned to the library. Come here, child. I understand that Mr. Collins has made you an offer. of marriage. Is it true? Elizabeth replied that it was. Your mother insists upon your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennett? Yes, or I shall never see her again. An unhappy alternative is

before you, Elizabeth. From this day, you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins. And I will never see you again if you do. Elizabeth could not but smile. I absolutely love this scene. Because this moment when her father backs her up, it tells her not only do you have the right to choose, but your choice is right, which confirms for Elizabeth that she really does have the world all figured out

and that she's amazing at reading people. I sense a butt coming up here, though. Coming up, everything Elizabeth thinks she knows and we know will be turned upside. down. Hello, this is Bryce Galing from Tent, Ohio, and you're listening to Thurline by MPR. Part two. Are you allowed to change your mind? Till Elizabeth entered the drawing room at Netherfield and looked in vain for Mr. Wickham

along the cluster of red coats there assembled, a doubt of his being present had never occurred to her. Is this another ball? Is this all these people do? This one is spicy, I promise. I'm ready for spice. I want to hear it. Balls are a big deal in Jane Austen novels because it's a way of meeting possible partners

and a world in which you're not supposed to really be alone in the company of a young man if you're a young woman unless you're engaged. And I think it's got quite a sort of erotic voltage, actually. So Elizabeth has just arrived at Netherfield, the estate Mr. Bingley owns, where he's hosting a private ball, meaning invite only. Elizabeth is really excited to see Mr. Wickham again, that soldier she's into, but then she overhears someone say, I do not imagine his business would have called him away just now if he had not wished to avoid a certain gentleman here. He's not going to show up because he's avoiding Mr. Darcy.

Because they got beef, right? They got beef. and in the middle of complaining to her best friend about Mr. Darcy, guess who shows up to ask her to dance? I guess he dances now. Well, Austin, she's let us, the reader, know that he's been secretly pining for Elizabeth since the moment they met. Without knowing what she did, she accepted him. Elizabeth has no idea why she says yes.

A detail I love, by the way, because who hasn't made, you know, an impulsive decision like that and then question their own mind? Yeah, of course. Anyway, her friend tries to console her. I dare say, you will find him very agreeable. Heaven forbid. That would be the greatest misfortune of all. To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate. Then the dancing begins.

At first, they're not talking. They're just moving in silence. And then Elizabeth decides, It would be the greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk. So she makes some small. all talk. Darcy responds with a few words, not a man of a lot of words, and then goes quiet again. She addressed him a second time with, it is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some remark on the size of the room,

or the number of couples, he smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say should be said. Very well, that reply will do for the present, but now we may be silent. Do you talk by rule, then? while you are dancing. Sometimes one must speak a little, you know. I can't tell if they're flirting or arguing. Look, they're definitely sparring, and I think Austin is trying to tell us

that intellectually they're on the same level. But then, Elizabeth brings up Mr. Wickham. The effect was immediate. A deeper shade of Oterre overspread his features. Yo, that shots fired. Oh, yeah, she's trying to push his buttons. Yeah. I remember hearing you once saying,

Mr. Darcy, that you hardly ever forgave, that your resentment, once created, was unappeasable. You are very cautious, I suppose, as to its being created. I am, said he, with a firm voice, and never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice. I hope not. It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion to be secure of judging properly at first. May I ask to what these questions tend? Merely, to the illustration of your character. She is not playing around. Yeah, this whole scene, you kind of feel like

they're doing this dance. I mean, a literal dance, but also this kind of like verbal dance and they're in their own universe. Everyone else is just white noise. And, you know, right after this, you get this sense that Darcy's pretty conflicted because he's very into her,

but thinks her family is pretty embarrassing. Her sisters are flirting with everything. Everybody, her mom is openly gold digging. And he even tells his friend Bingley not to marry Elizabeth's older sister, Jane. Wow. Mm-hmm. But not long after the ball, he decides to shoot his shot with Elizabeth and proposes. How does that go over?

She's totally blindsided. And like the way he proposes, he's basically like, you know, I've tried really hard not to be into you because you're poor and your family is trashy. But I can't help it. I love you. which I think he thinks is romantic, right? Like, against all odds, I love you. But Elizabeth is basically like, oh, okay, thanks for telling me all the reasons I suck. And she flat out rejects me.

Good for her, honestly. Her exact words are, I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry. What a way to say, like, you know, piss off, right? Yeah. I don't think there's anything he could have said in that moment that would have made her overlook the fact that Darcy totally mess things up for her sister. And remember, Wickham's words are still in her head that Darcy is a cheat. Yeah, this dude's like a villain.

He's definitely a villain in her mind. And he's completely oblivious to that. But I think there's something in the way that she says it that's really striking to me, right? She's like, you are the last man on earth I'd ever marry. So I think what Austin is telling us is like she senses this connection they have. And she's trying to just, like, push it down because her head is telling her something totally different. So, okay, I feel like Jane Austen is, like, tapping into something very real that many of us experienced here. Yeah, for sure.

And is that, like, kind of what Jane Austen is signaling that she's tapping into something personal? I've wondered a lot about this, too. It's the million pound or million dollar question, right? This is Devonie Louser. She's a professor of English at Arizona State University. And she has a new book out called Wild for Austin, a rebellious, subversive, and untamed Jane. That's a very good title. It is.

She told me that Austin's love life is kind of a mystery, like a lot of other things about her. But we do have some clues about where she might have drawn inspiration. From her earliest years, she was interested in fashion, in balls. There are second-hand accounts, third-hand accounts, referring to her as a husband-hunting butterfly and a flirtatious young woman. Now, this is weird because she never got married. Well, okay, so she never got married, but that wasn't always a given. You know, like when she was young, preteen, teen years, she had a bunch of random boys who were passing through the house because her dad had students, you know, stay with them. So she's doing a lot of observing, probably flirting.

And we don't know how many proposals she got, but we do know she definitely got at least one. She was engaged for, you know, less than 24 hours. But still, and then she broke it off. She sounds messy, man. Again, why I think there was a scandal in those burned letters. But anyways, there was also this supposedly four-week whirlwind relationship. To call it a relationship is probably a bit much. Lizzie Dunford again.

I would say it's a flirtation. He is a very gentleman-like, good-looking, pleasant young man. This is how Austin described the guy in her letters. He was an Irishman named Tom Lefroy. She describes flirting and dancing with him. And then she says he's going to go away. At length, the days come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy. And when you receive this, it will be over.

My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea. He's like her Darcy, it sounds like. I mean, look, that's a whole fan fiction universe around that question. But the truth is we really don't know. Nah, he's her. I'm like psychoanalyzing Jane Austen now. Well, we all are. And that's all we know about her love life.

Apparently, as she got older, she seemed to be less interested in playing social chess and preferred to observe it. There's one brilliant bit with the letters when she's in her mid to late 30s. She's going to a ball and she said, oh, all I get to do is sit by the fire with a glass of wine and that's going to be great because I don't have to worry about this anymore. That sounds like Elizabeth Bennett now. She probably would have seen that actually is a huge compliment. She loved Elizabeth.

called her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print in one of her letters which, you know, it's not to say that she thought Elizabeth was perfect. She's super smart. She's not blindly following all the rules and, you know, there's like a badassery about her. Yeah.

But she can also be like pretty quick to judge and even petty at times. But I think there's an appeal to that, right? Like she's flawed in that way. She's kind of mean, but she's real. And I think above all, she's also able to self-reflect and actually change if the facts call for it, which I think that's where a lot of people fall short, right?

Yeah. There's this great scene after Darcy proposes where Elizabeth and we, the readers, have to confront some big questions. She goes for a walk early in the morning, and she's kind of spiraling, thinking about that proposal. And suddenly she spots Mr. Darcy. Darcy walking toward her. He hands her a letter and walks away. With no expectation of pleasure, but with the strongest curiosity, Elizabeth opened the letter. Be not alarmed, madam,

on receiving this letter by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you. And so in this letter, he's basically saying, forget that whole proposal thing. I just want to clear up a couple of things. And the first thing is why he talked Mr. Bingley out of marrying her sister Jane. I remain convinced that though she received his attentions with pleasure, she did not invite them by any participation of sentiment. He just didn't believe Jane loved Mr. Bingley

and was worried she was taking advantage of his naive, nice friend for his money. That's not that far-fetched considering, like, how much. much her mom talked about money and his money. Yeah. And Darcy, he mistook the fact that Jane's shy and reserved as indifference. With respect to that other more weighty accusation of having injured Mr. Wickham, I can only refute it by laying before you the whole of his connection with my family. Then he tells Elizabeth what went down with Mr. Wickham. Wickham had burned through his inheritance and then took advantage of Darcy's much younger sister

and almost convinced her to a lobe with him to get to her money. Elizabeth is shocked. She reads it and reads it and re-reads it. She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd. Blind, partial prejudice. It's like, you know, when you think I've been such a fool and idiot, a moron.

And then the final word is, Elizabeth's sort of word for herself, absurd. How despicably I have acted, she cried. I, who have prided myself on my discernment. Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Till this moment, I never knew myself. Till this moment, I never knew myself.

That's a bar. It is a bar. It's the key line. because Elizabeth is actively changing her mind about Wickham and Darcy at this moment, but what's much more important in some ways is how she's coming to see herself. And after this, Elizabeth spends the rest of the book

working on herself. I will say this. It's kind of refreshing because it feels like today we don't really allow this space for people to kind of change their minds. It's like cool that this is such a main thread in this story. Oh, yeah. It's really, I think, at the heart of the book, which you're right. Like, nowadays, the idea of someone changing their mind about something in a pretty dramatic way

would be seen more as, like, even a defect or weakness, I think, by a lot of people. 100%. I think I've thought that way more when I was younger, but as I've gotten older, I've realized that, in fact, people changing their minds, that's actually, like, strength. And I think a lot of times people are impatient with that. You know, I've had even people tell me, like, you know, why are you always changing your mind about things? Right. Like, there's new information. I'm going to take that in and then think differently about it.

I think Austin would be a fan of yours. Because I think she'd be like, we're meant to evolve. And, like, happiness and growth hinges on our ability to give other people and ourselves the grace to do that. But in terms of the story, though. All right. So, Elizabeth. You're into it, huh? You know, I love mess and I love gossip.

And this is, like, feeding all those parts of my way. Because I want to know, like, should have to go back to Darcy and, like, give him a second chance? All right. So it's a few months later. All right. Elizabeth is visiting an aunt and uncle. They live in a town a few hours away. And they're not far from Mr. Darcy's estate.

And her aunt and uncle, they have no idea what went down between them. And they really want to take a tour of Darcy's estate. It sounds weird, but that was a normal thing people did. So this is like the MTV Cribs moment of the book. Kind of, yeah. And Elizabeth only agrees because she's told Darcy is out of town and there's no chance of running into him. I see where this is going.

Elizabeth, as they drove along, watched for the first appearance of Pemberley Woods with some perturbation. and when at length they turned in at the lodge, her spirits were in high flutter. It's a beautiful estate. It makes Mr. Bingley's estate look like small potatoes. And the housekeeper is their guide through it,

who, it turns out, admires the hell out of Darcy. I have never had a crossword from him in my life. And I have known him ever since he was four years old. This is kind of surprising, right? I mean, he's a rich guy who could easily treat his staff like garbage. be normal then. But he doesn't, you know, and between learning that and the letter, she's just really confused. Her mind is racing. How did I get him so wrong? And right in that moment. So abrupt was his appearance that it was impossible to avoid his sight. Mr. Darcy

unexpectedly shows up. Surprise, surprise. Their eyes instantly met and the cheeks of each were overspread with the deepest blush. The two of them blush deeply. It's the only time in all Jane Austen's fiction, a man and a woman blushing unison. They make small talk for a bit, the tension is palpable. And after there's this passage, which takes place entirely in Elizabeth's head, where she's going, oh no, if only we'd left 10 minutes earlier, we, why? I think she's embarrassed at everything, her misjudgment, the way she rejected Darcy so coldly, and the fact that she's touring his house, neither of them really knows where they

stand with the other person. What, in a way, Jane Austen's letting you see is this kind of sliding doors moment, isn't it? If they'd left 10 minutes earlier, they wouldn't have met. But in this version of reality, Elizabeth is about to get a few more big surprises. That's coming up. Hi, this is Rob from Arlington, Virginia.

You're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Part 3. Is it all about the Benjamins? Good God, what is the matter? cried he. Elizabeth hesitated, but her knees trembled under her, and looking so miserably ill that it was impossible for Darcy to leave her or to refrain from saying, in a tone of gentleness and commiseration. Let me call your maid. Is there nothing you could take to give you present relief? A glass of wine. Shall I get you one? No, I thank you, she replied, endeavouring to recover herself. There is nothing the matter with me. I am quite well. I am only distressed by some dreadful news which I have just received. She burst into tears as she alluded to it, and for a few minutes could not speak another word.

Darcy, in wretched suspense, could only observe her in compassionate silence. At length, she spoke again. I have just had a letter from Jane, with such dreadful news. My younger sister has left all her friends, has eloped, has thrown herself into the power of Mr Wickham. They are gone off together from Brighton. You know him too well to doubt the rest. She has no money, no connections, nothing that can tempt him.

She is lost forever. So Elizabeth's sister got with Mr. Wickham? Is that what's happening? Yes, yes. So, okay, we're finding all of this out at the same time Elizabeth and Mr. Darcya, right? Elizabeth gets this letter. It tells her that Lydia, her 15-year-old sister, who's staying with some relatives, came across Wickham. And, you know, he's a scumbag, right?

Remember what Darcy said about him? And he took advantage of Lydia and convinced her to run away with him. We can connect the dots and assume they've had sex, which is a big no-no. Okay, so, you know, it makes sense why Elizabeth is, like, freaking out here. Yeah, this is like disastrous for the whole family, you know. So she tells her uncle what happened. He sets off to try to find Wickham and Lydia. Darcy also went looking for them, and he finds them first.

He actually ends up quietly bribing Wickham to marry Lydia. properly to avoid a scandal and kind of save the Bennett family. And then Lydia shows up back at home, a wife, happy as ever. Lydia Bennett is a very lusty young woman. And what happens to Lydia? She's absolutely unchanged and seemingly unashamed. And I think that is a very brave choice on Jane Austen's part. That too was a part of ordinary lives, the sister who chooses to walk on the wrong side of the polite path. I appreciate that Austin, she's kind of showing us these different ways that different people are coping with the very real constraints of their finances and, you know, of the society's

rules. Elizabeth's best friend Charlotte Lucas, she marries Elizabeth's Weasley cousin, Mr. Collins. You remember him? Oh, yeah, yes, yeah. And she does that because, you know, she's not the prettiest, and he's offering her a stable, financially secure life. Austin is basically saying, like, let people live their lives. Yeah, and the fact that, like, it's Darcy, who's the one who bails out Lydia and Wickham, I think is very important because remember who we thought he was at the beginning, right? He's like snooty and high-minded, and I should say, he doesn't tell anyone.

And the only reason Elizabeth finds out is because Lydia lets it slip and then she prides it out of her. So he's not even doing this to say, like, look, I save the day. No, he's not. And he does a similar thing with Elizabeth's other sister, Jane. He tells his buddy, Mr. Bingley, look, I was wrong. Jane is into you and Mr. Bingley finally proposes to Jane. What I wonder is, was this who Mr. Darcy was all along? Because there's tension now between that concept of like first impressions and also people changing.

I mean, I think it's a great question. He, I think, has changed in significant ways. Yeah. I think him and Elizabeth have been humbled by life. So I don't think it's that she totally had him wrong at first Or he totally was wrong about her family being a little trashy But they managed to like find space to accommodate the things they don't like And also change in themselves the things that were sort of holding them back

From being able to be like fully with the person A lot of times in at least like modern romance stories It can be kind of like men are bad and an obstacle Whereas in this case he's like a complicated male fit figure, but kind of comes around. Yeah. It's interesting. I think often Austin is read as like a feminist book, which like in some ways, definitely it is.

But I don't think that means that it's a man-hating book. And this is an important difference. And ultimately she's saying both men and women are capable of changing. So like it's only then when both of them have worked on themselves that Elizabeth is finally able to admit to herself that she's in love with Darcy. What's interesting is no one knows this. her friends, her family, even Darcy, they don't realize that. She's kept it close to her chest.

But throughout the book, Austin, is dropping hints that the town gossips are speculating that Elizabeth and Darcy might be engaged already, you know, as gossips do. It takes on a life of its own, right? I think she's commenting on that, too. Anyway, so that gossip finds its way to Lady Catherine DeBorg, Darcy's rich and overbearing aunt. This is not going to be good. One morning, their attention was suddenly drawn to the window. Out of the blue one day, Lady Catherine hops in her carriage and travels for hours to knock on the Bennett's door and have it out with Elizabeth. She entered the room with an air more than usually ungracious, made no other reply to Elizabeth's salutation than a slight inclination of the head and sat down without saying a word.

She then demands a private word with Elizabeth. Miss Bennett, you ought to know that I am not to be trifled with. She tells her, I hear what people are saying. I know it must be a scandalous falsehood, though I would not injure him so much as to suppose the truth of it possible. And she's come to settle things once and for all. If you believed it impossible to be true, said Elizabeth, coloring with astonishment and disdain. I wonder you took the trouble of coming. so far.

She believes that Darcy and her daughter should be married. In her head, they've been engaged since birth. They are descended from the same noble line. They are destined for each other. And what is to divide them? The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, connections, or fortune. But it must not. Shall not be.

If you were sensible of your own good, you would not wish to quit the sphere in which, which you have been brought up. In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman. I am a gentleman's daughter. So far, we are equal. It certainly doesn't mean economically equal, but I think it does mean intellectually equal. And what this book shows us is how attractive a man is, not only because he's got land and money, but because he appreciates a woman who is smart and funny. Mr. Darcy could have anyone. But he goes after this woman who is his intellectual equal.

When Darcy catches wind of his aunt's visit, he immediately goes to see Elizabeth. The fact that she didn't flat out deny the allegations gives him hope that maybe Elizabeth has changed your mind about him. So, you know, in this like beautiful early morning scene, there's dew on the plants, the sun just peeking out over the horizon. Darcy and Elizabeth, they meet while walking. Oh, God. He proposes again, and this time, Elizabeth accepts. Okay. This is like romantic and everything, but like it's pretty convenient that Elizabeth and her sister just both happen to fall in love with some both very rich guys.

Okay, so Austin is, she's aware of that. And she actually pokes fun at it at the end of the book. One of the very last scenes, Jane, Elizabeth's sister, and her are sitting together talking. And Jane asks, when did she know that she loved Darcy? And Elizabeth says, when I saw his house at Pemberley. It's totally a joke, right? But the truth is, it is pretty lucky that he happens to be super rich and her soulmate. So all their problems are solved and she's happy.

It's a fantasy on some level. But Austin is letting us imagine this world where love and happiness is born of true equality. Equality, this is a word that meant so much in this period. It was kind of the word that defined Jane Austen's life and her books. Remember, she was born in 1775, so the American Revolution and the French Revolution both happened during her lifetime. fraternity, equality, liberty, these kinds of conversations were in the air. And by the time Austin died in 1817, she was 41. She was young.

Yeah. It was some kind of illness. But, you know, the world was going through huge technological and ideological changes. There were these big debates around what liberty and equality meant. This is very interesting, Comrade Austin over here, but I don't feel like we get any of this context in pride and prejudice, right? So it's not explicit, but keep in mind this, this would have been the water people were swimming in during Jane Austen's time. They would have understood that wealth was tied to exploitation, factories, colonies, slavery.

Austin would have known that, too. Some of her relatives benefited from the slave trade and a couple of her brothers were abolitionists. But like, by not addressing it more directly, see, I struggle about this. Like, is that kind of a cop-out? or is that like show don't tell art? Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah.

So this is something scholars still debate. And when I was researching this, I came across this essay. It's a well-known essay by Edward Said, who, of course, you know, but for our listeners, I'll say he's a famous Palestinian-American thinker. We have an episode about him if you want to check it out in our archives. So he wrote this essay. It's a chapter in his book, Culture and Imperialism, where he argues. that, you know, Austin, by focusing on the domestic world of these privileged elite, she's risking normalizing the system behind it, whether or not that's her intention. And I've given

this a lot of thought. And the way I see it is, you know, she's writing what she knew. Yeah, right. The small pea politics of her daily life, especially, you know, around women. And when you look closely, like she's exposing, she's mocking even, like if you think of that Lady Catherine's scene, the whole system. And again, like, I can see the critique that, like, maybe it's too subtle. But I do think it's in the adaptations, especially, very easy for the complexity of all this to get lost. I tend to agree with Professor Saeed over here, honestly. But I also know that, like, when you write something or you make something, whether it's a song or a book or a podcast or whatever, it is, right? At some point, it's not yours anymore. Right. Because it's had so many different

kinds of lives based on who is reading it and who's kind of adapting it. And who's branding it, right? Because especially in the more recent decades of its life cycle, right? It's gone through a lot of branding. And what I think you'll find interesting, actually, is that this whole idea of Austin's Chicklet is pretty new. That's how I think a lot of people think of her. And, you know, Lizzie Dunford, she told me that up until, like, the 1940s, 50s, men and women read Austin pretty equally. Really? Yeah.

And then actually, okay, so this is fascinating. In the 60s, you've got the women's liberation movement happening, women are going to university more, and marketers wanted to push Austin books to all these, like, university women. And so they started actually publishing Pride and Prejudice. It was a campaign with pink covers. It was like a very specific, like, this is for you women. You know? Yep.

Like this is your, you know, empowerment. Right out of madmen. Don Draper would have been behind this campaign. Yes, yeah, 100%. And then you get to our childhood era, right, the 90s, 2000s. You start seeing a bunch of TV and movie adaptations that are really, like, pandering to the female gays, right? So, like, in that 1995 adaptation, which is probably the most classic one, you've got Colin Firth, you know, and there's a scene where he's, He's coming out of the lake.

This time, I guess they swim fully clothed. But anyway, but he's coming out of the lake with this, like, white shirt, drenched, sticking to him. And it's kind of seethrew. You remember this in great detail here. I'll just say this. It's pandering to the female gaze, okay? That would do nothing for you, like a straight man. But, you know, I think what all of these sort of iterations point to, it comes back to what you were saying.

the story has lived many lives. Yeah. And I think it's more a reflection of, you know, the period you happen to be living in. It's a book out of time. It's a weakness and its strength, right? It just makes you think, like, man, what would Jane Austen have made of all this? I don't know. I mean, maybe she'd just be floored that an AI Darcy exists.

Wait, there's an AI Darcy? Yeah, man, look it up. I'm not looking to look it up. I'm not going to look it up. I'm not going to look it. Okay, so I have to say this entire conversation, it's been surprising. It's much more lair than I expected it to be, to be honest. I just thought it was silly, fun, romance stuff.

Yeah, I think a lot of people get that impression, right, from, again, especially the adaptations, which, because it does sound like I've convinced you, you're going to have to watch one. You know that I hate letting you win anything, right? Like, in anything. And yet, I win so often. But I would think that you would have gotten used to it by now. But listen, no, you convinced me, I have to admit it, and I'm going, you know, I'm a gentleman, and I will honor the terms of this bet.

So I think after all this, I still am going to go with the Bollywood version. Good choice. I haven't watched it in a while, so I'm excited to rewatch. I also want to get Rumi to watch it with me. What 10-year-old boy wouldn't love this? Wait, maybe we can get Rumi to be on the ThruLine Plus episode with us. He would love it. Oh, I'm so excited.

All right, well, I guess this is TBD until you and Rumi and I rewatch. And then I'll meet you on ThruLine Plus, right, for our debrief. And we hope to see all you listening there, too. Y'all not going to want to miss that, I think. That'll be fun. And that's it for this week's show. I'm Randad de Fattah. I'm Ramtin Arablui, and you've been listening to

Throughline from NPR. This episode was produced by me. And me and. Lawrence Wu. Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Casey Minor. Gistina Kim.

Devin Katiyama. Irene Noguchi. The voice of Jane Austen was played by Holly Hales. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. This episode was mixed by Jimmy Keely. Music for this episode was composed by Ramteen and his band, Drop Electric, which includes Naveed Marvie, Show Fujiwai. Anya Mizani.

Thank you to Johannes Durgy, Beth Donovan, and Tommy Evans. And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at throughline at npr.org or hit us up on Twitter at throughline npr. Thanks for listening.