Woman's Hour - Anya Taylor-Joy on playing Emma. Dirty Mother Pukka on where's my happy ending? Plus A Curious History of Sex

Episode Date: February 15, 2020

Emma is one of the most adapted books by Jane Austen. It returns to the big screen this week. We hear from the director Autumn De Wilde and Anya Taylor-Joy who plays Emma.Yvette Cooper the Labour MP t...alks about the increasing number of violent threats being made to her and other MP’s. She tells us why she wants political parties to draw up a new joint code of conduct against intimidation.Anna Whitehouse and Matt Farquharson the duo behind the comedy podcast Dirty Mother Pukka discuss the trials, tribulations and rewards of relationships and family life.Two casting directors, who have just won awards from the Casting Directors Guild for their work; Lauren Evans, for the first series of Sex Education and Isabella Odoffin, for Small Island on stage last year at the National Theatre in London. Why has the role of casting been so undervalued?We discuss the impact of loneliness with Baroness Diana Barran the Minister for Lonelines, Bethan Harris creator of the Loneliness Lab, Professor of Pyschology at the University of Manchester Pamela Qualter and Kim Leadbetter the Ambassodor of the Jo Cox Foundation.And we hear from Dr Kate Lister who set up the Whore of Yore project in 2015 with the aim of starting a conversation about the history of sex. She has now written a book, A Curious History of Sex in which she explores the strange and baffling things human beings have done over the centuries in pursuit and denial of sex.Presenter Jenni Murray. Producer Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor Beverley Purcell

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:00:42 BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Good afternoon. On Valentine's Day we talked sex and Dr Kate Lister's A Curious History of It. Stand by for some very strange things that have been done with fish and disappointing news about the oyster. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has them that children can have a somewhat negative effect on your relationship. This was found in papers that were done among different ethnic groups, gay couples and straight couples. That impact of a tiny person who you both adore that steals your time and your money
Starting point is 00:01:22 and the moments that you have together has a universally acknowledged bad impact on your relationship. This week saw an award ceremony for casting directors. Lauren Evans cast the first series of Sex Education and Isabella O'Dophin was responsible for Small Island at the National Theatre. Monday's programme was devoted to loneliness. Why do so many of us suffer? We put ourselves at the bottom of a long list of other priorities.
Starting point is 00:01:53 So we put our husbands or our partners first, our children, our jobs. And actually what suffers is our deep, meaningful friendships. So we're missing out on that depth of connection. We might have lots of people around us, but that depth of connection is often missing. And a new film version of Emma opened on Valentine's Day. We talked to the director, Autumn DeWild, and Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays Miss Woodhouse. Earlier this week, a Conservative activist, Joshua Spencer,
Starting point is 00:02:21 was jailed for sending offensive and menacing communications to the Labour MP, former Cabinet Minister and Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Yvette Cooper. The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has apologised for what she has had to put up with and insisted there is no place for threats and intimidation in society or public life. Yvette Cooper has called for all political parties to draw up a new joint code of conduct against intimidation. How much online abuse does she get? All MPs get a lot, sadly, and I've certainly had my share of it. And some of it passes a criminal threshold and some of it, there are cases where the police has taken action.
Starting point is 00:03:08 Often in those cases, interestingly, people do back down pretty quickly and apologise and say, well, they've been really stupid. In some cases they don't. And those are the more serious ones. and some of the, I think, both sexist and racist abuse that's been targeted, particularly at black and minority ethnic women MPs and people in public life, is a real problem because it can chill public debate, it can discourage people from getting involved in politics and in public life just at a time when you need as many people as possible coming forward with new ideas. What effect did the threat that Spencer made in politics and in public life just at a time when you need as many people as possible coming
Starting point is 00:03:45 forward with new ideas. What effect did the threats that Spencer made have on you? So they were different because this was actually, it was that he'd said that he had paid somebody to beat me up. There weren't threats, weren't sent to me directly, but we did, WERGA sent a copy of them. And in this case, because this was somebody who didn't immediately apologise, didn't back down, and in fact denied that he'd been responsible, he was also somebody we knew that I'd helped through local constituency casework, and had been involved in organising a protest outside my office at which somebody had also been heard calling for me to be burnt. So this was a very different case from previous ones that we've dealt with and truth is I mean I'm always optimistic, I'm always inclined to think the best of people and to think in the
Starting point is 00:04:37 end people don't really mean it but we weren't in any position to actually assess what the scale of the threat was and so that does have an impact as a result on on my office my staff who you know have to deal with the things that come into the office all of the time uh and with everybody else we know spencer was at your election count in december how where were you that he was there to be honest i, I wasn't, actually. Nobody warned you? No, but that's my way of operating, is to figure I am never, ever going to let threats or intimidation or attempts at intimidation ever stop me from doing my job. And so it was not something I was thinking about. We did anticipate he might be there. We had to inform the police, the electoral returning officer, but it wasn't something that I was thinking about in the slightest.
Starting point is 00:05:26 My disappointment about it had been that I had raised this case when it first emerged back in May of last year. I'd raised this with senior Conservatives because this individual was the Deputy Chairman of the local Conservative Association. I'd raised it with the National Party and there he was still representing the party in an election count in December.
Starting point is 00:05:46 So I really welcome the apology from Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, but I was really disappointed about the way that the Conservative Party had responded earlier, or had failed to respond earlier, and also at the failure last week of the chairman of the Conservative Party to condemn the threats as well. Now, you've called for a cross-party joint code of conduct against intimidation. How would that work? So it's not a silver bullet, but I think there is something symbolic about all parties coming together to say that, you know, we should not have nobody should be using violent threats or violent language nobody should be targeting somebody's children in the way
Starting point is 00:06:33 that we treat an opponent a political opponent just as the way we treat members of our own party and I do say I think this is for all parties to take action on the Labour Party has a serious problem about anti-semitism that has not yet been dealt with and absolutely must be. The Conservative Party also has to face up to their problems around Islamophobia. All parties, I think, have to do more. And there would be something important
Starting point is 00:06:57 and symbolic about parties coming together to agree a joint code of conduct and bringing a bit more kindness and respect respect I guess into our politics. The SNP's justice and home affairs spokesman was sceptical about this and I know you know you've been an MP since 1997 and a high ranking one and yet there are some people who've said the kind of abuse that you and others have suffered is just part of the rough trade of politics what do you say to that?
Starting point is 00:07:26 I think sadly it has got worse and I think part of that is this online, the social media kind of nature of debates that happen. Some of the closed Facebook groups that you get, which can have huge numbers of people in, all escalating the animosity and egging each other on to violent threats and abuse and that kind of thing. And I just don't think we need it in politics.
Starting point is 00:07:51 It's a bit like road rage when you're behind a windscreen, that people say and do things they would never do in person. You can have great political arguments and routes and debates without having to descend into violent threats. But of course there was violence. And I know your daughter Elise has spoken about the impact the murder of Jo Cox had on her in 2016. What do you remember of your reactions on that day? So there was nothing that could prepare you for that. There was nothing that could prepare you for that there's nothing that you
Starting point is 00:08:25 could um i could ever have imagined would ever happen to lose a friend in that way and a colleague in that way because she was involved in politics and for ellie and for our kids i remember you know ringing ellie to tell her what had happened because you you just want them to hear it from from us first i didn't manage to reach Joel and middle one and he'd heard it I think on the radio or on the television that a Yorkshire MP had been shot and so the impact that that has on your family as well as as on all of us I think was a huge huge shock it's the sort of thing you just never think would happen in Britain. And I suppose that's why we just can't ignore the rising climate of abuse that there has been.
Starting point is 00:09:15 And why I think all of us have a responsibility to stand up against it, to be really firm against it. It is particularly focused at women. It's particularly focused at people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Luke Pollard's had homophobic abuse and threats and violence against his constituency office as well. You have to stand firm against that. How do you deal with children who are frightened for you and know there's a panic button in your house. Yeah and so this is the kind of thing that all MPs now have which is the system of alarms that you know home alarms and office alarms that you need to have and it's I think it's hard as well because what you always
Starting point is 00:10:01 want to do is protect your kids and we've always been really firm about never having our kids in photos of us in politics or using our pictures of our kids on leaflets because we've been always so keen to keep them well away from all of it but it is hard for them and you also want to be able to say look the vast majority of people are really nice and we shouldn't forget that most of the people even people who strongly disagree with you, and they might want to have a bit of an argument with you, but they're actually still really nice and really kind and they'd help you if you ever got into trouble. And we shouldn't ever forget that.
Starting point is 00:10:36 And it's keeping that faith in the strength of who people are and not being deterred by the poison. You did publish a book in November of speeches by women called She Speaks. And you warned there in the introduction of women being silenced and giving up politics because of intimidation throughout the centuries. How do you convince them now to stay?
Starting point is 00:11:00 Because I think it's so important and there's so many amazing things that you can do. The striking thing about when I was putting together this book, and it was supposed to be a celebration of women's speeches through the centuries, from Bodecia to Greta Thunberg, international from Malala to Michelle Obama, all sorts of people. What was really striking when, after I'd chosen the speeches and was going through these amazing women's biographies was quite how many of them had been subjected to violent threats or abuse. We had Josephine Butler, who was a Victorian campaigner
Starting point is 00:11:32 in my constituency 150 years ago, speaking against prostitution laws at the time, was so targeted by opponents, they set fire to the barn that she was speaking in and she had to escape out of a barn window. We have had these kind of threats of violence through the centuries. Women have always been strong enough to stand firm against it and there are more of us than ever who are doing that now.
Starting point is 00:11:55 I was talking to Yvette Cooper. Valentine's Day is done for another year and significant numbers of couples will be hoping the love and the romance will go on and on. Anna Whitehouse and Matt Farquharson are a married couple behind the comedy podcast Dirty Mother Pucker. They have a new book out called Where's My Happy Ending, where they discuss the trials, tribulations and occasional rewards of relationships and family life. Anna first. We wrote the book separately. We did the first nine chapters separately and then we read each
Starting point is 00:12:31 other's chapters before writing chapter 10, which was dangerously called stick or twist. We're still here, just about, sellotaping over the cracks. How long have you been together? Oh, 12 years. Yeah, about that. So that was revelatory i think reading about matt's experience on a free love commune when i hadn't really thought about the implications of what it would be to read about your partner being in a portuguese love commune but uh any
Starting point is 00:12:56 good well i mean i was tucked away in a safe space of my own while everyone else was swapping caravans and so on but i think the whole process of getting that rare opportunity to see inside your partner's mind was the most remarkable thing because we talked about all sorts of things through the book from social media and sex and porn and the impact of kids and all of those things but also I think probably the most revelatory bit for each of us was really getting to understand what the other one was thinking and feeling about things which you weren't that you weren't we weren't that likely to share otherwise staring into that chasm of misery what you both acknowledge is that children far from being something that can keep a relationship together, are actually really likely to challenge it.
Starting point is 00:13:47 And as a quote from you, Anna, I don't think we've heard each other properly since our second daughter was born in 2017. Just expand on that. I think there was a point, you know, where you get married, for example, and you might not, but we did. And, you know, you say I do. And then there's this big space between I do and the end till death do us part and it's the same with your wedding day supposed to be the best day of your life and it's like well what is it then after that is it just a steady decline to the end and I think people often have a misconception oh I'll have a child and that might freshen things up at some point no no, no, no, it weighs it down significantly. And I think we all knew that. But you did a lot of research
Starting point is 00:14:30 on this. Yeah. So throughout the book, we try to get interesting anecdotal stories from individuals who had remarkable stories to tell. But we also looked into quite a lot of the academic paperwork on all of these subjects. And in most of the things that we looked at there was a little bit of room for debate the one area where there really wasn't was about the impact of children on relationships and the impact is universally acknowledged to be terrible this was found in papers that were done uh in asia in europe in the us among different ethnic groups gay couples and straight couples that impact of a tiny person who you both adore
Starting point is 00:15:07 that steals your time and your money and the moments that you have together has a universally acknowledged bad impact on your relationship there was a sanctuary in acknowledging that I think just fully acknowledging it knowing it's not us it's them it's everyone
Starting point is 00:15:23 because you feel incredibly guilty about that. And one of the best bits of advice that we got was from a therapist that we spoke to who said the biggest mistake he finds when people come to him is they worship their children. He said, I quite often have people getting in touch with me, telling me that their marriage is in the toilet, their relationship's falling apart. And then I look at their Facebook profile and it's a picture of their kids or it's a picture of one parent and the kids. And actually what you're doing then is you're worshipping the children
Starting point is 00:15:50 at the exclusion of the person that you're raising them with and that's a common mistake. We'll get on to sex in a minute, everybody will be glad to know. But let's talk money as well because you're honest about that and I think you use a great expression, Anna, women like benevolent sexists well that was a piece of research that I discovered oh sorry it was you it's a slightly controversial one I earn more than you but you but this is so we talk about this quite a bit right now hang on Anna you earn
Starting point is 00:16:18 more than Matt yes yes okay just so people know that yeah so we talk about this quite a bit in the book for the first 10 years or so of our relationship, I earned more. And then in the last few years, there's been a shift where Anna's earned more. And then all of a sudden, I have to make this adjustment of, well, actually, given that we've got two kids to care for, my meeting for this particular thing is less important to the family. So I've got to be the one that cancels it to go and collect a sticky infant and there's a bit of a sort of i think we're both comfortable saying there's a bit of a mentality shift there um that uh was an adjustment and it's an increasingly common adjustment in that something like in a third of straight relationships in the uk at the moment the woman now earns more than the man but people are quite nervous about talking about it
Starting point is 00:17:02 there are some there's some research in the States that suggests that when that's the case, women lie about how much they earn, downgrading a little bit. To protect what exactly? To protect the fragile male ego, I guess. Emasculation, that's what's used a lot. And men lie about how much they earn, saying they earn a bit more, which was interesting and surprising. And seeing my sister and her wife,
Starting point is 00:17:21 there's no weight of issue around who brings home the bacon, who cooks the bacon they there's just bacon and they deal with it which isn't to say that gay relationships are without any issues at all and i wonder whether you think that in gay relationships particularly if children are involved as increasingly they are now perhaps they also fall into a kind of division of labor state of affairs well we about this, and actually the difference was that Matt and I have trodden a well-worn path of marriage mortgage babies, man and woman get married, with hopes of a white picket fence at some point. But in same-sex couples, like with my sister, there's not male or female roles, it's just who's better at what.
Starting point is 00:18:00 We're seamlessly on to porn now. I know you'd like to avoid the subject, Matt, but we're not going to. One of the reasons I do really admire this book is that you're honest about porn and the reality of the presence of porn in contemporary relationships. So a little bit about that, Anna, and about the fact that I think you tried to watch it together. It was catastrophic. We have so few hobbies together. I thought, well, why don't we make this our hobby? And then I attempted it, but it felt a little bit like I was sort of a lower tier footballer trying to play for England, because obviously Matt's been watching more of it. Yeah. And also, I think you just felt you were intruding.
Starting point is 00:18:38 I just felt it was not my space, maybe. But I think the one point where I felt my lowest was when I realised when I'd seen Matt's browser history that I definitely didn't look like any of the girls he was watching. Matt? So we I mean I think it's important to be clear we don't go into a huge amount of detail. No you don't but I will say again I really admire your honesty. But it's something that is a sort of grotty digital elephant in most relationships that gets overlooked. If I think of the WhatsApp groups that I'm in with my mates, it's not long before someone makes a joke about their favoured category on YouPorn or something.
Starting point is 00:19:14 And one of the things that Anna said was that actually when she talks to her friends about it quite often, there is a bit of hurt there. And so we felt this was something that's probably quite common and worthy of a bit more investigation and according to which piece of research you look at three and four men in the UK are likely to have viewed porn in the last month and viewed is obviously a bit of a euphemism because no one's judging the camera work yeah this is obviously something that lurks in the background of most relationships and most of the guys I spoke to consider it something that's as normal and unstoppable as a sneeze but actually for most of the women I spoke to consider it something that's as normal and unstoppable as a sneeze but actually for most of the women it's something that can be a little bit
Starting point is 00:19:50 more hurtful I think. Well I think you're right it is hurtful because you feel as Anna has already said that you're not quite cutting the mustard. You know when you're postpartum and you know you can't have sex for medical reasons and you're twice the size you used to be you're not the sort of it's not the oxytocin fueled six months when you first got together and then your husband's looking at a perfectly honed woman uh going at it with someone else you feel low you know there is a moment i think we need to needed to acknowledge that within our relationship to get over it not to get under to get over that's not that's not the tip i think one of the the things that was most interesting was speaking to a feminist porn director who had had exactly these experiences herself erica lust yeah the reason she started
Starting point is 00:20:36 to make porn was that she felt you know excluded and inferior and her view on it is actually this isn't something that i can watch with my partner either this is a private viewing experience because of that sort of pressure of having to try and replicate things or feeling a little bit inferior in comparison the sex worker we spoke to she said the one point that all couples get wrong is that men need to sex sex to have the knuffle the cuddle and and women need the knuffle to have the sex. And because couples don't work that out, I get paid. Anna Whitehouse and Matt Farquharson were talking to Jane. And there's more from Anna and Matt in a video where they share their five best tips for making a real life relationship last.
Starting point is 00:21:21 You can watch it on the Woman's Hour website now or of course on the Instagram account at BBC Woman's Hour. And Rachel emailed, she said, I met my husband when I already had an 18 month old. We met and married and had five more children in eight years. 17 years in now, kids are growing up and I do still like him very much, despite the chaos of running this house with two professional careers to juggle too. However, my worry is that we've never had any time for us. What happens when they've all gone? Now, it's award ceremony season,
Starting point is 00:21:59 and earlier this week in London, there was a celebration dedicated to rewarding casting directors, the often neglected side of the theatre, television and film industries. BAFTA introduced one this year, but there is as yet no Oscar for the person who decides which actor will play which part, a decision which obviously can make or break a performance. Well, Lauren Evans won a Casting Directors Guild Award for Best Casting in a TV Comedy for the first series of Sex Education. Isabella O'Dophin won Best Casting in a Theatre Production
Starting point is 00:22:34 for Small Island at the National Theatre. Isabella explained why she thinks there are more female than male casting directors in the UK. I don't know if it's born from having been quite an administrative role, secretarial perhaps, almost servile. Back in the day, printing CVs and running about, and that was very much a female role. And obviously it's evolved over time and become incredibly creative and collaborative.
Starting point is 00:23:05 Lauren, it's been the first year for casting at the baftas there is still no oscar for casting directors why has it been so unrecognized oh i mean that is the question especially now this year's the head of the academy is dav Rubin, a casting director. I think it's been deemed as too collaborative. We've been deemed facilitators, I suppose, and a lot of people just don't know what it is that we do. What is it that you do? Good question.
Starting point is 00:23:39 Very good question. A lot of things, it's a big admin role, but we can be on a project for months, years even, depending on how long it takes to get to that green light phase. So we can be on it in a development phase with just a producer to attach cast, to attract broadcasters, to attract finance. And then we make lists, we meet actors, we workshop them in the room, we try to get as much out of them as we possibly can. We act like a director for those casting sessions. And then once we get to that place where we all make a decision, we have to contract them and negotiate their deals, how they get to set, what trailer they have, their credit, all those fun things.
Starting point is 00:24:23 So, Lauren, what was the process for casting sex education and how did you persuade julian anderson to do it we had incredible support from netflix and we weren't under any pressure to find any names as it were we don't have the luxury when we're looking for actors in their late teens early 20s of visiting showreels or bodies of work. You just have to meet a lot, a lot of people and make very quick decisions. And Gillian has been very vocal in saying that when she got the script she threw it in the bin.
Starting point is 00:24:56 So we owe a lot to Peter Morgan who told her to reconsider it which we're very thankful that he did. How do you tell when you're meeting all these young actors whether you've found one who will be comfortable with so much sex and explicit talk about sex? There's so much prep that has to be done even before we get them in the room, especially with young performers.
Starting point is 00:25:23 They need to be armed with all the information available, what the content is. Everyone had a copy of the pilot episodes. They knew the language that was being included, the themes that were being explored. We had a breakdown of every actor that would have simulated sex, potential nudity. So everyone has their own voice and can make their own decision before they come in will they be comfortable with this and we didn't put pressure on anyone because it's a huge ask I certainly wouldn't have been comfortable with that as an 18 year old absolutely not so I take my hat off to anyone who came through that door and had to come in, one to a casting session, which already makes them very vulnerable. It's a very odd setting, isn't it, a casting situation?
Starting point is 00:26:10 And then to deliver dialogue like that. Now, Small Island, as I recall, had an enormous cast. Where did you start? Revisited the book that I knew very well and very much honed into it needing to especially given the backdrop at which it was due to happen the windrush scandal i knew as did rufus norris the director that we needed to serve a certain demographic and that's caribbean actors and so that was my starting point really finding actors who I knew
Starting point is 00:26:46 had that background and auditioning every single one that we could. What happens if the production that you're casting for wants a big name and you think somebody much less well known is right for the part who wins that argument given this circumstance and i'm here to talk about small island i feel that the triumph was on my side there is the pressure when you're dealing with a london stage to go the route of leading actors of which there are short lists of male and female leading actors who are young and who can handle the Olivier. And it was almost just digging deep, being really courageous and showing through auditions why it should be a specific actor as opposed to someone who is leading
Starting point is 00:27:36 but not necessarily the perfect fit for it. How easy is it to fulfil diversity demands, of which there must be so many now? We were just saying, funnily enough, because of the push for diversity, which is fantastic, there's such a limited pool of actors available, especially if you get to 40s to 60s, because the roles have never been available for them.
Starting point is 00:28:00 So, of course, why would you get into this industry if you never see yourself on a screen? But it's so important. It's so important for people to be seen especially I feel younger people to feel like you're not alone to feel recognized it's hugely important yeah and what's every casting director's dream presumably to discover the next Meryl Streep it's always our dream to discover someone new to discover someone new or to bring someone new to the table and then watch them fly. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:28:29 It excites us, doesn't it? Yeah, it's that buzz you get when actually someone turns from a jobbing actor to someone who can pay their bills and not worry about it. Someone who can really flourish which is incredibly exciting to be able to give them that opportunity.
Starting point is 00:28:44 Yeah. Names? Gosh, who's the next Meryl Streep Lauren Emma Mackey she's brilliant to have someone who came into this didn't have a headshot and had never done anything before to now be a star and leading Kenneth Branagh's new film I feel like a proud auntie and I think Leah Harvey has done very very well and she will continue to do really well as well. Do you feel like a proud auntie too? Yeah I'll take that
Starting point is 00:29:16 I feel like a proud auntie I feel like I helped amongst other aunties I was talking to the casting directors Isabella O'Dophin and Lauren Evans and the Emma Mackey Lauren referred to plays Maeve in the series Sex Education and Leah Harvey was Hortense in Small Island. Still to come in today's programme, loneliness. It can strike at any age. What impact does it have and how best can it be dealt with? And as Jane Austen's Emma opens in the cinema, we're joined by the director Autumn de Wilde and Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays Emma. In the introduction to a book called A Curious History of Sex, Dr Kate Lister writes,
Starting point is 00:29:59 to say that humans have overthought sex is something of an understatement. She's a lecturer in the School of Arts and Communication at Leeds Trinity University who set up a project called The Whore of Yore in 2015. What is The Whore of Yore project? I'd love to tell you that it was a well thought out and executed project but the truth of it is that I was sat researching medieval sex trade and I found the name of a woman that had been arrested called Clarice Clatterbollocks from the 13th century and I thought that was so funny I wanted to tweet about it and so I needed
Starting point is 00:30:36 to set up an account and I realised that whore rhymes with yaw and that was that and then it kind of took on a life of its own and I really I love just tweeting out the little bits I'm researching little anecdotes and history and then the feed started to grow and grow and more and more and it was largely very positive and the word whore that I used I used it to kind of mean sort of transgressive sexuality. And I think, unfortunately, most women have been called that by someone at some point, whether it's yelled at them from a van or something worse. But it was the sex worker community that kind of came
Starting point is 00:31:15 and spoke to me about it and said, questioned my use of the word. And that for me, although I think it's kind of sort of maybe slightly antiquated and I knew what I was trying to do with it, but for them it's kind of sort of maybe slightly antiquated and I knew what I was trying to do with it, but for them it's a real term of abuse. So they were questioning my use of it and that's completely fair. And that dialogue actually made me much more aware of what I was doing is it wasn't just kind of funny jolly japes and silly names.
Starting point is 00:31:39 It actually was affecting people today. And that's something that's been really important to me. So it started off as me finding about Clarice Clatterbollocks in London in the 13th century and it ended up with me being really passionate about history history of sex and how that's used to frame debates today and why that's important and so we have the curious history of sex now there's so much to examine in this book how did you choose the subjects you included? Do you know what it is? I suppose it's the things that have appealed to me and the things that I've
Starting point is 00:32:12 really wanted to talk about. So there's a chapter on the Victorians and the vibrators and I really wanted to talk about that because there's this persistent myth that they invented the vibrators to cure hysteria and they didn't. I wanted to talk about smelling sexy in the Middle Ages, because I teach medieval literature, and every year the students make some assumption that everyone in the Middle Ages smelled really bad. So I'm forever correcting that, and I wanted to write about that. And I really wanted to write about language, the history of language, and about genitals, and about the sex trade. So it's things that strike me as being particularly pertinent and important today. Now, the clitoris features largely.
Starting point is 00:32:49 Maybe that's not the right word to use. That's exactly the right word. Because there was fear of one that may be too large. Why? All throughout history, the clitoris has been subject to a lot of misunderstanding and over-medicalisation. But this fear that a woman's clitoris has been subject to a lot of misunderstanding and over-medicalisation. But this fear that a woman's clitoris could get too large goes right back to the ancient world. And you come across all these horrendous accounts in sort of ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome about
Starting point is 00:33:16 cutting it out when it gets too... I know, I'm really sorry, everybody. Yeah, so cutting it out when it gets too big. The idea is that it would curb sexual desire and contain lesbianism. Actually, that crops up a lot as well. I think it's this really bizarre fear that it would get too big and turn into a penis somehow, or that they were becoming more masculine and male-like. So you get these horrendous descriptions of operations. And I'd love to tell you that ended in the ancient world, but we're still doing it in Britain in the 19th century. And of course, FGM around the world today
Starting point is 00:33:48 is still very much tied up with this idea of sexual purity. So yeah, so this idea of cutting out clitorises, mutilating vulvas to try and curtail sexuality has a really long and ugly history. Why did Renaissance man think he discovered it? Columbo Rialdo. Not Columbo like the detective, but it's just amazing that the person who thought they discovered and detected it is actually Columbo. But they both thought that they had discovered it independently of one another. And then when they realised the other one had written about it, they got really snotty and said that they must have stolen their work.
Starting point is 00:34:36 But their work is just... I can't believe that no one's ever discovered this before. This is an amazing discovery. How's nobody found this before? And it's just... So yeah, you can just imagine all the women just sat there just going, um, but no one asked them. So yeah, and then it was re-rediscovered 100 years later by another anatomist. And it's just kind of the conversation was never joined up. So you just get this re-rediscovery of the clitoris throughout the Renaissance. How long has the vaginal versus the clitoral orgasm discussion been going?
Starting point is 00:35:10 It's still going on now, actually. Be careful when you Google it and clear your history afterwards. But you can Google clitoral and vaginal orgasms, and there is still advice on it today. And that's caught up with the same thing. So this idea that a clitoral orgasm isn't as good or proper and invert commas as a vaginal orgasm that it's been around for a long time but i think we can probably lay him lay quite a lot of the blame at freud's door for this one he said that a clitoral orgasm was immature that the only sexually mature orgasm a
Starting point is 00:35:40 woman should have was vaginal so that basically means with a penis, doesn't it? So that's what this is all kind of built around, is that you're suggesting that if there's not a penis involved, that you're not doing it properly, is what it is. And that was still doing the rounds in the 1950s when the definition of a woman being sexually frigid was that she couldn't orgasm through penetrative sex. And it's had really horrendous consequences. Princess Marie Bonaparte,
Starting point is 00:36:06 who was the great-great-grandniece of Napoleon Bonaparte, she was one of Freud's patients and she became obsessed with the idea that she needed to have a vaginal orgasm. And she got this idea that she couldn't orgasm because her clitoris was too far away from the vaginal opening. So she paid somebody to remove it and reattach it near the vaginal opening three times.
Starting point is 00:36:26 All right. Sorry. Let's go on. That is too horrific to even think about. Valentine's Day today. And you do write about aphrodisiac foods. So what's the truth about the oyster? Well, the oyster has got a long reputation as being the food of love and aphrodisiac.
Starting point is 00:36:47 It's got associations with Aphrodite and it's even kind of medical literature. They're talking about it, that it can inspire lust in the Middle Ages. The truth of it is that it doesn't. There's been research done on this and there's no reason whatsoever why an oyster would turn you on any more than a fish finger for example but they are very very good for you and they've got very high levels of all kinds of vitamins and minerals they won't do you any damage but no they're not they're not sex sexy time they're not aphrodisiacs they're not aphrodisiacs no there's a fascinating section about someone called Bishop Bertrand of Worms. Yes. Worms, as one might read it in an English way.
Starting point is 00:37:31 And he had a fear of love spells. What's the one with the fish? The one with the fish. Right. So across medieval Europe, there are things called penitentials, which is basically manuals that priests and people in the church would use to kind of catalogue sin, basically. So you'd go to the priest and you'd say, I've done this terrible thing. And then he would have a book to look this up, right,
Starting point is 00:37:52 we'll do several penances. And this one was written by Bishop Burchard. And he writes a lot about sins and the kind of things you can get up to. And one of the sins he lists is if a woman has taken a live fish and put it in her vagina until it dies and then cooked it and served it up to her intended as a love spell then she should have to do penance on fast days for the next two years so yeah he does write that whether if that actually happened i can't tell you or if this was just the kind of the mad ravings of Bishop. But yeah, it's definitely there, this idea that you can cast a love spell by killing a fish in your vagina
Starting point is 00:38:34 and then serving it up to him. I was talking to Dr Kate Lister. Now, everybody will know somebody who's been lonely. The vast majority of us will feel that way at some point in our lives. We often hear about the old being lonely, but what about the young and the middle-aged? And what can we as individuals and government do to tackle it? On Monday, Jane talked to Baroness Diana Barron, England's Minister for Loneliness, Bethan Harris, the creator of Loneliness Lab and the director of Collectively,
Starting point is 00:39:10 Pamela Qualter, Professor of Psychology at the University of Manchester, and Kim Ledbetter, Ambassador for the Jo Cox Foundation and, of course, Jo Cox's sister. First, we heard from Nat and Sarah, who are both in their 40s with partners and children. Nat first. I've got a husband, I've got two sons, my parents live close, my sisters live close, I've got friends but yeah deep kind of I feel it in the pit of my stomach that I feel painfully lonely a lot of the time. I think I put mine down to struggling to feel truly connected to people around me. It's because of two things. One is that I do struggle with my mental health, with depression and anxiety.
Starting point is 00:39:56 So that's a factor that kind of makes me feel a bit isolated from the world and functioning people around me. But also I feel without those things, I also feel lonely because of the way life is now. It's, you know, it's so busy. People are demanded of. The age being 40, I feel like I'm expected to be a fully functioning together adult.
Starting point is 00:40:17 So I should be responsible for my children and I should be, you know, looking after my parents now and running a household. And I know everyone around me is being demanded of at work, at home, and everyone's being pushed to the limit physically and emotionally, and life is hard. And I think when we're all so busy and relationships have to fit in to people's lives
Starting point is 00:40:39 because priorities lie elsewhere, and then it's hard when you're just having fleeted exchanges or meeting once a month. It's very hard to feel truly connected yeah and to say that you're lonely feels like you're demanding of people that are already so demanded of so it feels like you would be adding to that and it would be selfish and and you don't want to feel pitied either you know I think people I have said I feel lonely to kind of give you that look and oh you know that's so sad yeah it's a it's a difficult one to admit to. Sarah what about you? There is so much in that that rings true for me as well and it's really actually quite
Starting point is 00:41:16 refreshing to hear that sounds like I'm in a similar situation I'm early 40s I've got three children constantly feel pulled in all directions I work full time and when I'm not working I kind of feel like I should be there doing stuff for my family and putting them first and if I'm honest I think that friendships fall a little bit wide by the wayside they're not something that I prioritize as much as children and I think that can actually have a bit of a downward spiral effect because if you're not trying to keep up with friends and keeping connected I mean it's interesting that Nat used that word as well I think that can make them think that you don't necessarily want to be as close to them and then those friendships drift and that in
Starting point is 00:42:02 itself creates a bit of loneliness because it makes it that bit harder to get in touch with them. Maybe they don't get in touch with you. And there's a point about I don't want to admit to it either, because if I admit that I'm a bit lonely, it makes me look needy. And who wants a friend that's needy? Sarah, before Sarah, Nat, I think that's really interesting. Kim, the friend who, well, you don't want to feel desperate. You don't want to be the needy one. It's tough, isn't it? Yeah, and I think Nat and Sarah have hit the nail on the head there
Starting point is 00:42:33 in terms of the way that society functions in the modern day. We are all busy. Being busy has become a badge of honour, hasn't it? We're all dashing around onto the next thing. And I think ultimately, particularly for women, and this is part of my background in physical activity and health and well-being, we put ourselves at the bottom of a long list of other priorities. And that's what they seem to be describing.
Starting point is 00:42:52 So we put our husbands or our partners first, our children, our jobs. And actually what suffers is our deep, meaningful friendships. So we're missing out on that depth of connection. We might have lots of people around us, but that depth of connection is often missing. And that's why I suppose from my perspective with my previous career doing something for you whether it's physical activity or whatever it is is really precious and important. Pamela just take us further on that particular the idea that you've plucked up the courage to say you know what I am lonely and I would like you or the other person in my life a person in my life to help me out and what if they just look petrified yeah and often what we find is they they are petrified they might
Starting point is 00:43:31 some might admit that they also feel lonely but some will be quite frightened because they don't know how to fix that so I think it's really about picking the right person to come find in but I think Kim's right is actually getting it out in the open, making it real, is something that we can start being able to manage. And I think we have got to make it a priority, you know. And I think that that's what's been really good about having the conversation at a countrywide level,
Starting point is 00:44:00 talking about loneliness, putting it as a priority, means that we are beginning to understand and support one another and have those relationships and have those conversations. Nat and Sarah are both mothers now motherhood isn't the answer to everything in fact I can remember never feeling more isolated than in the early days of motherhood what would you say about that Kim? Well certainly you know going back to going back to my sister going back to joe she struggled you know when she had her two children and again
Starting point is 00:44:29 i think there's something there around identity isn't there because suddenly you become somebody's mum so you you lack being the person that you actually are and you and you know the schools refer you to a so-and-so's moment and and that i think can be a very lonely place and and again the really important thing is reaching out to people who are going through similar situations to you and and you know new mothers often find solace in each other but having the time and the energy to do that when you're exhausted and you know and struggling to juggle everything is is really challenging but but it is a very common phenomenon and i think you know that is a one of these changing periods in life where loneliness is is a problem and again let's talk about it let's have that conversation diana what would you like to say about that well i've got sort of two reflections on that one was
Starting point is 00:45:10 a conversation i had the other day with a amazing young woman called alex hoskin who set up something called the chatty cafes and she did that after she had her first child and she said she never made it out on time to the mother and baby group she need you know we can all remember that and you just trying to get out the door you know and then you've got vomit down the back of your coat exactly all of that um so her idea was to have something much more informal where you could make connections with people that word that's come up a lot. And there are now chatty cafes all over the country. The other thing I just wanted to say was I think connection is a two-way street. So I absolutely echo the point about you start to talk about it
Starting point is 00:45:57 and that in itself can be healing. But actually most of us want connection to go in both directions. Yeah. We don't want to be helped we want to have a connection yeah which means you've got to do both you've got to do both yeah if you can of course and the interesting thing beth and about your generation is on paper you have never of course on paper is an arcane reference in itself you have never been more connected my goodness me you can be connected to somebody on the other side of the world in
Starting point is 00:46:23 a nanosecond but But are you really connected? Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what happened to me, actually. Just over a year ago, I was really, really struggling with my own mental health and had kind of got sort of a depression, anxiety that had really, really set in. And because I started working on loneliness as a as a project and started to kind of understand the issue a bit more I started to sort of see that actually a lot of what I was experiencing was loneliness but it didn't make sense to me because I have lots of friends and and what was happening is I'd moved back from Australia I was keeping in touch with my
Starting point is 00:46:59 my really close friends in Australia on whatsapp as if they lived down the street but they didn't live down the street and my friends in London as well, and I live in Bristol now. So for me, that was a real kind of wake up call that actually these virtual connections and working from home and kind of speaking to people every day, even though I was connected to all of these people in my life, actually I was missing something like a deep need to actually just smile at people or have a hug or you know have a bad day and actually feel like you can kind of go through the superficial stuff that you might
Starting point is 00:47:29 do but then actually then go into the deeper stuff so about a year ago I sort of did that kind of brave thing of sort of owning up to being lonely with people in in Bristol where I live with some other freelancers and even though it was a terrifying thing to admit, what I realised is a lot of us were in the same position. And so we've now got this really lovely group that meet up on Friday mornings and we go for walks. And that is rigid. You always do it. Not always, but every few weeks.
Starting point is 00:47:57 And it's sort of because the invitation was there to sort of be vulnerable and say, oh, I'm actually a bit lonely. I think people feel they can lean into that group a bit more and actually sort of say, you know, oh, I need to kind of have a chat with things like that. So, yeah, so it's definitely helped me along with a few other things. Bethan Harris, Kim Ledbetter, Pamela Coulter and Diana Barron. Jane Austen said of Emma, I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like. She introduced her as Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich with a comfortable home and a happy disposition and had lived nearly 21 years with very little to
Starting point is 00:48:41 distress or vex her. Well, judging by the number of films, TV, stage and fictional adaptations there have been, it seems Austen may have been wrong about no one liking her character. A new adaptation opened in the cinemas yesterday, so what is the appeal of Emma? Well, here she consoles her father Mr. Woodhouse, as they make the journey to the wedding of her former governess to Mr. Weston. Papa, Mr. Weston is such a good-humoured, pleasant,
Starting point is 00:49:14 excellent man. He thoroughly deserves a good wife. And you would not have had Miss Taylor live with us forever when she might have had a house of her own. A house of her own? Where is the advantage of a house of her own? This is three times as low. It's entirely unnecessary. Poor Miss Taylor.
Starting point is 00:49:31 Poor Isabella. My sister married seven years ago, Papa. You must be reconciled to it by now. That was a terrible day. It shall always be a matter of great joy to me that I made the match myself. Everyone said Mr. Weston would never marry again, but I did not believe it. Emma, you should not make matches
Starting point is 00:49:48 or foretell things. Whatever you say always comes to pass. You must not make any more. I promised to make none for myself the past. But I must indeed for other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world. Bill Nye
Starting point is 00:50:03 as Mr Woodhouse and Anya Taylor-Joy as Emma. Anya joins us together with Autumn DeWild, who directed the film. Autumn, what is it about Emma that made you desperate to make a film of it? My mother's English, and I grew up in Los Angeles, and I think there's a part of me that always wondered what would have happened if I was raised in England and so I ate anything British for breakfast lunch and dinner from so far away in America so it's corny to say but it was a dream come true you know to be able to dive into like one of the most important books ever written. And Anya why were you keen to play the character Austen thought no one but her would much like?
Starting point is 00:50:45 I think it's because she's so complicated. There's so many different facets to Emma. And in every single scene, it felt like I got to play up certain emotions and then we'd get the opportunity to go again and I could find something different. And I think people like her because she seems more real. She's not just good. She's not just good. She's not just bad. She's a very interesting mixture of everything.
Starting point is 00:51:11 And I just wanted a chance to take a crack at it. Autumn, you stay very close to the book. Why were you keen to stay really pretty true to the original? Well, I think that this book is so well written that it could be interpreted, you know, so many different ways till the end of time. But I find Jane Austen very funny. And I think that she was a really brilliant satirist of small town life. And because of that, it really translates to high school, which is why Clueless was so brilliant.
Starting point is 00:51:39 And our lives in offices, you know, in those contained environments where you feel like you could never get out. And so I really wanted to try and add a screwball comedy element, but try to stick to the complexities of the relationships that Emma has with everyone in the town. Because to me, that was sort of the more fascinating part of the book, how many clues were laid in by all of the people around Emma. And she is the main character in the book and the star of our film, but because of our ensemble, I felt it would be a way of really lifting up this character. Whenever I read it, and I have read it many times,
Starting point is 00:52:16 it was my O-level set text, or see the film or whatever, that the scene where she is so horrible to Miss Bates at the picnic always chills me to the bone. What was that like for you to play when it's been done so many times before? Oh, it was awful because especially we all became very, very close when we were filming and, you know, we've remained very close. And Miranda and I had a very special relationship. Miranda Hart.
Starting point is 00:52:43 Miranda Hart, yes. And so it was awful but it was I really felt like I was supported by the cast around me because whenever Emma had to be cruel because they were my friends I did go up to them and I said this feels horrible and they were like no it's working
Starting point is 00:52:57 it's so good please keep going so I had somebody to hug after being so nasty. And to Anya's credit I asked her if we could really tailor some of these key moments into intended cruelty, accidental cruelty, and just cruelty due to vanity and social pressures. And so she really often did these really key moments three different ways so that
Starting point is 00:53:24 we had choices in the edit room as we shaped Emma's anti-hero character. It was an acting dream. Not easy for you to do, to do the same scene three different ways. Oh, no, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. It was a challenge and it felt... There's something about somebody asking you to do something in a way that maybe you haven't thought about it before
Starting point is 00:53:42 that's so liberating. And I loved those days when I'd get the opportunity to do there's an argument between Emma and Mr Knightley that I think Autumn just left the camera rolling and I did it about I don't know, 12 times something like that, just back and back
Starting point is 00:53:58 and back and I really I adored it. She's such an intelligent actor, you know, that I knew she could handle it. How would you describe your Emma then? I think she is the product of somebody that's grown up very privileged. I think she's very, very intelligent. But I also think she's desperately lonely. I think she wants to have people around her
Starting point is 00:54:19 and she's not quite sure how to keep people. And she doesn't want to leave her father behind. So when she you know starts exploring this friendship with Harriet even though at the beginning it seems like she's you know quote-unquote improving her and it's a project I think she's really desperate to not be left alone again and she's trying with everything in her arsenal to to keep the people she loves around her yeah the house her house and that town is her dollhouse. And we were talking about how the matchmaker thing is,
Starting point is 00:54:49 there's a lot of emphasis put on the matchmaker part of Emma's character, but she really only matches two people. She's like, I want you to stay five miles away, Max, so you're going to marry Mr. Weston. And I want you to stay here because I've never had a friend before that wasn't paid to be my friend. So let's just match you up and then we'll be set. Why, Autumn, do you think she has had so much fascination for so many generations and it just continues? I think because we've all known an Emma and I think
Starting point is 00:55:19 few people want to admit how often they've perhaps behaved like Emma. And that, you know, and I think anti-hero characters, male or female in general, are very captivating because they exhibit the darkest sides of ourselves. And in a movie like this, and in the book, you know, Jane Austen weaves a beautiful fantasy story of love working out and you fall in love with your best friend, who you're always arguing with. And your best friend, you know, her and Harriet, you know, Emma finding her way to become a better person and realizing she's wrong. We probably all have someone in our life that we wish would have that revelation. You know, friends we've had to walk away from that were selfish and cruel. Just one final point to you, the Oscars, women, directors, how difficult is it going to continue
Starting point is 00:56:05 to be to break through? I think it will always be difficult, but my answer, I'd like to answer as a photographer, if that's okay. Having documented people for so long in helping raise their profile or, you know, create a visual identity, studios need
Starting point is 00:56:22 to invest in documenting female directors and directors of, you know, from, you know, directors of color. And because we have many, many years of evidence of men directing amazing dynamic photos of Kubrick directing in Coppola. And we need to have like that storytelling in the making of a film needs to be done. I was talking to Autumn DeWald and Anya Taylor-Joy, and the film, of course, is on nationwide release now. On Monday, Jane will be talking to the choreographer,
Starting point is 00:56:54 Cathy Marston, about her new ballet, The Cellist. It's inspired by the life and work of the British cellist, Jacqueline Dupre. It opens on Monday night at the Royal Opera House in London and portrays the virtuoso's life after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was only 28. And Phoebe Judge, the host and co-creator of the hugely successful American podcast Criminal, will discuss why people find true crime so fascinating. Join Jane Monday morning. Have a lovely weekend from me for today. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've
Starting point is 00:57:39 ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in.
Starting point is 00:58:01 Available now.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.