Woman's Hour - Potty training, Going away with friends, Jude

Episode Date: May 9, 2019

When it comes to potty training, we unpick the fads from what works. Rebecca Mottram, a children’s nurse who now runs her own business teaching potty training and Christina Hardyment, author of Dream Babies help us to work out the dos and don’ts - and what has changed over the years. Netflix's new comedy film Wine Country stars Amy Poehler and Tina Fey as friends who go away to the Napa Valley to celebrate a 50th birthday. During the course of the weekend, wine is drunk, singing and dancing ensue - and, tensions arise. We discuss why trips with female friends so often follow this formula with actor, Arabella Weir and Tianna Johnson, the founder of Black Girls Camping Trip. A play, loosely based on Thomas Hardy's 1895 tragic novel Jude the Obscure, has opened at the Hampstead Theatre in London. In this version Jude is a woman, a cleaner, a Syrian refugee who dreams of studying Classics at Oxford University. Actor, Isabella Nefar is joined by Karin Koehler, editor of the Thomas Hardy journal and a lecturer at Bangor University to discuss the challenge of re-working well-known characters for the stage. And, reporter Henrietta Harrison hears about a new libretto by Sheila Hill, performed by a community choir of women and children trained by Glyndebourne opera house in Sussex. Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Ruth Watts

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.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday 9th May. In Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, a young man from a working class background longs for a university education. In a reworking of the story for the theatre, Jude is a woman, a refugee from Syria who longs to study classics at Oxford. Potty training. We look at the history of getting a child out of nappies and ask

whether the new idea of putting a new baby straight onto the toilet actually works. And Eye to Eye, a community choir of women and children, will celebrate the early years of being a parent at the Brighton Dome. Now tomorrow, a new film will be released on Netflix called Wine Country. It's about a group of friends who go away for a weekend in Napa Valley,

home of many of California's vineyards. And they're up for celebrating a 50th birthday with some wine tasting. Let me know what you smell. There's no wrong answers. Green apple? Yeah. Yes. Very good. Green apple. I want to say canned peaches. No. You said there was no wrong answer. Yeah, but, you know, peaches. There's no peaches in there. What else you got? Oh, lemon. Yes, very good.

Oh, I taste the lemon, yeah. You don't taste it, you smell it. Grapes. Well, yeah, of course. Nice. That's smart. Definitely grapes in there. Can't go wrong with that. Jasmine.

Well, that's egregious. Pinot-gregious. Definitely a great scenario. Can't go wrong with that. Jasmine. Well, that's egregious. Pino-gregious. Thank you. You're killing it. Oh, we lost Mason. Well, the film was directed by Amy Poehler, and she's in it as are Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph,

and a number of other female comedians. And inevitably, along with the drinking, singing, laughing and dancing, there is a degree of tension among the friends. Why do weekends away with friends tend to follow a similar pattern? But lots of us continue to do them. Well, Tiana Johnson is the founder of Black Girls Camping Trip and the actor and writer Arabella Weir likes a weekend away with the girls. Arabella, why do you like a weekend away with the girls? I like a week, never mind a weekend. It's probably the most honest I can be. It's certainly

the least guarded I can be and also it is the least on duty. I mean, my children are grown up now. But as you well know, when you're on holiday with them, when you're little, you're never off duty. And then as they get older, they still have all the expectations of you making it nice, even sorting the weather for them. And it becomes you just think, what am I doing here? I'm sort of here as a housekeeper slash slave. You know what's happening? But with your girlfriends, even though, you know, the stakes are high, you just have in my, you know, you're just at your least guarded.

You're not holding your stomach in because it's a new boyfriend or anything like that. You're just completely, there are no expectations other than you being there. Why, Tiana, did you set up Black Girls Camping Trip? I think that when going away and when deciding which holiday destinations that we're going to go to um our culture plays a massive part in what we're just where we're deciding to go and what we're deciding to do and um for us like for being a black girl for example culturally sleeping outside and doing outdoorsy things those are not considered like things that people do they're not things that we do as black people so one of the things I really wanted to do

was introduce young black girls like myself and even older black women who would have never tried these things I wanted to introduce them to something they would have never done before do you actually like camping sometimes um the very first time I went I went in North Carolina when I was studying abroad and it was amazing like i camped at the top of a mountain we woke up the next morning we watched the sunrise and mountains it was raining it was not raining you're trying to do this in the uk it was freezing though like the top of a mountain snow ice everything so it's freezing but um at home i i enjoy the element that bringing it to people so I can see how excited they are about um you know

trying something new and doing it for people who are like them um for me personally right now I do really don't like coming it's really um it's work for me you know what I mean but you still like going away with a group of women yes yeah I do um I do I do like doing that with my friends um although I have had some really bad experiences in the past you're selling this really well I do. I do like doing that with my friends. Although I have had some really bad experiences in the past. You're selling this really well. I do. It is nice. Because like what you're saying is that,

you know, you become more vulnerable. So you strip away all the things like family, you strip away work, and then you just get to hang out with your girlfriends. Like you're just, you're a raw relationship with them. So that's really nice.

And drink wine. Drink all the time. I was about to raise wine yes i think it is the required country is about a wine tasting as we heard to celebrate a 50th birthday what role arabella does alcohol tend to play in your weekend pivotal um not to say uh essential uh i think i couldn't imagine a weekend away with my oldest girlfriend without wine and before i get letters uh it's just the way it is but then it is the it's the means by which everything becomes easier it's the means by which your your defenses are down and i don't mean we couldn't be honest with each other if we hadn't

had a drink but you're kind of it's the party element you're having a laugh and then of course in there there'll be tantrums and tears but and fights in my case there was a fight once about who was going to sleep uh on the bed underneath the window which is a literal fight yeah physical fight so yes I mean come on we were 30 it was. So, and I don't even think we were drunk at that point. But then the people I'm closest to are the people I was at school with. So we kind of replicate what we were doing when we were 15. I think actually that comes over in that film. You're just all reduced to sort of teenage girls.

What role does alcohol play, Tiana, on your camping trip? Well, we actually have a whole evening dedicated to just drinking around the campfire so it is yeah so it's really like it's really embedded within um our camping trip and you know the the kind of experience that we're trying to give people um and like you're saying it does it makes people more vulnerable um sometimes it's really good so they can you know it starts off as a party sometimes it reduces into something else but the thing is it'll be quite different for my camping trip because um people are coming mostly solo 80 of the girls who come they don't know anybody else there so these are strangers yeah so it's nice it helps them open up it helps the walls come down because sometimes it can be quite

scary if you're coming alone um yeah so it's really about encouraging the party to start and encouraging people to talk to one another and it's more social. Why is it so common though, Arabella, for tensions to surface when you're with a group of women? And apart from your fight, what generally happens when they do? I'm sure at the age of 61 you don't have fisticuffs anymore. No, no, no. We can still have pretty heated arguments. I think probably, isn't it, aren't your closest friends replicating your family, a different version of your family, but without the necessity of not,

of, you know, in front of your granny or whatever, not saying that extra thing you might say. Whereas with your friends, it's a level playing field. of you know in front of your granny or whatever not saying that extra thing you might say whereas you with your friends it's a level playing field and you will just if the tensions are high enough or if you've been camping or trying to find the hotel for long enough or stuck in a car or any of those things where you'll just say what you feel there'll be no kind of i mustn't say this because i don't want to upset her but there may also be an element that you don't then have to go home with them and do two days of being frozen out.

You are stuck in this shared environment that you are sharing equally, and therefore there's no kind of ownership or hierarchy. You've all paid the same for it, and it's a sort of level playing field. Tiana, you said you had had some difficult experiences. What difficult experiences have you had? So when I turned 17, it became like a really, like a thing for everybody to go on a group holiday with their friends because, you know, you finally have your own job, you have your own money.

So, you know, you can go anywhere and your parents can't really tell you that you can't go. So it became like a thing. So some of my friends from college, we decided to go to Portugal. People had like previously had problems within the group so leading up to it obviously we were quite poor like we're working minimum wage jobs so it took a long time to pay off this holiday and from the very first payment to the day it came loads of things about the dynamic of our relationships had changed since that very first day um so all of those things

came out on the holiday I think once we were getting closer to going to portugal everybody was trying to like pretend like everything's okay because they wanted to have a good holiday we'd spent our money on it um but once we got there everything came out like i was saying before everything stripped away um you're just there and it your raw relationship with this person will come out and so it caused loads of problems us. How much does money and who pays for what affect the dynamic in the group? Hugely. I think that is true of any relationship, even, as you know, with your children. But that's why, in a way, it's a sort of when you go on holiday with your girlfriends, by and large, you're all paying the same. And in fact, I think it can change it hugely if somebody goes, no, I really want to go to this restaurant, everyone's going, but you

know, it's 100 quid a head or something. And you don't want to be in that you want to be in the most democratic environment, you do not want it to be one friend saying, look, I can afford it, I'll just pay for everyone, because then suddenly you're their guest. And suddenly you're the kind of, you know know in a servant position to their master it's not desirable you have to be you have to share everything equally at whatever level yeah i would say the exact same thing i think that money isn't really for me i don't think money is but i think the choices who decides who makes the choices is who's the leader yeah so like which hotel we went to which hotel we went to um why we went to this hotel the perks are like if we went

and it wasn't good then we could say oh my gosh it was you you was the person who said we should come here and it wasn't even good the beds are like this and when things have happened like this how do you make up at the end of it we never recovered don't you oh no we always recovered you need to recover with because that's that's the stronger relationship you'll ever have with the person you've recovered from in my case having a physical fight with them but because i suppose the love is the love and the shared friendship is greater than the argument about who got what bed i mean you know you could probably do two days of not talking to them no problem uh but you will definitely make it up in the end arabella weir and tiana Johnson, thank you both very much indeed. Very best of luck

with any further weekends or weeks you may have away with your friends. And we'd like to hear from you. Have you gone on weekends or weeks with your friends? How has it gone? Let us know. Now who knows what will be expected of little Archie Harrison when

it comes to potty training. All we know thus far is that his father's been changing nappies, which suggests he won't be going through the latest trend, which is to hold a baby from birth over the toilet and have them out of nappies from the get-go. Well, what does work best with least anxiety for the parent and the child, and how have trends changed over the years? Well, Rebecca Mottram is a children's nurse

who runs her own company specialising in potty training. Christina Hardiman is an historian and the author of Dream Babies. Christina, when was potty training first introduced into manuals for parents? Well, it was right there in the very first manuals. It was taken for granted that you would start straight away with potty training. And what the baby did was lie across the lap, and you'd have a tiny potty underneath it, be quite comfy, and you'd make encouraging noises and that sort of thing.

There was a strong belief in habits and getting used to routines and training, not least because, of course, they didn't have disposables. They had all sorts of other horrible things they had to wrap around their babies' bottoms to keep them dry. And when was this? In what period? Certainly in the 18th, end of the 18th, well, probably the manuals began at the beginning of the 19th century. And the Dr. Spock of the Victorians was Pi Henry Chavasse, who was still having editions printed in 1940s, just before the very first Dr. Spock manual.

And he was very influential, his advice to mothers. And he was very keen on this regularity. He was also very kind-hearted. And the truth about poppy training, as with all childcare manuals, is you have kind of disciplinarian people and very tender-hearted people, which is quite well suited to different characters of parents. Now, Rebecca, I know you teach from birth elimination, which is a big title for, I think, holding the baby over the toilet what does it actually involve? Hi yeah so people call it elimination communication which is quite a

ridiculous name really I just tend to call it baby pottying because that kind of makes sense to me and basically it's about thinking that when you're you know all babies are going to wee and poo whatever we do we can't really prevent that so it's kind of thinking about a different way of managing that so it is it is like christina described um you literally hold your baby over something else that's not a nappy so um But I think a really common misconception is that people who do this nowadays don't use nappies and that's not really the truth. Certainly both my children use nappies as well. We have very busy lives and it's difficult to do that for every single wee or poo. So it's more a case of about when when you know that they will do it

and and helping them some of the time to do it outside a nappy but you see my understanding is that some people do do it without nappies and then i will how do you judge when your child your tiny baby needs to go to the toilet there's a very good thing called grunt and run i believe you take the, you notice what the baby's doing. And of course it does require close attention, pretty full-time close attention from a parent. And that is in a

sense why the whole thing went out of fashion. Because women were doing all sorts of other things. And then they discover disposable nappies. So why try at all? But it does seem to be coming back into fashion, Rebecca, doesn't it? and yeah it's definitely back in fashion for lots of different reasons and what Christine is saying is right you do have to give a bit of extra attention but if we think about the way that we normally think

about how babies communicate to us that they're actually very good at telling us things and all sort of new mothers learn to recognize the difference between when a baby's crying because they're tired or when they're hungry and actually learning about their elimination it's a similar kind of level of awareness and it doesn't have to be something that you do all the time you can very much do it just some of the time so most people will probably have recognized their own child's poo face I know I did with both of mine it's fairly obvious when they were pooing and and a lot of people now just try to do it for the poo because it's actually much easier to poo when you're being

held in that position um I mean I don't know how many people have ever had to or tried to poo lying down but it's actually quite difficult. And when you hold your baby in a way over a potty or something, it becomes much easier. So it's not as difficult as people might think it is, and it certainly has a lot of benefits. Christina, I know you were born in 1946, and I don't suppose you remember what happened,

but you may have spoken to her about it. What method did your mother use? Well, I'm pretty sure it's what was in the Mothercraft book, which is Mary Stokes's, sorry, Mary Tooby King's book. And that was very formal routines. But the same year I was born, Dr. Spock began to come out so when I was bringing up my own four daughters I was actually doing the big terry nappy thing and there you were did encourage them to get on a pot fairly quickly because it was such hard work washing the nappies I remember my husband washing them in a mountain stream when we were in on holiday but I think a big incentive now having had this age of comfort disposables where babies in fact can't feel if they're wet so those signals that Rebecca was talking about

are much less apparent in some ways to be something to be said to go back to nappies where the baby felt a bit uncomfortable and got nappy rash and to what extent Christina would you say that concern for the environment and the disposable of disposable nappies is starting to change things? I'm sure that is, should, certainly should be behind it because the situation where they're making pampas and nappies in bigger and bigger sizes, I believe there's even a nine-year-old one. And it does seem that we cannot throw, as we do now, eight million disposable nappies a year in the UK alone into landfill. Because even if they're supposed to be biodisposable, there's a big question mark over that. And so I think it's a thoroughly good thing

that we should start thinking about ways of things. But at the same time, as with all bringing up babies, you've got to make them suit your life and not let them in a sense run you so your lifestyle may require one thing and the baby another if you can afford a nanny or trained nurse or whatever then that's fine and dandy but one has to be realistic I think Rebecca what sort of problems might a child have if if a parent is let's say too domineering about it you know puts you on the potty insists that you do something gets across if you don't or if parents start too late and what you would you consider too late?

Yeah it's a really good question I think if we if we just go back a little bit and if we think about other things that we do with babies like we use high chairs or we put them in a baby bath or we put them in a car seat and we don't really make a big deal out of any of those things you know we just we teach our babies that this is what happens in this place and that becomes completely normal to them and I think we can kind of approach potty pottying in the same way that we just kind of make it a normal part of their life and I think that that massively helps when it comes to potty training later on because obviously a very young baby is

not going to be able to manage without nappies on their own there's not as much independence possible until they're a bit older and generally it's kind of agreed from about 18 months and onwards that some independence can be can be had and I think if when you approach potty training from that point if they've already had the experience of of sitting on a potty and using a potty sometimes and the potty training process becomes much easier and that's quite important really because most people will start potty training when their child's a toddler and generally nowadays it's around two and a half to two and a half to three and that's really anyone with children will know yeah that's a really difficult time because children will be

very resistant to being told what to do. And so the more normal it already is for them, the easier that process is. Nothing worse than terrible twos from the potty, I suspect. Rebecca Mottram and Christina Hardiman, thank you very much indeed. And again, we would like to hear from you. What's been your method of training your children to the body and if you've tried this from birth elimination how did it go now still to come in today's program a reworking of thomas hardy's jude the obscure at the hamster theater in north london in the play

jude is a woman an immigrant from syria who longs to be educated at Oxford University. And the serial, of course, the penultimate episode of the readers of Broken Wheel recommend. Now, on Monday of next week, Tina Dehealy will be talking to a photographer whose work consists of pictures of women in toilets

in pubs and clubs in Manchester and Leeds. I know we're a bit toilety this morning, aren't we? But we would like to hear from you. What experiences have you had in the ladies, apart maybe from those common incidents when a conversation is struck up on the basis of why are the queues so long and why are there never enough cubicles?

Do get in touch, either email or tweet. Now, Glyndebourne, the opera house in the midst of the Sussex countryside is generally associated with musicians and singers from the international jet set and posh picnics in the summer sun. This weekend sees the world premiere of a choral work that's to be performed by a community choir of women and children trained by the staff at Blindbourne. It's to be staged at the Brighton Dome and celebrates the early years of becoming a parent. Most of the singers are mothers, grandmothers or women who would like to have children. Henrietta Harrison spoke to Sheila Hill who created the, and to three of the singers. Eye to Eye is a work about motherhood and childhood,

and it's told through two voices, the mother's voice and the child's voice. My voice starting midway through pregnancy from when I heard my son's heartbeat, And the child's voice is an edit of what my son said from when he started talking. So I ended up with these two parallel, distinct monologues, but that were both written in real time. And I've only allowed myself now, 20 years on, when I've edited the words into a libretto if you like to edit them but not to add anything only to take away. The first child's words are eye to eye, nose to nose, chin to chin, cheek to cheek.

And that was a game he played with me. You know, he'd put his forehead against mine and his nose against mine and chin. And it was very sweet. So those are his first words. And that's where the title comes from. So my name's Chris and I'm 57 years old and I'm a single parent of two girls who are 18 and 21 years old What was the audition like? Scary, absolutely terrifying

but I'm one of those people that although I'm really scared I don't show it there's always that kind of self-doubt around I'm not good enough, I shouldn't be here, I'm an imposter. And there was one very scared lady on my right-hand side whose legs were wobbling as she auditioned, which kind of helped a bit. It's good for me to have something that's a complete head shift, doing something completely different,

away from the world of supporting people with mental health problems. How did you come to bring the women together? What was the decision-making there? My dream was that, to begin with anyway, was that the children would be children of the mothers, so we'd have a mother and child chorus. I approached Glyndebourne, who agreed to take on the project to my utter delight, because till then I'd been thinking,

God, where do you find 100 women and children and teach them to sing? And Glyndebourne said they'd do that, which is incredible. But we decided to open it up because it's actually a universal work. It's about women who don't have children. Maybe they want children, maybe they don't. I wanted the work to be more broad spectrum so it was a work that touched all stages of life. I'm Heather, I'm 32, I'm a primary school teacher. A lot of the singers are mothers. How has that impacted on you because you're you're yet to be a mum I'd love to be a mum my husband and I are very much hoping to be parents and that's been a bit

of a journey for us I still feel very very welcome to be here Sheila has asked us all to emotionally connect to the project in whichever way we feel able so that when we're singing there's a real meaning and I guess an emotional connection behind what what we're singing and to make it sound more real so even though I'm not yet a mother I think the desire to be one means I have my own way of connecting to the words. You've had quite a tough journey trying to get pregnant and I know the singing can sometimes be quite emotional it can bring out some unexpected feelings have you found that at all when you've been rehearsing? Yeah there's a line that's repeated several times and I wanted a baby I wanted a baby and I wanted a baby. And, you know, I can really sing that with meaning. And I think singing has a way of helping you to work through things and express things. And I think infertility is so infrequently talked about.

People don't feel comfortable. I didn't feel comfortable talking about it for the first two or three years. And I think now I don't feel the need to hide it. So rather than shying away and pretending it's not happening, you know, every month, I feel like having words and music is always like a tool to help work through it. I wanted a baby. help work through it. Has this project brought up anything in particular for you because it's very specifically about motherhood isn't it in the early years? Yeah it definitely did and it caught me off guard a little bit because I think the pure nature of singing it you know has made

me kind of think about my parenting. I'm a single parent of two girls which I didn't anticipate I thought there'd be two of us doing that but circumstances were that I was left as a single parent quite shockingly at a time my daughter was unwell but it really made me think about the joy of the parenting there are highs and lows and I've got two just post-teenage daughters so you can imagine there's lots of highs and lows but I had great difficulty getting pregnant with my children and I still get that kind of shocking feeling about oh my goodness I've got these girls these girls are connected to me so when I'm singing this piece it's hugely meaningful I always thought I'd struggle more than I did I found a huge strength in myself and huge resilience when I became a parent and there's a quite strong history of sort of depression in my family and I wondered if I might do get depressed but I didn't and

kind of holds of instinct about how to do it kicked in and I think again it was around self-doubt thinking perhaps I wouldn't be good enough or I wouldn't be able to do it but actually I did and I love those two humans that you know I've been part of producing and I love what they bring to me even with all their trials and tribulations I wish they were singers though I wish they would sing they don't sing my name is Elaine I'm 49 and I'm a primary school teacher. My daughter has been involved in a couple of youth opera workshops and then the email came through about this and I thought, well, that'd be quite a nice opportunity to do something together.

And going to Glyndebourne, obviously, was a bit of a draw. What's she like in the production? I think she's quite quite still a little bit shy but then we had a rehearsal this morning where we were doing more of the movement and setting on stage and she came and stood next to me and held my hand

and then held my hand all the way through it which was lovely Does it make you feel quite emotional? I can't believe it, yeah It really does, yeah It's not often you get to hold your hand with a 13 year old daughter Emotional? I can't believe it, yeah. It really does, yeah. It's not often you get to hold your hand with a 13-year-old, you know, with a 13-year-old daughter,

because you are the most embarrassing thing in their life. Sing it like that. Really? Come on! Come on! Yes! Let's go! How old was she when you had the diagnosis? She was about six months old.

She has a rare chromosomal disorder called cat eye syndrome, or CES, but it can affect people in millions of different ways. So when she was very young, we didn't know the prognosis, they just don't know what can happen. It can be from not surviving to the end of pregnancy to you know just various odd things that can go wrong it's quite a fine balance isn't it when your child has got differences to to not let them be a victim to to continue to encourage them and how I suppose in a way this project is part of that yeah and perhaps I have been really trying to find the opportunities to give her lots of different support because, you know, academically she may not flourish.

And so perhaps I have been seeking other avenues that she can be successful in. And I'm wondering perhaps whether this is one of them. I'm hoping perhaps is. Are there any moments in the production that particularly resonate with you? Any of the language that you particularly like? Yeah, the bit where I can't keep myself together. I want to cry. There is a phrase where it says, I wanted you walking. Oh, that's hard. I wanted you walking. I wanted you walking.

I wanted you walking. Because there were times when I thought, she's just took longer than everybody else. And you can see, it's a horrible thing when you compare your child to other children and when they're not meeting those milestones, which lots of children don't, but it can be quite hard. And so that's the bit that really gets me. I wanted you walking. I wanted you talking.

You don't want to rush them, but you just... God, I want you to get there. I want you to be able to do these things. I'd like to think that in some way, shape or form, I will get there eventually. I don't feel like this is it, that I won't be a mother. Yeah, maybe there are pros and cons with being involved in the project I think the pros are making it really worthwhile for me and in this

waiting stage to be a mother I don't want to just wait and put my life on hold this feels like such a big opportunity to grasp it feels a special thing to be part of. Heather, Chris and Elaine on Eye to Eye, which will be performed at the Brighton Dome as part of the Brighton Festival. Now Jude the Obscure is one of the most painful novels ever written. Jude is a working class young man who teaches himself the basics of a classical education. He longs to go to Christminster, Hardy's code for Oxford, has an unsuccessful love life, and tragedy befalls his children. Howard Brenton has reworked the story for the theatre in a play called Jude. Here, Jude is female and a Syrian refugee.

She, too, has taught herself the classics Has a particular fondness for Euripides Longs to study at Oxford And has an equally unsatisfactory romantic life You asked my aunt if I could marry you I've looked into it She's your guardian, right? Nearest to kin

Need her permission, don't we? I mean, 16, ain't ya? Am I? Anyway, ain't it the right thing to ask me first? Well, yeah, but... But what? But we sort of know, don't we? Do we?

I mean, the sex being so great. What's the sex got to do with it? Oh, come on. You and me, we're naturals. Naturals for what? Stuff. Stuff? Life. Together. for what? Stuff. Stuff? Life. Together.

Oh, that stuff. What did my aunt say then? I didn't get the words out right. You don't with her. She made me feel stupid. Join the club. Well, sod her. We'll do it anyway.

Yeah? Little thing lover. Still you hadn't actually asked me. Oh, no, Roy. Well, here. Will you marry me? No bloody way. Luke McGregor as Jack and Isabella Nafar as Jude. Isabella joins us together with Dr Karen Curler, editor of the Thomas Hardy Journal and lecturer in 19th century literature at Bangor University. Karen, why are you so passionately fond of

Jude the Obscure? God, where do I start? Probably I have a taste for misery. There's a moment in Jude the Obscure quite early on where he's trying to learn Latin and Greek and he's finding it really difficult and he's reading these books and the narrator says if the world was a better place somebody would come now and cheer him up and say you know actually you're doing really well you're probably advanced of the person who wrote this book you've got the right ideas but nobody did come because nobody does. And it's a sort of profoundly bleak, but also sort of surreal view. Nobody does come in those instances. There's no sort of magical intervention. And I think that's one of the things that has struck so profoundly with me about this novel and stuck with me for

years. So I just keep on reading it and rereading it and I can't stop thinking about it. Isabella, how familiar were you with Hardy's story when you were asked to play a modern Jude? When I was given the role, the first thing I did, I went to read the Iliad and the Greek tragedy. So I wasn't really familiar with Thomas Hardy's Jude. Why were you more interested in the Greeks than you were in Harvey? Because I was trying to understand why is Jude so passionate about Iliad and Euripides and the best way for me was to read this poem. How, Karen, does the new Jude work for you as a story of inequality in 21st century education? Because, of course, that was the problem that the original Jude had. Yes, I've been thinking about this a lot.

And I think sort of one of the problems of adapting Jude the Obscure for the 21st century is how profoundly conditions actually have changed. I mean, I'm not saying that the plot of Jude the Obscure doesn't sort of make kind of sense in the 21st century. There are plenty of working class boys who can't get into Oxford for structural reasons. But ultimately, if you want to read a novel or see a story, see a play, engage with the story of a working class boy who can't go to Oxford, maybe read Jude the Obscure. That's probably the best story about that. Sometimes the 19th century novel is the best commentary on the 21st century. But what I thought was really interesting about the new Jude, about Brenton's Jude, is that it sort of creates a different scenario because it has to, because there wouldn't be an inevitability to a working class boy not getting into Oxford. And I think

that's the brilliant thing about Jude the Obscure. There's lots of moments where we think, or Jude thinks, you know, I could have gotten into Oxford if I hadn't married at the wrong moment, or if I hadn't been drinking at the wrong moment, if I hadn't made that mistake. But actually, we as readers and Hardy as an author and the narrator, we all know Jude was never going to get into Oxford. But now somebody like Jude could get into Oxford. So you have to change the story. You have to change the parameters. You have to create a different set of circumstances.

Yes, Isabella, your Jude starts out as a cleaner. She's a refugee. She meets an academic. She thinks, yes, she can get into Oxford. But what does Oxford mean for your Jude? Something her father, who is now dead, had hoped for her? Yes, it's her father's dream. But it's also a place where she can get access to all this ancient texts, and she can read them and she can translate them. And it's also a place

where she can meet all this intellectual people and where she can share them. And it's also a place where she can meet all these intellectual people where she can share her ideas and her imagery, her discoveries. And it's also a place where she can eventually change her life and not be a cleaner anymore. The ghost of Euripides appears throughout the play from time to time. What was Brenton's intention in making him a character? I think Euripides is like Jude's voice. He appears when she's about to give up. He reminds her her journey and he reminds her that she doesn't have to stop. She doesn't have

to wake up from her dream. She has to keep working hard. She doesn't have to stop. She doesn't have to wake up from her dream. She has to keep working hard. She doesn't have to let anyone stop her from her dream. And it's a very interesting relationship they have because there's an intellectual understanding. They speak poetically together and sometimes they speak very humanly together. Karen, there are parallels in the idea of inappropriate marriage in Hardy's Jude and in Brenton's Jude. What was Hardy's message in Jude the Obscure about his disastrous love life? I mean, I wouldn't want to pretend that I know what Hardy's intention was. And Hardy certainly always denied having a kind of coherent message. He always said that Jude Lipsky was a series of seemings, an incoherent series of seemings. But of course, Hardy's love life wasn't the most successful. He was alienated from his first wife, Emma Gifford, Emma Hardy. Jude didn't help with that because she was very religious and Jude is quite critical of religion. So that further alienated the two.

But ultimately, I think what Hardy says about marriage is that it's profoundly flawed as an institution in the 19th century because it's permanent and human feelings, sexual passion and so on and on. So that's, I think, why I quite like the clip where he's saying, you know, the sex is so great, so we must get married and that will sort us out for life. And Hardy would say, well, actually, you might find that that sort of thing changes, but you can't get out of marriage so easily.

But as it turns out in the novel, people kind of can. But what I thought was interesting as well was that both the text and the play introduce external reasons why marriage becomes necessary. So in the original play, it's of course getting married because of illegitimate children or sexual impropriety, the taint of having out-of-wedlock sexual relations. But in the play, it becomes immigration and the status, the leave to remain, that makes marriage a sort of necessity.

So that was quite striking. What do you imagine, Isabella, happens to your Jude after the end of the play? Where does she go? She leaves. She says she embraces the fact that she's tainted, that she's the hated foreigner, that she's not accepted. And she leaves, and the play ends with her being a fighter again

and she never despairs. The new Jude is a Syrian refugee, as I said, Karen. What have your students answered to the question that you have put to them of how they would update Hardy's story? So I don't actually necessarily ask them to just specifically update Hardy's story? So I don't actually necessarily ask them to just specifically update Hardy's story. I do teach a module at Bangor University called Neo-Victorian Fictions,

where one of the assignments asks students to respond to 19th century fictions more broadly, but it doesn't have to be Jude the Obscure. I imagine if I did ask my students, they would probably ask the question why Jude is so obsessed with Oxford

I think that would be a really interesting question because of course in the 19th century, Jude the Obscure this character he doesn't have that much choice there aren't many universities apart from in Scotland and Oxford and Cambridge if he wants an education

Oxford becomes the obsession but why are we as a society still so obsessed with Oxford? I imagine that that's how they would respond. But of course, their students are banker. I was talking to Dr. Karen Curler and Isabella Nafar. Lots from you on going away with friends. Charlotte Lincoln said, loving the piece about going away with your girlfriends. I'm about to go away for the first time ever with my two friends who've been with me since childhood we're celebrating our 50th I will be myself among friends and I can't wait Emma Dixon said wow listening to women's

hour on girls trips alcohol plays a pivotal role and the woman can't imagine a trip without it we really are a nation of functioning alcoholics aren't we cook with josie said i'm off with six school friends to york to celebrate our 50th birthday we've been saving 10 pounds a month each for several years in a special birthday fund. First stop is a tattoo. First one for all of us. Susan said, I've spent a weekend away with girlfriends since the beginning of the millennium. It started as a walking weekend

to raise money for the primary school that all our children attended here in Cambridge, went into walking in various beautiful parts of the country and has now evolved into city breaks as our disposable income has increased. There are a steady 10 members of the group and we share everything equally. Sometimes this includes the beds. We're all in our 50s and 60s and this annual event is planned early in the year, although we don't go away until October.

That's how much we look forward to it. We would highly recommend this special time with like-minded female friends and ours is not based on alcohol, just spending time together. And Lowry said, the belief that women and girls have somewhat catty relationships is pretty widespread. That's never been my experience. I have a great group of girlfriends. Seven of us went interrailing across Europe for more than four weeks together. We all have a great bond and warm, genuine and honest friendships, but this doesn't mean we're prone to bickering or sulking. We haven't argued once. And Annie said I shared a flat in Brighton very happily for a year in 1978-79 with two women studying at Sussex University while I was doing my foundation year

in art at Brighton Poly. At the end of the year we decided to go on a month's inter-rail holiday together as we'd so much enjoyed living together. The holiday didn't go well and we fell out, quite literally peeling off and taking different trains back to the UK. I've long wanted to get in touch with the two women, Lucy and Christina, though don't remember and can't find anything with their surnames on. Well, maybe they're listening and they'll get in touch with us and we can pass them on. And then on potty training, Jennifer said, I've just had the introduction to the programme about

the new idea of potty training. There's nothing new about this. I was potty trained from birth 73 years ago and my three children, now 53, 52 and 43, were potty trained in the same way, being held over a potty immediately after a feed with total success. And then Dr Pragya Agarwal said, So much pressure to potty train as if it's some sort of measure of our ability as parents. I've been putting it off and hoping that it would just happen one day miraculously for my twins, but we do have to understand that all kids are different. Leslie said I enjoyed your potty training chat today. I had my eldest in cloth nappies and found potty training a long

and arduous process. I decided to do baby pottying with my new baby. She's now three months and we're loving it. It's so satisfying when we catch something in the potty. Well, thanks for all your responses to today's programme. Don't forget, we always love to hear from you, either on Twitter or indeed on the email. Tomorrow, I'll be talking to two travel writers, Cathy Kamleitner and Gail Simmons, about the joys of hiking alone as a woman. Have you been hiking on your own? We'd love to hear your rambling stories. You can tweet or email us in the usual way. Join me tomorrow, two minutes past ten if you can.

Bye-bye. Beyond Today is the daily podcast from Radio 4. It asks one big question about one big story in the news and beyond. I'm Tina Dehealy. I'm Matthew Price. And along with a team of curious producers, we are searching for answers that change the way we see the world. Subscribe to us on BBC Sounds.

And join in on the hashtag Beyond Today. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was 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. Available now.