Why do we still love Jane Austen’s novels 250 years later? What makes her stories continue to inspire readers and creators today? And if Jane were alive now, which book would you recommend she read?
In this special episode, recorded at Jane Austen’s family home in Alton, host Rhianna Dhillon is joined by Miss Austen author and president of the Jane Austen Society, Gill Hornby, alongside author and creator of the West End show Austentatious Andrew Hunter Murray, to explore Austen’s legacy and provide some regency-inspired book recommendations.
If you have been inspired by this episode then you can visit Jane Austen's House in Alton or join one of their vitural events to learn more about the author.
Listen to the episode and subscribe to Ask Penguin wherever you get your podcasts.
Books recommended in this episode
Episode Transcript
Rhianna Dhillon:
Hello and welcome to this very exciting, very special episode of Ask Penguin, the podcast all about books and the authors who write them. I'm Rihanna Dillon. Now, normally we record from the Penguin Studio in London, but in this episode, I'm so thrilled to say that I'm coming to you from Jane Austen's actual drawing room at her family home in Hampshire to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth. Now, I'm sure that most people listening love Jane Austen as much as we do here at Penguin. The word iconic is thrown around an awful lot, but we really want to delve into why her work is still adapted, talked about, loved 250 years after her birth, especially considering a Canon only consists of six full length novels. What is it about the Mr. Darcy archetype that we still measure heroes by? And why is that letter writing seen in persuasion, the most romantic things ever been written?
I'm joined by returning guest Jill Hornby, author of many books, including The Elopement, as well as Sunday Times Bestsellers, God, mission Park, and Ms. Austin, the latter of which was turned into a four-part BBC adaptation. And he's also the president of the Jane Austin Society, who better to speak to at Jane Austen's house. I'm also joined by writer, broadcaster and comedian Andrew Hunter Murray, and he's the co-host of the award-winning podcast, no such thing as a fish and author of the Last Day, A Sunday Times Bestseller, as well as the Sanctuary and a Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering. Andy studied Jane Austen at uni and has spent 10 years performing in the improv group. Ostentatious. Thank you both so much for being here. Honestly, I couldn't have asked for better guests given where we're all sitting, which is in the drawing room a very vibrant, gorgeous yellow colour and the place where Jane wrote practised piano and even read aloud from the very first copy of Pride and Prejudice. So how are you both, and how does it feel to be in Jane Austen's drawing room?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
It feels terrific, feels it's all been leading to this,
Rhianna Dhillon:
Everything in your life. Jill, obviously Jane is such a huge part of your life anyway. I imagine you're very familiar with the house.
Gill Hornby:
Yes, I've been here really quite a lot and I do appreciate it. I think it is one of the best museums that we've got. I mean, you come in here and you can feel her, you can feel both of them, I think Jane and Cassandra, and really sense their lives together. And it's just the way it's so perfectly intact is just wonderful.
Rhianna Dhillon:
What stands out to you, Andrew, coming here looking around?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Gosh, I mean, well, a couple of things stand out. One is the individual exhibits that give you a sense of their lives. So for example, their donkey cart, which was here last time I came here, I haven't checked this time, I
Rhianna Dhillon:
Haven't seen a donkey cart. It's
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Great, but it gives you a sense of how extremely rural their life here was. And when you look in the garden, you're reading about what they were making. I mean, they weren't making their own jams for fun. They were making their own preserves and things for sustenance, and that adds a dimension to what you might think or know about Jane's life. Yeah.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So I want to start by asking why do you keep returning to Jane and her work and what is it about her that you've always loved and will continue to love forever?
Gill Hornby:
Well, I think she's probably the best line by line writer we've ever had. I mean, if there's anybody who can turn a phrase, it's her. The combination of wisdom and comedy I think is really quite unusual and accounts for so much of her longevity, really, the fact that we can still laugh at jokes that she was making in the early part of the 19th century. We don't laugh at many other classical writers. That's true jokes, but those are absolutely timeless and just families are so endlessly interesting as she knew. So there's always something going on, but the more you read them, the more you get out of them, and the more you just watch the screen adaptations, the less I think is a very important point. And you can read them once and really have a great time enjoying the romantic comedy, and you can read them again and find all of the other women who aren't so lucky, littered by the wayside of the heroine's journey. And those are the people she was really talking about, I think. And so to interrogate the text like that is endlessly rewarding.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
I mean, I think Joe's absolutely right about the comedy. Most comedy goes off faster than other forms of fiction or drama or whatever you want. It's hard to laugh. Please don't commit me with the comments Shakespeare's scholars, but it's hard to laugh seriously and honestly at
Gill Hornby:
His comedy, at the
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Comedy. And there's lots of funny stuff in there, but just it's time. It's time in the way language changes. And so that is extraordinary. I think I first came to Austin, we had quite an enlightened English teacher who with a classroom full of boys said, I think we'll be reading Emma now. And he was absolutely right, and that stayed with me from then on. The other thing that you don't get in the adaptations is the narrator's voice. It is very hard to communicate the narrator's voice. Especially in a film that might be under two hours long. It's just impossible to do. And that is the real comic motor. It's Austin herself or Austin's narrator, just observing things along the way, and that's key. Another great comic writers, PG Woodhouse. So much of that is in the narration, whether that's Birdie with or someone else.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yes, that's such a good point. So with Emma, so that was your first introduction to Jane's work. Does it continue to be a favourite of yours, or do you have other favourites now that you've uncovered more?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
I think it's my least favourite now, actually. It's my
Gill Hornby:
Favourite. Is it your favourite, Jill?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
There's something about it. He wasn't
Gill Hornby:
That good an English teacher, then
Andrew Hunter Murray:
He opened the door and I've walked through two other words.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So what is your
Gill Hornby:
Favourite?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
It's very hard to say if you say pride and prejudice, everyone thinks you're like a,
Rhianna Dhillon:
Don't worry about what other people think.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Sort of goal handed and Glory Hunter. But
Gill Hornby:
I'll people say it
Rhianna Dhillon:
Because it's a brilliant
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Book. Yes. Yeah. I think it's hard to cap.
Gill Hornby:
I
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Think it's hard to cap. I think Persuasion does kind of manage it. She's only got six. Let's keep talking about all of the others. But I mean, I'm a big supporter of Mansfield Park. Everyone's a lot of people's least favourite.
Gill Hornby:
North Hanger Abbey is
Rhianna Dhillon:
Everyone least
Gill Hornby:
Favourite. North Northanger Abbey
Rhianna Dhillon:
Absolutely is. Just while we're on North Hanger Abbey. Why do you think it is? Is it because she was trying something different? Because it was the thing that everybody else was doing. She was
Gill Hornby:
Being modish. She was trying to get published. It's like all the people now writing copycat novels. One person has a huge hit, say with something like Cosy Crime, for example, and 95 other people do it. And she was on a kind of similar, it was her first published book. She was doing something kind of trendy and modish and it means nothing to us.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Interesting. Do you think that she moved the gothic on in any meaningful way?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Well, she was taking the Mickey out of the Gothic, wasn't she? I mean, she was a little demolition job,
Gill Hornby:
Wasn't it? And the trouble is, when she wrote it and it was accepted for publication, which was in the first decade of the 19th century, it was quite kind of cutting. By the time it actually came out after her death, the whole thing was dead and buried because it was just a trend. And so it never really hit its mark, I think, of finding the right audience.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Do you have, I mean, I'm sorry, I know I'm asking very basic questions, but just to lay some of the groundwork, what are your favourite characters in Jane Austen's work?
Gill Hornby:
Well, my favourite hero is Mr. Knightly. I think he's the, she's quite ready to give flaws to all of her heroes. I mean, none of them is perfect. They're all rich, so that's nice. But none of them has a completely perfect character. But I think Knightly comes nearest, and I just find him unbelievably sexy and the way he changes Emma, whereas in the rest of the novels, it's up to the heroine to change the hero. I find it very attractive. I've got a lot of time for Emma because she does develop and she does save herself, and that's terrific. And then, well, another person I'm on a slight hobby horse about is Mrs. Bennett, who I think is the heroine of pride and prejudice and is constantly played as an idiot in every adaptation.
And there's a big problem at the beginning of the novel. She's got five unmarried daughters. The problem is solved at the end of the novel. She's sorted it, fish b bash, she is the heroine. But because of the appalling sort of skewering, I think in every adaptation, Mr. Bennett I think is a bit of a villain. He's feckless, he's a bad husband, he's an irresponsible father. And talking about this interrogation in the opening chapter, he talks down to Mrs. Bennett and she does say DAF things. Fair enough. She does say DAF things, but he's talking down to her. And we'd rather take his estimation of her and presume, because he's talking down to he's clever, and we presume because he spends the whole time in the library that he’s clever. But if he was actually doing anything in the library, Jane would tell us what it was. If he was writing the mythologies or something similar, then she'd tell us that. But actually, if you look at it, she doesn't. And what he's doing in there is shirking. He's getting away from the family who's his responsibility as much as hers, and he's doing absolutely nothing about anything. So Mrs. Bennett,
Andrew Hunter Murray:
I think that's fair. I do think that's fair. When you first read it, you side with Mr. Bennett, because you think
Gill Hornby:
Totally,
Andrew Hunter Murray:
He's married this Muppet, and what you realise later on is that he married young out of lust.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yes, exactly. Oh, for sure. And now regrets the fact that he's got five daughters and can't really find a way out of the cacophony,
Andrew Hunter Murray:
But he doesn't act
Rhianna Dhillon:
Amount
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Of action unlike Captain Wentworth.
Gill Hornby:
Yeah, God,
Andrew Hunter Murray:
He's the business.
Gill Hornby:
But the thing about is so interesting, Austin, because she's always throwing dust in your eye as a reader so that Mr. Bennett's got two of the best lines in the English language. So you immediately fall for him. You go weaker than knees, and that distracts from the fact that he is just a very factless individual.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah. What about minor characters? I have to say, I think Mr. Collins is one of the most brilliant non-violent villains that we have in
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Literature. Yes.
Rhianna Dhillon:
He's so entertaining. He's so funny. He's such a great reference point. He's such a great lead in for all of these other characters to have to react to. So what are your favourite minor characters or part of the ensemble?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Austin does something brilliant with her heroines, and then I think of Austin novels as like there's an iron ball at the core, who's the heroine? And you're allowed the most interiority with her. Then surrounding that, you've got a slightly softer, let's say a mahogany layer. I dunno where I'm going with this, but the characters closest to the heroine. People like Jane Bennett, for example, closest to Lizzie are given a little more personality than rather more real. And then in the orbit of that, you get the really off the wall characters who, because they're only infra scene or two are allowed to be a bit more out there. Your lady, Catherine de Bergs, your Aunt Norris is in Mansfield Park. I mean, she's genuine, like she's horrendous. She's villainous
Rhianna Dhillon:
Brilliant.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
So all of I'm drawn to those characters. And in Emma the elderly, is it Ms. Bates? Ms. Bates.
Gill Hornby:
And Ms. Bates is a fabulous
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Character who just, when she appears, she just talks solidly for two pages.
Gill Hornby:
And we all know a Ms. Bates does, but she's also the sort of moral centre of the book because it's by insulting her that Emma goes through this massive personal crisis because she should be respected. And then in persuasion, there's Mrs. Smith, who'd been Anne's school friend and had married, well, married, a rich man. They both had money. They loved each other, had a wonderful time. They lost their money. Her husband died, she became disabled. She's suddenly living in one room in Bath. She's confined with one servant visiting once a day with some food. And the rest of the time she's making jewellery as long as she's got eyes to see to pay for that. And that's just a tiny little thumbnail sketch. But that's really what her books are about. These women who don't make it.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Are there any things that you feel like people really should know about her or any sort of myths that you'd like to bust about Jane Austen?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
She gets written up as a kind of girl boss. Oh God, I think every age has imposed its own values on Austin and made her into her for those values. So in the Victorian area, when her family was still knocking about and writing had geographies of her and saying she was so wonderful. She was so sweet and alighting a whole chunk of her writing and all the really unkind bits, the best. And now we have Austin Boss business bitch, which he wasn't. And I think it's really hard to see people clearly, I mean, look, this house we're in is fundamentally rural. One of the best books about Austin that I've read is called Jane Austen's Country Life, which is really about the way that people lived in 1814. And it's very hard to see, or her religious life, which is another huge side of her character and personality. And the books contain a strong streak of religiosity, which has expressed more in some heroines and less in others Fannie price at one end of the scale than probably Emma at the other. So it's very hard to see her clearly, and I think we're always going to be slightly dealing with a tide of people using Austin or portraying what they want through Austin.
Gill Hornby:
Yes, that's a
Rhianna Dhillon:
Very good point,
Gill Hornby:
Jill. Well, I think, I mean, that was Cassandra's stroke of genius really by burning so much evidence and so on, is that she is a bit of a clean slave. So she can be whatever, all things to all people like God and Shakespeare, and we can just decide who she is. But I think the thing that really upsets me is the poor spinster thing, and how did she write about love when she didn't know love and all this stuff. Whereas if she hadn't been a spinster, she wouldn't have written any books, would she? Because she wouldn't have had time. She would be dead in childbirth pretty sharply, and she'd have been bringing up children running a household making jam. There would've been nothing more than a letter. And the idea that Paul Spinster was the sort of ultimate failure because of her books, the Triumph is the ending at the altar in all of the books. The truth is that way below half of women in Georgia and England got married way below below 40%.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I
Gill Hornby:
Didn't
Rhianna Dhillon:
Know that
Gill Hornby:
There was a war on. There weren't any men. And also there were so many reasons not to get married. 19th century marriage wasn't a great business, and you married, often married a stranger. You look at family trees and you think, God, they all is marrying their first cousin. Well, at least they knew him. They knew their first cousin and they knew his parents, and they knew where he lived and stuff. They weren't just suddenly carted off to say DHA miles away from their sisters and parents. So there were lots of reasons not to get married and lots of reasons why women didn't get married. And so it wasn't unusual to have a household like this, although it's a really nice house, this, it's always called Jane Austen's cottage. I think a modern estate agent would call it a house, which it is. We've got what, five bedrooms and four reception rooms.
Gill Hornby:
That’s pretty bloody big. It's full scale, but it is spacious. And they lived here, the four of them, her mom, Jane Cassandra, and their best friend, Martha Lloyd. I mean, it's heaven, absolute, the best possible happy ending Jane Austin could have had was here. She never did fall in love with a man. But the pity people feel for her for not having obviously been so obsessed with romance, which I don't think she was at all. I think they are devices, the romances completely. That's what novels were in those days. They were romances. So you didn't write a novel without a love story in it.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
There was a film wasn't there, which was about Jane Austen's, and it was becoming Jane. Becoming Jane. That's the one
Rhianna Dhillon:
About with Tom La Freud.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
And they don't have much to go on, basically.
Gill Hornby:
I mean, that was literal,
Rhianna Dhillon:
Did cast an
Gill Hornby:
American as Jane, which is their first mistake, literal four days, that romance, it was four days she was 17. It was like going to centre parks, meeting someone in the flumes and thinking you're going to marry him. And now there's all, we've all been there, whole industry, you know what I mean? Yeah. It was just nonsense. So I don't think she wanted to get married. I don't think she ever met anyone she wanted to marry and she wanted to write her books. She was a serious about writing her books. So I think what needs dispelling,
Rhianna Dhillon:
That's a great argument for dispelling that. Although I'm quite happy that we got another James McAvoy film out of it.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
He played Jane. Wow. Casting
Rhianna Dhillon:
Like it. So Andy, we went to see Ostentatious as a team, a penguin team earlier this week just to get in the mood. I saw you in it years ago. Tell us about Ostentatious and how it came about, how you were inspired by Jane.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Wow. I did a lot of improvised comedy at university, and after uni, a few of my friends and I, we'd moved to London. We wanted to keep doing improvised comedy, and a couple of us had studied Jane Austen University with sort of a special detail. And so we thought a long form show where we're imagining that Austin didn't write six novels. She wrote four or 500, and these are coming to light. It's like a very slapdash, lazy version of chills, brilliant novels. And so you get the audience pitching things like Mansfield Shark or Bath to the Future.
Rhianna Dhillon:
We saw the Thursday afternoon Tea Club, which is a mashup of Jane Austen and original Osmond.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
There you go.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I saw Kitty Bennett's gap. Ya, that's very good.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
And so the idea is that you get a cast and you present 'em with a title, and it's in the world of Austin, it's in that universe, and you just see where it goes and it goes. It was so much fun to do. I spent about 10 years in it. I've left now, but the rest of them are still going very strong. They're in the West End every week, I think. And they're on tour all the time. And it sometimes can go, I mean, if you get given the title as we once did, Godzilla versus Mega Darcy, you know you're going in a particular direction and
Rhianna Dhillon:
Which direction did that take?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
You we're in Tokyo and we're in Tokyo. But the challenge with that show is to preserve even a tiny grain of the Austin. And we were part of a global mega industry of piggybacking on poor Jane's intellectual property. But the challenge, or the challenge and the fun of it was finding a bit of genuine emotion, a bit of genuine drama inside that. It's a very silly show. You've got lots more of those peripheral orbiting characters in that, but you try and find something real in the middle of it.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Jill, you talked about what we might have lost in some of the adaptations, but what do you think are the best cultural contributions or traditions that have upheld Jane storytelling?
Gill Hornby:
Oh, well, I think the Emma Thompson sense of sensibility is probably the best by far. And obviously the Andrew Davis Pride and Prejudice clueless, I think is pretty perfect. Yes. And again, that's another example of why we're all still reading her and so on, because not many authors can have their works, adapt, their English rural works adapted to Beverly Hills or wherever she is in Ulu. And it works perfectly, completely perfectly. So I do like that one. Yeah.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Is that because it's all about First Romance? I mean, they're all either in their teens or just out of their teens in the novels, aren't they? So it is that
Gill Hornby:
Kind apart. Yes.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Right. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah.
Gill Hornby:
I think it's because it's about gossips and mean girls and that sort of thing, female society. I think that's why it works so well.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
This was
Gill Hornby:
My
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Semi thesis. This was my sort of at the end of, because I studied here for term at uni, the main thing I was trying to write about was the difference between manners and morals in Austin, which are different things.
Gill Hornby:
Oh, very much.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
You have people who observe the forms of behaviour but are not behaving in a moral way. And you have the reverse. You have people who aren't moral, but might break the rules, but these sort of surface rules and what's the tension between those two? And that's a big thing for Austin is
Gill Hornby:
Yeah. And it's a huge thing in Emma. Absolutely. It is. What Emma's all about
Rhianna Dhillon:
That sounds better than my dissertation on Jane Austen, which was just the men of Jane Austen. I had an obsession. I stuck with it as you just you talking about that first love. Because nowadays when we're talking about romances, there are all these tropes that we talk about, the Enemies to lovers or Second Chance or friends to lovers. And actually these are all present in Austin's novels, each of them. So can you talk about how she sort of uses different forms of relationships to identify each of her classics?
Gill Hornby:
Yes. Well, I mean, each novel goes through a different trope, I suppose, how original she was in dealing with those. I don't really know. But as I say, I really don't think the romances are her principle propulsion in writing. I think they are books as far as she's concerned about class and society and the position of women and the family much more important to her than the romances. But yeah, certainly with Pride and Prejudice, it's taken as a blueprint, although it can hardly be a blueprint of, no, she can't have been the first, no, no, not at
Rhianna Dhillon:
All. But the one that
Gill Hornby:
People always reference where she is, the first I think is with the character of Emma, and I love to think of her writing Emma, because she'd been here now in this cottage a few years. When she first got here, she'd been carrying around the draughts of Pride and Prejudice and Sense Sensibility with her on her while she was of No Fixed Abo for four years. And then she got here and she got them out, and she prepared Sense and Sensibility for publication and then Pride and Prejudice. And then she wrote Mansfield Park, and then she sat right down to write Emma, and it was 1815. And she felt, well, she felt terrific. And she'd been in her own house for four years. She was a published author for a little girl like her, a little woman like her to be a published author. Amazing. And she sat down and decided the rest of the books were imitative. But with Emma, she decided to blow the walls off the whole novel form. And you talked about the narrator's voice, and she puts that away in Emma. And the narrator's voice is inside Emma's head.
Now, this is second nature now to all writers and readers, but that was the first time it was done. There's free and direct style. So you start Emma, and we're trotting along in Emma's head saying absolutely the whole world from Emma's point of view. And we think, oh, of course she's lovely. She's a lovely aunt, she's a very good daughter. And it's not until we're nearly halfway through when she really trips up and we go, whoa, Emma, hang on. Totally. This is not okay, as my children would say. And that is so revolutionary. And I don't think the romance with Mr. Knightly is particularly revolutionary. And it is in fact, in many ways, quite dodgy. Like all of those nineties, he'd known her since The Cradle.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Yeah,
Gill Hornby:
Bit grim. Yeah, that kind of stuff. But the characterization is where the revolutionary,
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah, we've talked about her wit comes up so often, and I think you really see that through her dialogue particularly. So can you talk a bit about what you think make the conversation so special? And Sparky?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
There is something that, for example, Dickens later picked up on really well, just every character having a very clear speaking style, whether that's, as we were saying, Ms. Bates, or whether it's Mr. Bennett being a lot more laconic or whoever it might be, you can be presented with a speech and you'll know who said it even without any context. And that is something that Dickens picks up on really well. I mean, he does it in a slightly more cartoonish way, but that I think was another thing that she was innovating as she went along.
Gill Hornby:
Yeah, she was. And
We, not everyone can do it. It's quite interesting. Another person who we might as well mention because she's not irrelevant, and we lost her any yesterday as Jill Cooper, who's absolutely brilliant at that, of having 50 characters. And she said, you've just got to give everybody one thing. Like one's got very red nail polish all the time, and then the mind remembers that reader's mind, and you can disentangle everybody as you go through. And Jane does it with idiom and a manner of speech, absolutely brilliantly. I mean, we're quite hazy about what any of them look like. She doesn't really go massively into description at all. So all we've got, in fact, their speech to distinguish them.
Rhianna Dhillon:
How do you think that she approaches the clergy? Because you sort of think you take one character as so ridiculous, and then you take another, and he's very well respected, and there's definitely, I guess a huge amount of respect that she writes about them, but she's not completely tied to it. So how does religion, the clergy, how did that impact her writing and her characterization?
Gill Hornby:
Well, she was a rector's daughter, of course, and Mr. Austin, George Austin was of the very fine Church of England tradition, which was starting to fall away as she was writing. And there was the rise of evangelicals, which everybody was very nervous about. Methodism starting up, congregations declining all the rest of it. Her faith was absolutely unwavering. And she was essentially a Christian woman. That's who she was. And they were brought up in a very Christian household. But there's a difference between God and the church and the established church. She had plenty of arguments with.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Interesting. So we've talked a little bit about the different types of romantic relationships, but what do you think about the power dynamics between the inver comms, the romantic heroes, and then the heroines? Do you think that that changes across her writing at all?
Gill Hornby:
It does change. I mean, in North Hanger, Abby, it's a very adolescent
Rhianna Dhillon:
Relationship.
Gill Hornby:
But this is where Pride and Prejudice is, I think an incredibly important book. It's not just that darcey changes, but the Lizzie changes him. The fact that Darcy even looks at Lizzie, which IRL as young people say, I don't think probably would've happened because she doesn't have a penny to her name. And really, I think the 1813 Metre would've appreciated the fact that she really should have married Mr. Collins because by marrying Mr. Collins, her mother and her four sisters would be safe. And that's a very small price to pay. That would've been the family's view for the safety of everybody else. The idea that Darcy would marry this person who has absolutely no money and isn't going to, he can fall in love with her, that's completely different. But marry somebody who isn't going to enhance the estate, enhance the name, bring social capital or economic capital, is quite unlikely. The idea that she turned him down the first time is off into the realms of total fantasy. And then that moment when he says the first proposal, well, of course you're absolutely your common as mucking, your family's ghastly, but for some reason you've been bewitched me. So you can be my wife if you want. And she says something like, you are a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. Thus far we are equal.
Huge. Absolutely huge. It's so revolutionary.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And do you think she was right
Gill Hornby:
In that? Not technically, no. I mean, there are, right? Technically, here's only a gentleman. Everybody's somehow got ply confused with Chatsworth, which I don't think it was. He is a gentleman, but she was a lady and she was a gentleman's daughter who had absolutely not a bean. So no, not really, but morally, morally morals and manners, morally she is his equal. And that's what she's saying.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
I do wonder if that relationship changes with, for example, Anna Elliot and Captain Wentworth
Gill Hornby:
When
Andrew Hunter Murray:
He's writing to her by the end of it, beseeching her, and she has slightly decided to wash her hands of the whole thing because she's not had that indication from him. And then of course, there's a letter,
Rhianna Dhillon:
That letter writing scene is one of the best, most romantic, sweeping, sexiest sexual tension filled scenes of anything I've ever read. It's my favourite moment,
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Half agony, half hope, so good.
Gill Hornby:
And she changes everything, not by being bolshy and outspoken like Lizzie, but by her quiet strength of character and just carrying on regardless and getting this increased respect from everybody.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
She's had the chance for what would've been, I presume, a much more equal marriage when he wasn't Captain Wentworth. He was just young Frederick Wentworth going off to see. He hadn't made his name. He hadn't made any money yet. And now things have changed drastically.
Gill Hornby:
Remember, she's a baronet's daughter.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Oh, yeah. But he's useless.
Gill Hornby:
No,
Andrew Hunter Murray:
But no, no. I know
Gill Hornby:
He's an Bain man, but yes, he's still a par. No, I mean, I think that's why she was prevailed upon not to do it because he wasn't posh enough.
Rhianna Dhillon:
But Eleanor also has that sort of quietness, which Marianne dismisses her for that being almost like a martyr or sacrificing her happiness, not speaking up. And even in the house upstairs, there was a, which Jane Austen character do you think you'll most like? And there was a lot of Elizabeth of course, and there were a lot of Eleanor's. There weren't that many Annes. And there's that line about her having lost her bloom very early on at the arrive old age of 27. And yet she is such a wonderful heroine. But why do you think that she hasn't maybe cut through quite in the same way as Eleanor and Lizzie?
Gill Hornby:
She's very quiet and a lot more put upon than most modern women.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Yeah, I really like what you said earlier, Jill, about this. The root to salvation for all the heroines is eventually a marriage despite Austin in her own life, having found this place with her mother and her sister. But you see, as you go along, it's like going through some terrible battlefield. You see these shattered relationships and people who've had to either marry the wrong person or not marry at all, and they're living much more straightened lives than you hope for yourself.
Gill Hornby:
And there's terrible, especially in Mansfield Park, it's a graveyard of marriages. They're awful marriages, they're everywhere. And even a divorce unheard of. She's very, very clear eyed about marriage, and she only takes those heroines to the alter. She doesn't dare take them beyond. She just sort of crosses her fingers, whistles, and looks to the heavens and issues a quick prayer and hopes they'll be right, pushes them, but at least they're not poor, which they are without
Rhianna Dhillon:
Him. Thank God. We don't have to deal with an awful meat market out there at the moment. Thank God we've moved on so much. So I've had two unfinished works, the Watsons and Sandton, which obviously less known, although with the adaptation of Sandton, perhaps that has become now slightly more well known. Which would you rather she had finished
Gill Hornby:
The Watsons
Rhianna Dhillon:
Because,
Gill Hornby:
Well, it's four daughters and she's on her home turf with Sandton. I feel she's not, I mean, she was ill when she was writing it, and she was already in decline, and she branched out from everything else. I don't feel she's completely on her right patch. The Watson's is great. It's already got some good lines in it, and yeah.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Do you have a theory about how it might've ended with marriage? Presumably
Gill Hornby:
Lots and lots of
Rhianna Dhillon:
Marriages. Lots of weddings. We've had a listener get in touch and they've asked, I love to visit literary destination. So apart from Bath, where would you recommend for an Austin themed trip
Gill Hornby:
Here? Here is the best because it's not just this lovely cottage in the village, but the Chilton great house where her big brother, that rich brother had his house, and he owned this one. And then this summer only, but I hope next summer it's going to happen again, is Winchester College opened the room in which she died at eight College Street. Ever since she died. It became a private house. And then Winchester College had just been using it for teachers and boys and tuck shops and things and championing all over it. And this year for the 250th, they were finally prevailed upon to open it. And it is so moving.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Oh gosh, I can't
Gill Hornby:
Imagine. And this window where, because College Street is just in the city walls, and her coffin was carried down through the arch by her brothers. And Cassandra couldn't go to the funeral because women didn't go to funerals.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I didn't know that.
Gill Hornby:
So the last sight she had of her sister was standing out this window watching the coffin being carried by the boys down through the arch into the cathedral. It's so powerful. And when I went round, this guy said, you can take as long as you like, but if you're still there sobbing two hours later, we're going to have to move you off because people have been getting so sort of Wow. Anyway, so it s again, book earlier got really, really booked out this summer. That's a
Rhianna Dhillon:
Really great shout. Thank you, Andy.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
I'll also, I seen from one of the novels in that case, I'll say the cob, but Lime Regis.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I was there a couple of weeks ago. Nice. So cool.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Lime is a terrific town.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah, it is
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Gorgeous. Gorgeous. You can visit the Mary Ning Museum of the Pioneering Woman, sort of proto palaeontologist and
Rhianna Dhillon:
Fossils down there
Andrew Hunter Murray:
And the remains of and was, yes, I set
Rhianna Dhillon:
Them up and you're not
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Going there. So it's just very nice. When I was there, I nearly bought a dinosaur drawer for way too much money, and then my wife deterred me, so I'd like to go back if I need to write that wrong.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Was that the one in the shop window that was about this?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
And she said, that's clearly a fake, don't. Yes, that's
Rhianna Dhillon:
What my friend said. It can't
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Be fake. It's in the window. Yeah, yeah. They have it there as bait. Anyway, there are other reasons to go, which is the cob, which is what's her chops? What's her name falls down. It cracks her head open. Miss thing in persuasion thing, Louis
Rhianna Dhillon:
Louisa,
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Louisa, Louisa, Louisa must grove falls off it and sort cracks her head open and
Rhianna Dhillon:
Which she's being punished for being an incorrigible flirt.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Yeah, I don't think any of us would say that's not a fitting punishment, but you can practise being jumped down from the co yourself as I have done with the other members of Ostentatious. It's really fun.
Gill Hornby:
Also, when you're going round bath, do bear in mind that she absolutely hated face. Hated it. Yeah, I know.
Rhianna Dhillon:
You always have
Gill Hornby:
To look that you wouldn wouldn't know from the way their past they made really, she didn't like it.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Do you think that people are still going to be celebrating Jane Austen's 500th anniversary in the same
Gill Hornby:
Way, have to say they're human beings going to be able to read a book in 250 years? We're all outsource our emotions to some very small, I mean, I think 50 years ago you'd have answered with confidence, and now we have no idea which way humanity's going. So if we'll still be next.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Sorry,
Gill Hornby:
You've got, here's another answer.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
I think pending language changes. I hope so. I mean, obviously language will evolve. Humour will evolve. I do find myself thinking quite frequently the tragedy of Austin is not that she didn't get married, it's that she didn't know what all this would lead to. She died moderately,
Gill Hornby:
Reasonably
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Famous and successful, but not,
Gill Hornby:
I know. Well, she started to witness her own professional decline. It was all going pear shaped. She died. She never thought any and the amount of money that's been made out her since
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Heartbreaking, she should get a 10th of ostentatious ticket sales. I can say that now. I'm no longer in the cast, but it's just, I mean, if she was to be presented now with one of her own books to read what people say about her now, to see a 10 pound note, which she's on, I mean, it just, it's absolutely staggering. And she was paid 10 pounds for one of the early, I think it was sense and sensibility. She sold outright to a publisher. That's the big tragedy. And I just wish she could know,
Gill Hornby:
Wouldn't it be amazing.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So as well as fascinating author conversations, we always love our listeners leaving the podcast with a bunch of book recommendations. So this week we are going to be putting our listener questions to you, Jill and Andy. So let's see what our listeners are asking. Somebody has asked, I'm looking for the Austins of today. Can you recommend any writers or books whose work balances wit social critique and enduring romantic appeal?
Gill Hornby:
I'd say Ann Tyler and patch it. Elizabeth Strout. I mean, Ann Tyler, I'd say does exactly the same thing. They're all basically three or four families. And Tyler's are all in Baltimore. Elizabeth Straus are all in Maine and New York. And Patchett does sort of sprawling family things. I'd say they're the people currently.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Yeah, it's tricky, isn't it? Because life has changed so much, particularly for women. It's hard finding someone who's doing a sort of exactly analogous thing. I mean, and the comedy you can get could be so much broader these days. I think also, Sarah Moss into the mix, she writes, she observes closely human behaviour and that's obviously a big part of Austin.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah. Can you suggest any classic authors similar
Gill Hornby:
To Jane Austen to read next? She's a bit later, but to my eternal shame, I've been just discovering Elizabeth Gaskell.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Oh yeah.
Gill Hornby:
Oh my God, she's wonderful. She is wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Wives and daughters. Yeah, excellent. I just,
Rhianna Dhillon:
It's a world to get lost in.
Gill Hornby:
Oh, just marvellous. Absolutely marvellous. And everything that's in Austin all is slightly more approachable, I'd say to the modern readers.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
I've read one of G's novels, but a long time ago, so much
Gill Hornby:
Better than I thought she was going to be.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Really? I wonder why you had that impression of her.
Gill Hornby:
I just presumed that she was a kind of pale imitation, but absolutely nothing like at all. I mean, so much more experienced woman. Very political.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
I'll pitch Rath Wharton.
Gill Hornby:
Yes, very good.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Yes, a hundred years later, the Richer, even Richer. And it's
Speaker 4:
New York.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
And there's one more, which I really read relatively recently. Francis Hodgson Burnett, who wrote The Secret Garden, she wrote a novel called The Shuttle,
Speaker 5:
Which
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Is all about the transatlantic Young American women coming over, marrying decrepit Barretts who've got nice dates and titles, but don't have any money at all. And these young American daughters of industrialists have loads of money. And so that balance between the two, the Shuttle is a great novel about interesting, because
Rhianna Dhillon:
The Buccaneers, I've been watching a bit of on that bit dodgy streaming. I mean, it's a lot of fun, but it is about those young Americans coming over and the Brit just being like, what
Gill Hornby:
Is going on? And another one, I'd like to make a case where there's a brilliant book published by Persephone called The Rector's Daughter by FM May, which is much, much later. I mean, it's early 20th century, but it is exquisite. And so Aian. I thought that one
Andrew Hunter Murray:
She puts up with a lot.
Gill Hornby:
Oh, heartbreakingly beautiful. Oh really?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Oh, she got so,
Gill Hornby:
Oh. Oh. Again, not bad on the train,
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Dear. We will. Great. It's good.
Gill Hornby:
Heartfelt. Yeah,
Rhianna Dhillon:
There have been a lot of novels that are inspired by Jane Austen. So which one is your favourite
Gill Hornby:
Long born by? Joe Baker, Bridget Jones'. Diary
Rhianna Dhillon:
Helen Fielding the best.
Gill Hornby:
Yeah,
Rhianna Dhillon:
Long Born. I was talking about this week actually. So remind us of the,
Gill Hornby:
It's Below Stairs in the Bennett's house. I think it's absolutely brilliant.
Rhianna Dhillon:
It's the fact that Mr. Bennett has an affair with Hill,
Gill Hornby:
Which very clever.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah,
Gill Hornby:
Very clever. But
Rhianna Dhillon:
I'm not actually, that's
Andrew Hunter Murray:
What he was doing in the library all this time.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Stopping Hill.
Gill Hornby:
Gosh, I just think it's so brilliant. It's such a great world open. It's really beautifully, beautifully done. I don't have that much time for a lot of the fan fiction of the, from the novels, I don't feel that really necessary. But with Lobo, I felt differently. It's very superior of stuff that is,
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Can I recommend one too? There is a terrific work called Godzilla versus Mega Darcy. We're in downtown Shibuya, but there's a tremor anyway, I won't say anymore.
Gill Hornby:
Is it on
Rhianna Dhillon:
YouTube?
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Yeah.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Somebody has written in saying, my favourite character is Marianne from Sense and Sensibility, who is a hopeless romantic, who gets our heartbroken and mended again. Do you have any suggestions of books with a similar character arc?
Gill Hornby:
Can I argue with the question? Please argue with the question.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I'd be disappointed if you didn't.
Gill Hornby:
I'd say she doesn't get her heart mended again. I think she just realises she's just got to settle for Colonel Brandon, who again, this is another confusion of the adaptations We'll think is dead sexy because it's Alan Rickman, but he is not dead sexy. He is to Marianne. He's an old geezer. So I think her heart is very far from being mended and that she is a very disappointed woman.
Rhianna Dhillon:
She's punished again, that sort of
Gill Hornby:
Punishment almost. She's punished yes
Rhianna Dhillon:
For loving. Well, G,
Gill Hornby:
You can recommend something
Rhianna Dhillon:
That's
Gill Hornby:
About hearts being mended and broken and whatever,
Rhianna Dhillon:
But Andy, you've not seen an Lee's sense of sensibility. So you don't know Colonel Brandon being the gorgeous, sexy Allen Rickman with that incredible voice. So how do you read Colonel Brandon? I think
Andrew Hunter Murray:
He's an old buffer because he's about 60, isn't he?
Gill Hornby:
Yeah, I dunno. Is he that? Maybe not that old, but I think it's so hard. But she's only 18 years. I think it's probably 40, but that's a good 20 years. And anyway, he's enough from another world. Yeah, it's a completely different
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Generation sense. And sensibility is not one of my fa, but it does contain one of the most terrific scenes, which is where their cousins who've inherited are slowly talking their weight down from giving the family, giving the Dashwood like it's from something like 500 pounds a year. And they sort of whittle away. They think, well, we don't want 'em to waste it. And it ends up with, I think we're going to send them a ham every other year.
Gill Hornby:
It's just terrific. I think it's entirely autobiographical. I think that's what happened with her brother, really, because it is their brother, cousin and the sister-in-law think it's what Edward Austin did. And then the minute his wife died in childbirth, he gave him this cottage. Say what had stopped him.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Okay. I'm looking for a book recommendation of a family as chaotic as the Bennetts.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Oh, okay. Now you and I, before the mics went on, Rena, we had a little disagreement about Charles Dickens.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Don't out me get violent. Don't out me on the podcast. Actually, I'm pretty sure I've said it on the podcast.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
I'm not going to say who picked which side. But I read Bleak House earlier this year for the first time. And the novel is not about the Jelly be family, but there is a character called Mrs. Jelly be who's always got the cause. And she has absolutely neglected her own domestic life. Mr. Jelly be spends the whole novel leaning his head against a wall so stressed and Mrs. Jelly is really dreadful and the poor younger jelly bees. Anyway, they are in a real fix the jelly bees. So there you go,
Gill Hornby:
Jill. Well, I'm trying to think, when I think of books about families, actually, I always think of the ones I loved as children, like the family at One End Street, which was hundreds of children crammed into a terrorist house. There's a great atch called Commonwealth, which is about a huge blended family.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And finally, if Jane was alive today, which book would you want to press into her hands first that you think, oh,
Gill Hornby:
Ms. Austin by Joel Ho
Rhianna Dhillon:
That you think she'd love to read or would've appreciated? Apart from Ms. Austin.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Gosh, tricky one.
Gill Hornby:
Well, the Rector's daughter that I mentioned earlier, I think she'd love that. But again, as we're talking when we are, I think perhaps not the later Julie Coopers, but the earlier ones, the ones with all the women's names, the Octavia and Charlotte's and all of those, I think she'd probably bloody love them, but not rivals. Well, you don't know how she'd disentangle herself from the age in which she lived. I mean, she did like a schlocky novel when she was younger, but well, perhaps she would. She's been dead for a long time.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Yeah, it's hard, isn't it? I mean, almost anything being written out would absolutely blow her mind
Gill Hornby:
Wide
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Open and she'd never recover. So Dorothy Whipple, who wrote a lot of
Gill Hornby:
In
Andrew Hunter Murray:
The mid 20th century, also published by Persephone, which is a perfect publishing house, and she wrote a lot about women's lives and the negotiation and the trade-offs that these characters are making and how to just come through. All right. And her novels are all brilliant. So
Gill Hornby:
Let's Cooper as well. I dunno if you
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Wrote,
Gill Hornby:
You're very sound on novels by women. It's very exceptional guest. We have on
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Today
Gill Hornby:
Most exceptional guest.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
It's mostly Lee Child for me, but occasionally,
Gill Hornby:
Suppose Hankin also publishes Lee Child. But that's fine per Stephanie books is an entirely female experience.
Andrew Hunter Murray:
I know, but this is because I had a great English teacher who said, look, we're going to do Emma now, and you're going to see it's funny. And do you
Rhianna Dhillon:
Want to give them a shout out Your English teacher,
Andrew Hunter Murray:
Dr. McEwen.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Great. Thank goodness for Dr. McKeen. Thank you so much Andy and Jill. What an absolute pleasure this has been, right? That's it for this week. Thank you so much to everyone at Jane Austen's house for letting us through the doors for this very, very special episode. And thank you so much to Jill Hornby and Andrew Hunter Murray for being here. If you enjoyed this episode, then we have a whole other episode dedicated to classic books with Jill and Henry Elliott, author of the Penguin Classics book, which is packed full of so many good recommendations. So go and check that out. Thank you to everyone who sent in a question or listened along, and I hope that you enjoy this episode as much as I did recording it. And I hope that you are leaving with some brilliant new recommendations, links, and information on all of the books that we've talked about today. As well as more info on the Jane Austen House are available in the show notes. Of course, you can come and visit Tread the Floors in the same way that Jane did, but if you can't, they do loads of virtual events that you can get involved with online as well. So go and check out their website. Thanks once more. And until next time, happy reading and happy birthday Jane Austen.