Persuasion: Episode 9, Chapter 21 and the cancelled Chapter 22

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In this much-delayed episode (recorded months ago, but stuck in editing limbo), we look at Chapter 21, and the original version of Chapter 22, which Jane Austen rewrote before publication to become the Chapters 22 and 23 we now have. This cancelled chapter is available in many modern editions of the book. We talk about Mrs Smith’s infodump about Mr Elliot, her change in tone, her patronising attitude towards Nurse Rooke, how in the cancelled chapter Anne was more of an observer (compared to the much better final version where she has regained her voice), and the fact that the cancelled chapter is unpolished, and even if Jane Austen had retained that, it would still have been improved before publication.

The character we discuss is Mr Elliot. In the historical section, Michael talks about the engagements, and for popular culture Harriet reflects on the various film adaptations of Persuasion, considering some of the characters, as well as how each adaptation deals with three key scenes (presenting the backstory, Louisa’s fall, and the scene at the White Hart Inn).

See the full transcript below.

Things we mention:

General discussion:

Historical discussion:

Popular culture discussion:

Creative commons music used:

Full transcript:

00:00:02 Harriet

Anne recollected with pleasure the next morning her promise of going to Mrs Smith, meaning that it should engage her from home at the time when Mr Elliot would be most likely to call.

00:00:12 Harriet

I’m Harriet.

00:00:13 Ellen

And I’m Ellen.

And this is Reading Jane Austen.

00:00:17 Harriet

My partner Michael’s joining us again.

00:00:19 Michael

Hello.

00:00:20 Harriet

And in fact, he’s going to be in all the remaining episodes this season, so henceforth he won’t be getting a special introduction.

00:00:27 Michael

This week we’re reading chapter 21 of Persuasion and then the original chapter 22, which Jane Austen later replaced with two chapters, the chapters 22 and 23 we have today.

00:00:38 Harriet

The original chapter 22 is included as an appendix in most modern editions of Persuasion, but we thought it would be interesting to talk about it before we go through the published version.

00:00:48 Harriet

So Michael, what’s your 100-word summary?

00:00:51 Michael

Here is my effort:

While walking, Anne reflects on the relative merits of Mr Elliot and Captain Wentworth and finds the former lacking. Her friend Mrs Smith, on hearing Anne will not marry Mr Elliot, tells her of his cynical plot to marry her to ensure his inheritance. Admiral Croft insists Anne visits his wife. Captain Wentworth, as required by the Admiral, tells her that he will give up his lease on Kellynch if she is to marry Mr Elliot. Her strong denial emboldens him to share his true feelings, leading to them being able to speak freely and renew their commitment to each other.

00:01:33 Harriet

Okay, so this is mine:

Mrs Smith reveals that she used to know Mr Elliot and says he’ll be a good husband for Anne. But when she realises Anne’s not going to marry him, she reveals his true history. In the cancelled chapter, Anne meets Admiral Croft, who practically forces her to call on Mrs Croft. Wentworth is there and says the Admiral wants him to tell Anne that he’s heard she’s to marry Mr Elliot and the Crofts are willing to give up the lease on Kellynch for them. Anne says she’s not marrying Mr Elliot, again, so Wentworth declares his love and they’re reconciled.

00:02:07 Ellen

You put a lot more of the last chapters in that than the first one, didn’t you?

00:02:12 Harriet

Well, I think that’s because not everyone will have read the second chapter.

00:02:15 Ellen

Yes.

00:02:15 Harriet

And I focused just on the first half, and I think Michael did as well, focused on the first half of it, which is so different from the published version, whereas the second half of that chapter is…

00:02:26 Ellen

She’s gradually crawling towards the final one.

00:02:30 Harriet

So, Chapter 21 is the chapter where Mrs Smith reveals all about Mr Elliot. So, it’s a big info dump chapter, which we’ve had before. An obvious example is Sense and Sensibility with Colonel Brandon telling everything about Willoughby.

00:02:45 Ellen

But this is a lot more entertaining.

00:02:47 Harriet

Yeah, there’s a lot more to and fro.

00:02:50 Ellen

And again, it’s got a lot more of that depth where everything she says doesn’t tell you just one thing.

00:02:58 Ellen

Nearly everything she writes tells you three or four extra. So, it’s not a sort of a simple info dump. It’s a very rich account.

00:03:08 Michael

Also, what you’re leaving out, which is one of my favourite parts of it, is before she gets to Mrs Smith, there is the description of her walking through the streets of Bath and debating with herself about the relative merits of Mr Elliot and Captain Wentworth.

00:03:26 Harriet

It’s not really much of a debate.

00:03:28 Michael

Well, except I think there’s perhaps some irony there that she believes she’s having a debate and really is all she’s revealing is the fact that there is no debate.

00:03:39 Harriet

I think one interesting thing is Mrs Smith, when she thinks Anne is going to marry Mr Elliot, she’s so pro-Mr Elliot:

“Where can you look for a more suitable match?”

“Where could you expect a more gentleman-like, agreeable man?”

“Let me recommend Mr Elliot.”

It’s very self-interested there. She kind of later defends it by saying, well, I thought it was all settled and there was no choice and so all I could do was be positive about him. But really this is all about getting Anne to intercede on her behalf with Mr Elliot.

00:04:13 Michael

I think you’re being overly harsh. The woman is sick and in poverty and she is clinging to what she thinks is the last hope for getting any relief!

00:04:24 Harriet

I don’t disagree. It’s just there is such a contrast between, first of all, her saying, I can speak for his character, and then saying, oh, he is black at heart, hollow and black.

00:04:34 Ellen

I think Michael’s right. She sort of sees her future lies in Anne marrying Mr Elliot and turning him back to helping her. The last thing she wants to do is break any connection between them. I think she just thinks to herself that there are various phases to Mr Elliot’s character, and when he decides to behave in looking after somebody, he’ll do a really good job. If you try to get him to do something that’s not in his own interest, well, too bad.

00:05:07 Harriet

Yeah.

00:05:07 Michael

Yes, I think you’re being unnecessarily harsh on an impoverished woman in ill health. She may not like Anne marrying him, but if, as she believes, she’s going to, then she needs to get in advance in Anne’s good books, because once they’re married, you’ll no doubt believe that Mr Elliot will tell her that Mrs Smith is a horrible, conniving woman who wants to get her hands on my money.

00:05:34 Harriet

So, there’s something that’s often slightly puzzled me about this, and a little while ago we had a comment on Facebook from Sylvia raising this point that’s bothered me, which is, are we supposed to think that Mr Elliot did not know that in Mrs Smith Anne is visiting the wife of his former friend. After the incident with the invitation from the Dalrymples, it’s discussed a lot among the family, and we know that Mr Elliot found it amusing. He knew that Mrs Smith was friends with Anne, so if her name is spoken, I find it quite reasonable that he adds 2 + 2. And that’s something that’s always, I’ve wondered about too and thought maybe it’s just a mistake. With what we are told, it seems so unlikely that he hasn’t made that connection.

00:06:16 Michael

Yes, but he’s not going to say, oh, I hate your sick friend.

00:06:21 Harriet

Surely, he would be concerned that he didn’t know what Mrs Smith might be saying about him. But as I was reading Sylvia’s comment, then it suddenly occurred to me when he references her, when he’s talking with Anne in the assembly rooms, if the whole point of mentioning her without naming her in that conversation is a way of putting out feelers to try and find out if she said anything about him, that would actually kind of make sense.

00:06:46 Ellen

Yes.

00:06:47 Harriet

Almost. It still seems a pretty risky move on his path, but then he is, I guess, willing to take some risks.

00:06:54 Ellen

And on the other hand, he probably wants to know.

00:06:57 Harriet

Yeah. So getting back to Mrs Smith’s revelation about Mr Elliot’s character. Again, we kind of get, and we’ve seen it before in Anne’s relationship with Mrs Smith, Anne’s sort of slightly naive, slightly idealistic view of the world as compared to Mrs Smith’s more cynical one where he married for money and Anne says, that probably first opened your eyes to his character. And Mrs Smith said, well, no, not really.

00:07:23 Michael

Well, again, this is the difference between privilege and a much more precarious hold on society. It’s easy to have high principles when you’re never having to worry about where your next meal is coming from.

00:07:35 Harriet

Well, I think we have to assume since Mrs Smith was at school with Anne, she had some level of security before she married Mr Smith. She was moving in the kind of circles that the Crawfords were moving in in London.

00:07:46 Michael

Yes, of course.

00:07:47 Harriet

Which is less about precariousness and more about just marriage is transactional.

00:07:52 Michael

Yes, which we’ll talk about later.

00:07:55 Ellen

And there’s something I want to have a bit of a quibble with Mrs Smith about, and that’s the way she talks about Nurse Rook, which is so terribly patronising. The foolish Mrs Wallace has been telling Nurse Rook that they should put it in the marriage articles when Anne and Mr Elliot marry that Anne’s father is not to marry Mrs Clay. And Mrs Smith says:

“a scheme worthy of Mrs Wallace’s understanding by all accounts, but my sensible Nurse Rook sees the absurdity of it.

“Why to be sure, ma’am”, said she.

00:08:33 Ellen

It would not prevent his marrying anybody else, and I find that such a patronising attitude towards Nurse Rook whose probably just as smart as Mrs Smith.

00:08:44 Michael

I see that as a patronising remark about Mrs Wallace, not about Nurse Rook.

00:08:48 Harriet

They’re both dismissive of Mrs Wallace, but she is being very patronising in saying, Oh, well, my nice sensible Nurse Rook, let’s pat her on the head for being so sensible, says this.

00:08:59 Michael

Yes, fair enough.

00:09:00 Ellen

I think the thing that’s irritating me is their believing that because these people don’t have the same vocabulary to describing things in, that they’re stupider about understanding the way the world operates.

00:09:16 Harriet

And they do particularly seem to be saying people of that class aren’t very clever, but Nurse Rook is an exception.

00:09:22 Ellen

Yes.

00:09:23 Harriet

I mean, we actually, when you think about it, this book goes all the way from the low end of the aristocracy, which is more than any other book does, all the way down to somewhat interacting with Nurse Rourke, which doesn’t happen as much in a lot of the other books. You do get it a bit. You get Mrs Norris interacting with the servants and with Dick Carpenter. You get the servant in Sense and Sensibility. But this has such an enormous span of the social classes and all the interactions between them.

I guess the other thing that does come through and is explicitly said is how careful Mrs Smith is to put all the blame for her husband’s extravagance on Mr Elliot and none on him and none on herself.

00:10:04 Ellen

Yes, but Anne is very aware that that’s what she’s doing and Jane Austen wants the readers to be aware.

00:10:12 Michael

On the other hand, you’ve been complaining about her infantilising Nurse Rourke, but she does exactly the same thing with her husband. her way of excusing his behaviour is to infantilise him.

00:10:23 Ellen

Yes.

00:10:24 Harriet

Yeah.

00:10:24 Harriet

So, okay, if we’re not going to really talk about Mr Elliot in the past and how he changes right now, because we’ll be talking about it when we talk about Mr Elliot.

00:10:32 Ellen

Yes.

00:10:32 Harriet

I guess the other thing that maybe we should mention is the fact that she has no one to act on her behalf for this property in the West Indies.

00:10:41 Ellen

Yes.

00:10:41 Harriet

Which puts it, I mean, for all we know, it could be the property right next door to Sir Thomas Bertram’s property in Antigua.

00:10:49 Michael

It’s virtually certain it involved enslaved people.

00:10:52 Harriet

Yeah.

00:10:52 Ellen

Yes.

00:10:53 Harriet

And nothing is made of it. Today, as readers, we cannot ignore the issue of the enslavement of people.

00:11:01 Ellen

When we’re talking about where they get their money from, it’s necessary to say it’s there.

00:11:08 Harriet

Yeah.

00:11:08 Michael

Yes.

00:11:08 Ellen

This is history.

00:11:10 Michael

Yes, indeed.

00:11:11 Harriet

So basically, after Mrs Smith says everything that’s terrible about Mr Elliot, and says that he is evidently a disingenuous, artificial, worldly man who has never had any better principle to guide him than selfishness, which I guess is a nice summing up.

00:11:29 Michael

The question might be to what extent does that also describe Mrs Smith? Certainly in the past, I think it described Mrs Smith.

00:11:36 Ellen

Those are the adjectives she attaches to that crowd, and she was part of that crowd and did the same sort of things, yes.

00:11:44 Michael

She was perfectly content with it, provided she was the beneficiary and not the victim.

00:11:48 Harriet

Yeah.

So that’s the end of that chapter. And Anne leaves, and the main thing she’s thinking is, I must tell Lady Russell as soon as possible. So then obviously in the finished book we have the great stuff with the arrival of the Musgrove clan and the stuff in the White Heart and the conversation with Harville and the letter.

But that wasn’t what Jane Austen originally wrote. And that’s why I thought it would be interesting for us to look at the cancelled chapter first. And I think this is actually quite pertinent to something earlier in the other chapter.

I think it’s really hard for us to think how we would have reacted if this had been the conclusion rather than the wonderful stuff we have. Because as Anne says of Mr Elliot and Captain Wentworth, how she might have felt had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case was not worth inquiry, for there was a Captain Wentworth.

So, how we might have felt about this chapter, where there is the final chapter, and it’s hard to read these in isolation, but nonetheless, I do feel that the revised version is just infinitely better, and Michael and I, in 100 words, did give a brief summary, but I just wanted to say, before we start looking at it in detail…

One of the things that I have always felt about the original way of getting them back together is that Anne has more agency in the finished version. But then I started to think and I realized, well, does she actually have agency? Because her conversation with Captain Harville is in response to what he’s saying.

But then I read this really interesting article in Persuasions Online, the JASNA website, called Persuasion, Why the Revised Ending Works So Well by Paul Ray. And he makes 2 important points: the first of which is the character of Admiral Croft is completely changed, which we can talk about, but the thing I think that really crystallized for me what is better about the revised version is he points out that In the first half of the book, Anne was very much the listener and Wentworth was the talker, right down to Anne overhearing Wentworth and Louisa talking.

00:13:54 Ellen

Yes.

00:13:54 Harriet

In the second half, in Bath, Anne has found her voice. Anne is initiating conversations with Captain Wentworth. And Captain Wentworth is the one who is listening. He’s overhearing conversations about Anne and Mr Elliot. So their roles have been reversed.

And in the published version that we have, that continues because even though Anne is responding to Captain Harville, she has her voice. She is talking about herself and Wentworth is listening.

00:14:24 Ellen

Well, she’s responding to Captain Harville, but she’s not agreeing with Captain Harville.

00:14:29 Harriet

Yeah.

00:14:30 Ellen

She’s offering an alternative view.

00:14:33 Harriet

So that still means she is speaking and Wentworth is listening. Whereas in this original version, she’s back to being passive. She’s overhearing Wentworth and Admiral Croft talking and then Wentworth initiates the conversation, and she responds to him, and she doesn’t respond very much other than saying he’s mistaken. So I think aside from all the richness of the Musgroves and everything, that is what makes the revised version so much better.

00:14:58 Michael

I think it’s simpler than that. In this chapter, we don’t hear the voices of Anne and of Captain Wentworth. It’s all very distant. We don’t get that direct speech. We don’t get access to what they’re thinking, what they’re saying, which if it had been published, people at the time would have thought is perfectly fine.

But what she’s doing with the replacement chapters is not just different in plot, but I think more importantly, it’s stylistically different.

00:15:31 Ellen

I agree with that, but I also feel there would have been some polishing done on the final chapter as she’s given it.

00:15:39 Ellen

It’s all a bit slapstick, really.

00:15:41 Michael

Yes, I agree with Ellen. In many ways, it reads more like a rough draft, working out what all the characters are going to do in this chapter, which then needs to be fleshed out. So, it would have been possible to rewrite around this structure and come up with a better chapter than the one we had.

But what’s interesting is, despite that, that Jane Austen says, No, this isn’t working. I want to do something completely different. I think the fact that she realized that the structure of this one didn’t work, and that even if she wrote more dialogue and gave me more insights, it was not going to give her the ending she wanted.

00:16:21 Harriet

If we sort of start looking at the chapter in more detail, it starts with her bumping into the Admiral, and he’s basically saying, you must come and call on Sophie.

“I insist you come and call on Sophie.”

Even Anne becomes a little bit impatient with the Admiral, and then it’s all about he wants to get her inside so that he can get Captain Wentworth to talk to her about giving up the lease, which, as I said, the article I read said that is very not the Admiral Croft we’ve had up until now. I do think that could have been polished out a bit.

00:16:51 Michael

Yes, I feel that it would be perfectly possible to rewrite this in a way that makes it clear that Admiral Croft is clearly uncomfortable. He feels that giving up the least is the right thing, but he doesn’t feel confident talking to her about it. So ,one can bring out that it’s his anxieties about the situation that caused him to act in this way. Whereas in the present version, all we have is this indirect description of him doing it.

00:17:16 Harriet

But I also think, though, that the Admiral and Mrs Croft we’ve known up until now, he would not have been asking Captain Wentworth to talk to her. He and Sophie would have talked about it and Sophie would have talked to Anne, which is much more appropriate.

00:17:29 Michael

I disagree because why it’s awkward is they haven’t announced the engagement. And so both Admiral Croft and Mrs Croft might quite reasonably say:

“Frederick, you know this young woman better than we do. It is more appropriate that you broach this delicate subject with her.”

00:17:51 Ellen

Yeah, I don’t think that would be true. It’s Mr Shepherd that they’ve signed the lease with. Surely that’s who they’ll be getting in touch with.

00:18:02 Michael

Yes, but before they can do that, they have to know from Anne whether she’s engaged or not. That’s the question that they’re asking. I think that’s perfectly reasonable at this point for all the reasons we’ve talked about, if they were engaged, why they wouldn’t have announced it yet.

00:18:16 Harriet

Just moving on, when Captain Wentworth does actually talk to her about it, you made the good point that there’s not a lot of direct dialogue. But the bit that there is, if we didn’t have the replacement chapters, I think is actually very good.

When he passes on the message and then:

“No sir”, said Anne. “There is no message, you are missing. The Admiral is misinformed, I do justice to the kindness of his intentions, but he is quite mistaken. There is no truth in any such report.”

And then Wentworth says:

“No truth in any such report? No truth in any part of it?”

I do think that works.

00:18:53 Ellen

Yes, that’s lovely.

00:18:55 Harriet

And you know when I talked about both the 1995 and the 2007 adaptations, including the cancelled chapter and how outraged I was by it, particularly in the 95? I do think actually the 2007 version did deliver this moment really well. They didn’t really capture that properly in the 1995 version because they were still having the scene at the White Hart and the conversation with Harville. Because the 2007 had unaccountably and unforgivably moved the conversation with Harville earlier, they could actually do justice to those lines. But I would still have preferred it if they hadn’t.

00:19:32 Michael

Yes, so they ruined one of the best parts of the novel.

00:19:35 Harriet

Yes, they did. But in their presentation of that moment, which is, I think, possibly the best moment from that cancelled chapter.

00:19:43 Ellen

Yes.

00:19:45 Harriet

But yes, then it just says:

“Bursting forth in the fullness of exquisite feeling and all suspense and indecision were over, they were reunited.”

Tick, yay.

And from that point, the chapter goes on to have them staying there all the evening and Mrs Croft figuring out what’s going on and cleverly manipulating the Admiral so they get some time alone together.

00:20:07 Ellen

Yes. Well, she and the Admiral seem to be running upstairs for little jobs and downstairs for little jobs.

00:20:13 Harriet

But that’s where Captain Wentworth then basically tells Anne of his emotions throughout the whole first part of the book, which you do get in the revised version. And I think, I haven’t done a direct comparison, I should have done. A lot of it is the same, but there is more, I think, dialogue in the revised version.

As I said, I think the method of getting them together is so much better in the revised chapters. And if we only had this, we wouldn’t have had that wonderful stuff with the Musgrove clan arriving in Bath and everything around that, which we’re going to be talking about next time, which is so much fun. But I’m also really, really glad we actually have this cancelled chapter so we can see.

00:20:51 Michael

Yes, absolutely.

00:20:52 Harriet

We can see her creative process. If anyone who’s listening hasn’t read the cancelled chapter, it’s available in lots of places and it really does make a fascinating contrast with the finished version.

00:21:02 Michael

Absolutely.

00:21:03 Ellen

Though I think we can be fairly certain, if she had been editing that chapter, it would have ended up a good deal nicer than it is at the moment.

00:21:13 Harriet

Yes.

00:21:14 Harriet

So who wants to go first with favourite sentences?

00:21:18 Michael

I’ll go first then.

So I have chosen one from quite early in the the first chapter we’re looking at, which I think is wonderfully ironic in the way that it quietly satirises her heroine. And that is:

Pretty amusings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy could never have passed along the streets of Bath than Anne was sporting with from Camden Place to Westgate Buildings.

00:21:45 Ellen

That’s one of the things I get really irritated by in Persuasion, because I think it’s so sentimental, so sort of…

00:21:55 Michael

Well, that’s the opposite of the way I read it. I think for Jane Austen, who frequently comments ironically, it never occurred to me that it could be anything but ironic.

00:22:05 Harriet

See, I read it straight as well.

00:22:07 Ellen

Yes, I read it straight. It may be that you’ve picked up a tone in it, overall that both of us have missed.

00:22:15 Michael

I read a level of irony in the whole earlier piece as well, because as Harriet pointed out earlier, whilst ostensibly she’s saying to herself that she’s comparing the relative merits of Mr Elliot and Captain Wentworth, as Harriet said, it’s perfectly obvious that there is no contest, but it is about making a more rational argument for what she actually wants to do. But she frames it in this very high-minded way, and that’s what’s being mildly poked fun at.

00:22:49 Ellen

Do you like it?

00:22:50 Harriet

Because I read it straight, I don’t much like it.

00:22:53 Ellen

Yes, and I sort of take it a bit further and think, ew.

00:23:00 Michael

So I literally cannot imagine taking it seriously. It’s so high flown that to me it just, it was automatically ironic.

00:23:09 Ellen

It’s a good thing you brought that up because that allows us to see how completely differently we can read Jane Austen either if we ignore her irony and get it wrong or if we’re so sure she’s being ironic that anything we don’t like she says we say is ironic.

00:23:29 Michael

So I’m not saying that I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m saying that it literally never occurred to me.

00:23:34 Ellen

Yes.

00:23:35 Michael

That it wasn’t.

00:23:36 Harriet

Okay, so your favourite sentence?

00:23:39 Ellen

Well, this is coming from Mrs Smith, where she’s talking about the gossip she’s got.

“It does not come to me in quite so direct a line as that, It takes a bend or two, but nothing of consequence.”

That to me sounds as though it could almost be something Mary Crawford said, that. That’s the way of talking that Mary Crawford has. Yes. This lady of fashion way of talking. And it takes you to Mrs Smith like that.

00:24:08 Harriet

Yeah, no, I’d never thought of that, but you’re right. Yes. It’s exactly something that Mary Crawford would have said.

00:24:13 Michael

Yes.

00:24:14 Ellen

Well, it’s just that they want to make what they say a bit more entertaining, a bit more amusing. And Mrs Smith comes from that world.

00:24:24 Harriet

The one I have is from the cancelled chapter. It’s not the bit I read out earlier that I really like. It’s a more comic bit because after the scene between Anne and Wentworth, Mrs Croft, who’s been upstairs with her mantua maker, she comes back into the room and it says:

“And though it was hardly possible for a woman of her description to wish the mantua maker had imprisoned her longer, she might be very likely wishing for some excuse to run about the house, some storm to break the windows above, or a summons to the admiral’s shoemaker below.”

So I love that picture. First of all, that Mrs Croft is not the type of person who actually wants to spend all that much time with her dressmaker. And she is immediately able to see what’s happening between Anne and Wentworth and wants to give them time away, and the narrator is suggesting all these random things that could call her away. I just think it’s very funny.

00:25:20 Harriet

So, the character we’re talking about today is Mr Elliot.

00:25:23 Ellen

What he’s presented as over and over again is agreeable. What I kept finding was people were saying how agreeable Mr Elliot was.

00:25:33 Harriet

We do get everyone appears to be in love with Mr Elliot. Sir Walter, Elizabeth, not Mrs Clay, all the people, Captain Wentworth overhears here is talking in Mollands. They all think he’s just it.

00:25:45 Michael

Except I would suggest that the people that like him in many ways are a red flag that he’s not the one because Sir Walter likes him for a start.

00:25:56 Ellen

But from the whole, the beginning of the book, we know it’s Captain Wentworth. You know who he is when he comes in. He’s coming in the person who may distract her from the one we want her to marry.

00:26:09 Harriet

But given the sort of strangeness of his past and his present, everyone does seem to like him. As you said, he’s agreeable to everyone, but also some of the direct dialogue we get with Anne is also quite nice. That conversation he has about that is not good company, that is the best company. That’s a lovely line.

00:26:28 Michael

Yes, he’s clever and charming.

00:26:31 Harriet

Anne has concerns, but she still enjoys being with him. She likes talking to him. And that’s probably a reflection of who else there is to talk to.

00:26:39 Ellen

Well, I mean, this is the bit I’ve got about him here.

“Mr Elliot was too generally agreeable. Various as were the tempers of her father’s house, he pleased them all. He endured too well, stood too well with everybody.”

00:26:56 Harriet

Yes, I had that written down as well. And in the paragraph before, it says:

“Mr Elliot was rational, discreet, polished, but he was not open. There was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight at the evil or good of others.”

And I think I might have said in an earlier episode that reminds me so much of Mr Knightley’s criticism of Jane Fairfax, that she’s not open. And so that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a bad person, but it does mean that they are not a person I can love.

00:27:27 Ellen

Yes.

00:27:28 Michael

I think that’s the most telling description of him in the book, really.

00:27:34 Harriet

I think the bit about him being too generally agreeable, that is probably more of a red flag than the fact that he’s not open. But then, of course, in the chapters we had today, we have Mrs Smith’s revelations about him and – not the change in his fundamental character, but the change in his objectives from when he was young and all he wanted was a rich wife and he didn’t care how he got it. And the only thing he did before signing the marriage articles was to make sure that she had as much money as he thought she did.

00:28:05 Ellen

But I mean, the other thing is that he’s a great one for talking to friends. You know, he tells Mrs Smith when they’re young all about it. Colonel Wallace knows all his plans. I mean, he never keeps anything very close to his chest. He tells his friends what his plans are.

00:28:22 Harriet

Maybe he has this close circle of acquaintances who are just as cynical as he is. The picture we get from Mrs Smith, though, is that while money was his objective and now he has all the money he wants, suddenly the baronetcy, which back then he said, “I don’t care”, anyone can have it, I’ll sell it. Now he suddenly, he’s got objective one, and that then means now I need something else to want and I want the baronetcy. I want the title, I want the property.

00:28:49 Ellen

I want the prestige is what he wants. I mean, he needs the property to have the prestige, but he doesn’t need the property for the money. He needs the property for the prestige it brings.

00:29:01 Harriet

He wants to be Sir William Elliot of Kellynch Hall. He doesn’t want to be just rich Mr Elliot.

And then the other thing that comes out of Mrs Smith’s story is the fact that he does actually have these close friends like Colonel Wallace, like Mr Smith, that he talks to, and initially Mr Smith had more money and he was sponging off Mr Smith. As soon as he has more money, he encourages Mr Smith to be spendthrift, and then when Mr Smith runs out of money and he’s of no interest to him, he just walks away.

00:29:33 Michael

Yes, I think calling them friends is not the right word. He has associates, but he has entirely transactional relationships.

00:29:42 Harriet

Well, as Mrs Smith says, he’s driven entirely by selfishness. He doesn’t really care about people, except apparently, according to Mrs Smith, he does actually care about Anne. Somewhat.

00:29:55 Ellen

Yes, I mean, there’s the sort of question, what is it that he cares about with Anne? To what extent is it that she looks like the ideal lady for Kellyn Hall?

00:30:06 Harriet

And she’ll keep him in with the family, but I think in terms of her personally, it’s that she’s intelligent, she’s interesting to talk to. She’s also got her bloom back, so she’s beautiful, and that doesn’t hurt.

00:30:16 Michael

Yes, if it were purely transactional, then you wouldn’t marry the second daughter, you’d marry the first.

00:30:22 Harriet

You’d marry Elizabeth, who is also her father’s favourite.

00:30:25 Michael

Indeed.

00:30:25 Harriet

And who is the friend of Mrs Clay?

00:30:27 Ellen

If he married Elizabeth, he could get rid of Mrs Clay more easily.

00:30:31 Harriet

Yes, absolutely.

00:30:32 Michael

Yes.

00:30:33 Harriet

But he doesn’t. He focuses on Anne. And that is actually, when you think about it, quite a risky move because he’s not stupid. He knows that Elizabeth thinks he’s going after her. And if he then marries Anne, that is going to put Elizabeth offside so badly and might not go down all that well with Sir Walter.

00:30:52 Ellen

What we should be looking out for here, it’s not till much later we realise that Mr Elliot has been pursuing Mrs Clay.

00:31:02 Harriet

He must also, hidden in the background in the scenes we’re not seeing, be being incredibly manipulative to Mrs Clay because she knows what he is concerned about and yet she is still willing to throw over Sir Walter to go and live as his mistress. So he is filling a niche that there’s someone in all of the other books. There’s Willoughby, there’s Wickham, there’s Henry Crawford, there’s Frank Churchill.

00:31:26 Ellen

No, he’s the rival lover.

00:31:28 Harriet

Yeah.

00:31:29 Ellen

They all have a rival lover. And sometimes you worry that they’re going to fall for the rival lover. At other times you feel that the main lover will be jealous of the rival lover and wander off. I mean, that’s what Anne’s worried about with Captain Wentworth.

00:31:45 Harriet

But what I was going to ask is, if we sort of look at this gallery of rival lovers slash rakes slash rogues slash whatever we call them. How do we compare him to the others?

00:31:54 Michael

Well, I think he’s more intelligent than pretty much all of the others, not that that’s very difficult.

00:31:59 Harriet

I don’t think he’s more intelligent than Henry Crawford.

00:32:01 Michael

Henry Crawford is charming, but is he actually clever? I mean, he’s very bad.

00:32:05 Ellen

Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, no, he’s smart.

00:32:07 Harriet

Yeah, I think, though, Mr Elliot is probably the most successfully manipulative of them.

00:32:13 Michael

I suppose that’s what I mean. He has a calculating intelligence.

00:32:17 Harriet

Wickham is also calculating and also does actually manage to convince Elizabeth that he’s a nice person. But I think Mr Elliot has a more specific long-term goal.

00:32:29 Michael

Mr Wickham knows how to say the right thing in the moment. He doesn’t necessarily have the long-term planning that Mr Elliot does.

00:32:37 Harriet

But the bit about Mr Elliot was too generally agreeable. That also applies to Wickham.

00:32:43 Michael

Yes.

00:32:43 Ellen

It also applies to Frank Churchill.

00:32:45 Harriet

Yes, indeed. But Mr Elliot has is a long-term plan that none of the others do.

00:32:50 Ellen

But if Mrs Smith hadn’t said what she’d said, Anne does think she might have…

00:32:57 Michael

No, because before that we’ve already had the piece in the debate with herself where she says that having compared the two that he cannot compare with Captain Wentworth.

00:33:07 Harriet

And I suppose, and I didn’t really think of that when we were talking about the chapter, that is probably positioned there just so we know without any doubt whatsoever that Mrs Smith’s revelations have not changed what was going to happen.

00:33:22 Michael

Yes, that’s exactly how I’ve interpreted it. And that’s why I think that part of the chapter, which is often overlooked, is so important.

00:33:29 Harriet

Yes, I think, though, at the end of the day, with Mr Elliot, I at least tend to agree with Anne when she says, Mr Elliot is evidently a disingenuous, artificial, worldly man who has never had any better principle to guide him than selfishness.

00:33:43 Ellen

Yes.

00:33:50 Michael

So today for the historical section, I’m here to talk about what engagement meant in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. And I wanted to start with some broader historical context.

I think to a 21st century reader, it can be easy to look at courtship practices in Jane Austen’s England and see them as very paternalist and restrictive, which from our perspective, they certainly are. However, I think it’s also important to recognise that the emergence of this new term, engagement, which began to gradually replace the older term, betrothal, in the English language through the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, needs to be seen as a marker of a significant shift in the courting practices of the mercantile, professional and gentry classes.

So in Jane Austen’s time, the degree of agency you had as a woman around who or when you got married was, counter-intuitively, in inverse proportion to your social status. Amongst royalty and the high aristocracy, betrothals continued in much the same way as they had since the Middle Ages. These betrothals were regarded as being principally tools for cementing political, military, and economic alliances between the ruling houses. And this is, of course, the model still favoured by Lady Catherine de Bourgh!

With such betrothals, the bride, but also quite often the groom, had little to say in who they could marry. We can see a perfect example of this in the sons of George III, the king at the time Jane Austen was writing. Not even the future George IV and William IV got to choose their bride.

Contrastingly, we tend to know less about the courting and marriage practices of the lower classes, because they leave less of an imprint on historical records. However, what evidence we do have suggests that their courting was not only more informal, but that women had much more agency in choosing who and when they married. For example, it’s a popular preconception that women got married very young in the past, but church records indicate that a duchess was far more likely to be a child bride than a dairymaid.

What we see in Jane Austen’s novels is her writing in the context of these new courting practices, in which the would-be couple have some degree of agency around who they choose to marry, but in which questions of money and status still play a crucial role. That’s the tension that drives the plot of the novels. What we see in the stories is her heroines’ need to hold on to what agency they have, to push back against more conservative traditions in order to reach their happy ending.

Of course, these conventions constrain her heroes as well. Edward Ferrer’s entanglement with Lucy Steele in Sense and Sensibility should be seen in this light. But in a profoundly paternalistic society, they have more agency than the heroines. Anne Elliot, after all, does not have the option of going off to sea and making a fortune capturing enemy ships.

What Persuasion also does so well is show us that the question of whether a couple is engaged or not, and what being engaged actually means, is a much more complex and nuanced one than is usually presented in traditional romance fiction. Persuasion shows us that becoming engaged is not just about a commitment between two people, but a multi-stage process involving multiple actors and practices, including familial pressure, legal and financial processes, and the court of public opinion.

So what Harriet actually asked me to talk about was, what did being engaged involve in Jane Austen’s time? How, for example, did other people know if a couple were engaged?

Because this is very much outside my comfort zone, I began by reading what Rory Muir had to say on the subject in his book, Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen.

00:37:54 Harriet

I’ll put the details of that book in the show notes.

00:37:57 Michael

His book is useful in providing examples illustrated by excerpts from contemporary letters. So what happened after the would-be husband had popped the question and been accepted?

The first thing he was supposed to do was seek parental approval. The correct practice would be for the would-be bridegroom to seek the approval of his head of household, his father or legal guardian, before making his proposal, although as Jane Austen’s novels demonstrate, it was not uncommon for them to do so after the fact. Of course, Captain Wentworth, as with Mr Darcy, has the advantage of being his own head of household and therefore only having to ask himself.

The couple would also need the approval of the potential bride’s family. Again, legally, only her head of household needed to approve, and it’s certainly true that his failure to give assent would effectively end the matter. In practice, however, the approval of both parents, and indeed the broader family circle, was usually needed in order for things to proceed smoothly.

00:39:03 Harriet

The bit about the father, we get that in Pride and Prejudice, where after Darcy leaves, Mr Bennett says to Elizabeth, I have given him my consent. But in the case of Mr Collins, you would expect him, being so proper as he is, you would expect him to approach Mr Bennett before proposing to Elizabeth. But because he’s already spoken to Mrs Bennett and got her enthusiastic approval, he actually doesn’t consult Mr Bennett before speaking to Elizabeth.

00:39:27 Michael

Yes, but in legal theory, Mrs Bennett approving, doesn’t matter if he refuses.

00:39:33 Harriet

Yeah, that fits in with what you were saying about in general.

00:39:36 Michael

Yes.

00:39:36 Harriet

It wasn’t just the head of household.

00:39:38 Michael

Yes, exactly.

What did being engaged mean for the couple? In the first instance, they were allowed more time together. Muir’s book includes amusing excerpts from period letters by family members jokingly complaining about the mooning couple. How they spend all their time gazing at one another and saying icky romantic things to one another. They would also be allowed a certain degree of privacy, walking, writing, reading, and talking together alone, for example.

I think this helps explain why in Sense and Sensibility people start to speculate about Marianne and Willoughby since they appear to be acting like an engaged couple.

There is also some suggestion that engaged couples were allowed to engage in some types of mild physical affection, such as holding hands, though any kissing would have to have been private and discreet. Muir devotes some time to the question of how often engaged couples took things further, no doubt more often than we think.

Muir also points out that engaged couples were permitted to write to one another, to have private correspondence. This, of course, would be particularly important when the marriage might be delayed for financial reasons or where one party was overseas on military service or managing overseas estates.

00:41:02 Harriet

It does actually come up, once you start to think about it, in a lot of Jane Austen novels, the two secret engagements, Edward Farrows and Lucy Steele, and also Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax, we know in both cases they correspond with one another. And of course, with Henry Tilney and Catherine Moreland, they cannot be officially engaged because General Tilney hasn’t approved of it. But it does say that whenever Catherine received a letter, her parents looked the other way, which I think is so nice.

But also, and this is something that actually only occurred to me when we started thinking about engagements, Henrietta and Charles Hayter, don’t have an official engagement, but they’ve got this long-term understanding, and they’re all assuming they will get married, but they’re not formally engaged. Whereas Anne and Wentworth do want to get formally engaged, and possibly one of the reasons they wanted a formal engagement rather than an informal understanding was because if they were engaged, they would be able to write to one another, and if they weren’t engaged, then they wouldn’t.

00:42:06 Michael

Yes, that would be vital for them being able to maintain their relationship.

One engagement practice that Muir talked about that I thought was particularly relevant to Persuasion is that of the couple gifting each other portrait miniatures of themselves. And again, this would be particularly important where the couple would be separated.

If we look at the miniature portrait of Captain Benwick in Persuasion as an example of this, he had it painted at the Cape to send to Fanny Harville after their engagement. Presumably he heard of her death before it could be set and sent to her.

00:42:40 Harriet

And of course, there’s another example of a miniature being painted in Jane Austen in Sense and Sensibility. Lucy Steele has a miniature of Edward Ferrer’s, and she says, I haven’t been able to get one of myself for him, but I have given him the ring with my hair in it. That sort of, again, is part of this whole doing miniatures was a very standard part of the engagement.

Another thing that does come up in Persuasion a lot, and particularly in these two chapters, but also earlier, is the level of expectation that behavior can arouse. You talked about it with Sense and Sensibility, but we also see it here, not to the same heedless extreme that Marianne and Willoughby are doing. But Captain Harville believes that Captain Wentworth and Louisa are engaged because of their really relatively innocuous behaviour.

00:43:31 Michael

Indeed.

00:43:32 Harriet

And then, of course, when we get to Bath, everyone in their particular social circle, the rumour Mrs Smith hears is that they’re definitely engaged, and then the rumour that Admiral Croft hears is that they’re definitely engaged. So it’s obviously a topic of conversation about people becoming engaged.

00:43:51 Michael

Yes, so it’s both about their relative intimacy, but also I think it’s a comment on the importance that people would have placed on her father’s and Lady Russell’s approval.

00:44:02 Harriet

And the fact that in the case of them, it was being seen by everyone, including Captain Wentworth, as such an eligible alliance.

00:44:10 Michael

Yes, indeed.

00:44:18 Harriet

Just before I start on the pop culture section for this episode, I wanted to mention another podcast I’ve been listening to for the past little while. It’s another Australian Jane Austen podcast. It’s called Enter the Austenverse and it’s hosted by David and Lisa Campbell. The main episodes focus on adaptations and there’s also bonus episodes that are interviews. I’m enjoying it. It’s a lot of fun.

So for this episode, what I thought I’d do is just generally reflect on the the screen adaptations I’ve talked about up until now. And a lot of this is probably going to be me saying I like the 1995 version better, but not always.

However, when it comes to the presentation of Anne Elliot, then yes, Amanda Root in the 1995 version for me is hands down the best film representation of Anne Elliot. She does the best version of regaining her bloom throughout the film.

00:45:15 Michael

I think the most impressive part of it is her ability to convey her inner life in silence.

00:45:24 Harriet

Yes, she does so much with her eyes.

00:45:27 Michael

Indeed.

00:45:28 Harriet

Having said that, most of the other Anne Elliot’s are basically okay. Sally Hawkins in 2007, I feel is just more crushed throughout the whole film. By contrast, in 1971, Anne Burbank seems to be more serene and self-possessed for the whole of the production, not just towards the end.

I’m not going to talk again about Dakota Johnson because, as I said when I talked about the film, the Anne Elliot that 2022 version of Persuasion gave us, I felt she was so unlike the Anne Elliot of the book that I didn’t feel she gave me anything to bring back to the character.

In terms of Wentworth?

00:46:08 Michael

My views have been made very clear in previous episodes. There is only one good presentation of Wentworth, which is the 1995.

00:46:16 Harriet

I certainly agree that Kieran Hinds is the best representation of Wentworth, and many of the others are fairly bland and in some cases fairly lacking in charisma. But I do think while Rupert Penry Jones, I would definitely place second to Kieran Hines, there are some aspects of his performance that I do like. And in some ways it’s like a comparison of Colin Firth and Matthew McFadyen’s Darcy.

Rupert Penry Jones’s Wentworth is more overtly emotional, and that is something you can engage with. And what I’m particularly thinking of is when they bring in the cancelled Chapter and saying, Please tell the Admiral he is utterly misinformed. The look of hope on Wentworth’s face when he says “No truth in any part of it?”I really, really liked.

So as I said, he does not to me encapsulate the Captain Wentworth of the book in the same way that Matthew McFadden to me does not encapsulate the Darcy of the book, but I can engage with him as a romantic hero in a way that I couldn’t for, I think, any of the other Captain Wentworths.

00:47:29 Michael

Okay, fair enough. I thought, and this is more a critique of the directorial choices than of him, I just thought it was a very unsubtle way of presenting that.

00:47:39 Harriet

I felt that just as Amanda Root delivers so much with her face, he delivered a lot with his facial expression. It was his facial expression much more than the actual dialogue.

00:47:49 Michael

Yes, I know, but I thought his performance lacked the subtlety of hers.

00:47:53 Harriet

Okay, well, since we’re talking about lack of subtlety, let me move on to Sir Walter Elliot.

00:47:59 Harriet

They always cast good character actors and they have all been good. So it may be surprising that I would have to honestly say my favorite is in fact, Richard E. Grant from the 2022 version. Now, this is not a subtle portrayal, but it is an incredibly funny portrayal of Sir Walter. This is big. This is dialing it up to 11. This is a caricature rather than a character.

In many ways, it’s on a par with Bill Nighy’s performance in the 2020 version of Emma, where he played Mr Woodhouse. The difference being that I felt he played a Mr Woodhouse that bore very little relationship to the Mr Woodhouse of the book, whereas I felt Richard E. Grant’s Sir Walter Elliot did have a connection with the Sir Walter of the book. I don’t think there was a bad Sir Walter, but the one that made me laugh the most was Richard E. Grant in 2022.

For Mary, again, there’s absolutely no competition that the best representation of the Mary of the book was from 1995 and it was Sophie Thompson. She was awesome.

00:49:06 Michael

Yes.

00:49:07 Harriet

Other Marys trying to do the same sort of thing less well. But I am again going to do a call out to 2022 because Mia McKenna Bruce was absolutely hilarious. If Richard E. Grant’s Sir Walter was dialed up to 11, Mary McKenna Bruce’s Mary was dialed up to 23.

She was so funny, and she, I thought, was the best example of what this adaptation was trying to do, was trying to be hip and now, but in a period setting with lots of modern expressions and modern attitudes, and they worked so well with her, and she was not in any way a realistic character. She was a completely over-the-top comic character, and I think this is actually encapsulated best in the moment when they return from the walk from Winthrop and Charles walks into the room carrying Mary over his shoulder because she’s refused to walk anymore.

That’s the level of subtlety, but it was so funny. She was not the Mary of the book, but I have to give her credit for being one of the absolute bright spots of that movie.

00:50:20 Harriet

I could go on and on about all of the other characters, but I think in the interest of time, I want to talk about three key aspects of the reductions. Dealing with the backstory, most of the productions have covered the backstory in conversations, typically with Lady Russell. But even when the scenes are well done, it doesn’t really sit all that well to have Anne and Lady Russell talking about the past because that is so not the right dynamic.

00:50:49 Michael

Yes, but it’s hard to come up with an alternative.

00:50:52 Harriet

Well, the alternatives that have been come up with are, to a greater or lesser extent, flashbacks. So the Spanish adaptation in 1972 had two flashbacks, one in episode one and one I think in episode 4, to show you scenes from the past.

The web series Rational Creatures also used flashbacks, but it had a great many more of them, spread throughout the entire series so you didn’t actually see their breakup scene and the reason for it until practically the end, which I thought was effective, but I’m not sure how much it affected the balance of the story.

The 2022 version started with Anne’s voiceover talking about the past, and the visuals to go with it were flashbacks from the past of the two of them on a hillside. If you’re going to include voiceover, I actually think that was a moderately effective way to do it.

As I’ve said before, most of the adaptations film Louise’s fall actually at the cob in Lyme, although they do use different sets of stairs. And the level of drama also varies. In 1971, she jumps only about four steps up and you can’t see how the fall actually happens. So it’s kind of hard to believe that she could be seriously injured. The 1972 Spanish one doesn’t use the steps in Lyme and it’s all offstage and it’s very nothing.

The 1995 one is a lot more dramatic because she does jump from higher up the stairs. She jumps feet first and as she’s falling, it’s all slow motion and no sound except for a bird in the background. So I think what you have to assume is she landed on her feet, but then just they went out from under her and she went back and hit her head.

In 2007, she’s jumping from much higher. You don’t see her actually falling, but when she’s fallen, and I didn’t notice this myself until someone pointed it out to me, they lift her head up and you can see blood in the back of her bonnet. That’s the only one that has blood in it.

00:53:07 Michael

I think that’s all about ratings and what time you can show them.

00:53:11 Harriet

Yeah.

2022 is possibly one of the most convincing falls, but in many ways the most ridiculous way of presenting it because when she runs up to jump the second time, he has stepped back and he’s put his hands behind his back and he’s nowhere even close to being in a position to catch her. It’s a believable amount of injury, but a kind of ridiculous presentation of the scene.

So they all have maybe some strengths and some weaknesses.

00:53:45 Michael

I’d also say that none of them have the budget to do it convincingly.

00:53:48 Harriet

Well, yes, there’s that too.

Now, the last scene I want to talk about in comparison is the scene at the White Hart, which is of course the key scene in the book. 1971 is fairly close to the book, but it’s all just feels a little bit flat and I think part of that is the Anne Elliot feels a little bit remote, almost objective in her discussion. It has most of the letter from the book, and you have Wentworth’s voiceover as Anne is reading it. When she goes down with Charles, he eventually goes off and leaves her with Wentworth, and they walk together arm in arm, and then they walk along somewhere that might actually be the gravel walk, but I’m not 100% sure. So it was fine, but a bit flat.

1972, the Spanish one, While Anne and Harville are talking, you see Wentworth writing, then it’s close up on them, then suddenly Wentworth isn’t there anymore, but he’s left a letter behind that Harville then gives to Anne. Again, we have voiceover by Wentworth while Anne is reading it. But in this one, Anne looks out the window and Wentworth is waiting and it sort of zooms in on his face as he sees her looking at him. So that was quite effective on a lesser budget.

1995, again, for me, this is the best representation of that scene. The dialogue in the conversation is very, very similar to the book. Amanda Root just absolutely nails the emotion behind it. The letter itself starts out with Wentworth’s voiceover, fades into Anne’s voiceover, back into Wentworth’s. It’s an interesting combination, but maybe a little bit disjointed at times.

00:55:35 Michael

I actually really liked it, though.

00:55:38 Harriet

And the scene of Anne and Wentworth with Charles in the street with Charles talking about the gun is absolutely superb. And then it goes off the rails with the circus that I’m not going to talk about again.

This is also the first one that has a kiss between Anne and Wentworth. The 1970s versions didn’t.

00:55:54 Michael

Harriet and I were fortunate to hear Amanda Root talk to the Jane Austen Society of Australia. She did mention that they did multiple versions of that scene. With a kiss and without, and then there was a lot of back and forth, and I think it was the distributors who were adamant they had to have a kiss.

00:56:12 Harriet

Yeah, I think since the 90s, people have been more and more keen that you have to have a kiss at the end.

2007 commits, in my view, the unforgivable sin of having the conversation with Harville earlier in line with Benwick rather than Harville.

00:56:28 Michael

Yes.

00:56:29 Harriet

And they’ve just taken the heart and soul completely out of it. Instead, in this one, they’ve incorporated the cancelled chapter, but they still try to work in the letter by having Harvel give it to her in the street.

When they do finally meet, one thing I did like about that is, again, they have Charles there and he’s talking about his gun again, but as he’s talking about his gun and she’s looking at Wentworth, his voice just fades away. And I thought that was quite effective. And then they, like in 1995, they kiss in the street.

2022 goes back to having a conversation in the White Hart with Captain Harville. But, and this is an enormous but, at this point in time, Anne still thinks Wentworth is engaged to Louisa. So she and Harville are talking at cross purposes about Benwick. So she thinks it’s all over between her and Wentworth, he’s engaged to Louisa.

And that kind of…

00:57:30 Michael

Ruins it.

00:57:31 Harriet

Kind of ruins it.

In this one, Anne is reading the letter aloud to the camera. It wasn’t terrible, but it also really lost, I think, a lot of the heart and soul. And also, they’d cut quite a lot of the letter and they’d reworded some of it, which didn’t work.

She then chases after Wentworth, not doing the Bath Marathon like they had in 2007. It’s much shorter, so it’s not as laugh out loud. But when she meets him, they are 100% definitely on the gravel path. So for all that I felt most of the rest of it could have been improved, I did like the fact that they used the gravel walk.

So, those were just my reflections.

00:58:20 Harriet

As I said all along, 1995 is far and away my favorite, but it still has some things I didn’t like all that much, and most of the others had at least something that even if I didn’t think it was better than 1995, I enjoyed it and it in some cases did make me reflect on the book, which is the main thing I like to get out of adaptations.

00:58:41 Michael

Yes, whereas for me the fact that the 1995 has the best protagonists and the best Mary overcomes everything else and all the others are to varying degrees disappointing.

00:58:56 Harriet

Yep.

00:59:03 Harriet

You’ve been listening to the Reading Jane Austen podcast with me, Harriet, me, Michael, and me, Ellen.

00:59:10 Ellen

In our next episode, we’re going to be reading the published version of Chapter 22 of Persuasion.

00:59:18 Harriet

The structure of this podcast was inspired by Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.

00:59:22 Harriet

Our music is Creative Commons performances of pieces Jane Austen might have listened to.

00:59:27 Ellen

You can find us on our website, ReadingJaneAusten.com.

00:59:33 Michael

We’re also on Facebook at Reading Jane Austen and Instagram at ReadingJaneAusten.

00:59:41 Harriet

You can email us at ReadingJaneAusten.com or rate and review us in your podcast app.

00:59:46 Harriet

We hope you’ll join us next time.

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