In this episode, we talk about private communications in public spaces, Wentworth’s possible feelings in the encounter at Mollands and in the Assembly Room, the question of whether Lady Russell was legitimately trying to identify a set of curtains, and Anne’s feelings towards Mr Elliot.
The character we discuss is Elizabeth Elliot. In the historical section, Michael talks about the Bath Assembly Rooms, and for popular culture Harriet discusses the 2023 independent film Persuasion.
See the full transcript below.
Things we mention:
General discussion:
- Janet Todd and Antje Blank [Editors], The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen: Persuasion (2006)
Historical discussion:
- Blackadder the Third (1987)
- YouTube video: Dr Timothy Moore, ‘Change & Challenge: The History of Bath’s Assembly Rooms‘, Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, 30 July 2024
- Assembly Rooms floorplan:
(Source: http://www.victoriahinshaw.com/victorias-vibes—-a-blog/archives/05-2019)
Popular culture discussion:
- Persuasion (2023, Agatha Films) – starring Skylar Pierce and Dan Brown
Creative commons music used:
- Extract from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sonata No. 12 in F Major, ii. Adagio.
- Extract from Joseph Haydn, Piano Sonata No. 38. Performance by Ivan Ilić, recorded in Manchester in December, 2006. File originally from IMSLP.
- Extract from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sonata No. 13 in B-Flat Major, iii. Allegretto Grazioso. File originally from Musopen.
- Extract from George Frideric Handel, Suite I, No. 2 in F Major, ii. Allegro. File originally from Musopen.
- Extract from Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 28 in A major. File originally from Musopen.
Full transcript:
00:00:00 Ellen
While Admiral Croft was taking this walk with Anne and expressing his wish of getting Captain Wentworth to Bath, Captain Wentworth was already on his way.
I’m Ellen.
00:00:16 Harriet
And I’m Harriet. And this is Reading Jane Austen. And as has happened before, for this episode, we’re joined by my partner, Michael.
00:00:23 Michael
Hello.
00:00:24 Ellen
This week we’re reading chapters 19 and 20 of Persuasion.
00:00:30 Ellen
So, let’s start with your 100 word summary.
00:00:34 Harriet
Captain Wentworth arrives in Bath and bumps into Anne in a shop. It’s raining and he offers his umbrella, but Mr Elliot returns to walk her home. They meet again at a concert and talk about Benwick and Louisa. Wentworth says a man doesn’t recover from the devotion Benwick had to Fanny Harville. When the Dalrymples and Mr Elliot arrive, Anne has to sit with them. In a break, she changes seats, and Captain Wentworth approaches her again. But they’re interrupted by Mr Elliot and Captain Wentworth leaves the concert. This makes Anne realise he’s jealous of Mr Elliot.
So that was my 100 words.
00:01:08 Ellen
And this time I was lucky enough to persuade Michael to write a 100 word summary, so I didn’t have to.
00:01:20 Michael
Okay, so here is my 100-word summary which is similar but a bit different.
On a rainy day in Bath, Anne Elliot first sees Captain Wentworth and then unexpectedly encounters him in Mollins. Captain Wentworth is struck and confused by the sight of her. Their conversation is interrupted by the return of Mr Elliot to escort Anne home. They meet again a few days later at a concert in the assembly rooms. They discuss the events at Lyme and their conversation convinces Anne that his feelings for her are returning. Mr Elliot intervenes to escort Anne in. His attentions to her during the concert cause Captain Wentworth to abruptly leave, angry and confused.
00:02:06 Harriet
You spent more time on the first chapter in the meeting in Mollins than I did.
00:02:10 Michael
Yes.
00:02:11 Harriet
So chapter 19 starts with the Elliot women, Mrs Clay and Mr Elliot, in Milsom Street, taking shelter in Molins when it starts to rain.
00:02:22 Ellen
Something that I find very fascinating is practically the whole of these two chapters take place in public places where they’re trying to make signals to one another with other people in the background because so much of it takes place indoors and so it’s all tied up with not just where they are, but the sort of manners that are appropriate in these places. So the kind of signals they’ve got to be giving are signals appropriate to public manners and public places.
00:03:02 Michael
I agree that the social signalling is a really important part of this chapter. However, I think one of the interesting ways in which Jane Austen writes this. It’s much more from Anne’s point of view. So, we clearly know what Anne is doing and what her intentions are. We don’t get that from Captain Wentworth. We get her reactions to him. We get to hear him saying these things, but we don’t know, just as she doesn’t know, whether this is actually deliberate signalling or whether it’s subconscious.
00:03:38 Ellen
Again, that’s something that we saw Anne has been monitoring Captain Wentworth and what he’s thinking and what his actions mean for the last eight years. And now she’s got another chance to see him again, yes. And then there’s also that business of who acknowledges whom. And Anne so nervy at different points, she’s sort of terrified that Lady Russell and her family are going to cut by not acknowledging that they’ve known Wentworth before and is so relieved when they do.
00:04:17 Harriet
Except, of course, in chapter 19 in Mullins, Elizabeth won’t recognise him.
00:04:23 Ellen
Yes.
00:04:24 Harriet
Let’s just go through the chapter a bit methodically now that we’ve had talked about general impressions.
00:04:28 Ellen
Yes.
00:04:29 Harriet
One of the things I noticed in the very beginning bit, and it’s probably I was conscious of it because we’re going to be talking about Elizabeth later, but Jane Austen is so snarky about Elizabeth’s sense of self-importance.
00:04:41 Ellen
Oh, yes.
00:04:41 Harriet
First of all, when she says the rain wasn’t much, but enough to make shelter desirable for women and quite enough to make it very desirable for Miss Elliot to have the advantage of being conveyed home in Lady Dalrymple’s carriage. And then later on, when there’s only room for two in the carriage, there could be no doubt as to Miss Elliott. Whoever suffered inconvenience, she must suffer none.
00:05:04 Ellen
The other side of that is this picture you get that it’s perfectly all right if it’s raining and you see a friend’s carriage to in effect rush up to them and say, can you give me a lift? Yes.
00:05:18 Michael
I think there’s more to it than that, because it’s not just a friend, it’s the dowager: “I’m so important that I can get a lift from her”.
00:05:27 Ellen
Yes, that’s what I was going to say.
00:05:29 Harriet
It’s assuming quite a lot of privilege, and quite a lot of visible privilege between the two of them.
00:05:35 Michael
Yes.
00:05:36 Harriet
That everyone will see that the carriage is coming for Miss Elliot.
00:05:40 Ellen
Yes.
00:05:42 Harriet
The other thing I noticed at the start of this chapter, before Wentworth has actually appeared, is that when Mrs Clay and Anne are debating who should go in the carriage and who should walk with Mr Elliot, and it says Anne was most sincere in preferring a walk with Mr Elliot. So we’re still getting this picture that Mr Elliot is still basically the person she likes best in Bath.
00:06:05 Ellen
Yes. Is this the point where Mrs. Clay has sent him off on a message for her? To what extent is he doing this wooing of Mrs Clay that we don’t hear about?
00:06:17 Harriet
Yeah, I also thought that it’s kind of like Emma, though at a lower level. You don’t pick it up on your first read through, but on your second read through, when you know what happens at the end, you’d realise that “Mrs Clay’s civility rendered her quite as anxious to be left to walk with Mr Elliot as Anne could be” And then the bit about him going off on an errand for her. These are kind of the first hints you get that you don’t notice the first time through that they’ve got something going on.
00:06:44 Ellen
Yes.
00:06:47 Harriet
Now, I found it interesting when I was reading it that at the start of the chapter, we were told Captain Wentworth’s on his way back to Bath, but then the chapter moves on and it’s all about the Elliot ladies in Mollins. And then Captain Wentworth’s actual appearance is so minimally presented. So what it says is, Anne, as she sat near the window, described most decidedly and distinctly Captain Wentworth walking down the street. So, it’s not like trumpets blowing. It’s just an almost casually mentioned. I like the fact that because she’s had the chance to see him walking down the street for the first time, she’s the more composed and he’s caught by surprise when he sees her because he wasn’t expecting to see her when he turned into the shop.
00:07:29 Ellen
The fact that he is embarrassed is a message to her because he was never embarrassed like that.
00:07:37 Harriet
Yeah, but the key thing we get really in this meeting is that their positions are kind of reversed from before because previously Anne was sort of internally discomposed and Captain Wentworth was completely relaxed, whereas now it says, for the first time since their renewed acquaintance, she felt that she was betraying the least sensibility of the two. She had the advantage of him in the preparation of the last few moments “All the overpowering, blinding, bewildering first effects of strong surprise were over with her”.
00:08:09 Ellen
Yeah, he is working to this plan of wanting to get rid of anyone thinking he’s interested in Louisa by disappearing the moment she seems to be recovering. And then the moment he hears she’s got engaged, he ups sticks immediately and heads for where Anne is.
So he’s come with this intention. So he’s embarrassed because how does he hide exactly why he’s there still pursuing this end.
00:08:42 Michael
I agree with you. I’m not sure embarrassed is the word I would use. I would have said more disconcerted.
00:08:49 Ellen
Right.
00:08:49 Michael
He’s gone through this change. He’s gone to Bath.
00:08:53 Harriet
He’s probably been planning in his head how he’s going to meet with Anne again.
00:08:57 Michael
Exactly.
00:08:57 Harriet
And then he just walks into a shop and there she is.
00:09:00 Michael
Exactly.
00:09:00 Ellen
Yes.
00:09:01 Michael
So he’s going with that in his mind. He’s being the naval officer, developing a strategy of what he’s going to do, and then he walks into a shop and suddenly she’s there and it all goes out the window.
00:09:12 Harriet
Yes, but it does say the character of his manner was embarrassment: “She could not have called it either cold or friendly or anything so certainly as embarrassed”.
00:09:22 Ellen
Yes.
00:09:22 Harriet
And then the sort of, and this is something I think I got out of one of the Talking of Jane Austen books: the very prosaic nature of Wentworth saying, though I only came to Bath yesterday, I’ve already bought myself an umbrella.
00:09:35 Michael
So what strikes me about the umbrella comment is it’s very much an insider comment. It reminds me at least that Jane Austen had lived in Bath. I suspect it’s the kind of inside joke that people in Bath would talk about, that it rains all the time and the most important thing to have in Bath is an umbrella.
00:09:55 Ellen
And you can also see someone walking down the street and can say he must have just arrived look how new his umbrella is.
00:10:04 Michael
Or they’re definitely a new visitor because they’re out in the rain and they don’t have an umbrella.
00:10:09 Harriet
Yes.
00:10:09 Harriet
And then after Wentworth has heard the other women in the shop talking about Anne and Elizabeth.
00:10:15 Ellen
Where they say the men are all wild about Miss Elliot.
00:10:21 Harriet
Although Anne was quite keen to walk home with Mr Elliot, now that she’s doing it, all she can think about is Captain Wentworth. And so even though his subjects were the kind they always talk about, such as praising Lady Russell and making insinuations highly rational against Mrs Clay, I kind of love the idea that Anne and Mr Elliot are bitching about Mrs Clay when they’re in private.
Then we’ve got this bit where Anne and Lady Russell are in the carriage going down Pulteney Street, and Anne sees Captain Wentworth, and then sees Lady Russell looking out the window of the carriage, and she’s sort of all on tenterhooks to know what Lady Russell is going to say about Captain Wentworth, and then all Lady Russell says is, I was trying to find these curtains. Now, do we think Lady Russell legitimately didn’t see Captain Wentworth and legitimately was looking for curtains, or is she making it up?
00:11:08 Ellen
I think she’s legitimately looking for curtains.
00:11:11 Michael
Whereas I think the opposite. I think it’s a terrible and unconvincing lie she tells, because she doesn’t know at this point that Anne has already seen Captain Wentworth. But I think the beauty of the way it’s written is we don’t actually know. We can have our opinion, but just as Anne doesn’t know, we don’t know.
00:11:29 Harriet
I’m kind of on the fence. Sometimes I think Lady Russell is legitimate, and then sometimes I think maybe it is just something she made-up on the spot.
00:11:37 Ellen
I think it’s completely legitimate.
00:11:39 Ellen
I think Jane Austen put it in there to have something funny to say about somebody.
00:11:44 Ellen
Okay. When she’s been giving this whole chapter without much humour in it.
00:11:49 Michael
But I think it’s a deliberate choice by Jane Austen to present it in a way that does not give you the answer. We don’t have an omniscient narrator telling us whether she’s lying or telling the truth. We are put in the same position as Anne of trying to work it out.
00:12:07 Harriet
And never learning for sure.
00:12:08 Michael
And never learning for sure.
00:12:11 Harriet
So that was chapter 19. Chapter 20, I think, is one of the pivotal – well, no, we have lots of pivotal chapters in this novel, really, which I think is another way that makes it in some ways a very rich novel. There are so many really important chapters that give us key insights into what’s happening between Anne and Captain Wentworth.
00:12:30 Michael
But I think it is pivotal because here we see other characters beyond Anne visibly changing their attitude towards Captain Wentworth. We see the social fabric changing from her family and those around her being vehemently opposed to Captain Wentworth as a match for Anne to admiration now that he is a rich, successful, good-looking post captain.
00:12:55 Ellen
When I look at this chapter, what I tend to see it as having the main purpose of revealing to Anne that Wentworth is once again in love with her. Throughout the whole chapter, just the way she was following his love story in the past. She is monitoring everything he does, what he says, what does this mean, what does that mean, and her spirits go up and down as she interprets the different things. But what I see as settling it is the point, and probably Wentworth is doing this on purpose, when he talks about Benwick’s engagement to Louisa and more or less implies that Louisa wasn’t good enough for Benwick, which is a very strong flag to Anne, that Louisa wouldn’t have ever been enough for him.
00:13:55 Harriet
Their first conversation is when the Camden Place ladies and Sir Walter have arrived, but the Dalrymples and Mr Elliot haven’t, so they’re just hanging around waiting for them. So they have this long public but private conversation, and I think the two key messages that Captain Wentworth gives to Anne are, first of all, that Louisa Musgrove is very nice but she’s not as good as Fanny Harville was and therefore, by extension, not as good as Anne. And then the second one is if you love someone like Fanny Harville or Anne, you don’t recover from it that quickly.
00:14:28 Ellen
I think what this also does is turns Anne’s conviction over from now on. She’s looking at what Captain Wentworth does as related to her and that Anne is now, I don’t think she’s sure it’s going to end happily.
00:14:47 Harriet
She’s sure it exists yet. She’s sure it exists and she’s now freaking out on how to make sure it does end happily.
00:14:55 Michael
Yes, I think this is where the two of them start to reveal to each other their feelings.
00:15:01 Harriet
Well, no, see, Captain Wentworth isn’t seeing Anne’s feelings yet.
00:15:04 Ellen
Anne doesn’t really reveal her feelings.
00:15:06 Ellen
Well, look, she reveals her feelings for him in the sense that she’s being very responsive to him. She chats to him. But her absolute feelings about the past are not revealed till those last chapters.
00:15:23 Michael
I think this is about the power of the narrative voice and the perspective from which the narrative voice comes. We have a much clearer idea of Anne’s internal life because that is what the narrator is revealing to us. However, she’s not revealing to us Captain Wentworth’s internal life. What she’s revealing is Anne Elliot viewing and responding to her interactions with Captain Wentworth. But we’re not hearing the same kind of interaction, internal mental dialogue from Captain Wentworth. I think that’s the difference between how the two characters are presented in these chapters.
00:16:02 Harriet
But it’s not just these chapters. It’s been that way all the way through the book. We’ve talked about it in previous episodes, how Anne is always looking at Captain Wentworth and working out what he’s feeling.
00:16:12 Michael
I agree that it’s been happening all along, but I think this is where that really comes to the forefront because, as you’ve already said, these are crucial chapters for the novel where the whole plot starts to shift.
00:16:26 Ellen
I think the thing that makes it shift is this conversation about Benwick, where she realises that there is hope for her, there’s hope for their relationship, that him being nice to her is not just him being generally polite.
00:16:44 Harriet
Yeah. The other thing I wanted to say, just as a sort of side issue, is why does Benwick fall in love with Louisa? When we were talking about Benwick, we said it was just part of the whole, he had an affectionate heart, he must love someone. But since then I’ve actually seen two different comments on the internet with two different points of view on it. One of them is that maybe what attracted him to Louisa was exactly that she was so very different from Fanny.
00:17:09 Ellen
Yes.
00:17:10 Harriet
And the other one is that he was able to nurse Louisa, which he couldn’t do for Fanny. Fanny died and he wasn’t there. This time he’s there and he can help and she gets better. And Fanny didn’t. And it’s like he’s getting a second chance.
00:17:27 Ellen
I’d never thought of that, but what he’s got is day-to-day thinking about Louisa.
00:17:33 Harriet
Yeah.
00:17:34 Ellen
He’s sort of drawn to her and he’s talking to Mrs Harville, and then Mrs Harville’s telling him about what she’s feeling, and he’s gradually coming in to have a nice little chat with her as she’s recovering.
00:17:48 Harriet
Yeah.
00:17:48 Ellen
And she likes his poems.
00:17:51 Ellen
And then it happens.
00:17:52 Harriet
But all the stuff he couldn’t do when Fanny Harville was sick because he wasn’t there.
But getting back to the chapter, at the end of the conversation when they’re separated because they all have to go into the concert room. We get explicitly told what we’ve already, as astute readers, worked out from reading the conversation, that Anne can see that everything he’s done declared that he had a heart returning to her at last, that anger, resentment, avoidance were no more, and that they were succeeded not merely by friendship and regard, but by the tenderness of the past, which we almost don’t need to be told.
00:18:27 Ellen
No, I don’t even remember that. I must have skipped over it.
00:18:32 Harriet
And then when they’re sitting down, Mr Elliot has manoeuvred himself, and Jane Austen specifically uses that word manoeuvred, with the help of Colonel Wallace, that he’s sitting next to Anne.
00:18:42 Michael
And then after earlier in the chapter having this meaningful, emotional discussion with Captain Wentworth, we then get this patently false, excessively gallant, excessively flirtatious, in a very mannered way, discussion with Mr Elliot, saying all these things that he thinks are the keys to getting and to give in to him. And perhaps they have been working earlier on, but it seems to me that all his flowery flattery of her in this stands in strong contrast to the much plainer but much more emotionally charged discussion she just had with Cabinet Wentworth. The way it presents us allows us almost to see what’s going on in Anne’s mind, that she’s now recoiling from this guy.
00:19:32 Harriet
No, I think it’s even cleverer than that because she’s not recoiling. She joins him with the jokey excessive compliment about Italian, but then when he says that he knew her by report long before she came to Bath, it says, Mr Elliot was not disappointed in the interest he hoped to raise. No one can withstand the charm of such a mystery. To have been described long ago to a recent acquaintance by nameless people is irresistible and Anne was all curiosity. She’s not recoiling from him at this stage because this conversation is the kind of way she’s been talking to Miss Elliot and it is still being successful even though she’s in the back of her head she’s thinking about Captain Wentworth. So at this point she is actually still being teceptive at that level to Mr Elliot, but she’s still thinking Captain Wentworth because she thinks that this person who might have talked about her could be Captain Wentworth’s brother.
00:20:27 Ellen
Yes.
00:20:28 Harriet
But then you get what is essentially Mr Elliot’s proposal, where he says, the name of Anne Elliot has long had an interesting sound to me. If I dared, I would breathe my wishes that the name might never change. I’m wondering, do you think if I dared just means because he’s still technically in mourning for his wife, so he can’t actually propose his wife?
00:20:48 Ellen
Well, actually, I don’t know if it is that. I think it’s just the first hint that wait a while and I’ll propose.
00:20:56 Harriet
Yeah.
00:20:56 Michael
Yes, I think it’s strategic.
00:20:58 Ellen
And to soften you up a bit.
00:21:00 Michael
Yeah.
00:21:00 Ellen
So it won’t come as a big surprise.
00:21:03 Harriet
Yeah.
00:21:03 Harriet
But no, I agree with Michael. Strategic is the right word. Absolutely everything Mr Elliot says and does in this chapter is strategic as compared to everything Captain Wentworth does, which is from the heart.
00:21:15 Ellen
Yes.
00:21:16 Harriet
This is also the bit where we finally get the Elliot clan recognizing Captain Wentworth, when we have this great bit where Lady Dalrymple says, Irish, I dare say.
00:21:29 Ellen
And after that, he’s then somebody that the Elliot family can approve of.
00:21:34 Harriet
And so Walter can say, oh yes, I just know him. But importantly, they then recognise him. But the thing is, that’s the point where Anne realises how close Captain Wentworth is to them. And that’s where she recoils from Mr Elliot. Up until this point, she’s been going along with Mr Elliot because, like I said, he’s the person she likes best in Bath, except maybe Lady Russell. But now, MrElliott’s speech too distressed her. She had no longer any inclination to talk to him. She wished him not so near her. And then there’s sort of this pause in the music and everyone rearranges seats a bit. And I think it’s such a great picture of Anne’s agency that she is now doing what Mr Elliott did earlier in that she’s strategically moving herself closer to the end of the bench. Captain Wentworth he kind of approaches her, but it says he looked grave and seemed irresolute. So, she’s actively having to engage him in conversation. And because she is actively talking to him, he is now starting to relax a bit more.
00:22:39 Ellen
And she’d made a real effort to make sure she got to the end of the bench where he had a chance to come up and speak to her.
00:22:47 Harriet
Yes. But then it says, he even looked down towards the bench as if he saw a place on it well worth occupying. And then at that point, Mr. Elliot butts in again and says she needs to translate the Italian. And it says: “Anne could not refuse, but never had she sacrificed to politeness with a more suffering spirit”. And that’s when Captain Wentworth then gets in his big huff and says, there’s nothing for me here, I’m going to leave. And that’s where we get the real transition of feelings against Mr. Elliot, because she realises that it’s jealousy of Mr. Elliot that is causing him to leave.
00:23:18 Ellen
Yes.
00:23:19 Harriet
And she’s freaking out about how was she to let him know the truth:
“It was misery to think of Mr Elliot’s attentions. Their evil was incalculable.”
So we’ve actually had this really interesting transition in her feelings towards engaging with Mr Elliot throughout the chapter. First up, even after the conversation with Wentworth, she’s more than happy to keep on engaging with Mr Elliot the way she has been up till now. Then she gets worried about it because it’s separating her from Wentworth and then she’s so upset about it because she doesn’t know how to get the truth across.
00:23:50 Michael
Yes, I think there’s more to it than just jealousy of Mr Elliot. I think what he’s seeing is the Elliot family block who were all against him before and now here they are and they’re enmeshing Anne in their schemes and they’re going to do everything to separate him from them. I think that’s where the anger comes from.
00:24:10 Harriet
I hadn’t properly thought of that before, but yeah, you’re absolutely right. There she is. I think the Elliot block is such a good way to express it.
00:24:17 Michael
Yes.
00:24:18 Harriet
Because both literal, a block of seats as well as…
00:24:21 Michael
Yes, indeed.
00:24:22 Harriet
So that’s where the chapter finishes, with Anne basically, on the one hand, she knows Captain Wentworth is in love with her again. And on the other hand, she has to try and work out how in this very public environment of Bath…
00:24:38 Ellen
And this very tight group she’s been pulled into, which in a sense, the toadies of Lady Dalrymple and Miss Carteret. How can she pull herself away from that group to say to Captain Wentworth, these are not my people. I am open to anything you want to say to me.
00:24:58 Harriet
I just think they’re such a good pair of chapters, but that one particularly is such a good chapter.
00:25:03 Michael
Yes, indeed.
00:25:05 Harriet
I might go first with my favourite sentence because as we were talking, I changed my mind about what I’m going to use for my favourite sentence.
00:25:12 Ellen
Yes.
00:25:13 Harriet
And the one I like, I’m cheating because it’s actually two sentences, but they’re unusually two quite short sentences.
00:25:20 Ellen
Yes.
00:25:20 Harriet
So this is when she’s in Mollins and she noticed Captain Wentworth down the street, but she’s probably inside the shop. So it says:
“She now felt a great inclination to go to the outer door, she wanted to see if it rained. Why was she to suspect herself of another motive?”
And I just think this is one of those beautiful moments of possibly the narrator poking fun at Anne, or possibly Anne poking fun at herself. So that was my favourite sentence.
00:25:50 Ellen
All right, well, I just so loved the final sentence in chapter 20.
The one:
“No, he replied impressively, there was nothing worth my staying for. And he was gone directly.”
Because I think it tells you everything you need to know about his jealousy.
00:26:08 Harriet
Yeah. So what’s yours?
00:26:11 Michael
Well, it was, these chapters make it incredibly difficult to choose a sentence. My favorite sentence, however, if forced to pick one, is:
“She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time, but alas, alas, she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.”
00:26:30 Ellen
That’s beautiful. That’s such a lovely expression of Jane Austen’s attitude to Anne. Yes.
00:26:44 Harriet
The character we’re talking about today is Elizabeth Elliot, who is not a particularly nice person, I suppose, but well, okay.
Elizabeth Elliot is 29 during the course of this book, but her birthday is the 1st of June, which we know from the Baronetish, which means within a couple of months of the end of this book, she is going to be 30.
00:27:05 Michael
Quelle horreur!
00:27:06 Harriet
Yeah. One of the things we’ve learned about her is that she is very handsome. You know, it says that there are some women who are handsomer at twenty-nine than they were 10 years earlier.
00:27:19 Ellen
Yes, and generally speaking, if there has been neither ill health nor anxiety. It is a time of life at which scarcely any charm is lost.
00:27:31 Harriet
Yes. And we even know from the conversation of the women in Mollins, as we talked about earlier.
00:27:37 Ellen
The men are all wild after Miss Elliot. Yes. Anne it’s too delicate for them.
00:27:42 Harriet
Yes. So, it must not just be Sir Walter and Elizabeth who think she’s very good looking. She must in fact still be a handsome woman.
00:27:51 Ellen
Yes, so why are none of these men who are wild after her asking her to marry them?
00:27:57 Harriet
Well, probably because they’ve spent half an hour in conversation with her. Because remember, that was something Anne was thinking early when she realised Elizabeth was certainly expecting Mr Elliot to propose. And she thought, well, Elizabeth is still good looking and hopefully Mr Elliot won’t spend so much time talking to her that he realises what she’s really like.
00:28:18 Ellen
I suppose another thing that sort of strikes me is we never get any of her thoughts. We never see the world from her point of view.
00:28:28 Harriet
We actually kind of do right at the start when it says:
“13 years had seen her mistress of Kellynch Hall presiding and directing with self-possession.”
It’s a long paragraph, I’m not going to read it all out, but it repeats, 13 years had seen this. For 13 years she’d been doing that.
“Thirteen winters revolving frosts had seen her going to the balls. Thirteen springs had shown their blossoms. And it says, she had the remembrance of all this. She had the consciousness of being 9 and 20 to give her some regrets and some apprehensions. She was fully satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever, but she felt her approach to the years of danger and would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet blood within the next 12 month or two.”
When it says to give her some regrets, do we think that probably means she did actually receive an offer that was beneath her that was not of baronetage blood and so she refused it and now she’s regretting that?
00:29:26 Ellen
We aren’t really told whether she was very fussy or whether in fact nobody approached her.
00:29:34 Michael
So, I suspect that previously her expectation was that she would marry up.
00:29:40 Harriet
Yes.
00:29:40 Michael
That she would marry a much wealthier baronet or even into the aristocracy.
00:29:46 Harriet
I’m not convinced she saw herself marrying into the aristocracy. I mean, her first choice was Mr Elliot. I do agree she probably would have expected a rich baronet. But yeah, it does seem like the baronetcy is her baseline and possibly there’s not much above it, but she’s not below.
00:30:02 Ellen
She is not going to marry a rector.
00:30:05 Harriet
Yeah, she’s not going to marry a Mr.
00:30:08 Michael
Yes, but she’s also not going to marry a poor baronet, a fat baronet.
00:30:15 Ellen
There’s almost the possibility of her houteur, this dressing throughout it that she expects and she expects, you know, Miss Elliot, surrounded by her cousins and the principal object of Colonel Wallace’s gallantry, was quite contented. Or other things.
Miss Elliot had to get into the carriage. Whoever suffered inconvenience, she must suffer none.
00:30:45 Michael
In contrast to all the adaptations, I see her as one of those ice maiden beauties. I often thought that Gwyneth Paltrow, for example, has absolutely the look that I associate with her, that very beautiful but standoffish ice maiden.
00:31:03 Harriet
One of the adaptations does have someone a bit like that. But no, I think Gwyneth Paltrow would have been exactly the right sort of person for it.
00:31:11 Michael
Yes.
00:31:11 Ellen
But this sense of being a sort of a leader of society, that’s the context in which this idea of the unapproachability and the ice maiden comes in because people are always having to give way to her.
00:31:27 Michael
Perhaps because I mentioned Gwyneth Paltrow, it has now occurred to me that she has a certain amount in common with Emma, who is also the centre of social attention in a very, very small community which allows her to develop this inflated notion of her own importance.
00:31:44 Harriet
Yeah, I think that’s being a little unfair to Emma. Well, though, Emma is way younger.
00:31:48 Ellen
The big thing, though, that I felt was Emma really didn’t meet many people.
00:31:53 Michael
Yes.
00:31:54 Harriet
That was actually the other thing I wanted to say: her relationship with Mrs Clay. Again, a comparison to Emma and her relationship with Harriet. But I think the difference is, well, Emma wants to mould Harriet, which is reprehensible in its own way. Elizabeth just wants Mrs Clay to make her feel superior. Well, she wants a lady in waiting.
00:32:15 Michael
She wants a minion.
00:32:16 Harriet
Yes, she wants a minion who will flatter her.
00:32:19 Michael
Yes.
00:32:20 Harriet
And she is incredibly blind to how good at flattering Mrs Clay is to Sir Walter.
00:32:24 Ellen
Yes.
00:32:25 Harriet
So what do we think will happen to Elizabeth after the end of the book? Do we think there’s any chance she’s actually going to get married? When it says, right at the start, she felt her approach to the years of danger and would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet blood within the next 12 month or two. So she obviously pictures herself as still being marriageable up to the age of nearly 32.
00:32:49 Michael
Yes.
00:32:49 Harriet
But she is getting close to that. Is she going to find someone? And if she doesn’t, what will happen to her?
00:32:56 Michael
So I think she’s going to end up rather like Jane Austen herself, with the hard-hearted rich relative shoving her into the smallest possible cottage.
00:33:04 Ellen
What you’re suggesting is a Miss Bates a couple of levels up.
00:33:09 Michael
Yes.
00:33:10 Ellen
Looking after her elderly father until her elderly father dies.
00:33:14 Harriet
She will have money. She will either have 10,000 pounds or 1/3 of 10,000 pounds from her father, depending on how you interpret it. But there is a fair to reasonable chance, she will also inherit something from Lady Russell. So while she won’t be as wealthy as Emma would have been if she stayed unmarried, she will still not be a Miss Bates. She may well move back to Bath and set up an establishment on her own.
00:33:40 Ellen
Well, after all, they’ve got to know quite a lot of people in Bath. She’ll just be a spinster, or she might marry somebody for the sake of being married.
00:33:51 Michael
Perhaps once she gets desperate, she’ll find one of the stupid ennobled captains with lots of money that are associated with Captain Wentworth and latch on to him.
00:33:59 Ellen
There are going to be a lot of sailors around, aren’t they?
00:34:03 Michael
With lots of prize money. And had been at sea since they were 14.
00:34:05 Ellen
But their prize money will be drifting away a bit.
00:34:10 Harriet
Well, it depends if they’re managing it well or not. Of course, if they marry Elizabeth… they’re not going to be managing it well because she’ll just spend it. Honestly, if she was just a little bit nicer, I would feel sorry for her.
00:34:22 Ellen
It’s a bit sad, her hoping for Mr Elliot all those years.
00:34:26 Harriet
Well, no, I don’t think she hoped for him all those years. She hoped for him for two years and then he got married and then this picture of her not wanting to look at the baronetage because:
she saw no marriage for herself and only that of a younger sister, made the book an evil. And more than once, when her father had left it open on the table near her, had she closed it with averted eyes and pushed it away.
It basically shows she’s presenting herself as ice queen, self-possessed, really important. But underneath, she is starting to panic a little bit.
00:35:01 Michael
Yes.
00:35:02 Harriet
But like I said, if she were a bit nicer, I’d feel sorry for her. But every time I start to feel sorry for her, she does something horrible to Anne.
00:35:16 Michael
I’m here today to talk about the Bath assembly rooms, a topic that I would normally describe as outside my wheelhouse. However, since Harriet and I visited them last year, I’m it.
00:35:28 Harriet
We were very lucky in our timing because I believe by now they’ve actually closed it down completely to the public because they’re doing some major renovation work on it.
00:35:36 Michael
Rather than just discuss the assembly rooms themselves, I also want to use them as a way of illustrating where Bath, as a whole, sat in the complex social hierarchy of Regency Britain.
I think it could be easy when looking at Bath’s Georgian elegance, particularly as it is represented in historical dramas, to assume that it was a place occupied by the country’s elite, the rich and famous, but that was never true, even in its heyday some decades before the time Jane Austen is writing about. 0In the Regency, Bath was not a place for acquainted by royalty or the aristocracy, or even the wealthiest gentry of the Mr Darcy class, all of whom preferred the newly fashionable seaside bathing resorts such as Brighton. Instead, as Jane Austen tells us, Bath is a place where Sir Walter can be important at comparatively little expense.
One reason for Bath’s decline during the Regency is not one that makes it into the tourist brochures. Its 18th century success was largely due to money flowing in from nearby Bristol, a port city whose wealth was largely derived from the transatlantic slave trade. The decline and eventual suppression of this disgusting trade in human misery played an important part in Bath’s decline.
This is probably one reason that the Bath assembly rooms were not completed until 1771 by John Wood the Younger, even though they had been proposed by his father, unsurprisingly John Wood the Elder, some decades before. This lack of money also led to a key decision when they opened, which may surprise many people today. They were not exclusive, but were open to anyone who was able to pay the entrance fee. This is without doubt one of the main reasons that Sir Walter and Elizabeth regard them as not fashionable enough for the Elliots.
The entry fees were not so little that anyone could afford them, but they were within the means of shopkeepers and even better paid servants. To use a Regency Blackadder analogy, Butler Blackadder could have afforded to go, but Baldrick couldn’t.
As Dr Timothy Moore, project curator at the Bath Assembly Rooms, points out in a lecture available on YouTube, which Harriet will put a link to in the show notes, this relatively egalitarian approach led to a certain amount of satirical social commentary.
Distinction of rank in a moment is gone,
and all eager for tea in a moment move on.
And Mistress O’Darby, the dealer in butter,
Now sweats by the side of the sweet lady flutter.
The assembly rooms were originally known as the upper assembly rooms, as there were already another set of assembly rooms in Bath, which became known as, you guessed it, the lower assembly rooms.
00:38:24 Ellen
This was because of their geography, wasn’t it?
00:38:26 Michael
Yes.
00:38:27 Ellen
But the upper rooms were higher up.
00:38:29 Michael
The upper assembly rooms are not upper because they are posher, they’re upper because you have to climb up a hill to get to them. Yes.
As well as concerts, the assembly rooms also hosted twice weekly balls, a dress or public ball on Mondays, and a cotillion or fancy-dress ball on Thursdays. They were also open every day for walking, billiards, coffee, and for men, bathing in the basement swimming pool. They were also open for cards every day except Sunday.
They also held other special events such as the Master of Ceremonies balls and the annual Queen Charlotte’s Birthday Ball, but it should be noted Queen Charlotte never visited Bath.
They were also used for special benefit concerts and it seems likely to me that this is what is being described in the novel and might be the excuse that the Elliots give themselves as to why it is okay for them to attend.
00:39:23 Harriet
Well, and because it’s by someone patronised by Lady Dalrymple.
00:39:27 Michael
Yes, sorry, that’s really what I meant. So the reason we know that the novel is talking about the upper assembly rooms rather than the lower assembly rooms is because it talks about the Octagon Room.
00:39:39 Harriet
What it says is that the Camden Place ladies and Sir Walter are waiting by one of the fires in the octagon room for Lady Dalrymple to arrive, and then when the rest of the party arrives, they go through the door to the concert room.
00:39:53 Michael
However, this leads to a slight problem, particularly for those doing adaptations, that the upper assembly rooms actually have two octagon rooms.
00:40:02 Harriet
As well as what I remember and the photos I took on the tour, I also online found the plan at first floor level of the new or upper assembly rooms as originally designed and carried out by John Wood the Younger, 1769 to 1771. So I’m going to put a link to that image in the show notes. But basically what happens is when you walk into the assembly room through the entrance, you go down a passage and you end up in a relatively small octagon room. And that octagon room has three exits to it. The exit on the left takes you through to the ballroom, which is the entire depth of the building. The exit on your right takes you to the tea room. And the exit in the center takes you through to the second octagon room, which in its original design was the card room but subsequently, they built a separate room on the other side of that, and that became the card room.
I asked the lady when we were doing the tour where she thought the various bits in Persuasion would be because the plan doesn’t have a room listed as the concert room. The woman running the tour said it was most likely that the concert would have taken place in the tea room, the room off to the right, not in the ballroom and probably not in the large octagon room. It’s very beautiful, it’s got amazing chandeliers, but it has terrible acoustics.
00:41:27 Michael
But also the acoustics means that sometimes you will be able to hear a private conversation that two people are having on the other side of the room.
00:41:35 Harriet
Right? Yes, it’s very, very strange.
00:41:38 Harriet
So, the question is, were they gathered waiting for the Dalrymples in the small entry room octagon room or in the larger octagon room? Again, the woman who did the tour said she thought it was probably the smaller one.
Yeah, I took that as read and then I reread the book and I’m just not sure whether it mightn’t in fact have been the larger one because you can get from the larger octagon room directly into the tea room. You don’t need to come out again.
00:42:06 Michael
I’m also inclined to think that it’s the larger one because it’s a much larger space. I would have said that the small octagon room is too small for the number of people attending a concert.
00:42:15 Harriet
It does say that they took a place beside one of the fireplaces.
00:42:19 Harriet
and I checked my photos and the small octagon room definitely has two fireplaces. I don’t know, maybe someone out there has more definite knowledge than me, but I am now inclining to think that what they did was they went in, they walked through the small octagon room into the larger octagon room to mingle before then using the doorway that goes from that directly into the tea room.
00:42:40 Michael
I’m inclined to think that too because it allows people to move around and socialise in a way that doing that in the small octagon room would be like trying to do it in an elevator.
00:42:49 Harriet
Yeah. I don’t know. As I said, maybe someone out there has a better idea. This is not a definitive statement. It’s just what I think. Now, I do know that at least one, if not two, of the adaptations certainly use the larger octagon room for those scenes.
00:43:05 Michael
But that would be a filming logistics thing, because you couldn’t possibly get a film crew and the cast into the small octagon room.
00:43:11 Harriet
Also, the large octagon room is a much more beautiful room with its fancy mirrors and it’s big chandeliers and things like that.
00:43:18 Michael
Yes, it’s definitely posher.
00:43:19 Harriet
Yeah. In between the Regency and now, it’s been used for a whole bunch of things.
00:43:24 Michael
During the First World War, they manufactured aeroplane parts.
00:43:28 Harriet
Yeah.
00:43:29 Michael
You’re also leaving out the rather important bit that it was bombed during the Second World War.
00:43:34 Ellen
Yes. The thing is that somehow or other anything to do with the assembly rooms and so on. But when Harriet’s father and I visited them in the 1960s, nobody mentioned that these had probably been rebuilt within the last two or three years. It was almost being kept as a secret.
How very, very recent, the reconstruction we were looking at. They were saying, and these are the beautiful chandeliers they used to use.
00:44:05 Michael
In fairness, from memory, the chandeliers had been removed and put into storage.
00:44:11 Ellen
So they were able to bring them out when they started rebuilding.
00:44:15 Michael
Yes, but all the decoration inside the roof itself.
00:44:18 Ellen
Except the place had probably been, you know, so well photographed and drawn.
00:44:24 Michael
Yes, but you know, in the 20th century, it had very seriously declined. And for context, in terms of the assembly rooms are not as posh as we thought, on the day we went for the tour, one of the rooms was set up for a local boxing match later.
00:44:40 Harriet
The thing that was so good about being able to do a tour of the assembly rooms is that it’s an actual place Jane Austen went and it’s also the actual place described in the book.
00:44:51 Ellen
Not the actual place in the sense that it’s a reconstruction.
00:44:55 Harriet
But it is like the steps on Lyme Regis. It’s not like you have to think, well, this is what Pemberley might have been like. This is what it was like. This is what Jane Austen had in her head when she was writing the these scenes.
The pop culture version I’m talking about today is another modernised film version of Persuasion. This was an independent film made in 2023, so a year after the normally period Netflix version. It was written and directed by Alison Calloway, who had done a few short films, but this was her first longer length work and her first adaptation.
When I wanted to watch it, was on Amazon Prime in the UK and in the US, but not in Australia. But I reached out to Alison and she very kindly gave me access to a screen aversion and also answered some questions I had about the film.
When I asked why she’d done it, she said:
“This film was an experiment to see if I could make a longer film with very limited resources in my town of Corpus Christi, Texas. There isn’t much of a film industry here, so people are very eager to work, and I wanted to create a film with a local cast and crew of friends.
I chose Persuasion because it was a story I had always related to. With adaptations as a writer/director, I think it’s important to find some sort of personal connection to the material. For me, when I started writing the adaptation, I was the same age as Anne, and also reflecting on a past relationship from my youth.”
00:46:26 Harriet
This film runs for just fractionally over an hour, so it’s by far the shortest of the adaptations I looked at. And this means, of course, that there were lots of cuts to the plot, and also the entire cast was only 10 people. So there was no Elizabeth, no Mrs Clay, no Mrs Smith, there was Sophia Croft but no Admiral, and there was no Henrietta, Charles Hayter, or the Senior Musgroves.
00:46:49 Michael
It does seem hard for me to see how it can be persuasion without some of those characters.
00:46:54 Harriet
Again, to quote from what Alison told me,
“There were many challenges in creating a film on basically no budget. In total, we shot for 13 days, and I knew we would not have a lot of time for each scene. So while adapting the script, I shortened some parts of the story that would have made it more complicated, like combining Wentworth’s sister and brother-in-law into one character. It was easier to have just one actor for Sophia, and more modern to have her unmarried.”
00:47:21 Harriet
So this film starts with the character of Anne writing in a notebook. You see her hand writing the word Persuasion and then she speaks aloud. She’s actually telling her own story, but in the third person and with vast amounts of text directly from the narrator of the novel.
The Anne of this film is an aspiring writer, which I thought actually fitted quite well with the very internal Anne of the book. I also thought that this was one of the more effective ways of getting the backstory across. It’s not done all in one lump. It’s sort of scattered in between many of the opening scenes, so it does come out gradually. But I did feel that it was much more effective than having her and Lady Russell talking about it. Or even in flashbacks, at least as they’ve been done in other adaptations. Although I’m prepared to believe that there could be a successful version using flashbacks.
00:48:09 Michael
Well, and as she’s talked about, it’s an incredibly effective way of doing it on a low budget with a small cast.
00:48:16 Harriet
Yes. Now, the modernisation concept is that Anne’s father, Walter, is obsessed with having a good social media profile. So when we first see him, he’s got his phone out, but he’s also got a little mirror sitting on the table so he can see himself.
Sophia Croft is a computer programmer and Freddie Wentworth created a gaming application with Sophia’s help. He liked gaming and she helped him develop his ideas. The application is called Laconia and you play the game as a naval officer rising through the ranks.
00:48:45 Michael
Oh, well, that’s sort of cute, isn’t it? Yeah.
00:48:48 Harriet
Charles is also into gaming, and at one point I thought maybe they’re going to show that the women are the driving forces and the men are less motivated, but that didn’t really come through. The profession of computer science is equated to the Navy, so you have people talking about how wonderful computer scientists are. Mr Elliott has become Will the Influencer, who’s focused on social media status and being around people who look good online, and he convinces Walter that he can become an influencer too. And I did think this use of the word persuasion and the use of the word influencer had some interesting connections.
00:49:23 Michael
I will say, though I was initially taken aback by it, if we were looking for a 21st century equivalent to Sir Walter’s obsession with his social status, it’s actually quite an effective one for a 21st century young audience.
00:49:39 Harriet
Yeah. So what Alison said is, she decided to use current internet culture to create differences in the characters. So what I noticed when I was watching it is you see lots of people on their phones a lot of the time, including Charles and Mary are sitting on a sofa and they’re each on their phones not talking to each other. But you don’t see Anne or Freddie on their phones that much.
Now, one of the features of this film is that the characters speak in a consciously formal manner. So there’s no contractions and they sometimes have very complex sentences. So much of the dialogue is directly from Jane Austen’s book. And even in the modernised stuff, for example, they always talk about computer applications rather than just apps.
So it’s like the complete reversal of the 2022 Persuasion, which had a nominally period setting, but used deliberately, again it was a choice, used modern anachronistic dialogue. Alison said of this:
“I liked the idea of using the language of the novel and time period in a modern setting. To see these modern characters speaking in an old style was a humorous idea that had me laughing while I was writing it. Austen was extremely witty and I find her novels funny so I wanted the film to also feel comedic. Our screenings of the film with an audience were very successful with a lot of laughs.”
But the other thing with the dialogue was that it was delivered in a consciously non-naturalistic manner. And I initially thought this was a limitation of the actors. In fact, my notes on the first scene say that Lady Russell and Walter Elliot aren’t very good at delivering the dialogue. But as the film progressed, I came to see that it was a design choice.
I asked Alison about this and she said:
“I wanted the characters to speak formally without much emotion. It was a stylistic choice. I was inspired by the films of Hal Hartley, specifically his debut, The Unbelievable Truth. His characters speak a certain way, and it is often quite emotionless. I like films that have a specific style, and there are so many Austen adaptations out there, I wanted to distinguish this one with its own aesthetic.”
I’ll be honest and say that while I think this was an interesting choice, it didn’t really work for me a lot of the time. But sometimes it did, and it was nice to see something different being attempted, because different films work for different audiences.
00:51:54 Michael
Yeah.
00:51:55 Harriet
Corpus Christi, where it was filmed, is by the sea, and Louise’s fall happens on a set of steps, although she was running up, not jumping down, and also, probably because of the zero budget, they didn’t actually film the fall, which I can’t say I blame them for.
In most of the modern adaptations of Persuasion, Anne and Benwick bond over music, but maybe in line with the older style dialogue, in this one they are actually talking about Byron, like in the book. And in a later not-in-the-book scene between Benwick and Louisa, he quotes from Young Lokenvah, which I know when we were talking about poetry was another poem of the time you mentioned. So again, I thought that was an interesting choice.
I loved that, unlike most of the adaptations, it did include the bit where Charles and Mary are talking to Lady Russell and having completely opposing views of what she’ll think of Bennwick. That’s such a funny scene and most of the adaptations leave it out. The equivalent of the concert scene in Bath is when Will the Influencer invites Anne to a concert by a band called the Dalrymples. And she in turn invites Sophia and Freddie. So again, we’ve got Anne being more proactive as she is in the book.
There’s also dancing at the concert, but it’s a Regency style dance. So another one of those interesting design choices of modern setting, but not modern stuff as well, which is not something any other modernization I’ve seen has tried to do. And again, I’m not entirely sure it always worked for me, but I was fascinated to see the choices she made there.
The White Hart scene is a conversation between Sophia and Anne rather than Harville, who’s another not appearing in this film character, and Freddie is in the next room writing. So I did think the dynamic of that conversation, which was largely taken from the book, is quite different when it’s between two women rather than between a woman and a man.
00:53:49 Michael
Yes.
00:53:50 Harriet
After Freddie leaves, Anne opens his letter and reads it aloud, which is again mostly from the book, including the half agony, half hope, but doesn’t have you pierce my soul.
So, as I said, it’s a very much shortened version. Some bits of the timeline don’t make sense because of that. Things seem to happen too close together. And also there isn’t any real sense of Anne regaining her bloom in it, but like I said, we do see her being more proactive around Freddie, which I did like because that does echo her becoming more active in the book.
Obviously, zero budget, less professional actors, limited time frame. There was only so much it could do. But given that, I did think she was trying to be adventurous and different in her choices, which I appreciated, even where the choices didn’t entirely work for me. And one thing I forgot to say, when I was watching it, I noticed at a certain point in the middle the sound went a bit glitchy. So, I let Alison know about that and she said that must have happened with the version that was given to Amazon. So she’s actually thinking about removing it from Amazon until that can be fixed and she may in fact end up putting it somewhere else online where it’s freely available. So if that has happened by the time this episode is edited and released, I’ll make sure that the most current link is included in the show notes.
00:55:19 Harriet
You’ve been listening to the Reading Jane Austen podcast with me, Harriet.
00:55:23 Michael
Me, Michael.
00:55:25 Ellen
And me, Ellen.
00:55:26 Ellen
In our next episode, we’ll be reading chapter 21 of Persuasion, and then the original chapter 22, which Jane Austen replaced with new material.
00:55:40 Harriet
The structure of this podcast was inspired by Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. Our music is Creative Commons performances of pieces Jane Austen might have listened to.
00:55:49 Ellen
You can find us on our website, ReadingJaneAusten.com. We’re also on Facebook at ReadingJaneAusten and Instagram at Reading_Jane_Austen.
00:56:06 Harriet
You can e-mail us at ReadingJaneAusten.com or rate and review us in your podcast app. We hope you’ll join us next time.