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• We’re at Week Six of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in the Austen Connection’s Great Jane Austen Read-Along. Congratulations!

• Check out all the schedules and info for the Read-Along here:

Hello, readers -

Happy, happy father’s day to you all for next week, wherever you are. This week’s reading brings so much high drama - as Lydia chases desire, and Darcy chases Lydia, and all gets royally confused before heading in to our wonderful resolution - it’s coming.

But most importantly, readers, this next week brings us about half-way through this year’s 2026 year-long readalong!

Well done to you, however you’re reading: whether you’re jumping on and off this readalong train, or joining for just P&P for the moment, or reading for the full journey. Let us know how you’re doing this thing in the comments below, and happy reading.

You’ll find lots of good things in this post including Readalong Librarian Tabrizia Jones’s thoughtfully-curated list of What to Read after Pride and Prejudice. And you’ll find this week’s discussion post for Week Seven of P&P, plus discussion questions, full schedules and info on the readalong, and some postcards from Chatsworth - the result of a serendipitous and unexpected intersection of timelines when my own trip into Derbyshire intersected with the timeline of this novel’s events unfolding at Pemberley.

Ah, Pemberley. Enjoy the reading and discussion this week, and don’t forget to weigh in with your own thoughts, below.

Pride and Prejudice Week 7 Discussion Post - Chapters 1-10, Volume 3 | or Chapters 43-53

It’s a perfect day for Mr. Bennet. And as we have seen in the last two weeks, the Bennet parents are a piece of work!

This week’s chapters just happen to feature this family’s patriarch, and also happen to fall on the approach to Father’s Day next week in many places including the USA and in Canada, the UK, India, Mexico, South Africa, France, and others. (Let us know where you are reading this from today, and how you’re celebrating if at all!)

So its seems like the perfect time to talk about Mr. Bennet.

And last week one passage in the reading was harsher, heavier, and more pointed than I had remembered - a passage describing Elizabeth Bennet’s reflections on her father. Mr. Bennet, our heroine’s dear dad, tends toward sarcastic humor and distant irony in the face of his wife’s and the family dramas.

He hides in the library, and generally seems benignly neglectful. But when things get more urgent, Mr. Bennet somehow maintains his posture of bemused sarcasm. Until he doesn’t.

And our passage in question comes in the novel soon after Elizabeth - ever observant, vigilant, and judging just like Jane Austen and before her Mary Wollstonecraft would wish her to be - takes the initiative to directly address her father. She requests that he forbid Lydia’s trip with friends to Brighton, specifically suggesting that her behavior abroad could damage not only Lydia herself but also the family’s reputation. He answers her request with more ironic distance, dismissal, and you could say gaslighting.

Not a good look, Mr. Bennet!

And what follows is the harsher, heavier, more pointed passage - for us to examine and discuss. We’re here in the thoughts of Mr. Bennet’s second daughter, one Elizabeth Bennet, as she contemplates the unpleasant “picture of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort” afforded by her parents.

Her father, she reflects, was “captivated by youth and beauty” when he married her mother, “whose weak understanding and illiberal mind, had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her.”

Nevermind: There’s a library and there’s the country to enjoy. And these are her father’s pleasures.

But then Elizabeth also reflects on other behaviors and choices made by her father that have affected the Bennet household. Mr. Bennet’s failure to actively address the family’s property and financial challenges - their estate of Longbourn is famously “entailed” - is much discussed in Austen dialogue.

But in this particular passage his daughter reflects on deeper, moral failures that might have had even more of an impact. It’s painful, and still relatable more than two centuries later. Over to you, Elizabeth:

“Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the impropriety of her father’s behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with pain; but respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate treatment of herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible. But she had never felt so strongly as now, the disadvantages which must attend the children of so unsuitable a marriage, nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising from so ill-judged a direction of talents; talents which rightly used, might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters, even if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife.”

For more than a century and counting after Austen’s novels were published, critics such as Henry James insisted that Austen’s talent lay in simply producing orderly, sentimental portraits of the world - the manners, if you will - of the gentry. Passages like these of Austen’s - that deliver a devastating judgement on human behavior, motives, and psychology, and that are easily overtaken by the suspense and the pleasure of the courtship plot on a first reading - if nothing else showcase the philosophical depth and seriousness of Austen’s grand project.

Mr. Bennet’s failure to actively address the family’s property and financial challenges - their estate of Longbourn is famously “entailed” - is much discussed in Austen dialogue. But in this passage his daughter reflects on deeper moral failures that might have had even more of an impact. It’s painful, and still relatable more than two centuries later.

And it’s not always an easy read! But something that Janeites and deep readers of Austen know is that it’s an investment worth paying. It’s a journey worth taking. We’ll continue to explore it all as we continue this Jane Austen journey, together.

Your Takes

Readers, there’s been so much going on this week in the first 10 chapters of Volume Three! We’ve got in these 10 chapters the entire drama of Derbyshire and Pemberley. We’ve got the Wet Shirt Scene! Or at least what the 1995 screen adaptation turned into the West Shirt Scene!1 We’ve got the entire Wickham-Lydia drama in all its desperation, sadness, chaos and hilarity - it’s all of it.

Next week we’ll unpack more of this - and focus on the entire Volume Three and ending . But in the meantime, let’s get your thoughts, your questions, your observations, your insights. They’re the highlight of this read-along! Some jumping-off points:

• For those of us that are obsessive watchers of the screen adaptations - the 1995 BBC series and/or the 2005 Keira Knightley/Matthew Macfadyen film - what did you think about the text of this scene? Something that struck me was the obvious confusion and tension - yes, sexual tension - coming off of the page of Jane Austen here. Always so gratifying and surprising to see just how much of the drama - and desire - she’s written into the text, for people like Andrew Davies (1995 screenwriter) and Joe Wright (2005) to come along and interpret.

• Ladies and gentleman: Lydia Bennet: “Lydia was Lydia still; untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless.” (Again, take that, Henry James.) Lydia Bennet is there to remind us that people - sisters, flirters, mean girls, and voters - simply will not change their mind or their demeanor. Don’t waste time expecting them to.

• What about the scenes of Pemberley? The Pemberley of the text and not of the screen: We have Mrs. Reynolds going on and on. And on and on. About how wonderful the family is! With more weighing of evidence, astute judging, and attempts to form a theory and find the truth on Darcy, and on Wickham. I had forgotten there’s a little portrait of Wickham at Pemberley in addition to the one of Mr. Darcy - which in the 2005 film becomes a sculpture, and it’s an actual sculpture of Matthew Macfadyen that I believe is still housed at Chatsworth House, being gazed at by tourists from across the globe.2

• But Pemberley - and you can see this in the text, the first few pages of this week’s reading - exemplifies a lot from the Romantic era that Austen is writing in, with its balance of nature and art, rugged beauty and culture, wealth and generosity, loftiness and justice, pleasure and productivity, as seen through the eyes of Mrs. Reynolds but also as showcased through the choices in the landscaping and grounds and decor and art. It’s quite the place! This is Austen’s Romantic-era vision of a world of natural beauty, order, health, wealth, and justice. Let us know how the descriptions in the first chapter of this week’s reading struck you on your own journey through Pemberley. And, the screen clips are below - enjoy!

But Pemberley … exemplifies a lot from the Romantic era that Austen is writing in, with its balance of nature and art, rugged beauty and culture, wealth and generosity, loftiness and justice, pleasure and productivity, as seen through the eyes of Mrs. Reynolds but also as showcased through the choices in the landscaping and grounds and decor and art. It’s quite the place! This is Austen’s Romantic-era vision of a world of natural beauty, order, health, wealth, and justice.

• What about the entire melodrama of Darcy pursuing Wickham to London, tracking him down, negotiating with (or pressuring?) the bad governess Mrs. Younge, sorting it all out, paying for everything? There are so many details in this sort of backstory. How did it play for you?

• Let us know all your thoughts, questions, confusions, and theories, friends!

  Leave a comment

Coming up - we’re heading to the finish line!

Next week we all become Pride and Prejudice completists, some of us for the first time and some of us for the umpteenth time:

• So here we are, heading into the final leg of this journey, reading Volume Three, Chapters 11-19, Volume 3 | or Chapters 54-61, by next Sunday, June 21st.

• We’ll also share our celebration video/discussion for Pride and Prejudice, featuring you readers and also co-hosts Readalong librarian of and Reclaiming Jane podcaster Dr. Emily Davis-Hale.

• Good luck getting to the finish line this week - see you on the other side, readers.

Here’s how to read along, or share with a friend!

You only need two quick things to get yourself - or a friend - on the Read-Along:

• 1-Get the book - I use the Norton Critical Edition, edited by Donald Gray and Mary A. Favret, but any copy from your library or an independent bookstore is perfect!

• 2-And - subscribe! All the read-along content and discussion rolls out right here each Sunday on the Read-Along channel of this Substack. Toggle the Read-Along button to “on,” in the Settings of this Substack - here, and with a “read-along” suggested-donation ticket of $25 all the posts will drop to your inbox (or read for free - if you need to read for free, just reply to this email to get added to the list!):

Get your $25 Read-Along ticket!

• You can see all of the schedules and information on the Great Jane Austen Read-Along here.

However you support this readalong and community-reading project, thank you - you’re showing up, reading, discusssing, and engaging. And that is so important. And if you’re also subscribing - whether paid, unpaid, new, or veterans - we are grateful to you. We see you. It’s nice to be noticed, yes?! ⬇️

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Meanwhile, have a wonderful week, friends. May you be captivated by youth and beauty; may all your petitions be heard and heeded; may you encounter a room of sculptures and miniature portraits; may you indulge every whim - untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless - and then may you be rescued by an awkward white-tunic-clad walker on the beautiful grounds of a powerful estate. Whatever it brings, wishing you a happy, romantic, and inspiring, summer-drenched week.

Yours affectionately,

Plain Jane

Pride and Prejudice - the Schedule

• Week 1: Chapters 1-8, Volume 1 - by Sunday, May 3

  • Welcome, announcement, schedule!

• Week 2: Chapters 9-16, Volume 1 - by Sunday, May 10

• Week 3: Chapters 17-23, Volume 1 - by Sunday, May 17

• Week 4: Chapters 1-7, Volume 2 | or Chapters 24-30 - by Sunday, May 24

• Week 5: Chapters 8-13, Volume 2 | or Chapters 31-36 - by Sunday, May 31

  • Guest post - Professor and Author Devoney Looser!

• Week 6: Chapters 14-19, Volume 2 | or Chapters 37-42 - by Sunday, June 7

• Week 7: Chapters 1-10, Volume 3 | or Chapters 43-53 - by Sunday, June 14

  • The Read-Along Read-Alikes List for P&P - from Librarian Tabrizia Jones

• Week 8: Chapters 11-19, Volume 3 | or Chapters 54-61 - by Sunday, June 21

  • We did it - Celebration Video!

Cool links and community

As Elizabeth headed into Derbyshire, so did we!

• The Chatsworth Regency Festival

  Just as Elizabeth Bennet was heading into Derbyshire, I found myself also heading in to Derbyshire in an unplanned intersection of timelines in which I managed to get myself on to the estate of Chatsworth just in time for the kick-off day of this past weekend’s Regency Festival. Dreamy day! My fellow travelers and I stayed in a nearby hotel formerly known as The Highwayman, enjoyed the surrounding countryside - absolutely the rocks and mountains - and listened to experts talk about Austen in this gorgeous setting, surrounded by said rocks and mountains and also gardens and fountains and most importantly a champagne shed and coffee/tea bar. Here are some postcards from the day, with a shout-out to my traveling companion photojournalist and photography professor Jackie Bell who took the best of these photos. Enjoy!

The grounds and House are of course gorgeous - with references and displays on The Duchess of Devonshire and her circle, Byron and the first-edition copy of Pride and Prejudice owned by Lady Caroline Lamb, and of course art and history and architecture and gardens to inspire, intrigue, and amaze.

But of course the highlight for me was … yes, the Talks: One by Zack Pinset of Pinset Tailoring which I stumbed on to (being in the wrong tent) but absolutely loved because of this expert’s knowledge, humor, and passion for historical dress. So fun. Also lovely to meet Laughing With Lizzie creator Sophie Lizzie Andrews.

“She was a revolutionary” - Jane Austen’s House Director Lizzie Dunford

And the absolute ultimate was seeing Jane Austen’s House director Lizzie Dunford’s fascinating talk anchored by her groundbreaking research on Jane Austen and Austen family “tales of fairyland” with her insights on parallels between Austen and fairy-tales. This is fascinating, and I cannot wait for this research to be shared with the world. We’ll stay on the case, friends, and create dialogue around this conversation as the research rolls out because it’s fun but also truly important and helps us learn about who we are, our fears, our desires, and our stories. Stay tuned.

Readalong Librarian Tabrizia Jones’s list of Read-alikes!

We are so honored to have podcast, blogger, Janeite and librarian along with us on this journey, providing expertly and thoughtfully curated lists of What to Read after each novel in this read-along year. Here’s her list of What to Read After Reading Pride and Prejudice - enjoy, and Tabrizia is also part of our P&P video conversation that drops next week, in celebration of this novel. Enjoy:

Cup of Tea With That Book, Please

Recommended Pride and Prejudice Readalikes

I’m back again with more Austen readalikes, to go along with The Great Jane Austen Read Along hosted by The Austen Connection. We just finished reading Pride and Prejudice, so now I am here to list book recommendations if you are looking for something similar…

Read more

a year ago · 116 likes · 18 comments · Cup of Tea With That Book and Plain Jane

Two ways to look at Pemberley:

• In the text of this novel, Austen spends some time describing the setting and the anticipation Elizabeth feels as the carriage crosses the grounds of this estate and approaches the house. And this progression through a beautiful natural landscape building up to a sudden appearance of the grand structure is captured wonderfully in not just one but two screen adaptations: the beloved 1995 BBC series and the stunning 2005 production. Here are the Pemberley scenes in each for comparison - let us know any thoughts you have in the comments!

  • “He’s so rich!” The 2005 film version by director Joe Wright is gorgeous on many levels, with rich audio, music, and imagery capturing the loftiness:

• “She’s not likely to be anyone WE know!” The 1995 production also captures the magnificence of the place and the pleasure the Gardiners and Elizabeth find in it together.

• We enjoyed this Guardian piece by Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius series director Ali Naushahi describing her personal journey with Jane Austen’s stories. It looks like USA viewers can now watch this series on Apple TV.

• Bad Dads Redux: If you want more Fathers today or this weekend, here’s an archive post with previous discussions on the Dads of Austen, available to all this week - enjoy!

Happy reading, friends! If you’re enjoying the Austen Connection, invite a friend!

Share

• We’re at Week Six of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in the Austen Connection’s Great Jane Austen Read-Along. Congratulations!

• Check out all the schedules and info for the Read-Along here:

Hello, readers -

The weird pairings and close encounters of the Rosings party is breaking up as the Lucas crew heads home, Elizabeth full of her own thoughts and of Darcy’s clarifying letter.

Much to consider! And, while we commune with a troubled mind as we follow Elizabeth’s thoughts on the journey home, we also encounter Aunt and Uncle Gardiner who are on the scene and suggesting a road trip. Into the countryside.

This is going to get good, friends! Glad you’re here for the trip. Below you’ll find the discussion post and questions for Week Six of Pride and Prejudice, and below that the full read-along schedule and some cool links and engagement opportunities, as always.

Enjoy - and happy reading this week!

Pride and Prejudice Week 6 Discussion Post - Chapters 14-19, Volume 2 | or Chapters 37-42

This week we started off at Rosings and departed Hunsford Parsonage, but not before a final dinner with Lady Catherine who assured everyone how sad her two nephews - Colonel Fitzwilliam and especially Mr. Darcy - had been to leave her. An lol moment as it puts in mind Mr. Darcy having feelings for this ridiculous relative.

With this joke, our narrator indicates her confidence that we are all on the same page. And then we have several passages where Lady Catherine exerts her control - over Elizabeth’s travel plans, over her packing methods (poor Maria repacks her trunk immediately), over all the “particulars” of the journey, using safety and protection as the excuse for her control. (Protection and safety as an excuse for control and confinement - a thing in the 18th century and today.)

We have contrasting travel companions in this week’s reading. We first meet up with Lydia and Kitty and observe their shopping methods as Lydia buys a bonnet she already doesn’t like and then “treats” her older sisters to a lunch that of course they have to pay for.

Lydia is plainly rude (commenting on the physical attributes of the waiter in a way that foreshadows the awful Sir Walter whom we’ll meet in Persuasion), she’s loud, she’s exuberant and overbearing, and also hilarious: ”How nicely we are crammed in!” cried Lydia. “I am glad I bought my bonnet, if it is only for the fun of having another bandbox! Well, now let us be quite comfortable and snug, and talk and laugh all the way home.”

Well OK then!

We are let in to Elizabeth’s melancholy, her intense desire to be alone with her thoughts following Darcy’s revealing letter, her relief at being reunited with Jane, and then - after an initial disappointment and delay - her excitement at the “expectations of pleasure” that her uncle and aunt Gardiner bring by taking her with them on a trip.

Elizabeth reflects - in one of Austen’s powerful moments of a heroine’s self-reflection - that she is “fortunate” to “have something to wish for… I may reasonably hope to have all my expectations of pleasure realized.” Although Elizabeth tempers this expectation of pleasure with the self-admonishment that it can only lead to disappointment. Volume 2 shows a more down and depressed Elizabeth than perhaps we had remembered.

And then we have - after a vexatious interlude and disappointing conversation with her father at Longbourn, more on this below - we have the arrival of the Gardiners, a portrait of a happy family, effective parents, and perfect travel companions, as our narrator assures us as they set off in “pursuit of novelty and amusement” and that: “One enjoyment was certain — that of suitableness as companions; a suitableness which comprehended health and temper to bear inconveniences — cheerfulness to enhance every pleasure — and affection and intelligence, which might supply it among themselves if there were disappointments abroad.”

And these perfectly suitable travelers are off!

And they are off to, of all places, Derbyshire. And more specifically: Pemberley, home of the one and only Mr. Darcy. Suddenly Elizabeth feels like a fangirl on the Beverly Hills Homes tour, and she’s worried that the celebrity will be in the house. But she’s assured that the family are away - they’re apparently too important to actually live in their luxurious home and gardens, and Elizabeth knows first-hand that Darcy is on the road and visiting abroad. So this story checks out. She’s off to Pemberley.

It’s going to get good this week, friends. We’re heading to Derbyshire. Good luck with the reading! And we’re here - come back and comment any time as you read.

Over to you!

Friends, let us know your impressions, your feelings, your observations from the reading this week that got us through volume 2, including:

• Are you laughing with Lydia and her shopping and travel methods and her completely blinkered jubilation at all times? Funny and dangerous!

• Lydia has FOMO! It’s interesting that it’s not just The Thing that Lydia is interested in but also The Story About The Thing - as she announces her intentions that the sisters should laugh all the way home, and then she announces once home that “we were so merry all the way home! We talked and laughed so loud, that any body might have heard us ten miles off!” Lydia Bennet has FOMO - what the extremely online refer to as “fear of missing out”. I had not realized this was a Regency thing.

• Mary is anti-everything: Meanwhile, in answer to this road trip story we have another hilarious, pious missive from Mary: “Far be it from me, my dear sister, to deprecate such pleasures. They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have not charms for me. I should infinitely prefer a book.” Yes, we’d all prefer a book. With you there, Mary. But - we have here something amazing going on - which is that the author of this novel is bringing up the binary, unequal approach to education that Mary Wollstonecraft and other feminist writers of the day criticized. But here we have this gendered, flawed approach to the “female mind” coming from a young woman! Austen often brilliantly gives a radical argument to a character that is Obviously Wrong. But yet the argument is still there! And Mary Bennet proves it by her very existence - she’s more pious than the most insufferable pious clergyman you can imagine!

• Regency happiness studies - But do you notice how Elizabeth actively engages in self-care? She monitors her feelings, anticipates moments of pleasure to come, recognizes her disappointments and takes account of the number of days or weeks before she may get relief? Regency happiness studies at work here, and often, in Austen, who is, like an American revolutionary, very much for the pusuit of happiness.

• Your opinion needed: What about that dismal conversation that Elizabeth has with Mr. Bennet where she requests that he consider preventing Lydia from going to Brighton, and asks him to consider, and contain, the impact of Lydia’s imprudence on the family? And she even goes so far as to mention the impact it has on Elizabeth’s and Jane’s future possible alliances? This passage comes just in time for Father’s Day next Sunday - so we’ll do a close read of this passage next week. But meanwhile let’s crowdsource it: What do you make of this passage between Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet, and also particularly the passage at the beginning of chapter 19 volume 2, when our narrator deconstructs Elizabeth’s feelings not only about her father’s parenting but also about her parents’ marriage and its effect on their children?! This is very specific - more specific than I’d realized - let us know all your thoughts on this, before we tackle it properly next week.

• LOL moments - Are you laughing at Lady Catherine’s adieus, her controlling over-reaching about the travel plans and packing methods, and especially her dramatic posturing about her nephews being so sad to leave her?! Especially Mr. Darcy, “who seemed to feel it most acutely”! LOL. But then again, this is a hint that Mr. Darcy is indeed dejected. And we know why.

• The regiment has left Meryton! And Elizabeth is so relieved! And with Lydia gone, Kitty has FOMO and she’s got it bad, but eventually she no longer cries every time she goes to town, so Elizabeth has hopes for her.

• Did you have a favorite moment, an LOL moment, or anything perplexing or confusing you want to ask the group about or comment on this week? Your comments are the best - let us know all your thoughts! Here:

  Leave a comment

Coming up, next week - Pemberley!

Next week:

• We’re heading into Volume Three, and reading Chapters 1-10, Volume 3 | or Chapters 43-53 - by next Sunday, June 14

• Father’s Day is coming - we’re going to subject Mr. Bennet to an intense, collective examination on his fatherhood skills. Stay tuned.

• Mostly: Enjoy the reading!

Here’s how to read along, or share with a friend!

You only need two quick things to get yourself - or a friend - on the Read-Along:

• 1-Get the book - I use the Norton Critical Edition, edited by Donald Gray and Mary A. Favret, but any copy from your library or an independent bookstore is perfect!

• 2-And - subscribe! All the read-along content and discussion rolls out right here each Sunday on the Read-Along channel of this Substack. Toggle the Read-Along button to “on,” in the Settings of this Substack - here, and with a “read-along” suggested-donation ticket of $25 all the posts will drop to your inbox (or read for free - if you need to read for free, just reply to this email to get added to the list!):

Get your $25 Read-Along ticket!

• You can see all of the schedules and information on the Great Jane Austen Read-Along here.

Thank you for being here, friends - as we always say, this community of readers, reading together, in this world is an actual life line. And together we make up more than 100 countries participating and reading, together. We feel like neighbors! If you’re here, that means you’re supporting this project as a Member and a paid subscriber - thank you! You keep this project going! You are lighting our way!

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Have a wonderful week, friends - perhaps you’re off for some walking in the countryside. Maybe you’re turning from men in favor of rocks and mountains. Maybe you’re buying bonnets you just don’t need, and maybe you’re laughing all the way home. Whatever you’re up to this week, stay safe and well and stay in touch.

Yours affectionately,

Plain Jane

Pride and Prejudice - the Schedule

• Week 1: Chapters 1-8, Volume 1 - by Sunday, May 3

  • Welcome, announcement, schedule!

• Week 2: Chapters 9-16, Volume 1 - by Sunday, May 10

• Week 3: Chapters 17-23, Volume 1 - by Sunday, May 17

• Week 4: Chapters 1-7, Volume 2 | or Chapters 24-30 - by Sunday, May 24

• Week 5: Chapters 8-13, Volume 2 | or Chapters 31-36 - by Sunday, May 31

  • Guest post - Professor and Author Devoney Looser!

• Week 6: Chapters 14-19, Volume 2 | or Chapters 37-42 - by Sunday, June 7

• Week 7: Chapters 1-10, Volume 3 | or Chapters 43-53 - by Sunday, June 14

  • The Read-Along Read-Alikes List for P&P - from Librarian Tabrizia Jones

• Week 8: Chapters 11-19, Volume 3 | or Chapters 54-61 - by Sunday, June 21

  • We did it - Celebration Video!

How to join and support The Austen Connection:

Here are links to the various ways you can join and support this project - thank you!

📚 Join the read-along by turning on (or off, if you prefer not) the “read-along” notification - you can manage the posts you receive here.

📚 Support for $25 - and get a read-along ticket for a suggested donation of $25, and get access to all read-along content all the time, here.

📚 Support as an Austen Connection Member, at $5 per month or $50 per year, for access to all content at all times, here.

If you would like full access but can’t afford paid support, simply reply to this email

Cool links and community

• Chatsworth House is name-checked! I had forgotten until my third read of this novel that while Pemberley could very possibly be based on Chatsworth House, being perhaps the grandest estate in Derbyshire and the obvious one, it is in fact named in the text - in chapter 19, volume 2, in a list of Derbyshire “celebrated beauties” in the novel.

And Chatsworth House website provides some fun background information here on the filming of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice production on its site. Both the 1995 production and the 2005 production capture Elizabeth Bennet’s reaction - and her first impression - of the stately Pemberley. It’s a wonderful manifestation of Austen’s dramatic description of this first encounter from text to screen.

• And, as I mentioned last week, I’m headed this week to Chatsworth House for the wonderful Regency Festival at Chatsworth House, featuring panel discussions from some fascinating curators, scholars, and authors like Helena Kelly, author of Jane Austen, the Secret Radical and The Worlds of Jane Austen.

• Here’s a great rec from the world of Austen scholarship, for anyone who wants to read what Jane Austen characters read - and in fact that is the bold title of this erudite book by Austen scholar and leader Susan Allen Ford. Her book is What Jane Austen’s Characters Read (and Why). Dr. Allen Ford has also spoken in person with our Amazing Central Missouri Region of JASNA, on Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters in Sense and Sensibility.” And asking, did Jane Austen read Mary Wollstonecraft? I’m obsessed with this topic! Enjoy this book!

Podcasts!

• Reclaiming Jane on Pride and Prejudice - If you want more conversation as you read, check out Reclaiming Jane’s episodes on Pride and Prejudice, from our friends and co-hosts Dr. Emily Davis-Hale and Lauren Wethers. You can listen by going to the website and clicking play - or you can find the episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

• And there’s also - co-hosts and producers Dr. Zam Cammack and Emily Neu also have loads of episodes about Pride and Prejudice. Check out this podcast that the UK’s Guardian calls “gleefully nerdy”!

• Live from Pemberley - this podcast from Vanessa Zoltan and Hot and Bothered is another that I’ve shared many times, but is brilliant and absolutely addictive.

• Have you listened to any of these? If you do, come back and let us know a favorite episode or moment you enjoyed!

• And - I don’t think I’ve shared these but it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk with several podcasters in the roll-out of the book - here are a few of my faves:

  • Reclaiming Jane - Truth and Power with Janet Saidi

  • Substack’s It’s All About the Words - a Q&A with

  • Unruly Figures on Jane Austen’s Subversive Writing, with

  • Film Snobs on Celebrating 250 Years of Jane Austen

Happy reading this week! If you enjoy The Austen Connection, invite a friend!

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• We’re at Week Five of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in the Austen Connection’s Great Jane Austen Read-Along. Congratulations!

• Check out all the schedules and info for the Read-Along here:

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Hello, friends -

Today we have a special guest post from a writer and producer working on the frontlines of television, writing, and popular culture, and she’s also a huge Jane Austen reader and a member of this community.

And, as she writes below, when things get tough and specifically when things got really tough on multiple levels around 2020, she knew where to look: Jane Austen. And even more specifically: Mansfield Park. In this post, she tells us why. Some of you will relate!

Gina Fattore is a writer, producer, and TV showrunner who has helped create some of the hottest shows out there - Gilmore Girls, Dawson’s Creek, and Californication. Her upcoming series is Off Campus, an ice-hockey romance that’s been in development right alongside the Heated Rivalry series, and you can see more on Off Campus at the end of this post. Gina is also the author of The Spinster Diaries, which makes spinstering look like an awful lot of fun and we feel Jane Austen would appreciate that.

Gina Fattore has been reading, and watching, and re-reading the story that we like to refer to as Jane Austen’s most complicated, most controversial, and perhaps most difficult story, Mansfield Park. But Fattore is brave and is taking it on. And you can too - and many of you have, with our read-along - so join us at the end of this post to take the mic and share your thoughts.

And now, without further ado or delay, take us away to Mansfield Park, Gina!

Mansfield Park Revisited

by Gina Fattore

In the fall of 2017, when the Harvey Weinstein story first broke wide open, I did my best to keep up with it in real time, but after a few short weeks, I gave up entirely on the news of the day and took the coward’s way out: I started rereading Jane Austen.

This is what I do in any sort of crisis – large or small, personal or global. Brain surgery, the last flight out before a hurricane, the 2020 election, the 2024 election. As general rule, it doesn’t particularly matter which Austen novel I pick up to try to soothe my anxious brain – like most devoted Austen fans, I’ve read and re-read them all countless times; but that fall, as the Weinstein story kept getting bigger and bigger – and Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement began spreading like wildfire on social media – the voice in my head was weirdly specific.

It didn’t just tell me to read Jane Austen: It told me to read Mansfield Park. A friend who also loves Jane Austen understood instantly what my subconscious must have been getting at with this choice. Non-Janeites may require further explanation.

Mansfield Park is famously the least fun Jane Austen novel, the one that fails to satisfy as a romance. Its heroine, Fanny Price, is generally deemed to be at the heart of this problem. At the age of ten – when she’s adopted by a wealthy aunt and uncle and comes to live with them at the Downton Abbey-like country estate that gives the book its title – she’s timid and shy, with “no glow of complexion, nor any other striking beauty.”

Once she’s grown up, her looks have improved slightly, but she’s cursed with a “mind which had seldom known a pause in its alarms or embarrassments” and a disposition “to fancy difficulties greater than they are.”

In other words, she’s anxious. Virtually all the time.

Another strike against Austen’s fourth novel is its less-than-thrilling plot. There’s a bunch of talk about landscape design and a bit about putting on a play, but very little of what Hollywood script development pros would call “incident.”

People try to persuade Fanny Price to do things. She mostly says no.

What’s the matter with Fanny Price?

That’s the basic gist of the story, and even though the ending Austen constructed for the novel ultimately suggests that her heroine is right to be constantly saying no to all these people – that she’s right to have boundaries, right to be governed always and only by her own desires and her own sense of right and wrong… nobody likes this young woman.

For hundreds of years now – more than 200 since the book was originally published in the summer of 1814 – readers have been picking up Mansfield Park and asking one very simple question about its heroine: “What’s wrong with Fanny Price? Why can’t she be a little more game, a little more fun, a little more willing to make other people happy?”

Enter the ultimate heroine for the post #metoo era.

She doesn’t fall in love by bantering.

She doesn’t fight crime while holding up two guns at once.

And she definitely doesn’t resolve the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman living in a patriarchal culture simply by giving voice to it and saying it out loud.

Enter the ultimate heroine for the post #metoo era. She doesn’t fall in love by bantering. She doesn’t fight crime while holding up two guns at once. And she definitely doesn’t resolve the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman living in a patriarchal culture simply by giving voice to it and saying it out loud.

She exists simply to confuse and annoy.

Hello? Is there a love story here somewhere?

The love story everyone remembers from Mansfield Park doesn’t even start till halfway through the novel, and it’s less a “love story” than a strategic initiative.

“My plan is to make Fanny Price in love with me,” Henry Crawford announces one day to his sister Mary, sounding more like a standard-issue 18th century rake than a swoon-worthy Regency love interest.

Crawford is a visitor in the area of Mansfield Park – a confident, charismatic Londoner with the sort of looks that improve quickly upon closer acquaintance, “conversation pleasing to everybody,” and a fairly significant fortune of £4,000 a year. His biggest fault, according to his sister, is “liking to make girls a little in love with him,” and that’s exactly how he spends the first half of Mansfield Park.

Flirting with someone who’s already engaged? Then, as now, sorta vaguely uncool.

Flirting with two sisters simultaneously? Again, vaguely uncool. But only vaguely. Fanny Price’s older cousins – Maria and Julia Bertram – are “cool girls” who flirt back and enjoy the attention.

It’s only when those flirtations run their course that Crawford decides to devote himself to “making a small hole in Fanny Price’s heart.”

There’s absolutely no ambiguity about this in the novel. Henry Crawford’s initial pursuit of Fanny Price isn’t motivated by love – or even by sexual attraction as we would understand it in the modern era. It’s just a way to kill time. A hobby, a diversion. Something to do on the days he does not go out hunting.

Anxious, unlikeable Fanny Price is wise to this right from the start, accurately perceiving Crawford’s attention not as “courtship” per se, but as a scheme to “cheat her of her tranquillity.”

His devoted sister Mary gives a kinder interpretation. She sees it all as a game, a lark. And how will Crawford know when he’s won the game? Henry Crawford wants Fanny to be interested in him – “in all my possessions and pleasures” – to look kindly at him, to think as he thinks. Like cat-callers and taxi cab drivers of old, he wants her to smile. You know, even though she doesn’t particularly feel like smiling.

Henry Crawford wants Fanny to be interested in him – “in all my possessions and pleasures” – to look kindly at him, to think as he thinks. Like cat-callers and taxi cab drivers of old, he wants her to smile. You know, even though she doesn’t particularly feel like smiling.

After only a few days of continued attentions – “continued, but not obtrusive” – Crawford’s plan of attack starts to work. Fanny notices a distinct change in his behavior and begins to “dislike him less than formerly.“

However, because her affections are “engaged elsewhere” – i.e., tied up in an angsty, unrequited crush on her older cousin Edmund – she isn’t entirely swept away by Crawford’s interest in her, or “persuaded into love” as Austen phrases it.

And that’s when the book hunkers down inside the subject that made it pop into my subconscious at the dawn of the #MeToo era: unwanted male attention.

‘Not half as entertaining’: Mansfield Park

Women are supposed to enjoy sexual attention from men. All women, all the time. This was the basic underlying assumption of the pre-#MeToo era — the one that held sway from Austen’s day until October 2016, when a reality television star running for president of the United States started saying all the quiet parts out loud.

On the off-chance that you found yourself in a situation where you didn’t enjoy the sexual attention you were getting from men, you were supposed to pretend to enjoy it and then strategically transform it into a form of currency that might be more useful to you.

For centuries before they could vote, own property, or hold office, this is what “power” looked like for women – the ability to manipulate men into giving you what you wanted.

In Mansfield Park, Fanny Price doesn’t respond this way to Henry Crawford’s pursuit. She’s not flattered or emboldened by it, and she doesn’t try to use it as currency. Instead, she simply resists, “trying by everything in the power of her modest, gentle nature, to repulse Mr. Crawford, and avoid both his looks and inquiries.”

What happens when men flirt and women don’t flirt back? Like everyone who’s ever responded to that “man vs. bear” meme that’s constantly making the rounds on social media, Austen clearly thought the question worth investigating, even if the resulting novel wound up being, as she joked in her letters, “not half so entertaining” as Pride and Prejudice.

And it’s not. Fanny Price’s determination to avoid Henry Crawford’s flattery and attention — her killjoy refusal to flirt back and play the game of love the way it’s supposed to be played — casts a scolding, spinstery gloom over Mansfield Park, and those harsh vibes intensify as the plot progresses. Once he’s quite certain he’s in love with Fanny, Crawford calls in some favors and gets her beloved older brother a promotion in the navy – and then two seconds later he proposes.

Equally certain that he’s not in love with her – that his words and actions are “meant only to deceive for the hour” – Fanny is “exceedingly distressed, and for some moments unable to speak,” but when she does, her response is crystal clear: She says no at least three times.

Austen diehards will note that when Elizabeth Bennet pulls this same move in Pride and Prejudice — categorically refusing to marry the comically self-important clergyman Mr. Collins — her doting father backs her up without hesitation.

But unlike Elizabeth Bennet, Fanny Price isn’t a notoriously likeable and charismatic darling daughter; she’s an everyday, run-of-the-mill niece, a dependent relation, and as such, she gets a very different response from the patriarchy.

Sir Thomas Bertram from HR

Her uncle — Sir Thomas Bertram, the main father figure in her life — accuses her of being selfish and ungrateful. Fanny cries bitterly throughout this encounter, and when Sir Thomas insists that her behavior in refusing Mr. Crawford “requires explanation,” she refuses to give one: “Her heart sunk under the appalling prospect of discussion, explanation, and probably non-conviction. Her ill opinion of him was founded chiefly on observations, which, for her cousins’ sake, she could scarcely dare mention to their father.”

In other words, telling Sir Thomas Bertram from HR the real reason she distrusts Henry Crawford — outing him as a problematic male — is also going to mean throwing her flirtatious cool-girl cousins under the bus, and probably no one’s going to believe her anyway, so Fanny doesn’t even bother trying. She stays silent, and then to make matters worse, she apologizes – “inarticulately, through her tears.”

Crying? Apologizing? Being inarticulate?

“Likeable” female characters don’t behave this way in the current era. They stand up for themselves. They have agency. They fight back. Against vampires. Against aliens. Against prestigious and powerful movie producers who want to have drinks in the room.

“Likeable” female characters don’t behave this way in the current era. They stand up for themselves. They have agency. They fight back. Against vampires. Against aliens. Against prestigious and powerful movie producers who want to have drinks in the room.

Of all the knocks against her as a heroine, this is perhaps the biggest and most difficult for Fanny Price to overcome. She’s passive, and while passivity may have been a halfway decent coping mechanism in Austen’s day, that’s not how modern audiences experience it.

For them, Fanny’s lack of agency plays as a character flaw that must be corrected or overcome before the heroine’s “journey” can progress to the next act or stage.

Will the real Fanny Price please stand up?

This is especially true in screenwriting, which — for reasons way too complicated to explain here — runs on the hard-and-fast rule that main characters must always be “active.”

In keeping with this dictate, the two most recent screen adaptations of Mansfield Park –— Patricia Rozema’s inventive 1999 feature version (released, in a strange twist of fate, by Miramax) and a more conventional BBC adaptation that aired in the US in 2007 on PBS’s Masterpiece – kept no faith with Austen’s original characterization of Fanny Price and reimagined her as a plucky, assertive tomboy.

A similar transformation occurred with the playful 2022 Netflix adaptation of Persuasion, which gave a cheeky Fleabag-style voiceover to that book’s famously reserved and introverted heroine, Anne Elliot, who was played in the new adaptation by Dakota Johnson.

The real Fanny Price, the one Austen created, is the exact opposite of cheeky and plucky. In a crisis, she doesn’t flee or fight; she freezes. Her big fears in life? “Doing wrong and being looked at.”

She has privilege, sure. Tons of it. After all, she’s a character in a Jane Austen novel.

But Fanny never feels confident enough in her privilege to defy any of the intricate and confusing rules patriarchy applies to women about how they should look, act, talk, and dress.

Moxie. Bravado. Balls. Whatever you call it, modern audiences tend to admire that sort of bold, rule-defying confidence in a woman, particularly in a woman who’s conventionally beautiful.

They find it, dare I say it… likeable.

And Fanny Price doesn’t have that quality. Not one ounce of it. Essentially, she’s a “before” — a nothingburger, an unexceptional female — but the story Austen chose to tell about her isn’t a makeover story. It’s not about how mousy little Fanny Price puts on a little black dress, changes her attachment style, and ultimately comes to enjoy doing wrong and being looked at.

That’s the modern template for a love story: The main character gets up off the couch, corrects their character flaws, and actively earns their happy ending. And with a few small revisions, Mansfield Park could have been that kind of love story – one where a woman who is uptight and humorless comes to appreciate the confident, laid-back charms of a guy who is all game.

That’s the modern template for a love story: The main character gets up off the couch, corrects their character flaws, and actively earns their happy ending. And with a few small revisions, Mansfield Park could have been that kind of love story – one where a woman who is uptight and humorless comes to appreciate the confident, laid-back charms of a guy who is all game.

He is reformed to be more serious; she is reformed to be more forgiving and relaxed.

Several passages late in the book seem to suggest that this type of more conventionally “romantic” ending may be approaching, especially when Fanny begins to find Crawford “much more gentle, obliging, and attentive to other people’s feelings than he had ever been.”

Powered by what feminist philosopher Kate Manne1 has dubbed “himpathy,” generations of readers have taken this bait and rooted for Henry Crawford. They want Fanny Price to bend to his charms — to forgive, to accept, to compromise her convictions — but Austen’s ending doesn’t give him that victory or that grace. The “selfish vanity” that defines his character at the beginning of the novel is still very much present at the end, when he gets bored of waiting for Fanny to change her mind and takes back up again with her still-cool, but now married cousin Maria.

Instead of crafting a charming, entertaining tale about how romantic love tames the will of a reckless, powerfully dominant man, Austen gives us in Mansfield Park an uncomfortable treatise on the interplay of male privilege and female powerlessness – or, in the words of critic Deidre Shauna Lynch, “a clear-eyed reminder of what is involved in enduring an imperfect, unjust fallen world.”

Instead of crafting a charming, entertaining tale about how romantic love tames the will of a reckless, powerfully dominant man, Austen gives us in Mansfield Park an uncomfortable treatise on the interplay of male privilege and female powerlessness …

In such a world, not everyone who aspires to be a “strong female character” achieves that goal. Instead, the vast majority of those who attempt it will likely find themselves — like Jane Austen’s most difficult heroine – living an embarrassingly passive life, filled with self-doubt, worry, and confusion: “She could not but feel some resentment against Mr. Crawford; yet, if he really loved her, and were unhappy too! It was all wretchedness together.”

Or as Stereotypical Barbie sheepishly admits about the power-mad Ken who invaded her dreamhouse, brainwashed her friends, and seized control of her government: “I still don’t want to hurt him.”

And maybe that’s patriarchy in a nutshell. It makes you worry about the feelings of the person who set out to hunt you like a pheasant. After all, they’re somebody’s brother, somebody’s husband, somebody’s son – maybe you’re just not trying hard enough to see it from their point of view?

That, in the end, has always been my pet theory about why Jane Austen’s dusty, decrepit 200-year-old novels are still such a vital and relevant part of our nonstop, never-ending pop-cultural conversation about romantic love.

It’s not the bonnets, the balls, and the happy endings: It’s because they’re so starkly, eerily honest about the effed-up way heterosexual courtship works in a patriarchy. And, until further notice ... we are still living in a patriarchy.

Wow! We are, indeed - thank you for this brilliant essay, Gina!

Love a guest-post that just spells it out for us, as does Jane Austen, if we’re paying attention! And I so appreciate this brilliant hot-take on Mansfield Park that illuminates the things going on in our culture, then and now.

This community is amazing - it includes so many of you who are brilliant writers, producers, directors, ministers, writers, and READERS.

And commentators - speaking of which: Over to you!

Talk back to us, friends!

• Does the current news cycle and the #MeToo movement influence and shape your reading of Jane Austen, the problematic would-be suitors like Henry Crawford, and the motivations and actions of Austen heroines like Fanny Price?

• Have you been impatient with this most complicated of Austen heroines, Fanny Price, and does this discussion shed light on your experience of this heroine and this novel?

• Do you have a favorite Mansfield Park screen adaptation? Have you seen the two mentioned above - the 1999 Mansfield Park film by director Patricia Rozema, or the 2009 BBC adaptation? Some of you in this community have been involved in these films! If that’s you, let us know about your experience and your take in light of the contemporary events that Gina raises in this essay.

• What about Fanny Price? In our previous posts and read-alongs this heroine elicits a lot of dialogue and big feelings - let us know if you’ve shared Gina’s impatience with this heroine, and if you’ve come to terms with that? Did reading Mansfield Park post-#MeToo influence your experience of this heroine and this story? Perhaps more importantly, and only share this if you feel like it, but did the #MeToo movement itself shed light for you on your life and experiences?2

• And what about Henry Crawford? As Gina so eloquently and honestly explores in this essay, it’s natural to have complicated feelings about this attractive, awful character! Tell us your thoughts and how you process as you read! (And watch!)

• And generally - what are you watching or reading right now! Are you a Heated Rivalry fan, and watching out for the next ice-hockey romance Off Campus? (More below!) Let us know your questions or comments on this series, because writer/producer Gina Fattore is the co-showrunner of this show! Stay tuned, and we’ll discuss it as it rolls out!

Meanwhile, let us know all your thoughts on Fanny Price, Henry Crawford, Mansfield Park and #MeToo, and anything else on your mind, as always:

Leave a comment

And most of all, thank you for supporting community and conversation and classic literature by joining us here at the Austen Connection. Just being here is awesome - thank you! If you’re new here, welcome! Say hi to us in the comments, and let us know what you’re looking forward to in this community. And if you’re not Subscribed yet, subscribe below for free, or paid - to power this project.

And of course - if you are a veteran and/or someone who supports this community with a Paid membership/subscription, thank you a thousand times! You’re as amazing and exhilarating as ice-hockey romance!

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Coming up!

Tomorrow’s post is Week Five of Sense and Sensibility - dropping tomorrow/Sunday morning. The read-along is going on in the Read-Along channel of the Substack which you can find here, with posts dropping on Sundays.

Please note: Starting tomorrow, the read-along posts can only go to Paid subscribers, and not the entire subscriber list; we don’t like this but it’s because the posts have been going to the complete list and believe it or not not all 4,000+ of us want to read All of Austen this year - again! So apparently the best way is to adjust the weekly Sunday rollout to Paid subscribers only. But - you can still read along (or not) and for free no matter what! Here’s how:

• If you do want to read along and you’re a Paid subscriber, the posts will come right to your inbox as usual.

• If you’re not a paid subscriber and you’re wanting to read along, you can sign up for the suggested-donation $25 read-along “ticket” for the journey, here:

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• If you’re a student, a teacher, or just don’t feel able to pay for the read-along, simply reply to this email and I’ll sign you up free, no questions asked. (And no shame whatsoever - trust me, I’ve been there!)

• And finally, if you’re a paid subscriber and don’t want to follow the read-along, because you already have, you can opt out of the read-along posts by simply toggling the Read-along button off/on in the Settings of this Substack, here:

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Week Five of Sense and Sensibility drops tomorrow - see you then!

And for now, have a wonderful week of good stories, good friends, good times. And, to borrow from Gina’s essay, wishing you lots of: “Moxie. Bravado. Balls.” And whatever you need to get through the week. Stay well, stay in touch, and see you next week, same time, same place -

Yours so very affectionately,

Plain Jane | PJ

Cool links and community

• Writer/Producer Gina Fattore is also showrunning the upcoming ice-hockey romance television series based on the series of novels, Off Campus, by Elle Kennedy. Here’s the trailer! We’ll be watching!

• And if you enjoyed this conversation, you can spend more time with Gina Fattore through her book and her work, here, and her inspiring-and-funny literal TedTalk, Become What You Believe, here:

• The Forsytes are here - and this series is as dreamy as it looks.

  Josette Simon is Ellen Parker Barrington in the episodes rolling out on Sunday nights on PBS’s Masterpiece (you can watch all the episodes with a passport) - and the series already is booked for a second season.

  

  And: Swoony in Venice. We get Forsyte flashbacks contrasting with the “suffocating” family traditions, wealth, and dramas of the two London stockbroking houses that make up The Forsyte circle. Danny Griffin is a ravishing Jolyon Forsyte and Eleanor Tomlinson is Louisa Byrne, his long-lost true love.

  

• Mary Bennet is coming! Substackers like are watching - so, look for more to come on this intriguing series. And, to bring things a bit circular - here’s an intriguing article in JASNA’s Persuasions Online about Mary Bennet that references philosopher Kate Manne’s work on misogyny - referenced by our fair author Gina Fattore, above. Enjoy!3

• Gina’s essay this week also references Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s groundbreaking television series Fleabag - we went there with the Austen Connection. Enjoy:

• Perhaps our most popular post from the Mansfield Park section of our read-along is this one - and it resonates with Gina’s essay, particularly the idea of resistance:

• The Austen Connection hits the road - we like to call it unofficially The Jane Austen, Truth, and Power Tour because we are getting invited more often to speak about Jane Austen, Truth, Power, and Journalism. And this year it’s been a joy to engage with so many amazing groups, from college classrooms and conferences, to bookshops and festivals. Check out the upcoming and recent events in the public-engagement section of this Substack here. And most importantly, know that you make this happen by supporting the Austen Connection, especially with a paid subscription that powers this project. You help us convene community around classic literature and Jane Austen. Thank you!

• “It’s a tacit agreement with the Cosmos, of who you are, and what you are, and what we’re made of.” Here’s Guillermo del Toro - on books, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and his reverence for this story. He says even though film is his medium, it’s reading a book that reaches you across the centuries in that “tacit agreement with the Cosmos.” You might enjoy this convo for a rainy day:

Have a good week!

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