These Books Made Me
These Books Made Me
Bonus Episode: Professor Ingrid Satelmajer, University of Maryland
We discussed at length about Jane Austen's most famous novel, "Pride & Prejudice" (in 2 parts!). But in case you still had a taste for more Jane Austen content, we've included an expert interview with Ingrid Satelmajer, a professor at the University of Maryland, who has taught a class called titled, "Jane Austen: Her World, Our Obsession". She discusses Austen's enduring legacy, what makes Elizabeth such a compelling protagonist, and how her students have engaged with Austen in a more modern setting.
These Books Made Me is a podcast about the literary heroines who shaped us and is a product of the Prince George's County Memorial Library System podcast network. Stay in touch with us via Twitter @PGCMLS with #TheseBooksMadeMe or by email at TheseBooksMadeMe@pgcmls.info. For recommended readalikes and deep dives into topics related to each episode, visit our blog at https://pgcmls.medium.com/.
Hi, this is Darlene from the, these books Made Me podcast As a bonus episode, we have an interview with Ingrid Saddle Myer, a professor at the University of Maryland who helped shed some light on pride and prejudice Jane Austin and our enduring obsession with her work. Hi, could you introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:Sure. My name is Ingrid Saddlemire and I teach at the University of Maryland College Park. And um, I'm really happy to be here to talk to you about Jane Austin in Pride and Prejudice today. Yes,
Speaker 1:Thank you. So I know that you had a class, I guess regarding Jane Austin before. Could you describe the class to us?
Speaker 2:Sure. So the title of my Jane Austin class was Jane Austin, her World, our Obsession. And I taught it for I think five times as a seminar for the honors program at the University of Maryland starting in the fall of 2009. And then I think for the last time, I believe it was maybe the spring of 2018. And this was a class set from the title as you would expect. It was a class where we read Austin's novels. So we read usually like five of the six major novels, always Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion, and then usually two of the three others. So some combination of Northanger Abbey Sense and Sensibility in Mansfield Park. And so it was a class where we tried to understand the events and the context of those novels, of the details of Austin's world. But the other part of it is that word obsession in the title as well. So it was a class that was also about the idea of fan culture and the idea of like being, really being into an author or books or the world that that person was exploring. I don't know if I would say that that was the time period, that was the peak of interest about Austin, but there was a ton of buzz around Austin at the time. And you know, just like a few things to mention, you had 2004 Bride and Prejudice, you had 2005, the theater version of Pride and Prejudice with Kira Knightly. And you had in 2009 the publication of Pride and Prejudice in Zombies. And so you had this interesting mix and it, and those are just three things. I mean, you had way more than that. So it was just kind of this really interesting moment I think where there was a lot of attention. It was a course the students had requested actually. And so to me it was like a really interesting class to teach because it raised a lot of debates about what did it mean to be a fan and really get caught up in an author and why are we drawn to something? What does it say about ourselves? What do we gain or lose by being fans? So that was what the course looked at.
Speaker 1:And what did you attribute to Jane
Speaker 2:Austin's enduring legacy? So that was an interesting question for me and I'll make a little confession here first. So one thing in talking about her legacy, I have to admit that when I came into teaching the course, I was someone who liked Jane Austin. I respected her writing, but I don't know that I would've described myself really as like a fan. A J Knight. A J Knight, exactly. So to me it was like it, but I knew people who were, you know, I had known people like, you know, who were since I was in college and you know, my first experience actually of Pride and Prejudice was from one of my really good friends in college who had this 1980 Masterpiece Theater version, um, or b BBC version of it on videotape. And we sat and just watched like one videotape after another, and she was really like a J Knight, totally into Jane Austin very, you know, just intrigued. So part of like, what was so interesting to me was thinking about that legacy and that question of like, why was, you know, my friend at that time period, so into Jane Austin, why were my students so caught up in her? Why were there all these, you know, fan fiction versions of things coming out? It was the air of the internet too, like really taking off. And so you could see like people writing all these things. So when I think about what it is that like really makes her last maybe a, a few things come to mind. First off, I think the stories and the characters are really good and the situations are very intriguing. So there's often a kind of built in suspense to the situation that Austin is set up. I think of them, you know, a lot of them are kind of the situation of the middle. Something isn't like, you know, some, a character's not living in a really horrific situation or a super, you know, easy or great situation entirely. And that person's life is a little bit on a, you know, possible teeter-totter type of thing where you can see things, you know, really go down or really go up for them. There's a humanness to the stories as well. There's the wit, there's the themes, you know, there are the language too. And one thing about her language I'll say is that she's really great to sit and read on the page. But the other thing is she also reads really well out loud. So if you, you know, are into audio books, she's a great writer, you know, for listening to being read out loud. But just a, like a couple more points about the adaptability, I think that her leg, excuse me, by her legacy, I would say, um, adaptability is I think part of it. So I think that we also have her legacy because of what she's inspired and she inspires people to make things. She inspires people to want to like do their own version of Austen's World or to try to capture it in some way. And I think there are really two components there. One component is that there's often like a preservationist type of impulse with some people. Some people are like, they, they're the people who want to really remember and recall like say the precise dance steps that people would have taken in Austin's worlds or what exactly were the dresses that people were wearing or how would men have, you know, worn hats or all of those kinds of details. Like what, how did people conduct themselves during a formal dinner. But the other component is really that there's an openness to Austin as well. And I remember one scholars, you know, uh, kind of description of this and really stuck with me, and it's true that there's this kind of sense where she's not giving a lot of detailed descriptions or a lot of like, explanations of things in her books. So you have this lovely openness where people's imaginations, I think kind of fill in the space. Ki kind have come to think of it as a kind of silence in her books that even as characters talk a lot, they, they, there's also all these moments of, of quiet too. So then you end up with things like Bridget Jones' diary, I already mentioned, bride and Prejudice, and then things like the Lizzy Bennett diaries, you know, the the vlog version that that got developed eventually. So I think that that that sense, that mix of like people really loving something there and wanting to hold onto it, but also a kind of openness is really, has been very important for her legacy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. And I think that that was very evident I think in your class. Would you say that the same reasons that you kind of touched on already are why Pride and Prejudice specifically resonates with people today? Or do you think there's something more to that story?
Speaker 2:No, that's a really good question. I think that, you know, because Pride and Prejudice really does stand out in the group as I think the book that Mo you know, the most people are familiar with. And I think part of it is Elizabeth Bennett, the main character Lizzie Bennett. And it's interesting to see, I remember when you were in my class, like, I don't know if you remember this, but there was all this interest at the time in a Broadway with Personality Tests<laugh>. And it was like this era of Buzzfeed quizzes, which I was, I guess they're still out there that people still
Speaker 1:Do them, but we actually included them in our podcasts because it's such a nostalgic thing for like people of our era, like for millennials. So I think it's just funny that you're even bringing it up as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I totally remember it with your generation and it was, you know, like it was my students who first started bringing it to my attention because it was a different class that I was teaching than I think one of my students did this whole really great essay where, where she was writing about this idea of like, which Spice Girl are you? And she used it as a way to like frame her analysis. So I was thinking about how with Elizabeth Bennett, you know, she's a really interesting character in that I think that that's the character that so many people always wanted. If you took a Jane Austin personality test, that's who people wanted to come out as. They wanted to be Elizabeth Bennett. So there's something about, I think there is something certainly about her as a protagonist that that really makes pride and prejudice in particular really stand out. Maybe also something too about the, the romantic story, the love story and you know, I don't know if it's because maybe there's a bit of like a Cinderella sensibility to it where, you know, you're watching Elizabeth Bennett kind of removed from a, a challenging situation and the whole family, the whole Bennett family, you know, removed from a, like what was the challenging economics situation and and seeing her, you know, become really wealthy at the end. So there's something kind of that's really about maybe connected to that. And then some of the other stories like I'm thinking Emma in particular, there's like a really big, I don't know, there's a really big age difference between the two and that romantic story. So anyways, I think there were a lot of reasons that that, that they work. But I think those are two reasons and then her pros at that time I think is really, really quite effective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so too. I think cuz we kind of already recorded a bit of it, although we might have to do another part to it. But one thing that we brought up was just, yeah, just how effective I think that her writing is and like her observations as well. It just kind of, I feel like each time you read it you get something more out of it. Because this time around I was reading it, and this is maybe like my third reread and I think this, this time around I was very like keenly focused and like, not on purpose but like on Mr. Bennett and I just noticed just like how very mean he is. Like he is very like sharp like witted and I, I know I knew that before going into it, but I think that that was just the one thing that my brain kind of honed in on this time around. Yeah. And speaking of personality quizzes, like at the end of that episode, which I don't know, it didn't, we had some technical difficulties but, but I did take a personality quiz and I was Mr. Bennett and I was like, how?
Speaker 2:Oh you were, you were Mr. Bennett? Yeah,
Speaker 1:<laugh><laugh>,
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well I dunno if you, I dunno if you remember, I think I started talking about this with your class and I don't think anybody did this in your section, but in another section I believe we talked about the idea of like doing like an undesirable character's personality test, you know, because again, there was this sense that again, like everybody wanted to be Elizabeth Bennett. So it started to become interesting like, well what if you got that, hey you're Mr. Collins, you know, like
Speaker 1:<laugh>, there was
Speaker 2:Some kinda the idea that that you know, like, like that we should watch out for maybe like it could flatter our sensibilities too much when maybe in truth like a lot of us aren't like Elizabeth Bennett, you know, some of us are like Mr. Collins or or Mr. Bennett or Mrs. Bennett or you know, other people. So
Speaker 1:Yeah. Or Lydia. I feel like Lydia also doesn't really come off too well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. But you know what you're saying about the writing, I think that one of the really interesting things about pride and prejudice is how she really throws us into the story. And I used to find that I would feel a little sorry actually sometimes for students who were coming into either that class or when I taught Austin in another class, particularly Pride and Prejudice and who weren't familiar with her because to people who know the story already, you jump right into it, you know, it really, the novel starts with this sense of you're getting all these names, you're getting this conversation and you're hearing about this another field, Paul and seeing all these names and so forth. But, and so I would advise sometimes some of the students, and this isn't not something I usually did, but I would say go and watch an adaptation first so that you can kind of just enjoy the writing actually because it's not, it's not gonna lead you through in the way that some of the other Austin novels do. Like sense and Sensibility has a more gradual entrance, I would say, into the story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I would agree with you cuz I, I think it helped that I had read it in another class before. So then when I took, you know, you're specific to Jane a class, I was just mostly focused on her writing.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm<affirmative>. Mm-hmm<affirmative>. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I agree. I think that that's, that's actually very helpful advice. And I guess kind of going still, like talking about Elizabeth Bennett, do you feel like she's a good role model or do you feel like there's not much there to kind of like say one way or the other? I guess
Speaker 2:That's a good question. So, so when I'm thinking about the idea of what it means to say some, like a character's a good role model, when I hear that, I'm wondering does that mean like worthy of imitating or an appropriate guide for behavior? You know, I, what I think she is is I think she's a really good and appealing protagonist. I think there's a reason that people want to be Lizzie Bennett and I think she handles some sal you know, challenging situations, very admirably. But I also think she's very human and I, you know, see this story as very much a story that is about the correction of misperceptions and you know, very famously Austin's earlier version of it was called First Impressions. And so it's, it's about like going from that state to a more mature state of judgment. So I think that like certainly she has traits I admire the Arc Ofer character is about developing your judgment essentially. Um, so in that sense, yes and, and also like her spirit is very fun to see also the kind of, the ability to take a good vigorous walk. Um,<laugh> is really is really great<laugh>.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah. So I guess we were talking about rereading pride and and prejudice earlier and I think this was a question more so based on the fact that, like I said, every time I feel like I focus on something new with Pride and Prejudice or with Austen's work. So I was wondering is there anything that's caught you off guard or piqued your interest after a reread of Pride and Prejudice?
Speaker 2:I'd say in terms of piqued my interest, one thing that's been really interesting to me is to have read this novel over like the decades that I've read it and where so much has changed in terms of how books are presented and stories are presented. I think in some ways like the appeal of the stories that you can really get elements on the first time and and understand it even with the challenge of first getting into the story for the very first time. To me, the thing I've enjoyed is like how much more I can kind of see the geography has become really interesting to me. And that's something that I have to credit not just the books with but the adaptations. So being able to see the scenes in ways that like I just, you know, from both the reading and what materials weren't available when I was starting with this in, in the nineties to also the early nineties to also like what the adaptations were like early on and what they didn't show you. So I find it really fun now to do things like just look at maps essentially at the counties that figure in the novel and to use that to try to get a sense of where the characters are going. I love seeing some of the scenery and the different adaptations and using that to get a sense of the place and you know, what it might have meant for the characters. So that's, I I would say that's one thing, it's definitely one place. My interest has definitely been peaked.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's interesting cuz I feel like that also fits with the theme of your class about obsess, like the obsession with her world because even though like some of these places aren't real and the first time you're seeing them is in the adaptations, so yeah, going off of that, I mean there are people who take tours of these locations. Yeah, they'll do like guided tours of the scenery from the 2005 Pride and Prejudice or uh, the nineties version. So yeah, I think it's really interesting that people are just like very interested also in the geography of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And you know, another one, another thing that comes to my mind is I, you know, one of my friends who I would have conversations with about, about Austin with I, I think that like the layers of the characters are always so interesting how you were saying, you know, that you reading mean rereading it recently like Mr. Bennett, you know how Monini seemed essentially. And I think another interesting debate that has come up at times is like whether a person can have some empathy for Mrs. Bennett, you know, for instance, and she's so on the first read I think very easily dismissed maybe at least, you know, in the early, like in the early readings that I was doing of the novel. And then I eventually ended up having conversations with a friend who was starting, you know, you start to see people kind of saying like, well maybe you know, she had some good points or some good concerns actually. So I think that our relationship with the characters often changes like when in life we're reading them what our situation maybe is like the how we're identifying whether or not some of the characters and then also just more time with them and and trying to get to know what their concerns are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's what I appreciate about reading, having read some of these books in a class. Cause I think that it also helps, especially when you're first reading them as sort of the fact that with these classes you sort of have a guide through it. Because I don't know that I would've really been that sympathetic or empathize very much with Ms. Bennett had you not mentioned it in your class. I think you said it at one point and you had said, you know, she does have four daughters, five daughters. Mm-hmm<affirmative>. And so that was her primary concern. And so maybe we should look at her with a bit more empathy cuz that is kind of what has to preoccupy her mind. So yeah, I, I don't know that I would've gotten that until maybe like maybe ano like maybe this reread is probably when I would've started to feel for her<laugh>. I think like now that I'm an adult<laugh>, I feel like maybe something to be said about reading some of these classics in a classroom setting,<laugh>. And I guess kind of going off of your class as well is what's your favorite thing about teaching Jane Austen and her work?
Speaker 2:Okay, so I would say that one thing I really loved about the class was that students really showed up for the experience. They wanted to be there. You were, you know, you kind of knew what you're getting if you came into a Jane Austin class essentially. And so, you know, it could take them a little while sometimes to figure out how they're gonna fit all of that reading into their schedules. And I remember talking about things like trying to encourage people, like, okay, hey, I was at the pharmacy the other day and what did I do? I was reading my Jane Austin novel, which, and then actually by the way ended up having a great conversation with the pharmacist about, um, Jane Austin. So, you know, and, and this is in a world of increasingly fragmented attention spans. So getting people to really sit down with a book and, and go and many books and go through them, but they read and they were, you know, you all were like so engaged in the conversations as well and produced really amazing final projects and papers. I think also like the class really connected me with some of my own friends and family. So I've had people who have said, Hey, you know, when they knew I taught this class, hey um, I'd really like to read Emma, you know, and then have a conversation with you about it. And we would meet for dinner and have that conversation, you know, of I have a friend who loves to talk about various screen adaptations of Austin's work and about reading the books. And then here's my favorite example. Okay, so the summer before I taught the class for the first time, I reread the major novels in preparing for it with a retired history professor from my college. And we had read through some of Dickens's novels together a couple of summers earlier. Both times we exchanged letters about our thoughts and you know, there we are writing about Austin's novels. His letters are coming from Massachusetts, mine are from Maryland, and I still have the stack of letters that he and I wrote to each other. He had never read any of Austin's novels before, I believe. So his letters especially have this wonderful sense of discovery and appreciation to them. And in one of my favorite passages from his letters, he grades Austin and Dickens, both<laugh>. And I think something like with Dickens, I think he really admires Dickens's social conscience and that dickens is taking on some, you know, really serious problems in an upfront way in his novels. But when he is grading them, he just gets so pulled into Austin's pros, her literary skills and he gives Austin a midterm grade of a and Dickens in either an A minus or a b plus<laugh>. So
Speaker 1:Controversial<laugh>.
Speaker 2:Yes. I think my favorite thing about teaching Austin has been the conversations either with the students, my family, my friends, you know, just the ability to, to talk about some of the questions that the books have raised.
Speaker 1:Oh, awesome. Yeah, that's such an interesting story. So I did ask your most favorite thing about teaching Austin, but do you have like a most interesting thing that has arisen? Cause I know that you give students projects as well to kind of see like how they engage with her work.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. I mean there are so many things that students brought to my attention and I loved it. It was like, uh, they gave me a window into kind of all kinds of things that I wasn't aware of. So whether it was, you know, one of my students was the one who let me know that Black Adder, this comedy series has these really kind of interesting Austin references. I had people who did projects connected to ideas about biology We had in your class, we had more than two people who did board games, but we had, you might remember in particular the Jane Austin Monopoly.
Speaker 1:Yes, I remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We had someone create their own personality quiz. I had someone in a later section who wrote a musical. It was like Bath the Musical,<laugh>, um,<laugh>. So I, I, so I think the most interesting thing really had to be honestly like the work my students did. Like I said, I think part of Austin's legacy is how she inspires people to make things and the things that people made were just so interesting and so fun to see develop.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well thank you so much for talking to us today.
Speaker 2:My pleasure.