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Sadie Stein on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Episode 4

The Rain Gambit

Featuring Sadie Stein

Audio episode · 18 min

Sadie Stein on Pride and Prejudice

Rain is coming, and Mrs. Bennet's plan is to send her eldest daughter into it on horseback so she will have to stay the night. Sadie Stein admires the scheme, suspecting the matchmaking mother and the plotting novelist are running the same machine. Chapters seven through ten: Jane's sudden illness, Elizabeth's three muddy miles, a week under Mr. Bingley's roof where every courtesy gets scored. Stein lingers on what that era found attractive in a sick woman, takes a side on the muddy hem, and spends her strangest sympathy on Caroline Bingley, hostess to the rival she watches winning. Listen for the poetry argument; it earns a first smile.

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