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Sadie Stein on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Episode 15

Till This Moment I Never Knew Myself

Featuring Sadie Stein

Audio episode · 22 min

Sadie Stein on Pride and Prejudice

The morning after their quarrel in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy does not speak to Elizabeth. He puts a letter in her hand and walks away, and this episode belongs to that letter: the true history of George Wickham, with a fifteen-year-old girl at its center, and to the woman forcing herself to read it honestly. Sadie Stein opens with a counterfactual nobody thinks to run, suppose Elizabeth had said yes, and closes with a fierce defense of a heroine about to blame herself for everything. This, Stein says, is where liking Elizabeth Bennet turns into admiring her. It happens on a walk, alone, with two hours and a piece of paper.

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I Couldn't Have Given You Up to Anyone Less

Sadie Stein weeps at Mr. Bennet's half-sentence goodbye. Garth Greenwell reads a whole novel about a father who can't say it, so the daughter must.

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Why Darcy Falls for Elizabeth in Spite of Himself

Darcy falls for Elizabeth because she alone does not perform for him, Stein argues — her wit is character, not strategy, and he falls in spite of himself.

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Was Charlotte Lucas Right to Marry Mr. Collins?

Stein reads Charlotte Lucas's marriage as clear-eyed and defensible: in Austen's marriage market, Elizabeth's freedom to refuse was the exception, not the rule.

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Marriage, Money, and the Village Religion of Pride and Prejudice

Stein argues the romance sits on hard economics: a village credo of marriage, too few men, and a good match as the difference between security and ruin.

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