THE BUCCANEERS by Edith Wharton and APPLETV Did you even know that the excellent

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Listeners, readers, welcome to the Fox Page, where we dive
deep into the very best books. You'll come away with
a richer understanding of the text to Dane, all while
learning to read everything a little better. I'm Kimberly Ford,
one time adjunct professor at Berkeley, best selling author and
PhD in literature. Today we're going to be talking about
The Buccaneers, both the television show which I just absolutely

(00:27):
ate up recently, and also Slash more importantly, the novel
by Edith Wharton. For those of you on YouTube, you
can see that I've made a tiny bit of an
effort here with the outfit and the hair. The Buccaneers
is a book that and television show that absolutely cries
out for some serious costuming. But I'm away and I
don't have all my crazy wigs, so I wasn't able

(00:48):
to get into the full Regency era hairdo. Speaking of hair,
I should maybe just get this out of the way
right from the start, I was so distracted by NaN's hair.
I watched a couple of episodes with my sister and
we both were just like, what is happening with this hair?
Everyone else had like these long locks, and she had
that kind of awkward, like it wasn't quite shoulder length,

(01:09):
it wasn't quite chin length, and kind of like chunky.
I mean, I don't mean to be shitting on her hair,
but I just couldn't figure it out. Even when she
would have it up in like some crazy updo like
all the rest of the young women, it still looked
a little bit wacky disimproved in the second season, but
in that first season I just was so confused. And
then this is the kind of magic that we are

(01:31):
going to experience today. I was reading The Buccaneers, the
novel by Edith Wharton, and toward the very end, Miss
test Valley, who is NaN's governess, finds this like incredible
French hair lotion or hair oil that she just thinks
is incredible. And it was amazing because she's talking to
Nan about how like amazing this hair oil is and

(01:53):
Nan is just kind of like not having it, And
part of me was like, Wow, maybe the producers and
creators really like this very carefully, and really we're building
on this idea that Nan was like not into the
French hair oil, but probably we should take a quick
step back. I think a lot of you know, for
seven months of this year from it began on January seventh,

(02:13):
and for literally until you know, the very end of July,
I had all these kidney issues, had a couple of
different surgeries. I was literally uncomfortable for seven months. And
one of the things, of course, that got me through
was television. I had not watched the first season of
The Buccaneers. Very good friend and a very excellent television
judge said wait, this is exactly what you need, because

(02:35):
I would have two whole seasons to be watching, and
the show absolutely delivered. You know, it's a little frothy,
they're parts of it that were certainly overly dramatic, but
I loved every bit of it. And of course what
I tend to do when I'm watching television is you
know when they say skip intro, I always like hit
the little thing. And we skipped the intro, and so
I was like, well, well into the second season, decided

(02:57):
to not skip the intro. Actually, I probably like missed
my window. So I was like, oh, wow, okay, I
have to watch the intro. And at the end of
the intro, when it was like based on a novel
by Edith Wharton, I was like what And I was
so happy. I hopped online ordered my copyright away, and
it was such a delightful experience. And actually, before we

(03:17):
move away from the idea of the opening of the
television show, I have to say I'm kind of hung
up on this idea that all of these television intros
are all kind of the same. I feel like it
started with Game of Thrones, where we have all of
those like kind of puzzle pieces coming up out of
the map, and then there's like some sort of molten,
you know, metallic liquid that's like flowing through all of

(03:37):
these places. And then the Crown had that thing where
like the molten again, the molten metallic stuff like is
like flowing around and it's kind of ominous and weird.
And this one was kind of the same. I mean
not exactly, but you have like all the hydranges and whatnot.
I really love the font that big fat like yellow buccaneers.
If you're on the YouTube, I'll go ahead and show

(03:59):
that font that I loved so much, and that will
be familiar to a lot of you. This is probably
a good place to say that if you are listening
to this as a podcast, that is great, but it
might be a good one to watch on the YouTube.
You can maybe just like have it going in the
background somewhere, because today I'm going to feather in tons
and tons of images. When I do the YouTube, I

(04:20):
like to be able to show you some of the
visuals of you know, whatever it is we're looking at
the author, the setting, and this is one between the
visual nature of the television show obviously, and then because
of the historical nature of the novel, and just like
because Edith Wharton is such a baller, there are going
to be a lot of photos. So now we're going
to move on a little bit more to like what

(04:40):
we are actually doing today. And what I'm going to
do is not try to convince you that you need
to read the Buccaneers. What I am going to convince
you of is that you should read some Edith Wharton.
We're going to do a bio in a minute, but
most of you have probably heard of the Age of
Innocence or The House of Mirth. You maybe read Ethan
Frome back in high school. If if you are kind
of hankering for some Edith Wharton, and I hope you

(05:03):
will be by the end, because her prose is absolutely sensational.
And if you finish Buccaneers, and you're like, shoot, I'm
kind of sad that Buccaneers is over. You can really
pick up some Edith Wharton and just like imagine a
whole cinematic Buccaneers experience that is happening right with the
Age of Innocence or the House of Mirth. So we'll
just go ahead and dive right in. Edith Wharton died

(05:24):
during the writing of this book. She had a synopsis,
she had an outline, although she did actually diverge quite
significantly from the synopsis, but she had, like, you know,
the full kind of conception and makings of this book,
and then she died when she was about three quarters
of the way through. That was in nineteen thirty seven.
They published the unfinished manuscript in nineteen thirty eight, and

(05:45):
then one of her scholars went on to sort of
complete the manuscript and published it in the early nineties.
In fact, in nineteen ninety three. That woman's name is
Marian Main Wearing, which actually makes her sound like she
just popped right out of the pages of a Wharton book.
So I was a little skeptical, and as I was
reading through, I knew that after chapter thirty that's when

(06:07):
Marian was going to take over. And I have to
say kudos to Marian. I think Marian did a great
job finishing this novel. And then today, obviously we're going
to be talking about the adaptation of the television. We're
going to talk about some similarities, some differences, some departures,
and a little bit about kind of the message of
Edith Wharton and how it both agrees and somewhat disagrees

(06:28):
with the tack that the creators of Buccaneers have taken.
But the other thing I want to do today is
read to you and talk a little bit about why
Edith Wharton's prose is so amazing. It is such an
absolute joy. She's kind of sassy, and just the prose
is so rich, and it's so strong, and these women
are amazing. She does minor characters like very few authors.

(06:51):
They're so strong. And we're going to take a look
at some various aspects that these descriptions. There are couple
were going to read today that are just absolutely sublime.
She does a little bit of something that one of
my writing teachers called the architectural digest approach, and he
said this in a very disparaging way, and I was like, wait,
what architectural digest mode of writing actually sounds pretty good

(07:13):
to me. He was not into the idea of describing
things of a lot of detail of the interior of
a space, and when she does it, it is so good.
She's also very good exteriors. So we're going to see
both of those. In fact, I'm just going to go
ahead and give you a quick agenda so you know
what we're up to today. We're going to start by
looking at this incredible narrative voice that she has. It

(07:36):
is a very strong, omniscient third person narrator, pretty standard
for kind of a late realist novel, but it's a
very nimble narrator. It's entering into the points of view
of a lot of different characters, which is so important
because this is a novel that is very much about judginess.
One of the things I loved best about it is
there are a lot of descriptions from the perspective of English women,

(07:59):
and they are of course judging these young American buccaneers,
and Edith Wharton is so good at having them say
something that they think is insulting, and I, as an American,
was like, yes, the British moral climate might have been
a little bit too chilly for these young American women.
And yes they are brash, and yes they are very loud.
But the genius there is that she's inhabiting all of

(08:21):
these different points of view in order to give us
a very complete picture of what we are seeing slash reading.
So we'll look at the narrative voice where then I'm
going to look at a bunch of similarities between the
novel and a television show. Then we're going to look
at some differences, which was pretty fun to look at.
We're going to move on and talk a tiny bit
about just like the gorgeousness of the prose, why it

(08:44):
is so beautiful. We're going to talk a little bit
about figurative language, just a couple of examples, mostly symbolism.
Then I want to take a quick look at how
well she drafts minor characters. Toward the end, we're going
to do my thing that I sometimes do with names,
which was so fun. I'm going to actually spell some
of them for you. I have to say the whole
time when they're like, it's brittle c, it's brittle Cy,

(09:05):
I'm like, how are they spelling that? How are they
spelling that? Actually, I'm going to throw your bone. I'm
going to tell you how they spell that right now.
It is bright ling c so b r igh t
l i n g sea. So now you understand why
everyone's mispronouncing that. But there are also some really interesting
nuances to the names that Edith Wharton chose. So we'll

(09:25):
do that toward the end, and then and then we'll
talk about the sort of messages and how the show
departs in some ways but also is very faithful in
some ways to the very important message that Edith Wharton
was promoting in all of her novels. She was really prolific,
and certainly in Buccaneers. So we're going to go ahead

(09:45):
and dive into the text here. Actually, before we do,
I'm just going to touch very quickly on the title
for anyone who is here, because you want to become
a better reader, which is one of the things we
are doing at the Fox Page. Although I don't like
the idea of anyone like needing to im prove their reading.
The way that you read is excellent and perfect for you,
but I understand the idea of wanting to get a

(10:06):
little more out of it. The way you do that
is simply by paying attention. I almost just skipped over
the title, but it is very important to pay attention.
So buccaneers is obviously like another name for pirate. I
actually like went and looked at the difference between pirate
and buccaneers, and I think it's pirates. Oh my gosh,
now I'm forgetting. Pirates were known to have been sent

(10:28):
out by people they already had money in order to,
like they were basically paid to go out and do
their thing, to go out and find, you know, ships
and do all sorts of plunder and whatever those pirates
were up to, whereas buccaneers were doing this without any
kind of backing, which makes total sense. Obviously, Edith Wharton
is tapping into this idea of buccaneers as being adventuresome

(10:52):
and strong and kind of wild and crazy. It's also
just a really kind of a genius title in the
sense of just how it sounds buccaneers or the buccaneers,
the buccaneers. It's just it's kind of a fun word
to say, and it really is. It's almost like on
a monopoeia in the sense that we really get the
sense of them like bucking the standards of the day.
And actually you could also sort of look at the

(11:14):
fact that there is some pirating going on in the
sense that all of these young women in America wanted
a title, all of these parvenu women, all of the
newly rich women, they needed titles in order to be
seen as legitimate people in the New York circles. And
of course the British people needed the money. So there's
sort of plundering on both sides. Actually, but now we're

(11:35):
going to dive into the actual text itself. One of
the things that it would be good to pay attention
to here as I read these first three brief paragraphs
is just the way that the narrative voice is working.
So on page three, here, oh my gosh, my readers
look super crazy with this dress. But these are the
ones I've got. They're also way too strong, so I
have to hold the book really close to my face. Okay.

(11:56):
On page three, it was the height of the racing season,
and in Saratoga, the thermometer stood over ninety and a
haze of sun powdered dust hung in the elms along
the street facing the Grand Union Hotel and over the
scant triangular lawns planted with young firs and protected by
a low white rail from the depredations of dogs and children.

(12:20):
Missus Saint George, whose husband was one of the gentlemen
most interested in the racing, sat on the wide hotel veranda,
a jug of iced lemonade at her elbow and a
palmetto fan in one small hand, and looked out between
the immensely tall white columns of the portico, which so
often reminded cultured travelers of the Parthenon at Athens parentheses Greece. Okay,

(12:46):
there is so much to talk about here. I mean,
I wasn't going to do like a supertextual deep dive,
but we might have to just like pause here and
just admire what it is that she's doing. So we
begin with this omniscient narrator at the narrator's pulled way back,
but this is also a narrator who really has her
finger on the pulse of what is going on here.

(13:06):
It's so interesting. I tend to think of an omniscient
third person narrator as male, as kind of a male voice.
I think that's like weirdly because of the patriarchy. It's
sort of my default. But sometimes in a case like this,
especially if I have a female author, I will feel
like the voice is slightly more of a woman's voice,
which I very much like. But this is one who

(13:27):
is both very authoritative and also very much in the know.
So we have at the beginning this kind of bold
statement which points to the omniscience it was the height
of the racing season in Saratoga. But then we drop
immediately to this really sensual paragraph. Edith Wharton's writing is
so essential. So we have this idea of the heat,

(13:50):
which is important because this book is about putting pressure
on people, and there's nothing like heat to help understand
why characters feel under pressure. But then we have a
haze of sunpowdered dust. I mean, that is unbelievable. It
is unusual, and you can kind of see it. It
seems so beautiful in my mind. It's kind of pollen
from the fir trees. And then we have all the

(14:12):
other elms. Says it right here. Then we have a
haze of sunpowdered dust hung in the elms along the
street facing the Grand Union Hotel. So Grand Union actually
don't know if that actually existed, But from the beginning,
even subconsciously she's talking about the idea of a union,
this idea of marriage, which is really the driving force

(14:34):
in this whole entire book. And it's not just any union,
it is grand union. And then the idea of this
scant triangular lawns. There is this idea that she embraces
of the United States as being you know, kind of
young and a little scant, and that everything is kind
of newly planted. And then she's so genius. She has

(14:55):
this protective low fence to keep things from depredation, this
idea of needing to protect things. In this case it's
from dogs and children, but we get the sense right
at the beginning of things that are young and burgeoning
as needing protection. Then of course we go to this
really gorgeous thing with missus Saint George. She's on the veranda.

(15:15):
This is the kind of thing that I think my
MFA teacher would not have liked. But when we hear
about the jug of iced lemonade at her elbow and
a palmetto fan in one small hand, first of all,
the cadence of that is so beautiful, but it's so appealing.
I don't know, there's something about iced lemonade and it
being at her elbow, and the jug, the word jug,

(15:37):
it just immediately conjures the deliciousness, frankly, of a big
jug of lemonade, but also the palmetto fan. In one
small hand. What you have there's assonance, which is the
rhyming of those vowels, and it almost is mimicking the
idea of this fan. And then, of course palmetto is

(15:57):
a slightly kind of exotic word here, and she pushes
that exotic idea a little bit further in such a
funny way to me, because suddenly we have the description
of these columns and that idea of the Greek Revival
architecture that was so obviously trying to kind of be
European here in the United States, and those columns she

(16:18):
says right here so often reminded cultural travelers of the
Parthenon it Athens parentheses Greece. The fact that she had
to say that Athens is in Greece is so funny
to me. And also, of course the Parthenon, like we
I spent forty eight hours probably less in Athens when
I was an eleven year old, and the one thing

(16:40):
that we did right away is go to the Parthenon.
So she is doing so much work in the very
beginning here to symbolically set up the idea of the
United States as new and young, and also this idea
of kind of striving the idea of trying to be
European but also being firmly American. The other thing that's

(17:00):
important is she is starting this in Saratoga Springs. Edith
Wharton is very good at explaining that the importance of
places like Saratoga, or places like Albany, like these were
very important and very cultured capitals, not actual capitals, but
they were like very important places at the end of
the nineteenth century. And the important thing about Saratoga, of course,

(17:22):
is that it is based on gambling. And she says
right from the start that missus Saint George has a
husband who's really invested in the gambling. But if you
are a savvy reader, you're going to take into mind
the fact that all of this is a gamble. I mean,
marriage is a gamble. But all of these people have
these very high stakes gambles that they are all trying

(17:42):
to kind of wrangle. And we have that notion right
from the start of the book. It's just a virtuoso
opening to a novel. So I mentioned that maybe you
should be listening for the narrative voice in that first part,
and then I didn't really talk about the narrative voice
all that much, but you can see how it's pulled
far back. It's talking about Saratoga in these kind of

(18:02):
more general terms, and then we have missus Saint George,
but kind of from the exterior. But what's amazing about
this narrator is that very quickly here we have on
page ten a small example I'd like to read of
how deftly this third person narrator kind of adjoin adjoins.
Adjoins is not a word. Wait, maybe it is. Adjoining.

(18:22):
Adjoining is a word. So this narrator melds in some
ways to a certain character, and then without coming out
of the third person, we have the thoughts of the character.
And this is important that we're staying in the third person,
because it makes the whole thing feel very accessible. It's
very easy to understand because we have this authoritative voice

(18:46):
that's kind of on the same plane the whole entire time,
and that even when when it's not these grand statements
like it was the height of the season, in Saratoga.
Even when it's very close, it's very easy to follow
a third person. So here we have an excellent example
on page ten. What we have here is young Nan,

(19:07):
who is here with her mother and her father and
her older sister Virginia, and we have the recent arrival
of the Clawson family, Colonel Clawson, and we're going to
discuss the Clossons in a moment. But Conchita is there,
and we have this description of NaN's reaction to Ponchita.
Long before Missus Saint George and Missus Elmsworth had agreed

(19:30):
on a valuation of the newcomer, Nan had fallen under
her spell from the day when she had first seen
her come whistling around the corner of the veranda, her
restless little head crowned by a flapping leghorn hat with
a rose under the brim, and dragging after her a
reluctant poodle with a large red bow. Nan had felt

(19:51):
the girl's careless power. What would Missus Saint George have
said if one of her daughters had strolled along the
had strolled along the veranda whistling and dragging a grotesque
looking toy shop animal at her heels. Miss Clawson seemed
troubled by no such considerations. She sat down on the
upper step of the veranda, pulled a lump of molasses

(20:11):
candy from her pocket, and invited the poodle to get
up and waltz for it. So a couple of very
quick things here. Clearly we have just this really robust
vision of a young woman who, despite the fact that
her mother is Brazilian, which we are going to find
out soon, we also find out that her mother is
maybe not married to Colonel Clawsan. We also know that

(20:34):
Kwanchita Clausen is not a daughter of mister Clawson. But
we have this young woman that Wharton describes as having
careless power. So so much of this book is about power,
and it is about the idea of power as not
being available to women. There's so many strictures against which
women are fighting in this book, but right from the

(20:55):
start some of them, Nan and Quonchita both are armed
with this kind of power. And it's beautiful that Edith
is Edith. That Wharton is very kind of baldly telling
us that not only does Qunchitta have power, but it's
a careless power, which kind of magnifies of course the power.
You also get the sense right here of judgment. At

(21:16):
the very beginning, we have missus Saint George and Missus Elmsworth.
They're still trying to judge her and figure her out,
but our trusting narrator is cluing us into the fact
that she and Nan are similar in some ways, and
that they're young women that really do have the Buccaneers spirit.
If you're on the YouTube, I'll put up a picture
of a leghorn hat. I had such a hard time

(21:36):
figuring out or like picturing that in my head because
the whole time I was thinking about for some character,
a cartoon character like Leghorn, something something so all I
could picture, and I think, I don't know, he might
be a chicken. If you're on the YouTube, I'll also
show you a picture of like Leghorn blah blah blah.
I'll also put his name, But it caused a complete
blockage in my mind. I could not even begin to

(21:59):
understand what leg born hat was. I was actually also
picturing a stovepipe hat. I will also put up a
picture of the stovepipe hat. But regardless of my inability
to recognize this hat or visualize this hat, I got
plenty of a sense of what Quonchita's spirit is all about.
I also was a little bit bummed out about how
harsh she is about the poodle. As you guys know,

(22:20):
I'm a total dog lover, and in fact I was
the owner of two smallish poodles, not tiny ones, but
smallish ones, and I love myself a poodle. So this
seemed a little harsh to me. So before we move
off the topic of this incredible narrator, and frankly, all
of the close reading that we are doing today is
in the auspices of just like enjoying this incredible prose.

(22:43):
But this final example we're going to look at of
the narrator is so duffed because essentially what Wharton is
doing is combining one of the characters and the omniscience
of the narrator. So we have this narrator who's very powerful,
and in this case it's sort of even closer to
Lizzie Elmsworth than we did with Nan thinking about Qunchita.

(23:05):
I mean, in fairness, the description of Nan in Conchita
is mostly just a description of Quonchita. There's that little
part about how Nan had fallen under her spell, but
then we just have a description. In this case, we
have a little more entering into the mind of Lizzie Elmsworth.
And not only is Wharton showing us a little bit
about who Lizzie is, but she's really moving the plot

(23:27):
forward in this very clear but also the very appealing
kind of way. So here's the paragraph on one twenty two.
Lizzie Elmsworth was not a good tempered girl. That's even
that just kind of cracked me up. I mean, Wharton
is creating some really round characters. These are not people
who are just like villains and heroes. These are people

(23:48):
who are complex. They're people who have, you know, good
things and bad things, as do we all. So I'll continue.
Lizzie Elmsworth was not a good tempered girl, but she
was too intelligent to let her temper interfere with her opportunities.
She hated the Saint George girls for having got ahead
of her in their attack on London, but was instantly

(24:09):
disposed to profit by the breach they had made Virginia.
Saint George was not clever, and Lizzie would be able
to guide her. They could be of the greatest use
to each other if the Saint George's could be made
to enter into the plan. Exactly what plan, Lizzie herself
did not know, but she felt instinctively that like their
native country, they could stand only if they were united.

(24:33):
I mean, this is such it's just such an incredible paragraph,
and it makes me actually feel like slightly patriotic, which
is kind of a difficult thing to do these days.
But you have this huge statement at the end, heier
that like America, these girls have to be united. But
in the very beginning of the paragraph, which actually is
fitting with the idea of the United States, you have

(24:54):
all of these kind of like Bella Cooast terms, like
warlike things. So she's talking about the Saint George girls
and their attack on London, and then soon after how
she's going to profit by the breach they had made.
So this is one of the ways that we're kind
of carrying through the idea of the buccaneers, like these

(25:14):
are women who are like kind of going to all
lengths to do what they want to do here, and
in many ways it's kind of warlike. But I would
also argue that when we have a woman writing a
book like this, that narrator can really add a lot
of scope, and a lot of depth, and frankly, a
lot of gravitas if the narrator is nimble enough to

(25:34):
use all of these different In this case, it's a
very kind of male metaphor here, and she does it
so well. We also, I think you can get a
sense from that of how strong Lizzy is. It's really
just very efficient in terms of characterization, moving the plot forward,
building tension. I mean, this is pros that is working
on many levels and is also incredibly appealing. Okay, now

(25:58):
that we've looked at the narrator, we're going to die
and talk about some of the similarities and real strengths
I think of both the novel and the adaptation. So
one of the things I love the best is that
almost all of the names are the same. We're going
to talk about names at the end, but you just
heard about Lizzie Elmsworth and Nan. I have to say too,
Nan is not my favorite. I do not love the

(26:21):
name Nan, and I certainly didn't like it when I
heard that the alternative is Annabel. Love Annabel. Sometime very
early on in the novel. It's really funny because Miss
test Valley, the new Governess for Annabel calls her Annabel,
and I'm like, oh my gosh, wait, great, maybe in
the book she's going to go more by Annabel. And
right away she's like, please don't call me Annabel. I'm Nan.

(26:43):
And I was like, oh God, okay, all right, here
we go. But I do like the idea of these
creators as being pretty faithful to the names. Also because
these names are great and very telling and doing a
lot of work which we're going to look at later.
So I'm also very clearly that both the book and
the novel are speaking to this idea of these ambitions
of both the Americans who need legitimacy and the British

(27:06):
people who need the money. It's very clear, and in
many ways the plot is sort of the same. We
begin at a slightly different point where this is right
before Quanchita Mary's Dick. I don't know why I'm smiling
about that. I mean, obviously because Dick. So we begin
at a slightly different time, but lots of the same
things are unfolding NaN's character and our focus on Nan.

(27:29):
She's clearly kind of the main character in the television adaptation.
She also is very much the main character of the book.
It is really her story that we are closely following,
and that's the one that has the most you know,
sort of like arc, most most like effective and sort
of rich arc by the end of the book. We
also in the book have the idea of Nan both

(27:52):
being in love with Guy Thwart and with the Duke.
Speaking of names, the Duke's name in the book is Ushant,
which is spelled you s H A n T, which
is like not a great name, and in the book
he's a much more kind of straightforward, villainous kind of character.
But she is in love with both of those men,
so that is one of the other similarities. We also

(28:13):
have this this idea of Conchita as kind of being
because she's sort of the first in the novel. In
the television show, she's the first to sort of launch
herself into society and have a baby and whatnot. We
have that same sort of idea in the novel, and
I want to look at two quick cases where we're
seeing the same kinds of things that Conchita is facing

(28:35):
in the television show. At one point, she says to
Nan that she's really worried because her child is going
to look like her is going to have a darker skin,
and that they don't, and that the family who already
don't like Conchita, that they are also not going to
like the child because of the child's skin color. And
I was very curious when I was watching the television

(28:57):
show whether or not Wharton was going to include this
subplot about racism. But I really like the fact that
she sort of takes it head on. It's one of
the differences here which we're in similarities and won't get
to differences soon. But she's from Brazil. Her name is
Quancita Santos Dios, although she goes by Clausen and then

(29:18):
she gets married, but she is Brazilian, so we know
that she has darker skin. The word dusky is used
a lot throughout this novel, but there was also a
question at one point a telegram from Horrendez Selena Brittlesy
basically she asks is she black? So we have like
a very pointed discussion in the novel about racism, which

(29:39):
was like obviously a very good thing for the creators
to include in the television show. I think I just
assumed that there wouldn't be this whole storyline, and yet
it's definitely here and it's done, I think very well.
So on page five we have the reaction on the
part of the mother's Missus Saint George and Missus Elmsworth.

(30:00):
But the thought of that new dusky Clawson woman with
the queer looking girl who was so ugly now that
might suddenly turn into a beauty. Missus Saint George had
seen such cases. The instinctive organized defense awoke in her
vague bosom, and she felt herself drawn to Missus Elmsworth
and to the two Elmsworth girls, as to whom one

(30:21):
already knew just how good looking they were going to be.
This is so funny. It's very much like the Lizzie
Elmsworth paragraph that we read. These people are very calculating.
But obviously what is important here is the idea that
Missus Saint George is suspicious of Colonel Clawsan's wife and
also the wife's daughter, but she also right from the beginning,

(30:43):
is recognizing that she is a potential beauty, and in
fact she does become very beautiful. And obviously, you know
if someone's talking about like she's ugly now, which I mean,
it's so funny, how bold. A lot of these statements
are but if someone is ugly now and you have
the suspicion that they are going to be beautiful, are
obviously seeds of that beauty. So then on page nine

(31:04):
we have like this, this really strong endorsement of Qunchita.
This is so early in the novel, and so for
the reader who already is clued into the fact that
Nan is kind of our main character, you have kind
of an extension or actually like almost like a rebuttal
of what missus Saint George was thinking, what we saw
her thinking earlier about the class. So this is an

(31:26):
extra fun section to read because it's dialogue and there
are also some very symbolic things happening here. Edith Wharton's
dialogue is so good. There are actually some parts where
there is verbatim stuff that is said in the show.
I was going to talk about it later, but I'll
just say it right now. There was a part where
guy Thwart's father says something about guy Thwart's late mother

(31:47):
and the fact that she was utterly unpaintable, and we
have exactly that in the book. We also have that
exact phrasing where all the girls arrive in London and
Quonchita is just miserable because the brit people are so uptight,
and she says that thing about how it's an ocean
of silence and that they should see it like that,
but they should also not be too worried because she

(32:08):
hasn't drowned yet. So we have these verbatim things that
are taken, and honestly, there were times where I would
be a little suspicious because the writing to me felt
a little bit stilted, and that actually was one of them,
which is probably the reason why I remembered it and
saw it in the novel, The one where Guy Thwart's
dad calls the woman utterly unpaintable. That was just beautiful,

(32:30):
but it didn't sound out of voice, this metaphor about
the ocean and her not having drowned yet. I think
it was actually the delivery of the actor, but for
some reason it did sort of stick out as potentially
something that was straight from the novel. But back to
the point I'm making, which is that right from the beginning,
Nan our sort of hero, recognizes how amazing Ponchita is.

(32:53):
So on page eleven, why can't I go with Conchita
if she wants me? To missus Saint George's faintly with
pink turned pale. If she wants you to ann about
Saint George, what do you mean by talking to me
in that way? What on earth do you care for
what a girl like that wants. So again, here we
have her, Missus Saint George is really still trying to

(33:15):
disparage her. But then we have this, Nan ground her
heels into the crack between the veranda boards. So obviously
there's some symbolic stuff there. I like the way that
we're reminded that they are on the veranda, but really
Nan is actually like physically digging in here. So Nan
ground her heels into the cracks between the veranda boards.
I think she's lovely. Missus Saint George's small nose was

(33:38):
wrinkled with disdain. The small mouth under it drooped disgustedly.
She was mother smelling a drain. So this is such
an odd little paragraph, but I love the way that
it gets us into the minds of these girls, of
the sisters. Some of the description of people's faces is
just so odd to me. At one point, someone's lip lengthened.

(34:01):
This is like also with disdain. And here we have
her mouth drooped disgustedly. This is the time when I
fall back on my MFA education and I totally agree
with the fact that if dialogue is good enough, you
shouldn't have to be describing these people's faces. That this
aspect the sort of Edith Wharton describing people's faces, doing

(34:22):
this kind of thing. This is one of the ways
that the book does feel distinctly like it was written
in the twentieth century, slightly less than one hundred years ago.
So right from the beginning we have this idea of
Nan as really recognizing Conchita as this phenomenal person, which
is obviously close to the novel I did. It was
interesting because Conchita Nan is younger and Conchita is older.

(34:44):
So in my mind, you know, Conchita was maybe closer
friends with Ginny and some of the other girls, and
it would surprise me a little bit when when it
seemed like she and Nan were so close, like when
she's going to have the baby and she's like, Nan,
you have to be here, and NaN's like, absolutely, I will,
and then she isn't. But in the book, despite the
age gap, Ponchita and Nan are very very close friends

(35:05):
and a lot of the plot hinges on the fact
that they are so close. Okay, we're going to move
on and talk about some of the differences. So one
major one is the fact that Nan is not her
mother's sister's child. I liked that storyline and I was
really curious if it was going to be in the novel.
It was not. It does feel, I mean, when you
step back a little bit, it does feel very kind

(35:26):
of soap opera y, but it really provided some good tension.
The other major change for me is that the duke
in this book his name is Ushant Ushant in this book,
the Duke of Tintagel. He's just bad, like he's just
kind of a one note. He's pretty villainous. He's petty,
he's greedy, he's calculating, he's misogynist. He's just not great.

(35:48):
So you're going to wonder why, in fact, Nan ends
up with him, and it's interesting. A lot of it
hinges on the fact that Nan is she just thinks
that Ginny is the best thing ever, and she's very
competitive with Ginny, and she gets kind of caught up
in this idea of this fantasy of becoming you know,
a Duchess, and she almost does it not to spite
her sister, but in competition with her sister, and then

(36:11):
is immediately disillusioned because in fact the Duke is just
a total dick. And though we have the whole like
Guy Thwart storyline, we do not have all of this
stuff about him going off. I believe it's Italy. Actually
don't know that they ever name it. I love those
parts of the show where they have the facades of
those beautiful houses along the water and it's so sunny

(36:32):
and beautiful and sensual, and you have Ginny and the
baby and Guy Thwart there. That stuff is not in
the book. We do have Guy Thwart go to South America.
He makes lots of money there, he gets married I
believe the woman dies, and then he comes back to England.
So we do have the tension of nan As being
kind of in love with both of these people. But
there's a major storyline that is not in the book.

(36:55):
There also was something that was really pretty different for
me in the book, and I really sort of clarified
one of my reactions to the show. So in the novel,
Laura test Valley is really central. She's like almost like
the second most important person after nan And in it,
and she's very well developed. There's lots of stuff about

(37:16):
her last name used to be Testa Valier. I was
like when they first were talking about miss test Valley,
I was like, test Valley, Like, what kind of a
name is that? Turns out it is an English version,
which that's so weird that they would do that. It's
an English version of Testa Vale. I guess you would
say in Italian t E s t A v A

(37:36):
l l E. And very much is made and actually
there's quite a bit of poetry in the book. Very
much is made that she is related to the Rosetties,
and in the book she's really decisive. She's like a
very kind of important character in many ways. And she
does have that affair with Dick Marrable. I'm pretty sure
Marrable is their last name. Although these last names are

(37:57):
tricky for me because it's also brittle Sy, But maybe
brittal Sy is like their title or something, and Marrable
is like their kind of normal last name. But I imagine
that you, as a viewer, remember the affair that Dick
has with the governess, and much is made of that
in the In the show, it's kind of this like
gross thing, and in the book it's not a great thing.

(38:18):
But one very important issue is that she's much younger
in the book, which seems much younger. I The casting
of that woman as Laura test Valley and making her
kind of like threatening and immoral in the television show
was a real departure. So in the book she's about
twenty seven or twenty eight, which is probably twenty eight,

(38:39):
and Dick Marrable is like twenty or something. So I mean,
still not great. And you could argue that a governess
is in like a position of authority and that she
hasn't using her authority, certainly, but the idea of him
as being significantly older and her as being significantly younger
in the book is pretty different than the idea that
Dick had been abused and that his parents had done

(39:02):
nothing about it. So that is not in the book.
What we have instead is a much more consensual, feeling situation.
And Laura Testfali also she's really kind of scrappy in
many ways, and she's very savvy about kind of not
exactly getting what she wants, but she's living a life
that is in many ways very satisfactory to her. There's
another woman in the book who's very important. Her name

(39:24):
is miss March, and she is this matchmaker. And we
have this kind of strain of these young women who
are these spinsters who have chosen not to marry or
did not get married for whatever reason. But they're very
strong and kind of instrumental in terms of plot. And
I really liked the idea of Wharton giving us certainly,
you know, mostly description of these striving, wealthy people, but

(39:47):
we also have really excellent descriptions of people from different
social classes. Sadly, another major difference is that there is
no affair between Honoria and Mabel. I was very curious
and was really hoping that at least there would be
some innuendo, and there isn't. Really. I loved that strain
in the actual television show, really wanted to see it

(40:07):
in the novel, but no. And of course there are differences,
and differences are important to sort of point out. But I,
for the most part, was kind of shook by how
faithful the adaptation was. Okay, now we're going to talk
a little bit about what makes this pros incredible, And
I realized that we've already talked quite a bit about that,
and we've had some pretty good digins to a few

(40:29):
of these passages. But I just want to read one
of the three that I chose to show you the
kind of sensuality and the original and really compelling nature
of the prose. So on page thirty four we have
the first time that Miss test Valley is seeing all
of these young American buccaneers. The driver pulled up with

(40:49):
a queer guttural cry to his horses. The poodle leapt
down and began to dance on its hind legs, and
out of the hack port a spring torrent of muslins,
sash ends, and bright cheeks under swaying hat brims. Misstest
Bellie found herself in a circle of nymphs. Nymphs, I
can't say that word, nymphs. Misstest Valley found herself in

(41:11):
a circle of nymphs, shaken by hysterical laughter. And as
she stood there, small brown interrogative, there's swept through her
mind a shred of verse which Dante Gabrielle used to
be fond of reciting. Whence came ye Mary Damsels, whence
came ye so many and so many and such glee,

(41:32):
which is actually a very beautiful little snippet wents in
that situation, meaning like where have you come from? But
what I loved about this We have this incredible description
that really captures the kind of energy and the kind
of impression that would have been made on Misstestfaly. The
part where we have out of the hack poured a

(41:52):
spring torrent of muslins, sash ends and bright cheeks under
swaying hat brims. It's like, you have this idea spring obviously,
and you have the idea of this river, which is
such a beautiful kind of metaphor. And then she goes
on to describe the fabrics and the sash ends like
you're getting bits and pieces as if we were watching
kind of a river of young women. I also like

(42:15):
the idea of the swaying hat brims because it sort
of carries on swing. It could be like trees kind
of over the river. It carries through this idea of movement.
So we have torrent, which is like really a lot
of energy, and then we also have the idea of
things swaying. It's also very apt that she uses the
word spring many times. A good writer will use the

(42:39):
seasons to describe things. So here a spring, of course,
is about you know, growth, and it's about burgeoning things,
and it's about fecundity, not so much fecundity, because that's
more like not so much fertility and stuff. I think
that comes a little more with the fall and the harvest,
maybe summertime. But you have this idea of these young
women as being like the spring in the sense that

(43:02):
they are just on the cusp of adulthood and they
are about to sort of blossom into themselves, which I
have to say, I really did like the hydrangas. I
thought the hydrangas were an awesome part of the opening.
I liked like weird vibrant color, and the fat buccaneers
written on top of it. I just didn't like all
those like weird flowers kind of appearing. It seemed also

(43:24):
just like really out of tone with the rest of
the show. But the point that I was making here
is that Wharton, again and again and again delivers these paragraphs, sentences,
chapters of prose that is unique and evocative and just
so so good. So we're not going to look at
too much more of that. But there's lots of figurative language,

(43:45):
and you know, we just saw it the idea of
the spring torrent. That's a very good metaphor. But we
also have this amazing metaphor. I could pull out hundreds
of these, which I'm not going to do, but this
one was particularly good. Nan is talking about the duke
who she's married to at this point, and she says
anger was too large a garment for him. It hung

(44:05):
on him in uneasy folds. That is so beautiful. I mean,
obviously it is not necessary to throw in this kind
of figurative language. She could have just said that, you know,
he was uneasy in his anger. Instead, we have this
beautiful idea of anger sort of cloaking him but also
him being uneasy. It's so dufft and it's so good.

(44:27):
We have a lot of symbolism. There's this one amazing part.
It just is like it should be kind of too
on the nose, like it should feel kind of overwrought,
but it is so excellent. Which is when missus Saint
George and Missus Elmsworth are in one of these like
English you know, manor houses, and they're like desperate to
be getting their girls married off. And in the manor
house there's a clock that loses five minutes every day,

(44:50):
which is so excellent, like not even it's not that
like time has stopped and they have to get like
musical chairs and they've got to suddenly like wrap things up.
In fact, they're losing time. It also speaks to the
fact of them aging. It speaks to time in general.
But also it's another one of these pressures that you know,
there's a narrow window for these young women to get married,

(45:11):
and this clock is emphasizing all of the pressure of that.
So if this is a section about like how incredible
the prose is, one thing I want to touch on
here is how incredibly well she does these minor characters
and minor characters. Obviously, you know we are going to
form an impression on like what they do and what
they say, which many people would tell you is more

(45:32):
important if you are a writer. But in many ways,
we have a narrator here who's doing a lot of
telling and it's extremely effective. So I already gave you
a hint about Mistest Valley, and I was like, maybe
I shouldn't read this whole paragraph because I have already
sort of given you my two cents about how well
she is flashed out. But this prose is so beautiful
that I actually do want to share it with you.

(45:53):
And one other thing while I'm reading this to think
about is just the way that this broadens the scope
of the novel and adds some heft. So here we
have a little backstory on miss test VALLEI this is early.
This is only page thirty two of a book that
is I'm checking. I'm checking four hundred and six pages long.

(46:14):
So we have this. Miss test Valley's grandfather was the
illustrious patriot Gennaro Testavalia. Oh I spelled it wrong. Earlier
I said v A l l e. It is Testa,
and then va g l Ia Testavalia of Modina Fo
mentor of insurrections, hero of the Resorgimento, author of those

(46:34):
once famous historical novels Arnaldo da Brescia and LaDonna de
la Fortesa. I'm reading those in a Spanish accent. I
do not speak Italian. But whose fame this is her father,
but whose fame lingered in England, chiefly because he was
the cousin of the old Gabrielle Rosetti, father of the
decried and illustrious Dante Gabrielle, the Testavalias, fleeing from the

(46:59):
Austrian in Inquisition, had come to England at the same
time as the Rosettes and contracting their impossible name to
the scope of English. Lips had intermarried with other exiled
revolutionaries and anti papists, producing sons who were artists and agnostics,
and daughters who were evangelicals of the strictest pattern and

(47:20):
governesses of the highest families. Laura test Valley had obediately
followed the family tradition. So you can see like how
much historical depth I mean, Laura test Valley, we really
actually know a lot about her, and a paragraph like
that could feel a little out of step with the
rest of the novel, and actually it kind of does.
When we have the naming of these historical figures, you

(47:42):
have the idea that the book is really like grounded
in history, it's grounded in actual experience, which makes the
whole thing feel much more real. And yes, in this case,
she does get a little more specific, and you kind
of have the sense that she really wanted to inject
these these names and these titles into a novel. So

(48:03):
it feels like a tiny bit forest But I really
loved it, and the saving grace is there's quite a
bit of this kind of depth about minor characters elsewhere,
so that is such a feat. I mean, we know
a lot about Nan and Conchita right from the beginning,
we know a lot about all of the girls. We
heard that paragraph about Lizzie Elmsworth. We end up feeling
really knowledgeable about the main characters, but also about these

(48:28):
minor characters. The last one I want to look at,
I think is so amazing. It's on page fifty seven.
This is a description of Quanchita's mother. And this is another.
I mean, we know very little about her. Actually we
know she's Brazilian, that's all, and she has a son
and a daughter, and she's married to Colonel Clawsan. But
get this, just like incredible characterization. Okay, here we have
on page fifty seven Missus Clawsan listened with her dreamy smile.

(48:52):
Her attention had none of the painful precision with which
Missus Saint George tried to master the details of social
life in the higher sphere, nor of the eager curiosity
gleaming under Missus Parmore's pale eyelashes. Missus Clausan really could
not see that there was much difference between one human
being and another, except that some had been favored with

(49:13):
more leisure than others, and leisure was her idea of heaven. Okay,
so good. She also there's another description of her like
lounging around smoking cigars, which are a total phallic symbol.
If a woman is smoking cigars at any point, you
can read that as her essentially having a stand in penis,
and she does. This is a woman who managed to

(49:34):
provide herself a lot of leisure, which apparently is what
she wants, so she has a certain amount of power
in the book. She's a very minor character. But the
way that the narrator just allowed us to get into
her mind and to distinguish her from these other mothers,
and then to give her that amazing idea that she
understands that people are all the same. That is not
something that is shared by many characters in the novel.

(49:57):
So it really makes her stand out, and it also
does the important work of having the reader understand. But
in the Gilded Age, here there were people who understood
just the folly and understood the basic premise that people
are the same. Okay, to conclude, I'm going to read you.
I'm going to read you out. I'm going to finish

(50:18):
with some of Edith Wharton's beautiful prose. But before I
do that, I just want to mention maybe the most
important thing, which is I found like the spirit of
the TV adaptation and the novel were really very similar.
There were obviously many changes that actually made it more
dynamic and interesting for television, this kind of episodic two

(50:39):
season thing that we got, but also for audiences in
twenty twenty five. But in both you had this really
important look at the way that societal expectations for women
can be really suffocating and really awful. They also both
do this thing which most of these period pieces do.
They really do make me appreciate the fact that I

(51:01):
was not living then most of this. I was like
on my couch in in my pjs or my sweats, convalescing,
and I was really psyched that I could just be
wearing like a T shirt and I could go get
a coffee in my slippers. But I have to say,
when I read the novel, which was just a delight,
I was really struck by first of all how modern
Edith Wharton's messages were, but also by the optimism and

(51:24):
the strength and the really incisive look at women that
we get both in Wharton and in the television show.
So the way that we're going to close, I think
is actually pretty spectacular, not because of my effort, but
simply because of how fate works here in the publication
of this novel. So what I want to read to
you at the end of this discussion is the end

(51:46):
of the manuscript that Edith Wharton wrote. This is so
eerie and so beautiful that I just was kind of
shocked when I read it. So what we are, what
I'm about to read to you is the end of
chapter twenty nine. So after this point we have Marian
taking over that this beautiful, beautiful paragraph was the last

(52:06):
part of the sections of the novel, the three quarters
of the novel that Wharton wrote herself. It's so moving. Okay,
here we have this. On two ninety one, the drive
back to Champions passed like a dream. To secure herself
against disturbance, Nan had slipped her hand into mistest valleys
and let her head droop on the Governess's shoulder. She

(52:28):
heard one of the Glenlow girl's whisper. The Duchess is
asleep and a conniving silence seemed to enfold her. But
she hadn't a wish to sleep. Her wide eyed eyes
looked out into the falling night, caught the glint of
lights flashing past in the high street, lost themselves in
the long intervals of dusk between the villages, and plunged

(52:50):
into deepening night as the low glimmer of the west
went out. In her heart was a deep, delicious peace
such as she had never known before. In this great,
lonely desert of life stretching out before her, she had
a friend, a friend who understood not only all she said,
but everything she could not say. At the end of

(53:11):
the long road on which the regular wrap of the
horses feet was beating out the hours, she saw him
standing waiting for her, watching for her through the night. Unbelievable,
so gorgeous, and so eerie. I mean, this is a woman.
Actually don't know how she died. I'm assuming that she

(53:32):
was ill. If she died suddenly. This is not quite
as impressive, although maybe still impressive. What she has written
here is this beautiful sense of things waning and things ending,
and lights going out and evening falling in a way
that is so evocative of death. But what's beautiful but
is it's also this incredibly like warm and comforting passage.

(53:57):
Nan is very close with this test valley, and we
have them physically bonded together. We have her comfortable enough
to sleep, but she's also thinking of Guy and the
fact that she has someone in her life who knows
her so so well. So I'm going to go ahead
and leave it there with that incredible paragraph, and I'm
going to hope that this talk today was a fun

(54:19):
kind of addition to the television show, but also that
it helped you appreciate how unbelievably great Edith Wharton is.
I will stand by my recommendation that I made at
the very beginning, which is, I mean, if you're a
total Edith Wharton fan and you've read all the rest
of it, then absolutely read the Buccaneers. But if you're
someone who doesn't plan on reading the entire over, which

(54:40):
honestly you couldn't. I mean you could, but she was
very prolific. But my recommendation stands, which is, you know,
maybe go pick one either The Age of Innocence or
the House of Mirth, which are absolute masterpieces. The Age
of Innocence actually it was published in nineteen twenty and
she won the pull Up Surprise for it in nineteen
twenty one, so maybe start with that one. But I

(55:01):
really hope that whether or not you go on to
read anymore Edith Wharton, you had a little sense of
the absolute genius of this woman. So thank you so
much for tuning in. Happy reading,