Welcome to the Waves, Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and single men in possession

of good fortunes.

Every episode you get a new pair of feminists to talk about the thing we can't get off our

minds.

You got me, Shayna Roth, a senior producer for Slate, and me and a Nordberg, a freelance

journalist who writes about books, TV, family, feminism, and how they all mix together.

This week we're talking about Jane Austen, and when I think of Jane Austen, I think of

my high school crush.

We read Pride and Prejudice in my AP English class and watched the 2005 movie starring Kira

Knightley as our heroine Lizzie Bennett and Matthew McFadden as the love interest Mr. Darcy,

and there's a scene where Darcy helps Lizzie into a carriage and then the camera pans down

to the hand flex that made a million women swoon.

And my crush was in that class.

I'm fairly certain he did not know I existed, but when that scene happened, he turned

to me and said, is that like because he's really into her?

And I blushed so hard that my armpits began to sweat.

And I have honestly been in love with Jane Austen ever since, and I love her novels in

part because despite being written in the 1800s, there's something so modern and transcendent

and universal about these stories that even the school jock who happened to be in the

AP English class can't help but become invested in her characters.

Jane Austen completed only six novels, but those works have been turned into so many period-appropriate

and modern movies, television shows and novels.

...