Georgia Hardstark
speaker
4,112 appearances
38 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Feb 2025
Georgia Hardstark’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
He is so abusive to Peg and her younger sister, but where Peg is rebellious and tries to escape, her sister has a harder time avoiding feelings of despair and hopelessness about the situation. She falls into a deep depression, she stops eating, and she eventually dies of malnutrition. Oh, my God. Yeah.
So, yes, horrible situation, like in a horrible turn where it's like you grow up in one way and then all of a sudden it all just goes so dark. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, chances are, knowing how we Irish do it, he's just an alcoholic and he just kind of like can't be in the real world.
Yeah.
That's an assumption on my part. I don't know what Peg's father was really doing. Allegedly, allegedly. Allegedly, allegedly, alcoholism is a disease. Okay. After her sister's death, Peg gets the worst beating of her life. She's whipped so badly, she vomits blood and loses consciousness. It takes three months of bedridden recovery. But she survives.
And once she does, she decides she's getting away from her abusive brother once and for all. Yeah. She convinces her father, who, as we just said, is still letting Christopher run the household. But she does convince her father to give her enough money to pay for a carriage ride back to Dublin.
And when she gets to Dublin, she moves back in with her married sister and she slowly regains her health and her confidence and her enthusiasm for life. She's still traumatized and in a fragile state, so when her brother-in-law introduces her to his friend, who she, in her memoirs, identifies as a Mr. Dardis, Peg is easily swept up in his kindness.
He sympathizes with all the hardships she's been through, and of course that makes her swoon, and the two begin a romance. Mm-hmm. What do you think is going to happen next? I'm good. Peg makes a very risky 18th century decision. She decides to have sex with Mr. Dardis. Before marriage? Yep. But she's sure he's going to marry her. So she isn't concerned about ruining her reputation.
She's basically been led along to believe this is like Both of them are in this together. So she does. And then she discovers she's pregnant. And when she tells him, she now knows, now we have to get married. But suddenly Mr. Dardis has cold feet. When she tells him he's ruined her reputation, he agrees to put her up in a brothel so she can deliver the baby in secret. Oh, my God. So she agrees.
She continues to see him. He comes to the brothel to see her. But of course, she's like holed up there. She can't leave. So she's very unhappy there and very anxious. And she's isolated from her family and friends. So now Peg's sister starts to wonder where she is. And then the word gets out that Peg had Dardis's baby. So before Peg gets a chance to explain everything, her sister disowns her.
Oh, come on.
Because it's all about reputation in the 1700s. This is like just bad fucking bad cloud. It's bad vibes. Bad vibes, bad cloud. So not only is Peg's sister disgusted by the fact that Peg had sex out of wedlock, which so did Mr. Dardis.
And she was a teenager. So she kind of didn't know. Like she was like, this is romantic love. Totally. But her sister's also horrified. Peg lived in a brothel during her pregnancy. So Peg tries to go visit her sister to hash things out and beg her for her forgiveness. But her sister calls her a, quote, vile wretch and slams the door in her face.
So, of course, Peg's completely destroyed by her sister's rejection. It's like, if it weren't for Mr. Dardis and the baby, Peg would be completely alone in the world. But shortly after this, the baby passes away. So now Mr. Dardis feels absolutely no obligation to take care of Peg anymore, and he kicks her out of his house. God.
Penniless and homeless, Pig finds the cheapest boarding room possible and moves in. And with no means of income, she's left selling her own belongings piece by piece until she says, quote, she's reduced nearly to nakedness, end quote. Oh, my God. And then here's another quote from her memoirs. Pig writes, quote, I remained in that boarding room till I had nothing but what covered me.
Not one single article wherewith to change what I wore. And for eight days had lived only on one pound of hung beef and a few potatoes using the water in which they were boiled as the only deluder of my wretched, scanty meals. So now she's desperate again. and she does the unthinkable. She returns to her family home and begs her abusive brother to take her back. Oh, man.
But her destroyed reputation precedes her, and her horrible, controlling brother refuses to let her back in the house. And with nowhere left to go, she has to turn around and walk back to Dublin. Jesus. So on this long walk back from the country into the city, Peg runs into two men who offer her a meal and tea. She declines them at first. She's very wary of their intentions.
She's been through this now. She's a little wiser. But then when she runs into them a second time, she decides to take them up on their offer. They lead her to a tea house and they introduce her to a wealthy wine seller named Mr. Thomas Caulfield. Mr. Caulfield takes an immediate interest in Peg. She's really pretty, by the way. There's like an etching I can show you.
And she's like, it just makes me sad. It's like she didn't have anybody in her early teens, in her adolescence to kind of be like, hey, keep an eye out for this. Right. Do this. Wait for that. Right. No guidance. Right. So Mr. Caulfield takes immediate interest in Peg.
He asks her all about her life while she's eating her hot meal, and he's shocked to hear about the conditions in which Peg has been living. He wants to see where she lives to see if she's really telling the truth about this tragic situation. She agrees to show him, and they start walking to Peg's boarding room. On the way, Mr. Caulfield, quote, slips two guinea into Peg's bosom.
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