Sophie Gee

And serviceable, very functional.

So I love this idea that it's the bonnet and perhaps the lace and so on that are the least recognizable aspects of Regency culture and therefore why we are kind of immediately drawn to them.

For you, what for you is the side of Jane Austen's life as a writer that you would love people most to understand as being important?

That's such an interesting point that there's this ongoing condition of war that Austen is grappling with.

There are voices of protest, of disruption and dissent.

And there's also this problem of an enormous resistance to disruption and dissent.

Could you give us an example from the books where you see that showing up?

Yes, we do tend to read past it, even in Persuasion, I think, with all the naval scenes and the naval characters.

They feel, to contemporary readers, until you really think about it, I suppose, like markers of rank or markers of a sort of hierarchy or order that is other than the social, but we don't really think about the warfare side of it.

Are there other things going on that were... You spoke a moment ago about the long revolution for women's rights and freedoms.

Obviously, we see the manifestation of it in the novel.

Do we see the pushback in the novels?

That's incredibly interesting.

And I hadn't thought before about Mr. Bennett occupying that position specifically of kind of licensing refusal.

Does she ever do that with another paternal figure or is Mr. Bennett on his own there?

Well, that's a good question too.

Of course, a lot of the fathers are so ineffectual.

Well, not fathers.

I mean, they're not the fathers of the people that they're presiding over.

It's very disturbing.