Episode 17: Classics
Summary: Join us as we start the school year with a deep dive into our English major roots with a lively discussion around Classics! Holly and Devin explore books that gave modern writers their templates and tropes for successful mysteries and romances. Plus, they spill the tea on the most recent Austen film adaptation, Netflix’s Persuasion, a segment you won’t want to miss.
Topics Discussed:
The Dagger (3:58): Holly discussed The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the most famous in the Sherlock Holmes series and a mystery that established many of the devices with which we’re familiar today - ranging from a sidekick character who represents the reader to using science to solve a case. Her key takeaways were:
The interplay between science and the supernatural in this 1902 work foreshadowed and gave rise to other pop-culture contributions such as Scooby Doo and Nancy Drew.
Dr. Watson, portrayed in films as either a portly bumbling idiot or Jude Law (somehow), opens the book by attempting to use his observational skills to determine the owner of an ornamental cane he sees in Sherlock’s home. Sherlock proceeds to dunk on him, but Doyle leverages Watson throughout to act as an entrypoint for us, the reader, even 120 years later.
Set in the Moors of England, the novel has a distinctly gothic feel that augment the creepiness of the looming threat represented by the mythically large hound suspected to be the killer; Sherlock must push past emotion toward the real answer, and the journey he takes resonates to this day.
The Heart (19:24): Devin discussed Persuasion by Jane Austen, the final novel written by the author who passed away at age 41 soon after its completion. Set 8 years after a broken engagement between Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth, Austen explores what happens to a woman when she does not remarry and pines for a lost love after pressure from family and society persuaded her to dismiss Wentworth. Her key takeaways were:
Unlike Austen’s other novels, our heroine is more reserved and jaded after ending up with a life she never asked for and a heap of disappointments that aren’t softened at all by her demanding, narcissistic family members. Anne suffers with dignity, and the novel traces her phoenix-like awakening.
Set principally in Bath with a heavy focus on naval officers and sea travel, Austen explores second chances and how an uninterrupted horizon of potential can exist even for an “old maid,” unmarried at 27.
Austen’s biting wit and scathing sarcasm shine forth in this novel more than many others, especially in the criticism of superficial society and pretension over true love and happiness that Anne and Wentworth must navigate.
Hot On the Shelf (42:01):
What’s Making Our Hearts Race (45:40):
Holly: Only Murders in the Building on Hulu
Devin: What We Do in the Shadows on Hulu
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