BOOK CLUB: Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

Welcome to our first ever book club episode, nerds! This one has it all: misandry, murder, and...martial religions?

Join us for a very wide-ranging chat about Lyndsay Faye's Jane Steele (and also our own research, because you know academics just can't help themselves).

As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.

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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.

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Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 0:17

This is keeping it 101, a killjoys introduction to religion podcast, which is part of the amplify podcast network, we are grateful to live teach and record on the current ancestral and unceded lands of the Abenaki and Wabanaki peoples, as well as the lands of one federally recognized native nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and seven North Carolina state recognized tribal entities. Increasingly, though, native folks are pushing us to forego land acknowledgements altogether and focus on action items. So let's start with land back. And as always, you can find material ways to support indigenous communities on our website.

Megan Goodwin: 0:51

What's up, Nerds? Hi, hello. I'm Megan Goodwin, and I am a scholar of American religions, race, gender and politics.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 0:58

Hi, hello. I'm Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, a historian of religion, Islam, race and racialization and South Asia. Well, this is new!

Megan Goodwin: 1:06

I know right like four years into this, and we're still learning every day, still keeping it fresh. I love that for us.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:12

Well, the fresh thing that we're smelling is not me, surely not

Megan Goodwin: 1:18

nor I, nor I

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:19

but today, nerds, if you're smelling what the rock is cooking, the thing that we are cooking is something new. We are hosting a book club. We told you many, many moons ago, like nine full moons ago, to read Jane Steele by Lindsay Faye, and then we just, gosh darn got overwhelmed with the actual jobs and lives we lead off of this parasocial relationship platform.

Megan Goodwin: 1:46

Yeah, yeah, it was. It was a whole time. It was a time and a half.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:51

It was the best of times and the worst of times, and now we're back on the air times

Megan Goodwin: 1:55

it was. We're back from outer space. It was the worst of times. But hey, we love this misandrist, queer, Gothic retelling of Jane Eyre, and it's just rife with religion and abuse, which I don't love, but I sure am happy to talk about, well, happy No, I sure am gonna talk about, and also Empire, which is a thing Ilyse knows a little bit about,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 2:16

so Goodwin. How do you wanna do this? What's our plan of attack? Should we run it like one of our seminars, or our lady love book and wine book clubs, like we've not done this as an episode? So how shall we attack it?

Megan Goodwin: 2:29

Okay, so I don't know how your middle aged mom life works, but I don't know what you're talking about, so I don't understand it, but I will respond to it. pretty much my MO what's going on? I don't know. Here are my feelings about it. What if we summarize the book's major plot and then we can move on to the religion of it all?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 2:54

Yeah, that sounds great. But if you ever want to like party, grab a bunch of moms without their kids. It's mostly pajama snark and one and a half glasses of wine before everyone is too tired to function, except for those of us with stamina.

Megan Goodwin: 3:11

I love that you have made wine mom book club into a competition. It's always sports with you. ,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 3:17

Well again, have you met me? And also, Come on, ladies, if we're having an evening out, we're gonna go ready to take a nap. We should not have like, gut

schluffies at 7: 3:29

30pm

Megan Goodwin: 3:34

this is very thrilling, and also, somehow, even without the children sticky, but, uh, yeah, let's, uh, let's get into it. The plot. Dun, dun, dun. ,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 3:49

Okay so this is a book that fashions itself alongside Jane Eyre, and that isn't a stretch for the reader. So each chapter, if you haven't read it literally starts with a quote from the original and our protagonist, Jane Steele, says early on in the book, like chapter one, that she's inspired by Jane Eyre to write her own journal and tell her own story. This is like Jane Eyre, and frankly, all of British literature, just all of it a story of childhood abuse, because as far well listen, as far as I could tell, there are zero children in the UK who did not experience abuse in all times, in all places and or financial hardship, social class and sexism, especially around the specific issues of inheritance. I'm not trying to indict all of my British and Scottish and Irish and English friends, but um, I suppose Welch friends as well, though I'm less familiar with the Welch cannon, but like y'all, have a lot of problems with your childhood abuse narratives.

Megan Goodwin: 4:50

They are persistent. .

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 4:53

Yes. Anyway, this book starts when Jane is a child living with her very depressed and Laudanum'ed mom on a property that is supposedly theirs, as willed by her dead dad, but the aunt and cousin live in the main house. We follow her through this troubled childhood, through her troubled teen hood and into her troubled adulthood. And if you read British literature, you know that women without a man can't really hold property in this era of literature that it's set in. So like anything before the 1920s really, or wealth post World War One. And so there's a lot of who's your daddy and who's the rightful inheritor and bastard child? Hell to the fucking No. We'd rather run you out of town and hope that you starve anyway. Jane Steele is a smart and clever and she had a French mom, so everything in the book basically racializes Her as inferior and problematic, and she really takes both a lot and very little shit throughout the entire book.

Megan Goodwin: 5:57

she's just, I'm not sure that this says anything good about me, but the first time I read this book, I immediately finished it and started it over again because I did not want to be away from her, even though her life was very, very bad. So, yeah, it was, it was, uh, unlike Jane Eyre, um, our protagonist really, she, she seems to love murder. Um, yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 6:30

she's at the very least cool with it. Yeah, she's, she's,

Megan Goodwin: 6:33

she's deeply cool with murder when it is deserved. And she meets a lot of people deserving of murder. So, yeah, her first murder is of a child cousin who tries to sexually assault her, also as a child, important, also as a child. Yep, we assume because England, but also because, as I point out in my first book, abuse is rampant and happens everywhere because we let it so, yeah, so just a post facto trigger slash content. Note about the fact that this starts rapey and does not get less violent. Although the descriptions of the violence are never explicit, no descriptions of the sexual violence are never vivid. The blood leaking from other places is pretty Yeah. Also, my sense of what is and is not vivid is maybe skewed slightly by the fact that I read a lot of yeah and

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 7:36

I watch i Dear listeners as Megan is your horror and gore and tension. Queen, I am your cheesy rom com, and I know how the book ends before it starts. Queen, there are a few graphic depictions in this book that might get your stomach boiling, or there's just a lot of tension. And for those of us who have been socialized to be women or socialized in systems that prey on qualities that are considered feminine. We would imagine you can feel the horror coming before it does. So it's never quite in the camera lens, so to speak, but it is. It's right there. And I wouldn't say it's something that made me have to close the book, but you might feel differently.

Megan Goodwin: 8:16

That's valid. It is. Yeah, there is a lot of narrative tension, which is kind of interesting for a book that's based on a book that I had read a million trillion million trillion times, she did some really interesting stuff with it. Any hoodle, after she murders her cousin who tried to sexually assault her, she is sent to a residential school that would make Dickens son easy with how much casual, cruel abuse just takes place all over the place, just physical beatings and food insecurity and pitting students against each other. It's, it's pretty hunger against Yeah, repeated sexual harassment of a young female teacher by the crusty old Dean, warden, Headmaster, head, arbiter for Jesus. Yeah, you know, we'll

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 8:56

get there. It's important to note that a lot of these scenes of this childhood of hell, particularly the ones that happen in this boarding school, are during all, all school, all Sunday prayer sessions, which they are called reckonings in the book. In the reckonings, the children have to confess their sins, but if no one confesses and acts like everyone's cool, they get the shit beat out of them, yeah. So during these reckonings, the headmaster fashions himself as both the lord and savior of these children, but also the messenger for the actual lord and savior,

Megan Goodwin: 9:31

yeah, yeah, yeah. And much like the actual lord and savior of Christianity, um, he gets killed. I He would not crucified.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 9:44

He really does. He's not crucified, but he is stabbed with a letter opener. It's fairly grizzly, and I will honest, it's like a little bit earned a had a comment, a plus, a plus, Chicago lied, a plus, a plus from. Removal of like a real turd from both the narrative and that world's planet. Yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 10:05

yep, yep. He only had himself to blame. Because this is the, this is the thing in this book. Everyone who gets killed, more or less gets killed. Well, anybody who gets killed by Jane Steele gets killed because they absolutely made the world better by leaving it, yeah, so usually, I think it is exclusively men that she murders because it is a straight up misinterest love story, bless it. Gets killed because he deserved it, usually because he was planning to do, or it already done, something ripy and disgusting. None of the murders are really premeditated, or at least not for very long. Most are reactionary and responsive to the brutality of sexual violence, and particularly the gendered sexual violence directed toward women, girls and fems, yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 10:52

yeah, it's very Earl's gotta die vibes. I can't disagree with that summary,

Megan Goodwin: 10:56

goodbye, Earl. Yeah. So between all the killings,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 11:00

you know, like, casually, yeah, like on Tuesday when I have a killing free day

Megan Goodwin: 11:04

in between the murders, we learned that Jane has a really close and loving relationship with her lowenbridge classmate Clark. Clark is a lady, by the way, this is also a sapphic love story, at least for half of it, Clark leaves her upon discovering that she did the murder of both Munt, that horrible headmaster and Clark and Jane Steele's wife beating, miscarriage causing landlord and Clark leaving just absolutely devastates Jane. So we see her involved with men. She's trying to scrape by through writing lurid tales for daily papers, and she has to do another murder, this time of a judge who is just going to casually purchase the very young child of her friend who is a sex worker.,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 11:51

Yeah this story really had everything

Megan Goodwin: 11:54

it does. It really theaction never stops. After all that, Jane sees an ad for a governor at Highgate house, the very estate she grew up on and she she has been told, is the rightful heir to. So hijinks ensue. Love it. We have a name change, we have a ruse, we have a mystery. How do we prove ownership and parentage? The new owner of Highgate house is Charles Thornfield, an Englishman born in British India who serves as a surgeon during the Anglo-Sikh wars, about which we know Ilyse will have things to say, which is originally why I made you read the book. Thornfield also has as the workers in his home a team of South Asians and a small girl named Sajarah, the one who needs to govern us. So we learn later that all these folks, including Charles Dun dun dun, are themselves Sikh. Religiously

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 12:45

Yeah, they're religiously Sikh, like s, i, k, H, but not only does she just live here, it's not like she lives here and it's happily ever after. Oh no, there's no more murder and intrigue a foot

Megan Goodwin: 12:56

There sure is. Turns out there's an Indian treasure!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 13:01

which is both the best and least suspicious kind of treasure in these books.

Megan Goodwin: 13:05

Totally and Sajara is connected to the treasure. Somehow. We think possibly one of the old war Buddies is back and sniffing around for said treasure. He is a real Butthead, yeah. So while they've all been training with traditional Sikh weapons, more on that in a second, dude tries to pull shit and, well, pull shit and get dead. Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 13:25

Yeah, Jane--Jane is a little bit concerned at this moment in the story. She starting to have some like butterfly feels for Charles. She's really into all the weird stuff that they're up to. She thinks she's unraveling it, and so she's a little bit nervous that she offed yet another butthead because whoops Whoopsie, doodle. Charles might not love me anymore, except dear listener, don't worry. He does. He gets it. He he thinks that justified murder is super fine.

Megan Goodwin: 13:50

Also, he has a secret room in his basement for examining corpses, because sometimes you need to learn things about medicine. So it's it's all sometimes bitches got to die. And by bitches we mean men who mean women, femmes, girls harm.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 14:06

yeah, that's, that's kind of it

Megan Goodwin: 14:09

alright, yeah, that's the plot. Let's, let's talk about religion! IRMF! How about, why did I make these choices for myself.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 14:21

You did this to us, collectively,

Megan Goodwin: 14:24

--to us and me. What if I talk about child abuse in the name of God, and then at the school, and then you can talk about the Sikh stuff?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 14:35

Great. Yet again, I get assigned the easy task, because you took all of child abuse in the name of God,

Megan Goodwin: 14:47

right, so, okay, there is the initial both class and not quite racialized, but interestingly, nationalized abuses that are happening among Jane's mother and her, she thinks, uncle's wife.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 15:04

Do you really not? Can I? Do you really not read that as racialization?

Megan Goodwin: 15:08

I wasn't sure. I mean, it's racialization within whiteness, right? But anyway, the French are clearly racially inferior, yeah? ,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 15:15

Well I was just curious, because for me, and like, the way that I'm reading that, like, 19th century of it all is like, Oh yeah, no. This is when nationality was race. Like a race of people could have a nation. But that doesn't mean it's not operating within this guise of whiteness, where, like, whiteness is its own thing, apart from brownness, and that's better. But also, there are types of whiteness that are shitty.

Megan Goodwin: 15:36

so Frenchness, in this home and in this book definitely gets construed as like dirtier and prone to giving in to savage urges

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 15:48

totally

Megan Goodwin: 15:49

and being a big old slut bag

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 15:52

loose--

Megan Goodwin: 15:55

which is also, of course, religionized, right? Because it's a Protestant and Catholic division. So the--any abuse that happens to Jane in her home is done in the name of civilizing her and bringing her up in the way that she should be brought up, the way that she should be grateful to be brought up, big Imperial energy, because that was similar to how the British treated the rest of the world also, yeah, you know, it starts at home. Empire starts at home.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 16:22

So sorry, I cut you off. I just thought that was interesting.

Megan Goodwin: 16:26

Yeah. No, it is. It is interesting. Thank you. Well. And I mean, we had talked about this a little bit before, but in some ways, my bit of this book is both the most emotionally challenging and the least interesting, or at least the least surprising, because when we read stories, when we hear stories about British boarding schools, we just assume somebody's getting beat up, abused, buggered in some way, treated horribly, and that that is happening under the auspices and with the justification of religious education. So there is, in a lot of ways, nothing terribly surprising about Jane being cast out of her family of birth after her mother dies, and it turns out, not her aunt, but her step mother, because Jane's mom and the aunt were actually married To the same dude, so it was an affair situation. It was all very scandal. This was very French, uh, she gets shipped off and put in this dangerous, soul crushing

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 17:36

and known, right? Like I want to, I want to pause on how familiar it is, not just to us as readers, but to the characters in the book, like the taxi driver, yeah? Carriage driver, who brings her from Highgate house to the school, is like, good luck to you. You might die. Have a sandwich, because you're not gonna you're not gonna eat for a while.

Megan Goodwin: 18:00

Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just everybody knows that this is going to be a bad place for her, that she is at the very least going to suffer, and that that gets presented as something both good for her and good for society, that this is what you do with children nobody wants.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 18:21

Yeah, it's virtuous.

Megan Goodwin: 18:22

Yep, yeah. So we're going to be returning to that when we talk about adoption. What is interesting and sets her apart from a Jane Eyre character is that Jane Steele is, from the jump, uninterested in God. She has taken none of this in she is, I don't think she recalls herself an atheist, but she's far too pragmatic to bother with any of this, and so there's no space for her to become disillusioned, because she comes in pre disillusioned, and knows from the jump that the institutional Christianity that has taken her under its wing is intending to harm her as much as it can, and is fine, if not eager for her death. Yeah. So that's it with but again, pretty predictable,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 19:12

though. I do--I was curious in this if it was like an atheism, or there were a few places where I felt like it was resignation to the"truth" of Christianity, like I a child did an accidental murder, and therefore I am a bad person. And I like, like, I at some points in the reading felt like, Oh, she already buys into the system completely, like she's actually bought that she's going to hell, and she can't get out of it. Yeah, so at this point, all actions don't matter. So like, Why should she allow Clark to get harmed, yeah, by the headmaster when she's already got sin on her, on her soul. So like, What's one more?

Megan Goodwin: 19:54

No, actually, I, I agree with you, because the the conversation very much is. And she doesn't end up in an atheist place. But no, I think you're very right. She accepts that her cousin's murder is on her soul, so she's she's fucked regardless, like she's going to hell.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 20:11

She's like nine by the way, yeah.

Megan Goodwin: 20:13

Well, it also, it kind of it. It jives with the ending of the witch, which the film The "vvitch," which people love to read as a feminist movie. And my students are always really upset when I assist that it's not a happy ending. It's not like, Yay, we're all witches. Now she is living within a Protestant worldview where she definitely, 100% thinks she's going to hell for having bargained with the devil. So that last shot that you see is not ecstasy. She is losing her damn mind, yeah, and realizing that, like her only option was to make a covenant with the devil, and maybe she'll get some butter out of it or a nice dress. But that's really the best she can expect. So and Jane's clothes also improve when she leaves school very much. So

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 20:59

I Yeah, no, but I did read her as not necessarily like questioning God, but she definitely, in the school questions the sanctity of these, like bullshit headmaster run religious ceremony. Like she definitely feels like graded by those and I think that that's where you see the parts that support a reading of her, maybe not necessarily, as you said, like she doesn't state that she doesn't believe in God, but you see her, and again, it's Not disillusioned, because she comes in pretty fucking jaded, yeah, but she's also just like, This can't be it, yeah? Like, I don't know what it is, but this ain't it, yeah.

Megan Goodwin: 21:49

Well, so And unlike Jane Eyre, you don't have any students who are like, Yes, this is for our own good, and we should repent harder. But you get shades of Jane Eyre in that Jane, even when she's in this foster situation, whatever the horrible boarding school that she gets sent to is, when she's threatened, they say, You know what? What are you going to do to make sure that you stay out of hell? And I'm paraphrasing here, but basically, basically, she's just like, I'm just going to try to not die for as I can. That seems like the best plan to me. So there's, there's an echo in our Jane steel,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 22:27

I think that's right. And I think you see that echo in the fellow classmates, right? Because some of them take survival as doing their repentance and like calling out other students, the classic like, forgive me headmaster for that, that kid sitting next to me has sinned. She had a sandwich--

Megan Goodwin: 22:45

secret sandwich--

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 22:46

and so like you see that, you see the lens of, we are all just trying to not get killed. It's not even we're all just trying to not die. We are all trying to not actively be killed by the murderous adults who are actively trying to kill us in the name of Jesus.

Megan Goodwin: 23:04

Well, and I think the other space that's really interesting in that boarding school vignette is watching the characters for whom survival is an individual undertaking, versus Jane and her friends, who are all trying to keep each other alive. They're they're hiding food for each other, they're making sure that if somebody you know has not eaten in a very long time, they'll confess to a sin. So they're they're the one that's getting punished, and the other person can get off the hook, kind of thing. So that was that was really touching. I like a team.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 23:34

What else is there to say about the abuse, besides the fact that none of us are surprised by it, which is itself telling about the pervasiveness, as you've said in all of your published work, like the pervasiveness of abuse is not surprising, because we always let this happen, right?

Megan Goodwin: 23:50

We do always let this happen. I think the other thing to pay attention to, I don't want to say this, so the argument that I make in the book[Abusing Religion] is that religion doesn't cause abuse, and I stand by that, but an important follow up to that is that religion can make abuse harder to spot as abuse, and absolutely provides institutional and organizational cover for systemic abuse. And again, the fact that this isn't surprising is precisely because so many of our institutions, and particularly so many of our institutions that are set up and charged to care for children are just accepted as abusing those kids in the name of doing something bigger or better for them. There are hundreds of stories like this. The one that always kind of came, comes to mind for me, is _Doubt_ when you have the Mother Superior talking to the mother of the child, and the mother of the child who's either being abused by the priest or is set up to become abused by the priest. It's like, you know what? Let him have him. This is a better school than I can send my kid to otherwise, so that this is just the cost of admission, and the way that we as people are willing to barter the bodily sovereignty and dignity of children in the name of a higher good, consistently surprises and disgusts me. and that's how I feel about that, yeah, which is why I was happy when that dude got murdered. Because fuck that dude, more murders of people who are harming children? I think?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 25:43

yeah, and quite honestly, most of the people she murders are not just hurting women. They are hurting children. Like this is actually like a women and children first moment in the in the way that, like when her cousin comes at her, he's a child, but so is she. And Munt, the headmaster, is harming children left right in between. And obviously the thing that sets them off is he is going to he they have uncovered a set of letters where he has written to their favorite younger teacher, and he's basically like, you exist in my presence. That means you want me. Like that. I

Megan Goodwin: 26:19

want you. Yeah, it's

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 26:20

your fault that I want you. You're tempting me. And also, like, if you're not the devil, then you should be letting me have you, so I'mma take you right, but he'd been hurting children first, and then with the judge...

Megan Goodwin: 26:32

oh before we even get to the judge, yeah? Because again, I don't want this to get set up as, like, all of the men in authority are the bad guys, and all of the women are the victims. Because what we find out is that the reason Jane gets pushed to finally murder Munt, the headmaster, is because the teacher who's being preyed upon sets her up to find out so she's manipulated by an adult woman into intervening into a situation that the adult woman didn't know how to handle. Yeah, so

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 27:01

no, you're totally right. That's like a really great corrective. But then when she murders her and Clark's landlord, who's a drunk and like a real piece of shit,

Megan Goodwin: 27:13

who regularly beats his wife--

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 27:14

regularly beats his wife, except the time where the girls, these young girls who are like, what 17 at the time, have to clean up the blood, because she has hemorrhaged a pregnancy. And she's like, Don't worry, he'll never do this again. Because she comes to find out--Jane comes to find out--this is the second miscarriage that has been caused by beating

Megan Goodwin: 27:36

well, and the very reason that the woman was so eager to have them in the house is because apparently he beats her less, if there are other people there, so

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 27:44

but so again, it's like this, like, destruction of a pregnancy or murder of a fetus, and then, right? So, like, but there's always this tie of the both/and. Much like when the judge, I think the judge is the next murder Yes, is threatening her best friend, they all live in this, like, house for ladies. Ladies of ill repute. And he's like, Yeah, I'm sniffing around your kid. You got old, yeah. And what are you gonna do? Better a prostitute? Surely your daughter is also a prostitute, and I'm a fucking judge. And Jane was like, meh, casually, you're just dead now. Like, right? I poison you.

Megan Goodwin: 28:22

I shall take care of that, yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 28:24

no one's gonna mess with this 11 year old, right?

Megan Goodwin: 28:27

Well, and it's, it's one of those places where every time Jane murders somebody, which is several times, it is because the person that she is murdering is acting in a way that, frankly, socially, they expect to be able to act, right? Your older adult cousin, the headmaster at your school, a judge, has the cover of propriety, which obviously is propped up in very white Christian Protestant ways in the UK. And Jane, with the exception of that first murder, I don't think ever act. No, there's one later on, but most of her murders are in the interest of protecting other people in a way that she was not herself protected. Yeah, it's she's, she has a very sympathetic character for being so murdery.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:15

Yeah. I mean, there's like five, six murders in the book?

Megan Goodwin: 29:22

I lost track.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:23

I lost track also.

Megan Goodwin: 29:26

yeah, it's the judge and then the guy who attacks the house, right? But I can't remember if she has to just do another murder after that. So

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:34

it's like cousin, landlord, Munt, judge and Charles Thornfield, because she kills him too, right?

Megan Goodwin: 29:42

Not Charles.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:44

Oh no, that's the boyfriend, the bad guy, friend of Charles, five murders total, yeah, and it's clear she's like, I would do more. Like, this is not like, I'm not done yet. Yeah? Cool. I feel like maybe we can move on from abuse

Megan Goodwin: 30:11

sure, sure!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 30:11

because you you wanted to read this book back and forth or back to back and then immediately, like as the whole thing was going and reader, I need you to know that Megan does not often share with me the books that she reads. Because we do not read the same books,

Megan Goodwin: 30:25

no.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 30:26

and even when I read like books that are the equivalent of emotional cutting, like when I read all of the Booker Prize winner, for example. So they're always about imperialism and violence, and it's like doing work. I don't share those with Megan because those are not the books that she chooses to read. So if Megan is sharing a book with me, it is either the most depressing thing you have ever even heard of, or it is something that she is so jazzed about because there is something that my little special interests will intersect with, and this is both of those actually!

Megan Goodwin: 31:00

soul killing, but also interesting, yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 31:02

Will you tell the dear listeners why you asked me to read this book, both with you and with our podcast?

Megan Goodwin: 31:08

Well, so it is very unusual, and I had not been prepared for finding a South Asian religion subplot in a retelling of a British gothic romance. So imagine my surprise and delight when we find out that, like a solid I don't know, third of this book actually happens in Punjab and gets decently into the history of British imperial violence against Sikh people. And I'm going to be honest, my first thought was, oh, wow, this is really interesting. I bet Ilyse would like this and also, she'll tell me which parts of the history are wrong. So it was, in part, trying not to do my own homework because I knew that you would read it and then fill me in.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 32:01

Is that what I'm doing right now?

Megan Goodwin: 32:02

Yes, it is, please and thank you.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 32:04

So Charles Thornfield is born in British India, specifically in the region of India that we come to know as Punjab. And he is part of the East India Trading Company and their army. So he's a surgeon in the army. Now, if you do not know why the East India Company has an army, I cannot walk you through that, but they--but one of the things that he talks about is that he and his who we come to find that later in the book, are not they're not just workers, they're not just servants. They are, in fact, like members of a princely family who he was really close with while he was growing up, and by bringing them out of India, he's essentially like, making sure they have access to sorts of freedom that weren't available to them. So it's set or He is a veteran of the Anglo-Sikh wars. Hold on to your butts, listeners, we'll give you a little bit of a rundown. Because for the most part, this is actually pretty accurate history. Like, I don't think all the battle stuff was super accurate and some of the like, fight scenes are a little bit goofy. They're like, a little bit goofy doofy. Like, a whole bridge falls, like, okay, whatever. Yeah, it's it's not real, but the

Megan Goodwin: 33:12

Very dramatic. historical Tableau is so both are two Anglo, Sikh wars. You will be shocked to know that they happen between the Sikhs and the British but specifically the British East India Company. Yes, the company has an army. And no, as again, we do not have time to get into it. And yes, having a company that had an army fundamentally change how the world operated. There are loads of books about that, and we can give you homework anyway. We know that you haven't heard of either wars of the Sikh Empire unless you yourself are sick or from South Asia, even though you most certainly learned about the East India Trading Company, because American and UK educations do not teach anything well about non Americans or non Europeans, especially their military history. We like the idea that they are not militaristic at all, unless they are revolting against us. So what was the Sikh Empire? The Sikh Empire was a formal regional power based in Punjab from about 1799 till 1849 when the British Empire--sorry, when the Sikh Empire fell to the British East India Company during the second Anglo Sikh war. You should care about these two wars that have been in sort of sort of short succession, because A, these wars subjugated at least partially, the majority of six to the British and B, it sets up the wildly problematic governing structure for Jammu and Kashmir that we are still living with today. Yeah. Oh, which we talk about in the book, which is forthcoming from Beacon on november 5, 2024 it is called Religion Is Not Done With You.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 34:53

Yeah, that's right at the end of chapter two, lots of folks are often confused by a Sikh Empire like was it? Founded in religion. How does a religious Empire work in the 19th century? What are Sikhs? And then there's also the racialization of six, as I and I quote martial race, which both harms and helps Sikhs, vis a vis the British in the 19th and 20th century.

Megan Goodwin: 35:14

I'm sorry. Time out. Time's out. Martial? martial race, as in a race that is inherently warlike is what I'm hearing you say,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 35:28

Yes, that is accurate.

Megan Goodwin: 35:31

Would you maybe unpack that one a little bit for us, because

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 35:35

what do you mean that's like, generally non problematic.

Megan Goodwin: 35:38

What in the white supremacy is moving on here. ,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 35:41

Okay as you all know by now, the British defined all religions racially, period. I don't have any more breath on this podcast for that right now. We have done several, many episodes about it. I have written many, many books and other things about it. I promise, the British defined religions racially.

Megan Goodwin: 35:58

Also, chapter two.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 35:59

yeah, also chapter two. Muslims, for example, were known as violent and traitorous. Hindus were docile, effeminate and heathens in need of reform. Sikh were martial, as my colleague, Harleen Kaur puts it, Sikh were part of a quote "British crafted racial category through which they were constructed as biologically and culturally suited for Imperial service and consequently received privileged status within the colonial hierarchy." That's an end quote, and I will link you to that really good article.

Megan Goodwin: 36:35

Wow, wow. Okay, so the British, bless their little hearts, literally decided that a religion was a race, and that that race was uniquely, inherently biologically suited to help the British rule the rest of South Asia,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 37:02

that is correct.

Megan Goodwin: 37:04

Well, I hate that. I hate that. Okay!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 37:06

and there's, there's so much more to say about how martial race gets construed and set up. And we're obviously giving you the down and dirty version, because this is supposed to be about a book called Jane Steele, not about the Anglo Sikh wars and also about how Sikhs' racialization within the British structure of race helped them divide and conquer and hold Punjab firmly, but not violently, because we do not want to spend more resources on the kind of relentless violence that would be required, like as in a war. So I want to say a few things to be really clear. The Sikhs being labeled as a martial race, which has something to do with their religion, right? So, like, when we did, what is Sikhi all the way back with Simran Jeet Singh in season four, he talked about, in part, like the five Ks, right? And carrying a knife on you. British people were like, What do you need to carry a knife for if you're not, you know, inherently warlike, right? So some of this is based in hyperbole of things that they were observing. But I want to be really clear that even though Sikhs in some instances and in some places and in some times get the benefit of their racialized stereotypes seeming like they play well with the British, that does not mean that all Sikhs support the British, nor does it mean that the British were like good to Sikh people. That's patently untrue, and also like a silly claim if any of you were to make it and cite me, and you would never, because you are not silly. But the British were in India for hundreds of years with varying degrees of control that varied in both region and time. And a lot of folks are confused by the British simultaneously trusting and distrusting Sikhs. But like real talk, that is actually just how racism works.

Megan Goodwin: 38:54

Yeah, some of the Sikhs were some of the good ones, right? Yes. So yeah, exactly.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 38:59

Sikhs were seen at various times as more trustworthy than Hindu and Muslim counterparts. But that doesn't mean that they get to be trustworthy. They're just relatively more so than these other notably larger and more politically powerful groups. All conquering armies and Imperial regimes need partners. Sometimes that was Sikhs, especially in service positions, which I'm going to lump in the military. There I have been in British academic spaces, please mind spent the better part of the year in the UK as part of a Fulbright. So I've been in many British academic spaces where military historians in particular--and it's always the military historians--and they wax philosophic about Sikh regimens in the British Army as a way to both demonstrate how diverse the military was, even if it was segregated, these blowhards do not know who they're talking to, or as a way to think about the Commonwealth's role within Europe's Wars. And that's important, because even as people in the West site how Sikhs fought in, say, World War One, few people cite that in april of 1919, not fucking, six months after Armistice Day, the British committed an obscene and grizzly massacre against unarmed Sikhs at Amritsar, literally the most holy site in all of Sikhism around a major holiday Vaishaki, which is like it is an unspeakable massacre. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people were killed at their place of worship. Many, many more were injured, and most folks who are like good historians, point to this incident as the real turning point for popular and political support for independence movements across South Asia. So I want you to hear that even though the British, in many ways, will talk about how they have favored Sikhs as a religiously constituted racial group that did not save Sikhs from these brutal treatment, including this, like honestly, one of the worst massacres in South Asia under British rule. Anyway, all of this matters to our girl Jane, because part of the revelation about her life in the manor with her Sikh employers and you know, love interest, is that her training in weaponry. Yeah, there's like, Sikh traditional weapons. And all of the Sikh people are like, Yeah, of course, we know how to use this, like, five part whip that will take someone's back off. Like, and and the like so called butler--all of these folks are construed later to be leaders of the Sikh Empire, and not just like casual ninjas or something. So I want you to hear that this racialization of Sikhs as martial race shows up in this book, and it ends up being positive for our main character. But that is not without its own like, problematic literary and cultural history.

Megan Goodwin: 42:05

It's dope that so many of the women living in that house know how to defend themselves in some very spectacular and, like, frankly, I would watch this movie sort of, well, yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 42:17

no. Like, the weapons they describe, I have, like, some of them are legit, and I've seen them in, like, weapon museum. I do do a little bit of military histories. Like, I go to weapons museums, that's right, I go to weapons museums

Megan Goodwin: 42:28

so New Jersey weapons.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 42:31

But like, Well, I mean, listen, if you got a good switchblade, like, I've been to the oranges, you know what? I mean, like, I I've been to East Rutherford. Like, I know what's up, but like, I think that there's a space where--it's meant to be really empowering, and I do find it really sympathetic towards Sikhs. It's not--it's not racist. But I read this as a 19th century historian, like, Oh, this feels it's like, close to the bone in a way that I can't quite articulate neatly.

Megan Goodwin: 43:03

Well, I mean, you have the main characters who are very sympathetic, but doing kind of a benevolent racism toward their Sikh friends and like family members, honestly, where they have been accepted in as converts to Sikhi themselves. Um, they--should be less shocking than it is--they but are treating all of their members of their household as full humans and and not in a well, not in the dehumanizing way that Jane was raised by her aunt, for example. But yes, even the celebration of the Sikh characters as fantastically martially able does come out of a more complicated history of racialized religion.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 44:01

But I will say I found one of the things I found in that that felt, and I'll be totally honest, I liked this book. I did not love it in the way that you loved it.

Megan Goodwin: 44:09

I really love Jane Eyre, though. So

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 44:11

yeah, and I'm like, meh on Jane Eyre, because, like,

Megan Goodwin: 44:14

I don't understand you.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 44:16

Yeah, you do. I just don't have patience for this kind of nonsense. But like, one of the things that felt both interesting and sympathetic, and if I can mix Indian metaphors here, it felt a little close to like noble savage tones, is that when you see Jane move from this abusive Christianity and Protestant white Christianity into this white-mediated brown religion, yeah, and the white mediated brown religion in the body of Charles this, this man who becomes her love interest, and they like run away together having killed everybody bad. He's, like, down with the murders, yeah, because they are justice based, but he also sees that as a part of righteousness. So we go from like, virtuousness and righteousness, being, listening to your elders, following these rules, repenting, like, accepting that you're a bad person, that you're going to hell, and like, somehow Jesus fits into that. I don't really know. Don't ask me about the goyim. But then at the end, she's so worried that this guy, Charles, is not going to accept her, that she sort of like blurts out all the people she's killed. And like, in this very loving scene, he's like, brushing her hair with his fingers, and he's like, tell me about each murder. And she does. And he's like, great, that was justified. Great, that was justified. But he is portrayed as so religious. So part of what I find interesting, curious, worthy of our attention, is that we move from this like understanding of a religious background, where it's oppressive, you're supposed to suck it up on behalf of the whole, on behalf of civilization, you should accept abuse.

Megan Goodwin: 45:59

Yes

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 46:00

to, on behalf of civilization, we protect our own because, like, that group of people living in the Highgate Manor is, like, Charles, all of the Sikh employees who are like, I don't know, members of the royal family. And then this little girl, everyone's like, like, literally, they get into like, Power Ranger formation, like we protect us. We protect us is the vibe. And so I both find that really charming and really alluring, but also a little like, why are all the brown people, the people that are, like, noble here? Like, what is that? What work is that doing? And I don't, I don't think it's doing bad work. It doesn't have like, Hiawatha vibes, or like, last of the Mohegan like

Megan Goodwin: 46:44

Yeah Last of the Mohegans -- That's what I was thinking up.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 46:47

it doesn't have THAT going on but it, it, it's not fully removed from that, either, if I'm being honest, where like Sikhi here is like, murder's good. Like, you get the impression that like Charles is okay with the killing because they were just killing, and I'm part of a martial religion, so of course, I'd be down with the killing.

Megan Goodwin: 47:05

yeah

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 47:06

whereas Christianity is just warlike and violent, but doesn't say that out loud. That's like the underbelly of it, but it's not the stated purpose, and that feels like the tension of like, why we're unhappy, but I don't know, maybe I'm just riffing on nothing.

Megan Goodwin: 47:20

I mean, no, I think there's a lot going on there. I also like, I don't know. It was just it was such an unexpected turn from a book that felt so close to Jane Eyre, even with the liberties that they start immediately taking to like, Oh, I did not expect to end up in Punjab. Okay, this was not, and I, I did not expect Sikhi to be presented as the superior religion, which it very much is. Sikhi also gets not detached from Empire, right? Because Charles, main companion, is very critical about the way that Sikh martial forces sold out Sikhs to the British Empire and got so very many people killed. Yeah, it just it is doing a way more nuanced thing with religion than I expect a book about queer misandrist murder to have done. So that was part of my delight. Was this was I thought I knew what I was getting, and it just took a complete left turn for me. And it's, it is clever, and it is often very funny, and the scenes where she is being vulnerable with the people that she loves are just so heart wrenching.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 48:42

Yeah

Megan Goodwin: 48:42

she like her reconnecting very briefly with Clark and realizing that Clark absolutely had the hots for her, and they never acted on it the way that she is unabashedly attracted to Charles, and also resolved to run away because she's no good for him. Like, it's really striking. And I don't read a ton of romance, so the fact that I was so sucked into this just, it was really delightful, and I liked it a lot. And I just, yeah, I just really like this book.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 49:17

amazing. Well, on that note, we've got some homework. Nerds,

Simpsons: 49:27

homework. What homework?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 49:29

I'm not going to read everything that I put in the script, Goodwin, because there's a lot, but I will put it in the show notes, my number. I'll like specifically rec three things and it Goodwin, if you have things to rec, please do after I'm done. The first is Kim Wagner's, Kim Wagner's Amritsar 1919: an empire of fear in the making of a massacre, which is a pretty new book, or new ish book at this point, is fantastic. It is, to me, the best contemporary read of the Amritsar massacre and it should be mandatory reading for anyone who's interested in British Empire or South Asia or even just thinking about race. And then there's a few things on martial races. Amanda Lanzillo has a whole book coming out, but she has this really great open access article with AJAM media on artisanship and how race gets defined through what you do. Harleen Kaur, who I cited at the top, has something that I think is open access, but if not, I'll get you the PDF. And then there's a piece from Pradeep Barua, who is an oldie. It's like from the 90s, but it's called inventing race, the British and India's martial races. And he goes through all of the spaces where warlikeness was either harnessed or punished.

Megan Goodwin: 50:49

Hmm, I feel like you might have also written a book that is pertinent to this conversation.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 50:56

It's not about martial races per se, but it is about the 19th century, race and racialization. And yes, it is called Indian Muslim minorities and the 1857 rebellion. Goodwin. I'm I'm curious, I think you wrote a book about abuse and religion?

Megan Goodwin: 51:09

Ah, fair, I did write a book about abuse and religion. It is called Abusing Religion. It is available wherever books are sold, through Rutgers University Press. The only other thing I was going to recommend, honestly, was our podcast Sikh of not knowing about Sikhi, where we learned a bunch about Sikhi from our friend and friend of the pod, Simran Jeet Singh, so if you want to know more about Sikhs, you should listen to that episode and check out the show notes, because we put a bunch of sources and resources in there.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 51:40

You can find us across all social media platforms these days, our website is keeping it 101 dot com. Our book Religion Is Not Done With You is available with Beacon Press, if you want to have us visit your campus or local bookstore, please check out our website for more details on how to get that done. Please rate and review this podcast. It helps people find us, and with that: peace out, nerds

Megan Goodwin: 52:02

and do your homework. It's on the syllabus.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 52:04

Try not to do any murders

Megan Goodwin: 52:07

unless you really have to, in which case God understands.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 52:11

I'm glad you didn't say we support you. We do, but we're not saying it on The pod.

Unknown: 52:16

I That Earl had to die goodbye.