"A Neighbourhood of Voluntary Spies"
Jane Austen, Gilmore Girls, and the Social Microcosm of the Small Town
Paris: Worship Kerouac and Bukowski. God forbid you pick up anything by Jane Austen.
Jess: Hey, I’ve read Jane Austen. And I think she would have liked Bukowski.
–Gilmore Girls, S2E16: “There’s the Rub”
I recently began my annual Gilmore Girls rewatch, a show that makes me feel warm and cozy and in which it is always autumn in the small New England town of Stars Hollow. (Actually, I take that back, sometimes it’s winter. But the vibes are always cozy.) I’m also in the midst of another ritual I partake in every September, my annual reread of Pride and Prejudice.
If you mention Gilmore Girls and the works of Jane Austen in the same thought, most people can probably see a kinship fairly easily: both center the interior lives and exterior concerns of intelligent, complex women; both are known for clever humor and witty dialog; and GG has a very bookish, “old world,” classic lit vibe that Austen fits into pretty seamlessly. Austen is even name-dropped several times throughout the series.
As a Janeite and devoted fan of Gilmore Girls, I’ve spent more time thinking about the connections between these two bodies of work than I can easily measure. I’ve talked about the parallels on my podcast, Pop DNA, TWICE. I’ve rewatched the video “Pride and Prejudice Gilmore Girls Style” by the YouTube account pookieloser, in which the audio from the trailer for the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice plays over clips from Gilmore Girls, so many times that I alone probably account for at least a third of its 284K views.
I’ve placed my Lorelai and Rory Gilmore POP! figures next to my Lizzy Bennet from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies POP! figure (the only version of Lizzy Bennet available as a POP! figure, but I actually really like it because she has a tiny sword) on my bookshelves, hoping they would become friends under the shadow of my replica of the Mr. Darcy bust.
Sometime in the fall or winter of 2005-06, I also dyed my hair brown and cut my own bangs, a decision inspired in equal parts by Rory’s season 6 hair and Elizabeth Bennet’s hair in the 2005 film. Thankfully, there is no surviving photographic evidence, but I’ve been in a constant cycle of growing out and recutting my bangs ever since.
And out of all the common threads, the connection that I find most compelling and keep coming back to is how both Jane Austen and Amy Sherman-Palladino situate their narratives in the social microcosm of the small town.
A Neighbourhood of Voluntary Spies
Catherine Morland, the heroine of Austen’s Northanger Abbey, thinks that the father of the guy she’s crushing on has murdered said guy’s mother. When she sneaks into the deceased woman’s bedroom to investigate, the worst possible thing that could happen in that moment, happens: she’s discovered by her crush, and he quickly discerns her suspicions!
Henry Tilney, who is pretty aware of Catherine’s crush on him and has started to return the feeling at this point, tries to point out to Catherine how preposterous her suspicion truly is, reasoning,
Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?
This “neighbourhood of voluntary spies” refers to late-18th-century English society in general, wherein “the newspaper was within the reach of almost everyone,” according to historian Moira Goff’s “Early History of the English Newspaper.” “The 18th century was a period of staggering growth in newspaper circulation. The Stamp Act duties suggest annual circulations of 2.4 million copies in 1713, 7.3 million in 1750 and 16 million in 1801.”
The ready availability of newspapers, including provincial papers which brought news of major events to even the remotest small towns, as well as the recent improvements in roads leading to greater travel opportunities within the country, meant the world was much more accessible to a late-18th-century English person than it had ever been before. It also meant, as Henry Tilney suggests, that criminal deeds were much more difficult to keep secret than they would have been in centuries past, when Catherine’s beloved gothic novels take place, in a country neighborhood of voluntary spies with the ability to take note of their neighbors’ every suspicious move and tell someone about it.
This depiction of English country communities is reflected throughout Austen’s work, with the small towns of Meryton in Pride and Prejudice and Highbury in Emma serving as hotbeds of neighborhood gossip, where characters learn of newcomers to the area, mild scandals that may be tangentially related to people they know, and both learn about and find conversation partners for debriefing from major social events.
In Gilmore Girls, the town of Stars Hollow fulfills much the same function. When Lorelai and Rory visit Luke’s Diner, or even just walk through the town square, they’re sure to encounter one of the town regulars–Kirk, Miss Patty or Babette, or Taylor Doose, most often–who will tell them about a juicy bit of gossip, or an important upcoming town event, or ask about their own gossip-worthy news, such as that handsome man Lorelai was spotted with in town the other day.
In fact, both Stars Hollow and Austen’s towns seem to be very interested in the handsome men who visit. In Emma, the biggest news the town of Highbury has to buzz about in a long time is the arrival of Frank Churchill, the son of a respected member of the community, Mr. Weston. When Frank is first mentioned in chapter 2, we are told that he is “one of the boasts of Highbury, and a lively curiosity to see him prevailed.”
When he finally makes his appearance nearly halfway through the book, he and Emma become fast friends and take a walk through the village, where he insists on patronizing a local store to prove his loyalty to Highbury. Everyone who meets him or even just sights him in the village seems intensely predisposed to adore him; “In general he was judged, throughout the parishes of Donwell and Highbury, with great candour; liberal allowances were made for the little excesses of such a handsome young man—one who smiled so often and bowed so well.”
Stars Hollow has a similar attitude toward Christopher Hayden, Rory’s dad and Lorelai’s ex-boyfriend/future ex-husband. His first appearance in season 1, episode 15, is the news highlight of the day for the whole town. When Rory shows him around, residents are heard discussing whether he looks more like George Clooney or Brad Pitt, with produce farmer Jackson telling a rapt crowd, “Yes it is her real dad. He seems very nice. Kind of a folky, poppy, urban, scruffy look to him. And obviously there's some money mixed in there because he's got that, you know, money nose.”
In season 7 of the series, when Lorelai and Christopher are married, the town seems less enthused about him, more wary of how he will fit in as a permanent resident, and protective of Lorelai, knowing their rocky romantic history. No one is more “protective,” of course, than Luke Danes, who much like Mr. Knightley in respect to Emma, loved Lorelai from afar for years and, like Mr. Knightley in respect to Frank Churchill, sees Christopher as a coxcomb unworthy of her affections.
Love and Freindship
The works of Jane Austen and Amy Sherman-Palladino (not just Gilmore Girls) explore the interior lives, struggles, concerns, and journeys of intelligent and flawed women. Female protagonists give us our perspective into these worlds, and their stories of self-discovery and self-actualization provide the main focus of the narratives, despite our tendency to discuss them disproportionately in terms of their romantic storylines. The romances in both Gilmore Girls and Jane Austen’s novels are important, but only insofar as they provide context for character development for our protagonists.
When asked about her thoughts on fans’ tendency to focus on Rory’s romances in Gilmore Girls, specifically forming into camps of “Team Dean,” “Team Jess,” and “Team Logan,” Sherman-Palladino noted:
I don’t begrudge people the excitement of Jess and Dean. But they were there to show Rory’s evolution as a character. She picked certain boys for her depending on who she was at that moment. It was part of her character. It was part of her development that Dean was her first boyfriend, that Jess was the boy that diverted her attention.
Jane Austen wrote some of the most iconic love stories of all time in her novels, and her work is foundational to the modern genre of romance fiction, but in her work as well, the romances serve a deeper purpose in her heroines’ journeys and development. Anne Elliot in Persuasion, for example, finds her voice and the courage to advocate for herself through her rekindled romance with her former love, Captain Wentworth. And in Austen’s most famous love story, Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth asserts her independence by refusing to marry men she doesn’t love, and only accepting Mr. Darcy’s proposal once he’s rectified his behavior, and once she’s fallen in love with him.
In Austen and in Gilmore Girls, female friendships are also vitally important to the heroines’ development. Of course, GG centers on the close bond between Lorelai and Rory, a relationship often discussed as “more like best friends than mother-daughter.” Several of Austen’s novels also center close familial bonds between women, with Jane and Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, and the almost-familial closeness of Emma Woodhouse and her former governess Mrs. Weston in Emma.
Lorelai and Rory’s relationships with their respective best friends apart from each other also mirror Austen heroines’ friendships in some ways. Rory’s bond with her lifelong friend Lane, who is staunchly loyal and supportive, reminds me of Elizabeth Bennet’s friendship with Charlotte Lucas. Charlotte and Lane both make choices Elizabeth and Rory are initially incredulous about—Charlotte in marrying Mr. Collins, and Lane in joining the Stars Hollow High cheer squad in season 2—but eventually accept and resume their friendships.
And Lorelai, who reminds me in so many ways of Emma Woodhouse, has a close friendship with her coworker and eventual business partner, Sookie St. James. Most of the time Lorelai and Sookie remind me of Emma and Mrs. Weston; Sookie reaches life milestones such as marriage and having children (as an adult) before Lorelai, and often offers sound life and relationship advice. But every once in awhile, mostly in the earlier seasons, Lorelai’s selfish streak and tendency to speak before she thinks lead her to lash out with unkind comments, putting me in mind of Emma’s mocking of Miss Bates. (To her credit, Lorelai almost always immediately recognizes her mistake and apologizes.)
Handsome, Clever, and Rich
Gilmore Girls is sometimes a little overly rosy about its main characters’ flaws, while Jane Austen sees her heroines’ flaws very clearly. Both works, though, dip into comedy of manners and social satire, and both in general expose the negatives and positives of belonging to certain socioeconomic classes.
Most Jane Austen heroines (except for Emma Woodhouse) are on the lower rungs of the upper class of English society; they all come from a gentry background, but they are not considered as high-ranking socially or economically as some of the characters they intermingle with, which is where much of the social commentary comes into play.
Elizabeth Bennet encounters Mr. Darcy and his aunt, Lady Catherine; Catherine Morland becomes friends with the wealthier and higher ranking Tilneys; and Mansfield Park’s Fanny Price is raised from the age of 10 by her relatives the Bertrams, though her own immediate family is decidedly poor. In all of these cases, the heroines’ fortunes, or lack thereof, acutely inform the tenor of their relationships with characters of greater wealth and higher social ranking, making their respective marriages into those families acts of social mobility.
In Gilmore Girls, Lorelai has very consciously moved down in economic class, though I’d argue that she never fully leaves the monied class she was born into because she always has a safety net through her, albeit rocky, relationship with her parents. Emily and Richard pay for much of Rory’s education at both Chilton and Yale, which are both framed as “loans,” but we also get the sense that the Gilmore parents would not mind if those loans were never paid back. Emily also cosigns a bank loan for Lorelai to make major repairs on her house. And though Lorelai prides herself on being financially independent and self-made, the advantage of having wealthy parents is always hovering in the background.
Since Rory has had a more middle class upbringing, her entry into the monied society of her grandparents in certain ways mirrors the journeys of Austen heroines. Her early interactions with Logan have echoes of a Lizzy/Darcy dynamic, with her admonition of his snobbishness striking a similar note of fierce independence and just ever so slight hypocrisy as Elizabeth’s criticism of Darcy’s pride. Rory’s awe upon entering the Huntzbergers’ mansion and seeing its art collection is also reminiscent of Elizabeth’s emotions on first seeing Pemberley.
Very Happy, and Rather Vulgar
Gilmore Girls would not be half so charming as it is without the eccentric townsfolk of Stars Hollow, just as the small communities in Austen novels are given texture by their more eccentric residents. Mrs. Jennings from Sense and Sensibility would be right at home gossiping with Babette and Miss Patty; Sir William Lucas from Pride and Prejudice would no doubt admire the town spirit embodied by Taylor Doose (in fact, he’d say it was “Capital!”); and I like to imagine that Harriet Smith from Emma upon meeting Kirk Gleeson would be boundlessly impressed with the 11,000 jobs he has in town, and probably fall in love without Emma knowing.
In describing how she created the setting for Gilmore Girls, Amy Sherman-Palladino has cited inspiration from the town of Washington Depot, Connecticut.
I went on vacation to Connecticut, because I wanted to see Mark Twain's house. I stayed at an inn, and it was very charming, in a tiny town, and everybody seemed to know each other, and there was a pumpkin patch across the street. I went to a diner, and people kept getting up to get their own coffee. No one was there to be waited on. It seemed like a fun environment to put [the characters] in.
Though Amy Sherman-Palladino drew inspiration from a town she only visited, Jane Austen lived in small towns most of her life, namely the villages of Steventon and Chawton in Hampshire, though with a five-year stint in Bath, which features in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion and is portrayed as kind of like a big small town. In a letter to her niece Anna, who was an aspiring author, Austen gave a piece of writing advice that also seems to fit the guiding principle of the setting for Gilmore Girls:
You are now collecting your people delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life. Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on… You are but now coming to the heart and beauty of your story.