Women on Women: Female Friendships in Literature and Media

Re-reading Jane Eyre, the Mean Girls remake, and our Season 3 theme announcement

Lately I have found myself more and more drawn to the complexities of female friendships and how they are portrayed in literature: the sweet yet selfish affection that Jane Austen’s Emma has for her chosen companion Harriet Smith; the electric relationship between Claire and Irene in Nella Larsen’s Passing, plagued by fascination and envy; and the unquestionable bond between Meredith and Cristina on Grey’s Anatomy - these are some of the fictional relationships that keep me up at night (my Roman Empire, if you will).

John Hoppner, The Frankland Sisters, 1795, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art

In this newsletter, before we get to our Season 3 theme reveal at the end, I want to spend some time thinking about relationships among women - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Novel Tea newsletter is a companion to The Novel Tea podcast, where in each episode, we discuss one book in-depth, considering characters, themes, plot devices, and lessons. Our goal is to read more deeply, and more broadly - and along the way we hope to discover modern, diverse classics.

Rereading Jane Eyre

and examining her relationships with other women

One of the downsides to being an avid reader is constantly feeling like you’ll never have the time to read all the books you want to - as a result, I haven’t revisited many of my favorites in over a decade. This year, I want to reread some of these favorites, starting out with Jane Eyre (winter chills and cloudy skies make me want to go back to Thornfield Hall).

My beautiful clothbound Penguin edition of Jane Eyre

I’ll admit, the first time I read this book as a teenager, I was most captivated by its gothic elements - the looming manor, the natural descriptions, and the mystery in the attic. But Jane Eyre is also a coming-of-age story, an unapologetic account of a girl becoming a woman. And it is not the men in her life that help her do so - it is the women.

In this essay and alternate ending to Jane Eyre, Phillipa Gregory asserts that women are the “spiritual heart” of the book, and then gives Jane an alternate ending in which she runs away with Bertha. While I very much enjoy the spirit of this essay, I push back against the reinterpretation of Jane’s sexuality, because it minimizes the strength and complexities of her platonic relationships with women.

In English class, most of us learned that Helen Burns and Blanche Ingram, among others, exist as foils to Jane’s personality. But friends in life don’t exist to act as foils to your personality; they are there to support, nurture, and love. And I think reducing these characters to one literary device eliminates their agency and the value they provide to the story.

The first women Jane interacts with are anything but nurturing, but Jane’s sense of self does start to form in reaction to the cruelty of Mrs. Reed, Eliza and Georgiana Reed. As she grows older, she has very different relationships with other women: in Bessie she has an ally in her cruel childhood home; Helen Burns for Jane is a soulmate, an example of a lifelong friendship as only schoolgirls can form; Mrs. Temple is a supporter and model for goodness.

Later, at Thornfield, she meets other women, with whom she is a bit more distant (is this a choice Jane makes? Or is it a result of her position and lack of power as a governess?). Mrs. Fairfax, Grace Poole, and Blanche Ingram are all perfectly cordial, but they maintain their distance from Jane.

Bertha Mason, of course, is the real skeleton in the attic, and I will look out for how Jane’s relationship with other women impacts her imagination and her perceptions of Bertha.

Finally, Jane becomes very close with Diana and Mary Rivers, sisters of St. John - I remember thinking on my first read that this was a bit uncharacteristic for Jane, who seemed to be such a lone wolf. But this time, I’ll pay closer attention - what in Jane’s previous relationships with women informs how she bonds with Diana and Mary?

I loved this detailed exploration of power and desire in Jane Eyre, and I’ll be thinking about these themes on this reread - not as they relate to Jane and Rochester, but as they appear in Jane’s relationships with other women. Does Jane desire female companionship? I’m excited to find out.

What have you noticed about the women in Jane Eyre? Let us know in the comments!

The 2024 Mean Girls Musical

When I first heard that they were remaking the Mean Girls musical, which itself is a remake of the 2004 movie (and so this line of reasoning makes no sense at all - the new movie is just a musical version of the old one), my first thoughts were, why? Who is this for? Having watched the movie, I’m still not sure of the answer.

Mean Girls 2024 promotional image from slashfilm.com

When the original Mean Girls came out in 2004, aside from its hilarious caricatures and relatable storyline, the central issue of the movie was - why are women tearing down other women? Why are we holding ourselves to ridiculous standards, and trying to follow made-up rules? It was an issue that was timely and important for the early 2000s, particularly for teenage girls (I love this interview about why the movie did so well). Cady’s fish-out-of-water perspective was the perfect way to show us how slut-shaming, body image aspirations, and cliques are all learned behaviors.

But we are now well into a new wave of feminism (is it the fourth? Fifth? I have lost count) and I think we are all aware that these issues exist. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be repeated for emphasis - but in watching the remake, I didn’t find anything new in its ideas.

Nothing about it made me think I’d occasionally prefer to watch this new 2024 version, rather than the original.

What I was hoping for was something that uniquely addressed the issues of the 2020s. Women still tear down other women nowadays, and we still hold each other to impossible standards - but one difference is that now we have social media and the internet, which have completely changed the landscape through which we grapple with these issues on a day-to-day basis.

Yes, there were some Tik Tok and vlogging scenes interspersed in the movie, but they mostly mirrored the format of the original (remember the montage about the Plastics? “One time, she punched me in the face. It was awesome”) just transposed onto smartphones. The Burn Book was a nice throwback, but entirely unrealistic - I find it hard to believe that a group of today’s teenagers would find photos online, take the effort to print them out and glue them into a book, and then write nasty things in a physical book, when they could accomplish a similar feat online for a fraction of the effort (I know they explain that there was a week when their phones were taken away, but I still don’t totally buy it).

A truly inventive adaptation would have found a way to deal with the issues of the first movie as they uniquely relate to the current age. If Mean Girls 2004 became an anthem for millennials, then Mean Girls 2024 should’ve done the same for Gen Z.

If Mean Girls 2004 became an anthem for millennials, then Mean Girls 2024 should’ve done the same for Gen Z.

For example, I would have loved to see the narrative on fat-shaming reversed - since Beyoncé and the Kardashians, the hourglass figure has become much more ‘desirable’ than the straight, thin frames of the early 2000s. Reneé Rapp (who plays Regina George) has a curvier body than Rachel McAdams, and this would’ve been the perfect opportunity to show how arbitrary and rapidly-changing the ‘ideal female body’ is.

They could’ve made efforts to highlight class, racial, and financial discrepancies, and how these subtly sneak into the formation of high school cliques. This is somewhat alluded to in the original, with Mrs. Norbury working two jobs, Janice working at the mall after school, Regina living in a mansion, and Gretchen being the presumed heir of the toaster strudel empire, but in the remake, many of those plotlines are removed.

The only parts that were really updated were the potentially problematic elements, in an effort to make the movie more politically correct. Joining the mathletes was “social suicide” in the original, which becomes “socially ruinous” in the new version. Instead of writing “fugly slut” in the Burn Book towards the end, Regina writes “fugly cow” (I’m not even sure if this is much better).

Regina George writes in the burn book in the 2004 original. GIF from tenor.com

In fact, in some ways the new movie actually regressed a bit. While in the original movie, the characters frequently call each other “whore” and “slut”, the words are used as just words, without the weight of accusation behind them. In the new movie, Karen Shetty (played by Avantika) is called out several times for having slept with 11 people - and the tone in which Regina delivers this makes it clear that this is a bad thing. The story never returns to this moment to give its characters an opportunity for growth, and so as an audience we are left believing that we are meant to judge Karen for her (private) sex life. Why is this movie slut shaming so blatantly?

Some of the song lyrics did feel fresh, particularly ‘I’d Rather Be Me’ sung by Janice towards the end when she refuses to participate in the trust fall exercise:

We're supposed to all be ladies
And be nurturing and care
Is that really fair?
Boys get to fight, we have to share
Here's the way that that turns out
We always understand
How to slap someone down
With our underhand

So here's my right finger
To how girls should behave
'Cause sometimes what's meant to break you
Makes you brave

So I will not act all innocent
I won't fake apologize
Let's just fight and then make up
Not tell these lies

But any real effect the songs could’ve had was negated by the fact that the script was a near copy of the original (did we really need a new actress repeating that she had a wide set vagina and heavy flow? Surely that screen time could’ve been used for something else).

Though I’ve spent a fair amount of time criticizing it, the new Mean Girls does have some fun moments. I thought both Angourie Rice and Reneé Rapp gave excellent performances as Cady Heron and Regina George - Rice was entirely believable as a sweet and overwhelmed homeschooled girl (though as a result, her later transformation into a mean, ruthless Plastic was less believable to me than Lohan’s) and Rapp exuded an alluring kind of charisma that convinced me that this new edgy, domineering version of Regina was definitely the queen bee.

So was the new Mean Girls movie doing something? Not really.

But was it a whole lot of fun to watch? Definitely.

Our Theme for Season 3 of The Novel Tea Podcast

It’s finally time for our Season 3 theme announcement!

Each season, we structure our book list around a theme. For season 1, our theme was The American Dream, and for season 2 it was Around the World in 8-Tea Books.

And now, we are so excited to announce our theme for our upcoming Season 3: Other Worlds.

In Season 3, Other Worlds, we will be encountering monsters, aliens, mythologic figures, and more, in unique, imaginative settings. We can’t wait to delve into the world of speculative fiction.

Mark your calendars for January 31, when we will be releasing our Season 3 intro episode. In this episode we’ll share our book list for the season - and we have some great titles coming up. We'll also talk a little bit about our selection process, speculative fiction as a genre, and what we’re excited about in the coming months.

You can listen to the upcoming season, as well as our previous episodes, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Quick Picks

In this section, we’ll share books, movies, podcasts, TV shows, and other arts/media that we have been enjoying lately. Today’s selections highlight different aspects of women’s relationships with one another.

• BOOK | A Thousand Splendid Suns: this story is about many things - war, family, and tradition - but to me, it is mostly about the love between Laila and Mariam, who are both married to the same man in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Though they are initially wary of each other, the difficult circumstances and cruel husband they share bring them together. This is not an easy book to read - but it is an important one.

• MOVIE | Thelma and Louise: this is hardly an undiscovered gem - it was a big hit when it first came out, and it has endured over the years. I first watched this movie last year and was genuinely surprised at how relevant it still is in today’s world. The two title characters embody the ride-or-die energy throughout the film, and I love watching their casual friendship turn into unwavering support. If you’ve never seen it, now is the time. Even if you have, it’s worth a rewatch.

• TV SHOW | The Morning Show: critics have been divided on whether this show is compulsively watchable, or a ridiculous disaster. Personally, I think it’s excellent television. The chemistry between Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston is what makes the show so good - in its first season, their rivalry and occasional mutual respect is electric. The second season flounders and loses its footing, partly because Witherspoon and Aniston are kept apart for the majority of its episodes, and I start to see what the critics mean when they call this show ‘ridiculous.’ But I’ve heard that the third season brings them together again - so I will power through season two to see where Witherspoon and Aniston’s relationship goes next.

— Shruti

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Next Up

Our Season 3 intro episode comes out on January 31. Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode!

Also: On February 7 we will be releasing a bonus episode in which we get to speak to some special guests about reading deeply and other bookish things.