Can you be a feminist and like Jane Austen? The podcast that proves it

BarcelonaThe restaurant and cocktail bar Jok, hidden on a mezzanine in Barcelona's Eixample, with its modernist decor and rosé velvet sofas, seems like the perfect setting for the cutest Victorian podcast out there. I'm going to see the "Punkis Decimonòniques" precisely on the day they disband: this will be their last show after five years of delving into the best novels by Victorian female writers, most of which have recently been published in Catalan by Viena, in collections such as Club Victòria and Petits Plaers. Indeed, their editor, Blanca Pujals, along with the then bookseller of La Carbonera, Carlota Freixenet, are the "Victorian ladies of the 21st century".

The dress code for Wednesday was pink, and I'd say half the audience believed it. The charm of the "Punkis Decimonòniques" is that they have embraced a community of ardent followers of 19th-century female authors who thought they were alone. "We have talked about many authors and many books that had not been discussed in Catalan, nor in Spanish, nor in any Romance language, only in English," Pujals tells me, so this archive with original content from over thirty books is now saved.

The pandemic and social media contributed to making reading a social phenomenon, especially among young people. "When we voted on who was the best Darcy in history, Colin Firth or Matthew Macfadyen, there was almost violence. People have gone along with us, commenting on all the adaptations that came out or if there was news about a Brontë story," say the Punkis, who have essentially chosen the books that made them readers and made them adults, but had to read them in Spanish or English, like Donuts.

The origin of it all is a question: "You, who are so feminist, how is it that you like Jane Austen or the Brontës?" they told her. "Precisely because of that!" Pujals replies. "There was a need to explain that behind the image of teacups there is a lot of feminist activism". "We have talked about economics, class struggle, the position of women, very serious things and with rigor, but adapted to the millennial and Z generations," adds Freixenet. After all, "Jane Austen invented the "ghosting" and Anne Brontë warned of the red flags of toxic masculinity, as we learned on Wednesday, who cited Rosalía and the Starks.

The last chapter is an hour and a half of juice about the life and work of the youngest of the Brontë sisters and her "moralistic and raw" Agnes Grey. For Pujals, it is "a great guide to navigating your thirties; there are phrases that seem to be taken from Substack, and as a good millennial, she clearly has imposter syndrome." Despite the literary quality of the work, however, she is not the most popular author. It turns out that it was the elder sister, Charlotte ("Jane Eyre), the last of the Brontës to die, who blurred Anne's image as simply "pious and bland" and curbed the dissemination of her work, especially that inspired by her alcoholic brother. "She was the sister with more class consciousness, the most radical," they argue. And that is why she is chosen to close the podcast, which ended with the same phrase as Agnes Grey": "I feel like I've talked enough."