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Book Review: Pride & Prejudice
Oct. 1st, 2022 03:23 pmI read Pride and Prejudice for the first time in high school, and hadn’t reread it until now. However, I’ve seen a bunch of adaptations, not least my beloved Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the modern-day vlog retelling over which I obsessed for a year. So it’s interesting to see how both the passage of time and the new light shed on the story by adaptations has changed my opinions over time.
Of course in some cases, I mean that my opinion has come full circle. In high school, I shared Elizabeth’s horror when her friend Charlotte agreed to marry that rat Mr. Collins. Later on, I grew more sympathetic to Charlotte: surely marrying Collins would be better than being a spinster in Regency England! (My recollection is that the 2005 adaptation makes this point with particular force.)
Rereading it now, it occurred to me that Jane Austen, Regency Spinster, probably has a better idea than I do what fates would be worse than being a Regency spinster, and she is absolutely right that being married to Mr. Collins would be on the list, at least for sensible, level-headed Charlotte Lucas. Moralistic Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins might have been well-suited, although they would have encouraged each other’s worst tendencies and become utterly unbearable to everyone else. Compare their reactions to Lydia’s elopement: Mary reflects piously how easily a woman’s precious reputation can be stained, while Mr. Collins writes to the Bennets to state that he’s shocked, shocked that they received Lydia at their house after the way she behaved! A match made in heaven. Pity Mr. Collins didn’t think of it.
Speaking of Lydia. Modern adaptations often seem troubled by Austen’s unsparing portrayal: she is gleefully unrepentant when she returns from her elopement with Wickham which would have destroyed her own reputation and severely injured her sisters’ future prospects, and continues just as “untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless” as ever.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, in particular, makes it one of its main projects to rehabilitate Lydia both with viewers and with her exasperated sister Lizzie. (And, let it be said, it succeeded, at least with me: Lydia is my favorite character in LBD, although it pains me to say so because I love them alllllll.) For the most part she displays that same noisy, unabashed character, although with a strain of vulnerability that Austen’s Lydia never shows… right up until the Wickham debacle, which in this version takes the form of a sex tape that Wickham intends to sell online for cash. LBD Lydia collapses like a house of cards.
Now of course this is an extremely understandable reaction, and given that aforementioned streak of vulnerability it follows naturally from Lydia’s character in the adaptation. But the adaptation would have been closer to the original if Lydia had yelled, “Woo hoo! If this sex tape goes well, I’m going to start a career as a camgirl, and then I’ll be financially independent LONG before Jane and Lizzie move out of the house!”
…actually that would be a fantastic adaptation choice, but it would definitely have alienated a lot of viewers (probably including my 2013 self) and therefore undermined LBD’s “reconcile the sisters” project.
Jane Austen hasn’t any intention of reconciling Lydia with her despairing elder sisters. She has no more sentimental investment in sisterhood than she has in marriage, or friendship, or parent-child relationships, or indeed any other human relationship that you can name. None of these relationships are either good or bad by nature: they are good or bad entirely as the individuals within them make them so. And from that point of view, there's no reason for Jane and Elizabeth to try to reconcile with Lydia: she is what she is and they are what they are, and the mere fact that they are sisters will not make them mix.
Of course in some cases, I mean that my opinion has come full circle. In high school, I shared Elizabeth’s horror when her friend Charlotte agreed to marry that rat Mr. Collins. Later on, I grew more sympathetic to Charlotte: surely marrying Collins would be better than being a spinster in Regency England! (My recollection is that the 2005 adaptation makes this point with particular force.)
Rereading it now, it occurred to me that Jane Austen, Regency Spinster, probably has a better idea than I do what fates would be worse than being a Regency spinster, and she is absolutely right that being married to Mr. Collins would be on the list, at least for sensible, level-headed Charlotte Lucas. Moralistic Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins might have been well-suited, although they would have encouraged each other’s worst tendencies and become utterly unbearable to everyone else. Compare their reactions to Lydia’s elopement: Mary reflects piously how easily a woman’s precious reputation can be stained, while Mr. Collins writes to the Bennets to state that he’s shocked, shocked that they received Lydia at their house after the way she behaved! A match made in heaven. Pity Mr. Collins didn’t think of it.
Speaking of Lydia. Modern adaptations often seem troubled by Austen’s unsparing portrayal: she is gleefully unrepentant when she returns from her elopement with Wickham which would have destroyed her own reputation and severely injured her sisters’ future prospects, and continues just as “untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless” as ever.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, in particular, makes it one of its main projects to rehabilitate Lydia both with viewers and with her exasperated sister Lizzie. (And, let it be said, it succeeded, at least with me: Lydia is my favorite character in LBD, although it pains me to say so because I love them alllllll.) For the most part she displays that same noisy, unabashed character, although with a strain of vulnerability that Austen’s Lydia never shows… right up until the Wickham debacle, which in this version takes the form of a sex tape that Wickham intends to sell online for cash. LBD Lydia collapses like a house of cards.
Now of course this is an extremely understandable reaction, and given that aforementioned streak of vulnerability it follows naturally from Lydia’s character in the adaptation. But the adaptation would have been closer to the original if Lydia had yelled, “Woo hoo! If this sex tape goes well, I’m going to start a career as a camgirl, and then I’ll be financially independent LONG before Jane and Lizzie move out of the house!”
…actually that would be a fantastic adaptation choice, but it would definitely have alienated a lot of viewers (probably including my 2013 self) and therefore undermined LBD’s “reconcile the sisters” project.
Jane Austen hasn’t any intention of reconciling Lydia with her despairing elder sisters. She has no more sentimental investment in sisterhood than she has in marriage, or friendship, or parent-child relationships, or indeed any other human relationship that you can name. None of these relationships are either good or bad by nature: they are good or bad entirely as the individuals within them make them so. And from that point of view, there's no reason for Jane and Elizabeth to try to reconcile with Lydia: she is what she is and they are what they are, and the mere fact that they are sisters will not make them mix.
