Finally! Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

published 1813

I recently watched all the available Jane Austen screen adaptations – twenty four of them – and re-read her novels, and then watched some modern versions of Pride and Prejudice. This was so that I could write several articles for the i newspaper - see here and here  – and it was the best work assignment I could ever have, I enjoyed it hugely.

Although Jane Austen has featured on the blog in various ways, there have been very few actual straight posts on the book – and they were on Northanger Abbey, which I described as the slightest of the six main novels. So, time to put things right. I started with Sense and Sensibility recently, and now we are ready to move on…..

There has been so much written about this book and this author, particularly in this year celebrating the 250^th anniversary of her birth, that I don’t pretend to do anything very academic. Writer Dolly Alderton – whose new screen version of Pride and Prejudice will appear soon – has promised  she wants to ‘bring new insights’, which inspired me to try to find my own new insights.

I have said a lot about the adaptations in the articles mentioned above, and would particularly recommend this one, here, on this book.

1)  On the day the article came out, I tweeted this:

Kitty’s coughing has no purpose except to annoy Mrs Bennet, and I am wondering: was it a family joke? Something JA put in there because it was what happened in her own family?

2)  Miss Bingley tries to warn Lizzy that she should be more careful about Mr Wickham. Not enough is ever made of the fact that Miss Bingley (much hated in the book) is correct and helpful and generous in sharing this, and  Lizzie is wrong and rude.

 

3)  In general, parents in Jane Austen books make you wonder about the author’s relationships with her own parents. Mr Bennet is a particularly contentious figure: there is disapproval later, but in the early parts of the book it seems that both JA and Elizabeth B think he is clever and charming. Modern day readers do not find him so. And that’s before we even get to his awful lack of thought for his daughters: quite happy, apparently, to leave them to penury. He is very lucky indeed that in the end that they look after themselves.

 

4)   On the other hand, Mrs Bennet has been much mocked, but many of us are trying to rehabilitate her. At least she has some concern for her daughters’ future.

5)  Then there is Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who is rude, vulgar, offensive and absurd: she is a much worse and more horrible person that Mrs Bennet. And yes people see that, but still it seems that money and a title make that more forgiveable. She is not the figure of fun that Mrs Bennet is. Mr Darcy should be apologizing to Elizabeth for the inferiority of his connections.

6)  I have suggested elsewhere that these  two characters – Mrs B and Lady C -  only share one brief scene, and that therefore a really good idea for an adaptation would be to have one actress doubling the parts, see what they make of them.

 

7)  However Lady C has this excellent apercu:

There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient. [emphasis added]

We should all take this firm line on matters that we never bothered to study. (Opera-singing in my case)

8)  There is a splendid online feature (at Popbitch) which is Baboon vs Badger –  celebrities are asked who would win in a fight between these two creatures? The Clothes in Books equivalent is ‘If you absolutely had to choose one, would you marry Mr Collins or Mr Wickham?’ This has produced wonderful debates in the comments, and pops up regularly.

The initial question was one posed by blogfriend Birgitta to her literature students – read it in the comments on this post. And it has emerged a few times since then. Have your say now!

9)  I recently went to see (again) the excellent improvised show Austentacious – very funny and highly recommended. One of the actor/comedians is Rachel Parris, and by happy chance I discovered that it is she who has written a novel from Charlotte Lucas’s POV – in earlier posts I have said I knew this book was coming but couldn’t remember any details. It is called Introducing Mrs Collins, and is out in the autumn.

 

10)                If you must watch the 1940 Hollywood version of Pride and Prejudice, with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson (criticized in some quarters - like, by me, here, for its Gone with the Wind costumes and invented scenes) there is one more thing to look for. The script was written in part by literary novelist Aldous Huxley, and allegedly it was meant to ‘encourage the USA to enter the Second World War’ – raging in Europe in 1940, while the US stayed clear. Endless opportunities for analysis here: would Americans feel ‘Greer Garson is 36, why is she playing 20 yo Elizabeth Bennet – are all the young women off fighting the war? We must help’. Perhaps.  (The USA entered the war in 1941, but we believe this is more to do with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor). Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments on how this worked.

 

11)                The money shot for P&P is traditionally thought of as Mrs B and the five girls walking into Meriton in a line (or just the four when they miss out a sister). They are an invading army  looking for husbands. Watch out for that, and their nice dresses and bonnets. But I like also to look out for the traditional ‘gardener in the background’, a rural yokel type - appears in versions of the other books too. By the time I’d watched them all, I was starting to hallucinate and wonder if it was the same man (‘will provide own wheelbarrow’).

As I said at the beginning, there is finally going to be a new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. When it was mentioned many people said ‘not another! Why!’  - but really the remarkable thing is how few there have been in the past 30 years since the Firth one: exactly one (Keira Knightley). I think we’ll have to create a Pride&Prej bingo card, to see which of these items pop up in it.

 And as I like to say - you need a new P&P every now and again so you can discuss young actresses' career trajectory with the safe remark 'she must have been one of the Bennet girls'.

One day there may be a brave P&P version which would make Mrs B sensible and really young (she should be under 40) and Mr Bennet a selfish fool.  And one that makes  Mr Collins – portrayed as his actual age of 25 – a better choice than Wickham? That’s probably a step too far.

 P&P is generally pictured in Regency times, around the date of publication (1813) but we know that it was written in the 1790s, so really anyone is free to choose costume from any of those years.

Whispering young women.  NYPL

Walking dress or carriage costume, 1810s, NYPL.