Hanukkah and Christmas are just
around the corner and the working year is ticking down.
Professional women know what that means. Deadlines, lists,
bookings, late nights, and desperate searches for new frocks and
organic turkeys. This article therefore, is going to be
unadultered, unreconstructed, unashamed fluff.
Goodness knows we've all earned it.
For the next couple of minutes, grab a coffee, put your brain in
neutral and the phone on divert. If anyone asks, you're reading the
latest literary review. No need to let on you're off on a little
escapist fantasy. To Longbourn, Netherton, Rosings, and Pemberley.
Ah… Pemberley.
The pond at Pemberley.
The pond at Pemberley on a hot summer's day. The pond that Jane
Austen never put in her famous novel but that has become its most
famous scene. The wet shirt sequence that has every red-blooded
woman making that impossible-to-render sound of phwoarh.
You know the scene. Of course you do.
But maybe, maybe, there's one reader out there who doesn't. It
wouldn't be fair to leave her in the dark, would it? In the spirit
of sisterhood I think I should provide the Youtube link. Purely for
research purposes, you understand ... Simply click on Colin...
……
Ahem. Perhaps, while I wait for my blood pressure to subside, I
should tell you a little about this book. A Professionelle member
loaned it to me, knowing my liking for romantic fiction. When she
mentioned that Jennifer Crusie, the doyenne of romantic comedy, had
edited it, I was doubly keen to read it. I heard Ms Crusie at a NZ
Romance Writers conference a couple of years ago and she spoke a
great deal of good sense about the craft of writing, the business
of publishing - and the realities of being a woman.
Ms Crusie's introduction to the book is short and sweet. She
describes this anthology of twenty five essays as a series of Dates
with Jane, "where some writers were serious about her, some
were looking for a good time and some, frankly, took advantage of
her." It's an excellent assessment.
The Serious Stuff
For all I'm being fluffy in this review, the serious pieces were
the best. In the 'History and Jane' section, I found the very best
essay. Jo Beverley, a prolific and highly respected writer of
Regency romances, brought the monetary realities facing the Misses
Bennet into sharp relief in The Gold Diggers of 1813. She
explained, in a system designed to maintain stability of property
through male primogeniture, how the younger children and wife were
provided for after the husband's death. Turns out that the
daughters' dowries, the younger sons' starter money, and the wife's
life income in her widowhood (jointure or pin money) were all
funded by what the wife brought into the marriage!
If you know your P&P, you will know Mrs Bennet brought very
little into the marriage. Mr B married her for her looks (certainly
not her brains). His cunning plan was to have a son so that once
the boy reached full age they could together break the entail on
the estate. That way, Mr B and Son could then deplete the estate to
provide dowries for the girls. But alas, Mr and Mrs B produced five
daughters and no son.
Marriage, the Holy Grail of the original book, was therefore
vital as the only route to a comfortable income for the girls. I
don't think it's any accident that Lizzy falls in love with the
grandeur of Pemberley before she realises how much she loves
Fitzwilliam Darcy. You can love a man just that little bit more
when you've seen where he gets his ten thousand pounds a year from.
Jane Austen was nothing if not pragmatic.
Good Times
Speaking of pragmatic attitudes, one of the good time essays
explores the story of Charlotte in a contemporary setting. You
remember Charlotte Lucas, Lizzie Bennet's best friend, the one who
accepted Mr Collins' proposal? The same Mr Collins who was a
brown-nosing bore and who, moreover, had proposed to Charlotte just
a day after proposing unsuccessfully to Lizzy? How could Charlotte
accept? How could she settle? Melissa Senate, who writes chick-lit
and contributed Charlotte's Side of the Story, gives her
modern Charlotte an entirely believable motivation for choosing a
devoted but infuriating husband. Charlotte wants a child, and she's
not prepared to wait for a grand passion to reach that goal.
The anthology contains several more stories that reinterpret
characters' motivations and explore what was going on in the minds
of more lightly drawn characters. Ugly, bookish Mary, the third
sister, gets her own story - and a happy ending (you'll have to
read it to find out the details). Georgiana, Darcy's little sister,
moves out of the long shadow of having planned (but never carried
out) an indiscretion. Her happy ending includes one in the eye for
Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
The Rest
And the taking advantage essays? For my money, one in this
category is the essay by Mercedes Lackey. In her day job, Ms Lackey
writes fantasy stories about Elemental Magicians and she
self-indulgently worked this private theme into Jane's work. And as
for the contribution entitled Jane and the Masturbating
Critic by Adam Roberts… it might have made some excellent
points about both literary criticism and general readers, but I
could scarcely get past the awful title. And I hated the corny
ending.
The anthology offers plenty of choice and none of the pieces
will tax your brain. I haven't even mentioned the story that
inspired the cover illustration - how differently everything would
have worked out if cell phones had been around in 1813. Or the
thoughtful essay on the Bollywood version, Bride and Prejudice,
that explored which elements India changed, which it kept, and
why.
My Firth Hero
I've saved the section on 'Jane's Hero' till last. Bizarrely,
for such a rich, deep vein, it contains only two essays. The second
one, by Lani Diane Rich, entitled My Firth Love was
fabulous. The poor writer was driven to distraction by Colin
Firth's swoon-worthiness in the part. She is not alone. Ms Crusie
herself seems to feel the same. In her introduction she comments
that Pride and Prejudice has remained unchanged through all the
years of adaptations and academic criticism...
except that Mr Darcy now looks like Colin
Firth.
Does he? In the interests, once more, of research, I have
dutifully trawled through hundreds of images on the internet to
bring you a representative set of stills from the BBC's inimitable
1995 production.
To be balanced, I must point out that other men have played Mr
Darcy. In 2005, after this book was published, another adaptation
of P&P was released on the big screen with Matthew Macfadyen in
the key role. Martin Henderson was William Darcy a year earlier in
Bride & Prejudice. Peter Cushing, Mr Hammer Horror himself,
played the part in a TV series in 1952 and way back in 1940, Sir
Laurence Olivier took on the role.
Check out the following gallery, presented in date order - who's
your Mr Darcy? I'll leave you to ponder this question for a
luscious moment before you get back to the real world.
Flirting With Pride And Prejudice: Fresh
Perspectives On The Original Chick Lit Masterpiece (Smart Pop
Series) available at Amazon