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Urged on by a conversation at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tempestsarekind's, I present my meta on why Bridget Jones is possibly the nastiest insult to Elizabeth Bennet - and the readership - that could ever have been foisted on the public.
Pride and Prejudice's heroine was charismatic, opinionated, proper, and - more importantly - fiercely intelligent and self-controlled. She did not suffer fools gladly or quietly, making her one of literature's first snarky heroines. Even when Elizabeth was completely wrong - say, about Wickham's character - she wasn't just reacting to what was said, she was working off of all the available evidence.
She was almost never impulsive. Certainly never about important things. She *always* weighed her options and took the one that would let her keep both her dignity and her long-term self-respect. That's why she could turn down the humiliating proposals of Collins and Darcy despite knowing that a yes answer would mean security for her family.
Most importantly for this argument, the things that were out of Elizabeth's control were truly out of her control. It wasn't in her power to break the entail on the house or to make her mother or Mr. Collins less clueless. The one thing she put her foot down on - Lydia going off with the soldiers - was overridden. Only for the entire family to find out that she had been oh, so right.
Several centuries later, enter Bridget Jones. Even her author says she's based on Elizabeth Bennet... except that if you look at her, she's as far from the smart, restrained, dignified Elizabeth as you can get. Bridget cannot think further ahead than about 24 hours. Her life is a constant mess of what she wants, what she's denied herself, what she thinks she deserves.
But the things that she keeps claiming she can't control are all in her power. It's up to her to regulate her diet, stop smoking, exercise, manage her career, and yet for some reason all of those elude her. Even her biggest humiliations don't come from someone else acting upon her (in direct contravention of her advice), it's because SHE was stupid enough to speak out of turn, leave her diary out, etc.
Astempestsarekind points out, Bridget Jones' Diary takes a heroine, in Elizabeth Bennet, with whom we get to see an intellectual and emotional inner life, and replaced her with someone who was all about cataloguing the external: how much Milk Tray, how many cigarettes, how many pounds.
No matter what Helen Fielding says, Bridget cannot possibly be based on Elizabeth.
Not when her emotional and maturity levels are such a match with Lydia's.
But by making Lydia, wild, reckless, clueless Lydia into the heroine, Fielding did a lot of women a huge disservice, because Bridget ushered in the era of "neurotic is the new cute." It was the enormous success of Bridget that led to a massive upswing in heroines who are jealous, shallow, obsessed with the external, show exasperation instead of empathy to everyone around them, and completely incapable of turning down the momentary temptation. Laura Levine's Jaine Austen mysteries (not to be confused with Stephanie Barron's lame attempts to cash in on a much better author) are all about a modern girl who just can't say no to anybody or anything and then bats her eyes in pretty confusion wondering why her life is completely out of her control. (I finally got so disgusted with the character that in the last book I reviewed, I snapped The book is such a tribute to the choices [Jaine] didn't make that it ought to be dedicated to Robert Frost.)
Not only is it insulting as hell to assume that a normal modern woman is by nature a complete and utter mess, books in the vein of Diary also assume that women cannot take control. That they NEED a man to save them.
Go reread P&P again. Someone in the family had to make a good marriage or they'd *starve* when Mr. Bennet died. But at no point did Elizabeth actually need a man to save her from the consequences of her own actions. Never. Who did? Lydia. Lydia, the character Austen herself used as a horrible warning, not a shining example.
And that's why I'd rather reread P&P than most of the modern romances. I certainly find more of myself and what I want to emulate in Elizabeth, not Bridget and her daughters.
tempestsarekind's, I present my meta on why Bridget Jones is possibly the nastiest insult to Elizabeth Bennet - and the readership - that could ever have been foisted on the public.Pride and Prejudice's heroine was charismatic, opinionated, proper, and - more importantly - fiercely intelligent and self-controlled. She did not suffer fools gladly or quietly, making her one of literature's first snarky heroines. Even when Elizabeth was completely wrong - say, about Wickham's character - she wasn't just reacting to what was said, she was working off of all the available evidence.
She was almost never impulsive. Certainly never about important things. She *always* weighed her options and took the one that would let her keep both her dignity and her long-term self-respect. That's why she could turn down the humiliating proposals of Collins and Darcy despite knowing that a yes answer would mean security for her family.
Most importantly for this argument, the things that were out of Elizabeth's control were truly out of her control. It wasn't in her power to break the entail on the house or to make her mother or Mr. Collins less clueless. The one thing she put her foot down on - Lydia going off with the soldiers - was overridden. Only for the entire family to find out that she had been oh, so right.
Several centuries later, enter Bridget Jones. Even her author says she's based on Elizabeth Bennet... except that if you look at her, she's as far from the smart, restrained, dignified Elizabeth as you can get. Bridget cannot think further ahead than about 24 hours. Her life is a constant mess of what she wants, what she's denied herself, what she thinks she deserves.
But the things that she keeps claiming she can't control are all in her power. It's up to her to regulate her diet, stop smoking, exercise, manage her career, and yet for some reason all of those elude her. Even her biggest humiliations don't come from someone else acting upon her (in direct contravention of her advice), it's because SHE was stupid enough to speak out of turn, leave her diary out, etc.
As
tempestsarekind points out, Bridget Jones' Diary takes a heroine, in Elizabeth Bennet, with whom we get to see an intellectual and emotional inner life, and replaced her with someone who was all about cataloguing the external: how much Milk Tray, how many cigarettes, how many pounds.No matter what Helen Fielding says, Bridget cannot possibly be based on Elizabeth.
Not when her emotional and maturity levels are such a match with Lydia's.
But by making Lydia, wild, reckless, clueless Lydia into the heroine, Fielding did a lot of women a huge disservice, because Bridget ushered in the era of "neurotic is the new cute." It was the enormous success of Bridget that led to a massive upswing in heroines who are jealous, shallow, obsessed with the external, show exasperation instead of empathy to everyone around them, and completely incapable of turning down the momentary temptation. Laura Levine's Jaine Austen mysteries (not to be confused with Stephanie Barron's lame attempts to cash in on a much better author) are all about a modern girl who just can't say no to anybody or anything and then bats her eyes in pretty confusion wondering why her life is completely out of her control. (I finally got so disgusted with the character that in the last book I reviewed, I snapped The book is such a tribute to the choices [Jaine] didn't make that it ought to be dedicated to Robert Frost.)
Not only is it insulting as hell to assume that a normal modern woman is by nature a complete and utter mess, books in the vein of Diary also assume that women cannot take control. That they NEED a man to save them.
Go reread P&P again. Someone in the family had to make a good marriage or they'd *starve* when Mr. Bennet died. But at no point did Elizabeth actually need a man to save her from the consequences of her own actions. Never. Who did? Lydia. Lydia, the character Austen herself used as a horrible warning, not a shining example.
And that's why I'd rather reread P&P than most of the modern romances. I certainly find more of myself and what I want to emulate in Elizabeth, not Bridget and her daughters.
