by Molly Ivors
Once upon a time, when Thers and I were in grad school, we had a colleague, the child of a prominent economist from the developing world. She was bright enough, but she seemed fundamentally confused by the premise of graduate school. One day over the seminar table in a course on race and nationalism in literature, we were discussing Thomas Dixon's execrable novel The Clansman, the book upon which Birth of a Nation was based. Our colleague revealed that she had watched Birth of a Nation before the class. The professor, a young, perky fellow, asked "How did it compare to the book?" and she responded that she didn't know: she had watched the movie in lieu of the book. The professor, in a surprisingly gentle yet pointed moment, replied, "This is graduate school. You have to read the book."
MoDo needs to read the book. Shocking, I know, but passing out over a cosmopolitan ten minutes into during Bridget Jones' Diary does not, in fact, reveal much about Austen at all.
First, a movie is always an interpretation. Screenwriters, directors, and actors pick and choose. I know one Austen scholar who deplores even the BBC P&P because, he says, Colin Firth (who, should he improbably arrive on the doorstep of Liberal Mountain, could sweep me away in a heartbeat) plays Darcy as Edward Rochester. And Rochester, of course, is based on Byron. (And all women's romance novels are based on either Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, or Pride and Prejudice, but that of course is another conversation.) Austen had a fair few nasty comments on Romanticism (see: Sense and Sensibility) and intended Darcy's flaws to be those of manner, not judgment.
Second (and related), both Fitzwilliam and Mark Darcy are fundamentally decent but introverted, they do genuinely good things (in both Austen and Helen Fielding's clever retelling) and they're not bad guys, and Elizabeth/Bridget is mistaken in her first impression.
Let's review, shall we? We'll start with P&P, in which Elizabeth's flighty and shallow younger sister risks the reputation and future of the entire family by scampering off with a charming but scummy scam artist. Darcy, the first in a long line of people Wickham has wronged, chases him down, pays his debts, and forces Wickham into a kinda sorta respectable arrangement to save the Bennett family. In Bridget Jones' Diary, Mark Darcy disappears to chase down Bridget's mother and her scam-artist boyfriend, who have bilked most of their social circle out of money. Even the miniseries of P&P only deals with this episode cursorily--it's pretty complicated. And the film of BJD doesn't deal with it at all.
And so, Mo, what you reveal here is your own shallowness. Go ahead, compare Obama to Darcy. Let him reveal himself to be the one who will go to extraordinary lengths to save us from our own foolishness and eight years of Wickham rule. Of course, Maureen, the giggling fool who doesn't even realize she's been fucked over because the parties are so jolly, is also prominently featured in P&P: she's Lydia.
And I'll be Elizabeth, Mo. I'll learn to love the guy the way she did. And so will all those "dead-enders" you're obsessed with. We'll be fine, and we're certainly not going to vote for Ebeneezer McScrooge. What will you do?