This week saw the election of an American Pope, the 80th anniversary of VE day, a UK - US trade deal and a possible war between India and Pakistan. However, oddly enough, what has been keeping me up at night is the very real possibility of a woke Pride and Prejudice. It was announced that Netflix are to adapt one of the greatest novels in the English canon, Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen for the small screen.
The six-part series will star Emma Corrin as Elizabeth Bennet, Jack Lowden as Mr Darcy and Olivia Colman as the mother Mrs Bennet. The adaptation will be written by the author and Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton.
I am going into this with an open mind, truly, but alarm bells are ringing already. Olivia Colman is a good choice as the anxiety filled Mrs Bennet, a part she will no doubt have much fun with. Personally, I always thought Mrs Bennet has been subject to undeserved criticism over the years.
Mrs Bennet is usually dismissed as either silly or scheming (surely you cannot be both) but what else was a mother of five daughters with a modest entailed property to do but make it “the business of her life” to get her daughters married? If the daughters remained unmarried Mrs Bennet and the girls would have to leave the family home Longbourn and become homeless on the death of husband and father Mr Bennet. The cousin Mr Collins would inherit the family home. The prospect of homelessness would certainly impact my ‘nerves’ and concentrate my mind. In fact Mrs Bennett would be very much at home with today’s obsession with mental health. It will be interesting to see what Colman does with the part.
It is not like Mr Bennet was of any use. He spent all his time escaping to his library. He refers to his daughters Kitty and Lydia as ‘uncommonly foolish.’ And whose fault is that might I ask but the patriarch of the family? So negligent in fact is Mr Bennet as a father that the entire family is threatened when the youngest daughter elopes with a rouge. That’s on you daddy dearest, not Mrs Bennet.
I don’t fancy Emma Corrin as Elizabeth Bennet. The same error was made when Kiera Knightley was cast as Lizzie twenty years ago in a film version of the novel. Both actresses are too slim and too pretty to play Elizabeth. The big question is who will play Jane, described as a rare beauty in the novel. She must be prettier than Elizabeth or the entire thing falls at the first hurdle.
If Elizabeth is prettier than Jane, it makes no sense then when Mr Darcy first refuses to dance with Elizabeth at the critical ballroom scene. Mr Bingley who has been dancing with Jane all night encourages Darcy to dance. But Mr Darcy protests that it would be positively beneath him to dance with any of the ladies at the gathering. “You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room” he tells Bingley.
When encouraged to ask Elizabeth to dance, Mr Darcy replies, “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.” So that’s that then. Mr Darcy has revealed his pride which will return to haunt him. The point is, Elizabeth has quick wit and fine eyes but she is not a stunning beauty. That honour belongs to Jane so whoever is cast as the elder Miss Bennet she must be more attractive than Emma Corrin.
Which brings me to Mr Darcy. Now, like every suburban mother in her 40s, there is truly only one Mr Darcy and that man is Colin Firth. They can trot out whatever hot young thing is the latest hot young thing and they will still fall far short of the performance Colin Firth gave in playing Mr Darcy in the BBC adaptation in 1995. Yes, that adaptation is 30 years old this year and it can never be bettered. But actors have got to eat, hence why we have this Netflix 2025 version.
I never cared for Matthew Macfadyen who played Mr Darcy in the 2005 film opposite Kiera Knightley. He seemed to think being angry and sulky was the same as being proud, brooding and handsome. They are not. The key point about Mr Darcy’s character however is not just his haughtiness and his pride but his sharp eye. Mr Darcy is always surveying the scene, weighing people up and forming judgments of those around him.
This is completely foreign to today’s audience who spend all their time with their heads stuck in a smartphone. They wouldn’t spot an inappropriate attachment if it was standing right in front of them but Mr Darcy watches carefully. Sadly, he also comes to the wrong conclusion judging that Jane’s attachment to Mr Bingley insufficient for Bingley to propose.
In the crucial scene where Mr Darcy and Elizabeth finally dance together, Elizabeth questions Mr Darcy closely on the wisdom of forming character judgments too firmly. The chemistry between them is electric, the intellectual sparring unmatched in modern dramas.
(Jane Austen said of her heroine, ‘I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least I do not know.’)
Jack Lowden will play Mr Darcy. I admit I never heard of this chap before and it turns out he is married to Irish actress Saoirse Ronan. The powers that be have decided to go with a ginger Darcy, which in all seriousness is a mistake. Perhaps I can get past that but I doubt it.
What I do not want to read about in the coming weeks are the following words, modern, a drama for a modern audience, an up – to – date version, or reimagined. Lord, save us from a “reimagined” Pride and Prejudice.
The Netflix peeps do not have a better imagination than Jane Austen. We do not need their take on the social mores of the time. I want to see the social mores of the Napoleonic era presented to me as Jane Austen presents them in the novel. What I want to see is a drama that is ‘faithful to the original’. What we need is some good old fashioned humility, not the arrogance of a bunch of people who think they know better and can write better than Jane Austen herself.
The only words worse than modern or reimagined are diverse and inclusive. Keep your diversity for Bridgerton which I enjoyed as it was a modern book adapted for a modern audience. Therefore the casting in that programme was fine.
Pride and Prejudice however depicts a very exclusive world. For instance Lady Catherine De Bourgh objects to the engagement between Darcy and Elizabeth as she feels Elizabeth is not within Darcy’s class. The class system excludes people – exclusion is the entire point!
Elizabeth in this conversation counters not ‘oh love conquers all’ or ‘maybe Darcy would like to slum it with me for a while’ or ‘shut your pie-hole you old bat.’ Instead, she points out to Lady Catherine that yes Mr Darcy is a gentlemen and “I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far we are equal.”
There was a gargantuan difference in incomes between Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet but they were of the same class therefore Elizabeth can make a suitable wife for Mr Darcy and mistress for the big pile of bricks that is his estate at Pemberley.
(Some costumes from the Jane Austen museum in Bath that I visited with my daughters in August 2022.)
Likewise Charlotte Lucas daughter of Sir William Lucas, Mr Collins who is to inherit the Bennet family home and rogue Wickham are all critical characters who must be cast appropriately. If the Netflix crowd decides to get their diversity wand out and have us believe that actually there were plenty of vicars of colour around in 1813 I am going to throw all my toys out of the pram.
Just don’t waste time and energy adapting the story if you can’t be bothered to be faithful to the original work. Also do not spend millions on the costumes, cutting the empire line dresses to perfection, if you are going to make them out of Nylon. Nylon was not invented then – it should be silk for the snobby Bingley sisters and cotton for everyone else. And no Georgiana, Darcy’s younger sister, was not secretly transgender. This is not why she nearly ran off with Wickham. I just want to say that now.
If Netflix manages to stay faithful to Pride and Prejudice as portrayed by Jane Austen, that is an artistic and political win. It is a sign of our post-woke times proving that hope springs eternal. Now, where is my bonnet?
Dolly Alderton once wrote something along the lines of a woman’s body can be given to someone else (as in through sex) but her heart cannot. Through her other work she seems too much of a proponent of casual sex. I watched a series based on her life and work (titled; everything I know about love) and found her to be oddly vacuous. Needless to say I don’t have high hopes for her version of Pride and Prejudice but I may watch it so I can write about the various issues.
Thanks for your article.
One of the co-founders of Netflix was Marc Bernays Randolph of the Edward Bernays family. ( Edward was the founder of modern advertising and author of the book Propaganda ).