Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), describes a society whose members, constantly fearing the loss of personal reputation, ask themselves this question like a reprimand: What will people say? The title’s timeless alliteration also displays how words shape reputation’s near relation–memory. Soniah Kamal’s Unmarriageable (2019), a retelling of Austen’s novel, explores the way in which language impacts cultural and personal memory. Set in Pakistan in the early 2000s, the novel follows Alys Binat and her sisters as they navigate the marriage market, female identity, and British and Pakistani influences on their self-expression. Kamal translates “What will people say?” into Urdu: ” کہیںگے/ Log kya kahenge” (35). She applies a post-colonialist perspective to…
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Merry Christmas to All, and to Emma a Good Knightley
In both Douglas McGrath’s and Autumn de Wilde’s adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma (1815), Christmas dinner scenes intimate the intersection of the familial love and comfort associated with Emma and Mr. Knightley’s romance. At the same time, these scenes draw attention to Knightley’s often paternalistic love for Emma. Taken together, these scenes at once associate Knightley to the comfort, conventions, and even the colors of the Christmas season, and crystallize his identity as the story’s central patriarchal figure. De Wilde’s Emma. (2020) shapes its “Winter.” chapter along the intersections of the romantic and familial plots of the story. The chapter opens with the arrival of Emma’s sister Isabella and her…
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Baby, It’s Cold Inside: McGrath’s Family Warmth and de Wilde’s Chilling Christmas Dinner
Douglas McGrath’s Emma (1996) stresses the importance of kindness and familial harmony, themes which are absent from Autumn de Wilde’s cool rendition, Emma. (2020). In the novel, Emma learns to be kind and caring to others as well as be considerate and helpful after her behavior is called out, and McGrath showcases this journey from performed kindness to genuine kindness. In de Wilde’s retelling, Emma remains cool throughout, even as she matures. The novel’s Christmas scene depicts a community gathering with its members caring for each other. Emma is witness to warm family togetherness. She cheerfully banters while talking to the Westons and Mr. Knightley. Family is important to everyone…
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“A Holly Jolly Christmas”: Oppositional Binaries in McGrath and de Wilde’s Emma
Both Douglas McGrath and Autumn de Wilde seize upon the holiday scenes in Emma (1815), the only Austen novel with a Christmas scene. Each film’s Christmas scene display the cultivation of relationships and community-building. However, in their respective representations of Emma and Mr. Elton (McGrath) and Emma and Mr. Knightley (de Wilde), the movies underscore binary and oppositional relationships. In these relationships a mirroring occurs, positioning Mr. Knightley and Mr. Elton against each other with Emma as an anchoring force—all against the backdrop of Christmas. In both films, Christmas becomes a kind of oppositional holiday, one that brings out the combativeness of others, not one that creates relationships among them.…
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“Do You See What I See?”: Christmas Scenes in Douglas McGrath’s and Autumn de Wilde’s Emma
The integration of the holiday season and all things Jane Austen might appear the doing of popular retellings. But many of Jane Austen’s contemporaries were probably reading Emma on Christmas and the days following the holiday given the novel’s publication on December 23rd, 1815. Although the overlap of the holiday and the novel’s publication is accidental, Christmas is mentioned eleven times throughout the narrative and key plot turns occur during and immediately after the Christmas party at Randalls. In fact, while we often turn to the novel’s opening to recite the famous first line which lists everything that Emma is—“handsome, clever, and rich” —and has—”a comfortable home,” a “happy disposition,”…
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Most Ardently: Pamela Aidan’s Mr. Darcy in An Assembly Such As This
Pamela Aidan’s An Assembly Such as This, A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman (2003) is a partial retelling of Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice (1813) from the perspective of Mr. Darcy. It is the first in a series of three novels by Aidan that follow the story of Pride and Prejudice, and this volume covers the first part of Austen’s famous novel once the Bingleys have moved into the neighborhood bringing their friend, Mr. Darcy, with them. Aidan’s novel covers the events that take place from the Netherfield Ball up until Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley’s departure to London through Mr. Darcy’s perspective. She creates a character who looks…
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Yours Forevermore, Darcy: Exploring the Feminine Side of the Romance Hero
Mr. Darcy, the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice (1813), has become the model for many romance heroes. According to Deborah Kaplan, the romance hero is characterized by being “self-assured, hot-tempered, capable of passion, and often mysteriously moody” (171). All of these qualities are evident in Darcy’s character. Yet, despite Mr. Darcy’s undeniable status as a hero, his narrative remains a point of intrigue for readers and writers. Darcy’s shift from the “arrogant young man” at the beginning of Austen’s novel to the “polite gentleman whom Elizabeth marries” has generated an ongoing debate about his true character (Moler 491). The mystery surrounding Darcy might be why KaraLynne Mackrory’s novel, Yours Forevermore,…
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Jane Fairfax and Emma Woodhouse Can’t Be Friends
Emma Woodhouse is quite atypical for an Austen heroine in that her prettiness and charm are bolstered by both financial security and status, albeit within the intimacy of Highbury. This is an advantage not experienced by Anne Elliot, Fanny Price, the Bennets, or the Dashwoods, who for all their attributes, either have no fortune or only a tenuous proximity to one at the start of their stories. Emma is also arguably the most unlikeable Austen heroine, which is no accident on the part of the author who was famously quoted by her nephew James Edward as having stated that she had written “a heroine whom no one but [her]self will…
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Old Maids and Mind Games in Austenland
Jerusha Hess’ Austenland (2013) centers on Jane Hayes (Keri Russell), a thirtysomething Jane Austen devotee who is having difficulty in the dating world. The audience is led to believe that Jane’s primary problem is her all-consuming love for Austen’s romantic stories. In one scene, Jane is watching BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with her date. He nibbles provocatively at her neck while she’s distracted by the sight of a sodden Colin Firth walking onto the banks of the lake on his Pemberley estate. Austenland follows Jane as she decides to become her own Austen heroine in a last-ditch effort to exchange modern spinsterhood for a love story written only…
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Presumption: An Entertainment
Julia Braun Kessler (1926-2012) and Gabrielle Donnelly’s Presumptions: An Entertainment: A Sequel to Pride and Prejudice (1993) offers a continuation of the well-loved 1813 novel, from the perspective of Georgiana Darcy. Written under the nom de plume Julia Barrett, who has also written two other Austen engagements, Presumption introduces readers to the happy marriage of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, explores Georgiana Darcy’s coming of age, and follows the Bennet family through another set of crises. The focus of the novel is marriage, particularly the marriage of Georgiana Darcy. While echoing the beginning of Pride and Prejudice (1813), as any discerning reader will recognize, Presumptions opens with “If, as the prevailing wisdom…
