Devotees of Jane Austen’s fiction might understandably express little interest in contemporary novels dealing with the urban singles scene of the late 20th century. A sensibility that revels in the long ago world of country dancing, chaste heroines, and polite courtships in delightful villages might well be put off by today’s typically sexually promiscuous heroines. Yet in her two recent bestsellers chronicling the adventures of a single modern thirty-something Londoner, British author Helen Fielding appeals to both sensibilities. In Bridget Jones's Diary and its sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Fielding presents a thoroughly modern heroine who is surprisingly reminiscent of, and at times as endearing as, Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Elliot. What’s more, Fielding provides a glossy and humorous prism through which Austen’s themes are refracted. Fielding sees the connection between Austen’s youth-oriented culture and its attendant problems of finding suitable mates and Bridget Jones’s contemporary singles scene. An astute observer of today’s mating rituals, Fielding is straightforward in connecting her novels to Austen’s: “I shamelessly stole the plot from Pride and Prejudice for the first book. I thought it had been very well market-researched over a number of centuries and she probably wouldn’t mind” (Daily Telegraph 11/20/99).As for the sequel, she says, “I borrowed quite a bit from Persuasion for this book too, there’s a Benwick character and persuasion is one of the themes; Anne Wentworth was persuaded out of a relationship by her elders. Bridget is persuaded out of a relationship by—ironically enough—too many self-help books about how to improve your relations” (Daily Telegraph 11/20/99). Even
without Fielding’s admission that she does not suffer from the anxiety
of influence, Austen fans would immediately recognize the parallels between
plot episodes and characterizations. In
her first diary entry, Bridget writes of her encounter with a Mr. Mark
Darcy at Una and Geoffrey Alconbury’s New Year's Day Turkey Curry Buffet: “It
struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your
own looking snooty at a party” (Bridget Jones's Diary 9, 12). According
to Bridget’s mother, Mr. Darcy is “‘one
of those top-notch barristers. Masses
of money’” (9).And
though it is near the close of the 20th century, “in
manner of” (to use one of Bridget’s favorite phrases) Mrs. Bennet in Pride
and Prejudice, Mrs. Jones is desperately trying to get her daughter married.
Mr. Darcy, available, rich,
successful, the son of old friends, is her number one target. As
part of her matchmaking strategy, Mrs. Jones has been planning to have
Bridget and Mark meet at this very Turkey Curry Buffet, a contemporary
analogue to the Meryton assembly. Alas,
by Bridget’s frank, humorous, and accurate estimation, the result is a
“day of horror” (9).Her first impressions? “Mark
Darcy . . . Yuk . . . clearly odd” (11, 13). Fielding’s
deliberate weaving of the plots, characters, and themes of Pride and
Prejudice and Persuasion into her own novels is hardly unique. The
movie Clueless did much the same with Austen’s Emma. Art
imitating art. But Fielding cleverly
raises the ante, working at a more self-consciously intertextual level:
art imitating art imitating art. For
example, she portrays Bridget and her friends Jude and Sharon as obsessed
with the BBC’s 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice. Bridget
writes:
Adding
yet another self-referential layer to the intertextual complexity, Fielding
and company have hired Colin Firth to play the role of Mark Darcy in next
year’s film of Bridget Jones’s Diary (Mcdaid 6/9/00).One
can only wonder if the parodies and intertextual jokes will end there. In
a film of the sequel, will Mr. Firth be called upon to play himself in
the interview, as well as the Mark Darcy character? While
both of Fielding’s novels were bestsellers around the world, the response
has not all been favorable. Feminists
have complained that Bridget “isn’t a very impressive role model” (Daily
Telegraph 11/20/99).One can
easily see their point. Like Elizabeth Bennet, Bridget has a lively
mind, but some critics might characterize her as “scatterbrained.” She
and her fellow “Singleton” (as opposed to “Smug Married”) girlfriends are
consumed with finding suitable men. Their
careers and paychecks cannot compensate for their loneliness and fear of
“dying alone and being found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian”
(Diary
18).If in Pride and Prejudice
Charlotte and Elizabeth debate the judiciousness of a woman’s showing or
concealing her affection for a man (21-2), in Bridget Jones’s Diary
Bridget and her anxious girlfriends desperately scour magazines and self-help
books for the key to the male psyche. Periodically,
they convene emergency summit meetings to engage in heavy duty "feminist
ranting" about “commitment phobic” men (Diary 17,107-9).These
decidedly unfeminist get-togethers invariably turn into junk food orgies
accompanied by prodigious amounts of wine. Bridget’s
frustrated friend Sharon says, “we women are only vulnerable because we
are a pioneer generation daring to refuse to compromise in love and relying
on our own economic power” (18). But
two hundred years before, Elizabeth Bennet was just as adamant in her refusal
to compromise, though she lacked the economic power. In
her famous remarks on Charlotte’s decision to marry Mr. Collins, Elizabeth
is emphatically pioneering: “‘the
woman who marries him, cannot have a proper way of thinking. You
shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle
and integrity, nor endeavor to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness
is prudence, and insensibility of danger, security for happiness’” (Pride
and Prejudice 135-6). Responding
to the inevitable criticism that attaches itself to a work that interfaces
with a masterpiece of fiction, Fielding argues that she has written “about
all the secret anxieties that—apparently—lots of women have but don’t like
to admit to. It was very interesting
going to readings all over the world and talking to—say very whizzy businesswomen
in New York—who whispered over the signing table that they related to Bridget”
(Daily Telegraph 11/20/99).Fielding,
like Austen, is an observer with a very satirical eye. Would
Austen relate to Bridget? Austen
would probably be appalled by the immaturity, lewdness, and general lack
of self-control exhibited by Bridget and her friends, but it is not far-fetched
to imagine this kind of character in one of Austen’s novels. Lydia Bennet, for example, would fit right in with Bridget’s group of women who
are desperate to be married. And
Austen would probably appreciate Fielding’s astute characterizations, if
not her language. Shrewd,
biting, and at times hilarious, the language of Bridget’s diaries conveys
the frankness and urgency that separates our time from Austen’s. Bridget
keeps a record of her vices—alcohol and tobacco consumption, weight gained—and
expresses herself in a peculiar vernacular of abbreviations, missing articles
and pronouns, and slightly warped syntax. The
effect gives Bridget—and her words—a reality that a more carefully cadenced
text would not.
In
Bridget
Jones’s Diary, for example, Mark Darcy predictably finds himself in
a position to rectify a scandalous affair of the utmost embarrassment to
Bridget. “He started to pace around
the room,” Bridget writes, “firing questions like a top barrister . . .
it was pretty damn sexy, I can tell you”(238-9).Her
reaction is modern and visceral. In
contrast, Elizabeth Bennet’s reaction to precisely the same circumstance
is summarized demurely by a narrator who tells us that “never had she so
honestly felt that she could have loved him, as now, when all love must
be in vain” (Pride and Prejudice 278). In
Bridget
Jones: The Edge of Reason, Bridget and Mark gradually transform into
Persuasion’s Anne
Elliot and Frederick Wentworth, lovers who find their relationship strained
by misunderstandings, miscommunication, and outside interference. Here
again, we find the contrast in the blunt, inelegant first person narration:
“[I]f we love someone it’s pretty hard to get them out of our system when
they bugger off,” Bridget remarks “ruefully” (Edge of Reason 233).
Bridget
echoes Anne Elliot’s sentiments, though not exactly her manner: ‘“We
certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It
is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We
cannot help ourselves ’” (Persuasion232). By maintaining Bridget’s voice throughout,
the diary format allows readers to judge the characters and their predicaments
for themselves. The omniscient narrator
of Austen’s novels is replaced by an unreliable, solipsistic voice that
creates its own sense of reality and coherence. As
readers, we have the opportunity to accept or dismiss Bridget’s subjective
assessments and point of view, but we also respond to the humor of the
first-person narration of a self-absorbed young singleton as she begins
to get to know herself.
Few
readers will see Fielding’s books as great literature. The
“excursion” to Thailand in the sequel is a bit over the top, for instance.
Yet,
while the Bridget Jones books may not be read two hundred years hence,
they do provide us with recognizable portraits of Austen's women as modern
singletons relating to “fin-de-millennium males” (Edge of Reason
286). They show the tenuous position
of women who accept the fact that they must be married to achieve social
acceptance. As an observer of contemporary
mores, Fielding shows how the problems of a socially mobile youth culture
have not really changed in two hundred years. Finding
mates in a world where single women outnumber available men is just as
important for Bridget’s coterie as it was for Elizabeth Bennet’s sisters,
friends, and acquaintances. The
Bridget Jones novels are essentially palimpsests upon which both
Fielding’s texts and Austen’s co-exist. Their
ultimate value may lie in the insights they provide into Austen’s work. By
“modernizing” Austen, Fielding not only honors her model, but also validates
her perceptions in a new century. Works Cited
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