Focus Features’s cinematic adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice garnered decidedly mixed critical reviews and audience responses when it was released in Fall 2005.  This version was purported to be glossier yet grittier than former adaptations and was best-noted for the recruitment of rising star Keira Knightley to play Austen’s much-loved heroine Elizabeth Bennet.  But for all the cinematic flashiness of the new film, former adaptations of Pride and Prejudice—in particular the 1995 BBC TV series—have retained a larger, loyal and more vocal fanbase, raising the question:  was the 2005 Pride & Prejudice ultimately a case of style over substance?

 

The 2005 Pride & Prejudice focuses primarily on Elizabeth Bennet’s own emotional journey, her maturation plot, offering us a largely uncluttered narrative centered on the heroine.  Simply put, the film offers the tale of a young girl on the cusp of womanhood who falls deeply in love, a theme with timeless romantic appeal.   It can be seen as a refreshing feminine counterpoint to a tendency in much period adaptation to ramp up the masculine viewpoint.  Arguably, the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, with its abundance of “extra” Darcy in comparison to the novel, emphasized the masculine, as screenwriter Andrew Davies often switched the focus away from Elizabeth to the hero.  Davies even inserted multiple invented scenes to afford the audience closer access to Darcy’s perspective and inner life, thus ensuring that the audience was sufficiently wooed by him as a viable, sympathetic romantic match.¹  Notably, the 2005 Pride & Prejudice rarely strays from Elizabeth’s viewpoint, and in comparison to Colin Firth’s Darcy in 1995, Matthew Macfadyen’s Darcy in 2005 has limited airtime.

 

Certainly, there is much to admire in the 2005 adaptation, most especially for those who like to revel in the aesthetic pleasures of cinematic narrative.  British director Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice never fails to be visually engaging.  Photography is lush and fluent, art design is impressive, and the musical score from Dario Marianelli is enchanting.  Cinematographically, narrative is moved along at a brisk and efficient rate.  Every frame is chock-full of ideas, action, and momentum.  Joe Wright also demonstrates a wonderful choreographic talent for organizing space and people.  The long tracking shots he uses for two major dance sequences, in addition to the opening scenes at the Bennets’ house, all comprise brilliant film-making, exhibiting a true mastery of the art of telling a story utilizing visual cues.  Wright’s skills behind the camera exemplify the classic film school exhortation to “show” not “tell.”  Wright also deploys, to good effect, a wide range of filmic devices, notably to enact transitions from one scene to another.  For example, Elizabeth circles slowly on a swing in the Bennets’ backyard, as the scenes and the seasons change around her, moving us through time.  There is a constant flow, a fluidity, between images and moments in this film, ensuring a visually satisfying experience even if these images sometimes border on hyperbole.

 

Most notable in this regard is a nonsensical but dramatically beautiful shot of Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth standing alone on the edge of an extremely high and vertiginous rock face in Derbyshire, overlooking a magnificent scenic feast below her.  It is a stunning, magical evocation of Wright’s strong stylistic brand of Postmodern Romanticism, more resonant perhaps of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights than of a work by Jane Austen, who parodied society’s attachment to the picturesque and lampooned the cult of sensibility, most notably in Sense and Sensibility.

 

More important, Wright’s instinctive preference for aesthetic beauty is perhaps inconsistent with his own purported intention to render a more “Realist” representation of Austen’s day.  Indeed, he has said, “I wanted to treat it [the adaptation] as a piece of British realism rather than going with the picturesque tradition, which tends to depict an idealized version of English heritage as some kind of heaven on Earth” (qtd. in Walter).  This intent supposedly meant eschewing the long, loving establishment shots of bucolic English countryside and stately homes, often noted in British period drama.  Yet Wright’s Pride & Prejudice still manages to linger over Chatsworth, one of England’s finest grand estates and the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, rendered in fulsome glory as Darcy’s Pemberley.  Notably Darcy’s annual income is just £10,000 a year, in comparison to that of the Duke of Devonshire, who earned an estimated annual £70,000 according to Chatsworth accounts for the years 1813-1815 (Cannadine 79).  The choice of Chatsworth is thus a far cry from Realist representation.  Arguably, the primary aim was to offer a swift filmic metonymy of Darcy’s wealth and position in comparison to the Bennet house.  Here, Longbourn is itself represented by stately Groombridge Place—a very grand seventeenth century manor house surrounded by a moat, and also a hugely popular tourist destination.

 

In Wright’s defense, the director never claims to shy away from instant aesthetic appeal.  “I always said I wanted it to be beautiful, but not pretty,” says Wright.  “One’s natural inclination as an artist is to make things beautiful.  I also wanted it to be provincial, and I wanted them to have a laugh” (qtd. in Briscoe).  His assertion is very much in keeping with the general tone of this production, which the screenwriter Deborah Moggach has famously dubbed “the muddy-hem version” of Pride and Prejudice (qtd. in Briscoe, Walter).

 

Wright’s filming techniques support his drive for “gritty” realism.  His influences are rooted in British televisual contemporary social realism, which brandishes a trademark “television docu-drama” style.  Wright’s Pride & Prejudice borrows from this style:  the camera plunges down corridors, pulling the viewer into and out of rooms, keeping us close to the action.  Wright states:  “If something is contemporary, people shoot it with zoom lenses and handheld cameras, and if something is period, then they want to shoot it with a static, formal composition.  But, actually, zoom lenses are incredibly exciting, because they mean you can move with the moment and improvise.  To shoot Pride and Prejudice in a so-called contemporary style brings it into fresh relief” (qtd. in Briscoe).

 

Certainly, the film is a rumbustious, wholesome affair, a far cry from the often staid chocolate-box prettiness associated with so much heritage costume drama on film.  Therefore, even though Mr. Bennet is a “gentleman” farmer, livestock crowds the decidedly unmanicured yard abutting their lovely house, and the interiors are decidedly shambolic and unfashionable.  The film simply revels in its Hogarthian muddy rusticity.  And the provincial and comparatively impecunious status of the Bennets is never shied away from.  (Indeed, Wright strongly highlights class distinction in this production, possibly, at times, even overplaying his hand.)  Costumes are realistically dour, shabby and homemade—at one point we see Mrs. Bennet and her daughters dying clothes with beetroot juice.  Naturalistic, uncoiffured hairstyles and no makeup match the loose, unfashionable dresses, although the less formal style is partly due to the period in which this production is set, pre-Regency, during the late 1790s.²  (Notably Austen wrote “First Impressions,” the forerunner to Pride and Prejudice, between 1796 and 1797.)  In addition, the Bennet girls’ potential poverty in the event of Mr. Bennet’s death is explained with a few short, clear statements interjected into general conversation and further highlighted by Mr. Collins’s (invented) surprise that the estate can afford a cook.

 

Local society is decidedly provincial in tone.  The assembly at Meryton is recreated here as a true rustic hoe-down, a riot of swirling movement and sweaty bodies, wigs askew, accompanied by jaunty, folksy music—seemingly most un-Austenlike, or so we have been led to believe by the rather strait-laced tradition of BBC costume drama.  There is altogether something quite refreshing and remarkably unstuffy in this particular take on Austen’s society, and it is here we first meet Mr. Bingley, a rather comedic-looking chap with a shock of bright red hair, his snooty sister, and of course, a stern-faced Mr. Darcy, whose socially entrenched rigidity is all the more pronounced as a looming, sullen presence overseeing the dancers.

 

         The Bennet family home might be chaotic, but in this version it is, at heart, a happy home—much happier, and much less dysfunctional, than Austen’s original version of Longbourn (pun surely intended).  For one, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet actually seem to like each other, even love each other, a characterization which is a far cry from the source text.  Mr. Bennet, played here by Donald Sutherland with rheumy eyes and a quiet but knowing demeanor, is seen tending lovingly to his plants, seeking respite from the clamor of girls in his household.  There is also an ambiguous edge to this Mr. Bennet, an association with some unpromising imagery:  stuffed birds, a dead dragonfly.  The production fails, however, to advance this suggestion with anything remotely substantive.  Mrs. Bennet is commonly viewed as shrill and abrasive, a buffoonish harpy much loathed by Austen’s narrator, but here, as portrayed by Brenda Blethyn, she has been rendered a more rounded, layered character, who shows real love and concern for her daughters’ futures.  Her infamous vulgarity is unavoidably apparent, but she has been softened for comical effect.

 

The rest of the Bennet family is also treated with comparative kindness by Wright and Moggach.  Kitty, for example, is still silly and simpering but thoroughly harmless.  Lydia remains flirtatious, vulgar and brazen, but there is a distinct vulnerability to her character, which is not as apparent in either Austen’s work or other adaptations.  This vulnerability is manifested when she returns home from London with her new husband Wickham.  She is smug, proud and clearly infatuated with her handsome Wickham, but as she leaves the family home for the last time, there is a sad faltering as she waves disconsolately from her departing carriage.  Wickham roughly pulls her down, a foreboding that this marriage will be abusive—not surprising given this Wickham, who has the reptilian charm of a handsome sociopath.  This sort of detail is characteristic of Wright’s film, a telling act almost out of eyeshot but there nevertheless.

 

         The emphasis on Elizabeth’s happy home life is somewhat undermined, however, by Moggach and Wright’s decision to portray Elizabeth as increasingly aloof and emotionally distant.  At first, Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth is shown to be blessed with supportive, intimate friends. She shares a bed and her deepest feelings with her elder sister Jane, played with luminous beauty and poise by Rosamund Pike, and also has no-nonsense Charlotte Lucas (Claudie Blakley) on hand. Yet as the narrative progresses, Elizabeth increasingly yearns to be alone.  In contrast to the novel, as her own emotional life becomes more troubled, Wright’s Elizabeth pulls away from Jane, failing to confide her feelings—while Charlotte is forcibly removed, of course, through her marriage to Mr. Collins.  Why do Moggach and Wright emphasize Elizabeth’s withdrawal?  It is certainly an alternative approach to Elizabeth’s character and actions, and it subtly undermines the stability of the close, seemingly supportive relationships she enjoys in the early stages of the film.  Is her reticence in not sharing her feelings with others, especially Jane, after rejecting Darcy’s first proposal, the product of guilt for potentially condemning her family twice (bearing in mind also her rejection of Mr. Collins) to a future life of penury?  Or perhaps, as seems most likely in view of the film’s overall tenor, she is being portrayed here as a young girl, hovering uneasily on the brink of responsible womanhood, still grappling with her emotional and sexual feelings and thus unable to express herself fully.  While in a written text interiority is much easier to convey, such silence on weighty emotional matters is notably uncommon in film, where characters are often forced to express their feelings and fears to an outside party.

 

         Elizabeth’s taciturn approach is rendered all the more bewildering in view of her feisty, impassioned confrontations with Darcy and her rebellious refusal to “perform” for Lady Catherine at Rosings.  Her innate disdain for such self-important authority figures, while deserved, also betrays her youthfulness.  There lingers a sense of a solitary and deep yet childlike nature beneath her veneer of pertly poised womanhood.  In this aspect, she is far removed from Austen’s original Elizabeth, who has a greater sense of grounded maturity, even though both Elizabeths have an occasional inclination to fluster, fun and giggles.

 

The youthfulness of Pride and Prejudice’s characters is underlined in this 2005 production; therefore, Knightley’s Elizabeth expresses a youthful excitability—at least to start with—and, notably, she is the only Elizabeth in filmic adaptation to share the same age as her fictional counterpart.  Knightley’s Elizabeth, however, is much less sedate than Austen’s heroine (even if Austen’s is famed for favoring long walks) and a lot less matronly than Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth in the 1995 BBC adaptation.  Indeed, Knightley has an air of contemporary tomboy about her—you wouldn’t be too surprised if she was shown to be wearing a clunky pair of Doc Martens or Hunter Wellies under her long skirts.  She has also been dressed in natural, earthy colors, emphasizing her contentment outdoors.

 

This Elizabeth has seemingly been sheltered, comfortable and happy, but she is launched, rather reluctantly and unprepared, by the arrival of strangers—the Bingleys, Darcy, Collins, and then Wickham—into a new and difficult phase of her life.  Life at Longbourn has become a little claustrophobic, as demonstrated by the numerous scenes showing Mrs. Bennet and her daughters eavesdropping at doors.  Yet for all of Mrs. Bennet’s anxious clucking over an impecunious future, Elizabeth at the narrative’s outset manifests minimal urgency to take on adult responsibilities, to fly the nest.

 

Perhaps then Knightley’s Elizabeth truly is an Elizabeth for 2005—a time when young men and women are often forced, because of a precipitously expensive housing market, to live with their parents and are therefore rendered unable fully to take on the onerous responsibilities of adulthood, suspended in a false state of prolonged childhood.  Knightley’s Elizabeth, along with her sisters, is notably excluded from major ongoing “adult” discussions (hence the eavesdropping habit), perpetuating a sense of infantilism.  Elizabeth’s uncertain status as a young female, forever hovering on the threshold, continues for much of the action in Wright’s film, most notably at Pemberley, where she tentatively spies on Georgiana and her brother.  Interestingly, by the closing stages of the film, Elizabeth’s family has resorted to eavesdropping on her (and her spat with Lady Catherine).  Adulthood, a world of personal responsibilities and secret burdens, has arrived.

 

         Knightley’s Elizabeth is thrust into adulthood in this production predominantly by her relationship with Darcy.  Certainly she is chastened by Charlotte Lucas’s security-driven self-sacrifice in marriage with a man Elizabeth describes here as “ridiculous,” but it is her wanderings away from Longbourn which offer most scope for maturation.  In many ways, the same can be said for Austen’s text, but in this compressed version the effects are more immediately obvious.  Elizabeth’s romance with Darcy, however, is not hailed here as a meeting of minds, a chance for Elizabeth to find her intellectual equal.  Instead, and unsurprisingly perhaps for a visual-oriented, two-hour film, it is their mutual sexual attraction that is most strongly emphasized by the filmmakers.  This emphasis is notably at the expense of many of the super-charged verbal battles for which this literary couple is justly famous.  Sexuality is thus deployed here as a mainspring of narrative action.

 

         Arguably then, the 2005 Elizabeth’s “maturation” is sparked by her simultaneous erotic awakening, as demonstrated by her response to Darcy’s first touch of her hand as she leaves Netherfield Hall, and later, when, after Darcy proposes, they almost kiss whilst quarreling.  Her evolving sexual response is further reinforced when Elizabeth visits Pemberley.  Here the moment when Austen’s Elizabeth gazes at a portrait of Darcy (and possibly falls in love) is replaced by a sensual scene set in a sculpture gallery.  Elizabeth marvels at neoclassical marble statues, the gallery ceiling festooned with plump naked cherubs and scantily-clad ladies.  She tearfully admires the smooth eroticism of the statues’ naked forms and gazes at a sculpted bust of Darcy.  She then acknowledges for the first time, when asked by her Aunt Gardiner, that Darcy is a handsome man.

 

         It is not just Elizabeth’s sexual attraction to Darcy, however, but her initial attraction to Wickham that, in Wright’s film, triggers active catalytic change in Elizabeth’s narrative.  Even though Wickham’s role has been drastically scaled back in this adaptation, his importance within the narrative has not suffered a similar fate.  Elizabeth’s relationship with Wickham fundamentally alters the dynamics of her dealings with Darcy at crucial moments, possibly at the expense of other aspects of their complex relationship as written by Austen.  This impact is first evident at the Netherfield Ball when Elizabeth baits Darcy with his supposed ill-treatment of Wickham, but it is Darcy’s failed proposal which offers the strongest example of Wickham’s ex machina intervention in their relationship.

 

         Darcy and Elizabeth’s confrontation, in this film, comprises a trading of verbal blows, which include Darcy’s intervention in Jane’s love affair with Bingley and his insulting manner of proposal.  Yet it is Elizabeth’s mention of Wickham which pushes this argument, and their relationship, into new territory—a more sexualized domain.  At this point, Darcy, who as played by Matthew Macfadyen is a tall, imposing figure of a man, literally muscles himself forward, occupying the figurative “space”—Elizabeth’s sexual interest—which has been formerly occupied by Wickham; at this point, most unlike the novel of course, Darcy and Elizabeth almost kiss.  Darcy’s jealous aggression thus sparks her incipient sexual interest in him and ensures there is a perceptible gear-change in their subsequent interactions.  In such a way, youthful sexuality can be seen as the key driver of this particular adapted romance.

 

But what then of the man Elizabeth falls in love with?  Macfadyen’s Darcy is certainly a powerful physical presence, and, as with Colin Firth’s Darcy in 1995, his interest in Elizabeth is very much driven by his sexual desire.  His physicality is underscored by his large frame, which is highlighted throughout, the camera often encountering him mid-body or allowing his body to obscure other characters in-shot.  He often looks too big for the furniture, most particularly at Netherfield where the frail, neoclassical chairs look too insubstantial for his long, sturdy limbs.  There is also a strong symbolism attached to his hands (indeed, hands are a key motif which pervade the film as a whole), which are often viewed in-shot and “reacting” on his behalf to what is happening between him and Elizabeth.  Darcy’s costume is also altered in the course of the film, becoming less stiff-backed and formal as the story progresses.

 

         Macfadyen’s Darcy is much less the haughty patriarch we find in both Austen’s novel and to an even greater extent in the famous Firth characterization.  This Darcy is portrayed as struggling with the responsibilities of adulthood, and he needs to mature emotionally—clearly a predominant theme in this production.  His greatest crime here is not “Pride” as Jane Austen (and Darcy himself) would have it.  It is social awkwardness, laced with mildly peevish aggression, rather than superior rudeness.  He must become more socially adept, and, true to the model of most Austenian heroes, he must prove himself worthy of the heroine by “learning to regulate . . . his emotions in accordance with the constraints dictated by a [contemporary] public courtship” (Nixon 25).  Matthew Macfadyen claims in an interview featured on the Pride & Prejudice DVD that his more defeated Darcy is “a young man who is still grieving for his parents.  He’s from an ancient family and has this huge responsibility, but . . . he’s still trying to work out who he is and how to be in the world.  It’s not news to him that he has a taciturn, awkward disposition—he just can’t help himself.”  Amazingly then, Darcy, one of literature’s super-patriarchs, has been rendered a victim:  a victim of his own rigidly snobbish upbringing, a victim of his own good fortune, and a victim of his loneliness.  Unlike Austen’s livelier hero with his abrasive clever wit, Macfadyen’s Darcy is often struck dumb with love, “bewitched . . . body and soul.”

 

Tanya Modleski highlights the way the standard Harlequin romance—and Pride and Prejudice is often viewed as a key generic progenitor—usually features a Super Male (the hero, usually older than the heroine and frequently richer) and a Shadow Male (the weaker rival), both vying for the heroine’s love.  Importantly, there is misunderstanding and separation of the central pairing before reconciliation.  The patriarchal romantic hero, however, is finally tamed through love, thus losing his blunt masculinity, as the heroine finally conquers his pride.  Modleski views such romance as a revenge fantasy, where women ultimately oppose patriarchy by reorganizing reality (45).  Arguably Macfadyen’s interpretation of Darcy subtly weakens this aspirational fantasy, in the sense that this Super Male Patriarch needs much less “taming” than the original.

 

Of course marriage to Darcy offers Elizabeth unmistakeable material advantage, as she earns the potential for genuine self-empowerment, represented by the gradual unfolding of the splendors and responsibilities pertaining to Pemberley, of which she is set to become mistress.  Wright’s film unsurprisingly revels in the visual splendors of Pemberley.  As with Austen’s original heroine, Wright’s Elizabeth, in her married capacity, is set to become a wealthy woman of substance and standing, contributing to the wider social good.  Ultimately it is a conservative fantasy, reinforcing rather than overtly challenging a social status quo—although Austen’s support for the rise of the virtuous and principled middle-class interloper, as symbolized best by Elizabeth, should not be ignored either.  From the singular perspective of a heroine’s capacity to work change and wield power within the narrow parameters of Austen’s world, however, Elizabeth’s social elevation and her commensurate romantic satisfaction are nothing short of astonishing.  Aspirational fantasy indeed.

 

And yet, Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet remains one of literature’s best-loved heroines, not because she achieves so much, but because she initially rejects the aspirational fantasy.  In refusing the highly eligible Darcy, she demonstrates heroic courage, not caprice, representing a wholehearted rejection of the concept of the marriage of convenience, even necessity—most especially in view of her family’s uncertain future.  Her bold self-determination ultimately secures her an intellectually equal relationship, and it is this privileging of the personal over the social, Austen’s charting the psychology of two young people falling in love, which has ensured the novel’s enduring popularity.  Elizabeth and Darcy effectively learn each other’s language, learn to read each other’s self-consciousness.  Love becomes a painful but certain process of mutual understandings.

 

The 2005 Pride & Prejudice focuses primarily on this painful yet tender process of falling in love.  Despite the vivid grandeur of Pemberley and the thrashing storm that serves as a backdrop to Darcy’s first proposal, this is a small-scale romance, notable for its subtle, unspoken intimacies.  Despite its luxuriant aesthetic pleasures and over-blown Romanticism, Wright’s adaptation actually has a stiller heart, a more introspective, shyer presence compared to the lively and engaging dynamics of its textual predecessor.

 

Indeed, this film is anxious, its lead characters subtly expressive of a deep-set fear of moving beyond the securities of the known (childhood, family, the home) to face the trials and responsibilities of the wider world.  Perhaps this anxiety is reflective of the times we live in—undoubtedly a circumspect, uncertain era, when compared to the past securities and smugness of the optimistic mid-1990s, when the BBC’s Elizabeth Bennet was brimming with confidence and her Darcy was a world-weary, go-getting alpha male, reminiscent of a highly successful, corporate CEO.  But here, Joe Wright’s Elizabeth and Darcy truly have become children of our age, startled into maturation through the unbidden circumstance of their falling irrevocably and hopelessly in love.

 

As a fresh and exciting response to Austen’s original text, the 2005 adaptation offers, however, minimal interpretative edge; hence it has excited a relatively scant, even tepid response from critical and academic quarters.  In truth, this text-to-screen adaptation is less interested in the “text” as opposed to its greater focus on the “screen” than most adaptations, which are often embroiled in a more intensive dialogue with their literary predecessors.  The 2005 Pride & Prejudice is perhaps more notable for showcasing the qualities and intensities of the cinematic experience over fresh readings of Austen’s best-loved romance.

 

 

NOTES

 

1.  Indeed, it could be argued that the scriptwriter Andrew Davies has engineered with his 1995 Pride and Prejudice a classic case of what Laura Mulvey cites as “trans-sexual identification,” in which the female spectator elides herself with the male hero, enacting repressed desire for aggression.  In addition, the 1995 BBC production also offers us a Bennet family which has been rendered dysfunctional predominantly by a grotesquely immature, selfish mother figure, whilst Mr. Bennet is treated with much greater indulgence by the adaptors.  Elizabeth’s allegiance to her father, representative of the familial masculine, is solidly validated in the 1995 production—arguably ensuring a corresponding repudiation and diminution of the feminine.  The wit, cleverness and common decency associated here with her father (and later too with Darcy) ensures a subtle elision of these “positive” characteristics with the masculine.  Therefore, despite the external femininity and prettiness of Ehle’s Elizabeth, her archness of expression, cool temperament and sharp, witty intelligence appear, in this production, to be mostly resonant of masculine values.  This subtle endorsement of the masculine over the feminine is perhaps what defines Davies’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and distinguishes it from others.  It should also be noted that Brenda Blethyn’s version of Mrs. Bennet in Wright’s 2005 film was far less shrill and indeed much more sympathetic a characterization than Alison Steadman’s 1995 version.

 

2.  Wright preferred the costumes of the late eighteenth century to the Empire dresses associated with the Regency period.

 

Works Cited

 

Austen, Jane.  Pride and Prejudice.  Ed. R. W. Chapman.  Oxford: OUP, 1965.

Briscoe, Joanna.  “A Costume Drama with Muddy Hems.”  Times Online 31 July 2005.  5 Apr. 2007 <http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article549627.ece>.

Cannadine, David.  “The Landowner as Millionaire: The Finances of the Dukes of

Devonshire, c. 1800–c. 1926.”  Agricultural History Review 25 (1977): 77-91.  15 Apr. 2007 <http://www.bahs.org.uk/25n2a1.pdf>.

Nixon, Cheryl L.  “Balancing the Courtship Hero: Masculine Emotional Display in Film Adaptations of Austen’s Novels.”  Jane Austen in Hollywood.  Ed. Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield.  Lexington: UP Kentucky, 2001.  22-43. 

Modleski, Tania.  Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-produced Fantasies for Women.  New York and London: Methuen, 1984.

Mulvey, Laura.  “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun.”  Contemporary Film Theory.  Ed. Antony Easthope.  Harlow: Pearson, 1993.  125-34.

Pride & Prejudice.  Dir. Joe Wright.  Screenplay by Deborah Moggach.  Perf. Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen.  DVD.  Working Title, 2005.

Pride and Prejudice.  Dir. Simon Langton.  Screenplay by Andrew Davies.  Perf. Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.  BBC/A&E, 1995.

Walter, Natasha.  “Unrealistic, But Undeniably Real.”  The Guardian 6 Sept. 2005.  5 Apr. 2007 <http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1563494,00.html>.