A deep dive into the Bridgerton season 2 craze and Pride and Prejudice (2005).
The recent release of the second season of the popular Netflix show, Bridgerton, has broken my brain. Based on the paperback romance novels by Julia Quinn, the show has audiences and entertainment news outlets hailing its modern tone embedded within the Regency era, and subsequently its “similarities” to Jane Austen works. One Twitter news headline from Telegraph TV & Radio reads, “Bridgerton replaces bodice-ripping raunch with toned-down Austen-esque sexual longing,” and continues in a separate tweet with, “As a Regency drama filled with sex scenes, Bridgerton made its name as a racy alternative to Jane Austen.” Now I am not here to play the part of the prudish, English-major librarian, who is opposed to sex or desire; my issue with Bridgerton and these headlines is not the idea of sex in the pristine Jane Austen world (indeed, there are a number of plotlines in her novels that deal with the messiness and recklessness of sexual desire). My issue is that these entertainment outlets and the Netflix audiences of the world are identifying contrived, and often incorrect, similarities in the first place. A romance occurring in the Regency era is the only thing that could possibly connect Jane Austen to Bridgerton, but for some reason people somehow see them as comparable in a way where one can easily replace the other. Why is that?
Pride and Prejudice (2005) represents everything I love in the possibilities of a romantic film: a hard on the outside, sweet on the inside leading man; a strong and captivating leading woman; an enemies to lovers framework; gorgeous cinematography; a delightful soundtrack; and Kiera Knightley. But it is not Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Not really. The bones of her work are there—the original story, its plot points and characters hold up the many artistic liberties taken by director Joe Wright. Pride and Prejudice (2005) (hereafter referred to as “P&P 2005”) is the uncanny valley of Jane Austen’s work, representing something similar but not quite whole, absent of the specifically human critiques that Austen had on social structures.
The scene I always go back to when I am being a P&P (2005) killjoy, is the rain-soaked, heavy breathing, initial proposal scene. Mr. Darcy, played by Matthew Macfadyen, is a man tortured by his absolute love for Elizabeth, and begs for her hand in marriage. Of course, he throws in the important “ew you’re poor, but I still love you despite you being really poor, ew” line, but his delivery is very quick. Thus, the line is easy to miss, especially when his cadence lands succinctly on the final line, “I love you.” The silence that follows allows the audience to truly savor that declaration. Finally! He admits it! They fight, yelling at each other, getting closer and closer, their faces inches away, and there is a ridiculous pause between them where it seems as though they might actually kiss. This moment tells the audience that, despite Darcy’s wrongdoings and insults toward the Bennet family, and despite Elizabeth being resolved to dislike him for these transgressions, there still lies an innate desire between these two that is being thwarted by inconsequential family drama. This scene demonstrates what is fundamentally wrong with P&P 2005, and unfortunately, it is responsible for the way millions of people misunderstand Jane Austen.
As Elizabeth and Darcy are inches from each other’s faces, soaked by the rain, and clearly seeing something desirable in each other, I see the amalgamation of generations missing the point. Darcy’s proposal to Elizabeth is an insult. He degrades Elizabeth and her family, calling them embarrassing and looking down on them for where they are in the social hierarchy. He remarks on how weird it would be if they did get married because of it and he has detached his own friend from Elizabeth’s sister for these same reasons. Elizabeth, in this moment of the novel, is not looking at Darcy as a romantic prospect! Where Joe Wright created a longing between these two characters, Jane Austen drew a line. Darcy may have been tortured by his love for Elizabeth, but his love is undercut by his pride; Elizabeth’s low social standing is embarrassing to someone of his status. Likewise, Elizabeth’s prejudice against Darcy causes her to believe a terrible story about Darcy and his family with zero confirmation of its validity other than the word of a man she barely knows, ultimately resulting in her looking quite foolish as well. This is not inconsequential family drama! Both Elizabeth and Darcy fall victim to their faults, and it takes 200 more pages for them to make up for it.
The newest season of Bridgerton employs the enemies to lovers framework, which is the basis for many Pride and Prejudice-inspired romcom media. The two leads, Kate and Anthony, begin in a friendly state with one another, having met by chance. However, this quickly turns sour when they meet again at a ball, and Kate overhears Anthony likening women to, as Kate puts it, “chattels and breeding stock.” This event is also quite similar to a certain Pride and Prejudice moment, where Elizabeth overhears Mr. Darcy discussing women, and herself, in a similar, albeit less crass, manner, resulting in their own conflict. While I have not read the Bridgerton novels, it is safe to say that the writers of the show were inspired by Pride and Prejudice, and thought it would be fun to perhaps pay homage. However, I see something a bit manipulative in it, where the show seems to be playing with this similarity and making audiences feel as though the works are comparable.
In Bridgerton, the tone of the back and forth between Kate and Anthony resembles that of P&P (2005). While Kate and Anthony are at first put at odds due to a slight, they are often drawn to one another, sharing playful jabs. For example, their muddy croquet scene is full of these witty remarks to one another. They tease one another, daring each other to enter the mud and ruin their fine clothes. They are showing the audience that under different circumstances, these two attractive people could definitely get along and fall in love, if only they set their petty differences aside. Their pettiness to one another has no real substance other than being a fun and light scene that shows the leads becoming more acquainted with each other. This is the essence of romantic comedies, of which P&P 2005 emulates well. Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice is a romantic comedy at heart. The film utilizes the drama that Austen so successfully developed, but emphasizes the romance aspect in a way that fits into our modern sensibilities. Thus, the new era of “enemies to lovers” media was born. Wright’s interpretation of the tit-for-tat moments in the novel between Darcy and Elizabeth is more akin to a flirtatious back and forth, where both characters are slowly becoming more intrigued by each other’s presence.
One scene in P&P 2005 demonstrates a more flirtatious version of Austen’s Elizabeth and Darcy. Darcy, after previously rebuffing Elizabeth as a dancing partner, asks her to dance. While they dance they have their contentious discussion about Wickham and Darcy’s characters. As their conversation reflects an anger on both sides, they find themselves drawing closer and closer to one another until they stop in the midst of the dancing and begin arguing inches away from each other’s faces (this sounds familiar). The scene then loses the background characters and just has Elizabeth and Darcy dancing in an empty ballroom, emphasizing this pull that they have to one another, so much that they feel they are the only two people in the room. Wright reduces the disgust that Elizabeth feels about Darcy’s actions against Wickham into a kind of petty disagreement. Sure, in the novel Elizabeth is in fact mistaken about the incident, but she genuinely sees Darcy as someone who has wronged a good man. This argument becomes inconsequential to the scene in the movie, showing us that, yes, these two are at odds, but under different circumstances they could be something more. If only the annoying, pesky misunderstandings would just resolve! Their romantic pull, while necessary for a Hollywood romantic drama, makes Elizabeth’s character less resolute. Austen’s Elizabeth quite firmly dislikes Darcy for much of the novel, and Wright’s shift in tone and emphasis on a dramatic longing between the two makes his Elizabeth distinctly different from who she was intended to be.
Kate and Anthony’s relationship progresses as something not so much enemies to lovers, but two people who bicker occasionally, and who very clearly “love” each other. Anthony is originally set on Edwina, Kate’s sister, and attempts to pursue her as a wife. Kate, on the other hand, is determined that her sister not follow into her spinster foot steps, and wants Edwina to find a decent husband that is not Anthony, because of the aforementioned breeding stock scene. Although actively courting Edwina, Anthony begins showing more interest in Kate, and Kate, while determined to dislike him, replicates that interest. They are drawn to one another through sheer sexual tension and one liners; however Kate becomes uncomfortable with the possibility of her stealing away her sister’s happiness. The show certainly presents the central conflict of ruining Edwina’s happiness as the driving wedge between Kate and Anthony, but it is hard not to see two adults being separated by an absolutely arbitrary situation. Sure, it is difficult to admit to your sister that you have been flirting with her fiance behind her back, but at the end of the day, whose fault is that? It seems that for all of Kate and Anthony’s supposed intellect and reason they can’t conceptualize a way to simply break off a courtship or engagement amicably. Truly mind numbing.
Kate and Anthony’s desire for one another is both complicated and heightened by the family issues that keep them apart, compounded with a Regency-era social sphere that requires appropriate behavior between men and women. So while they cannot be together (even though they definitely can), Kate and Anthony long for one another. Somehow they constantly find themselves alone in a room together, inches from each other’s faces, daring each other to make the first move. There is a moment where both Kate and Anthony’s hands touch momentarily as he is helping her out of a boat, which is distinctly similar to a scene in P&P 2005, where Darcy helps Elizabeth into her carriage. The hands brushing, followed by both couples’s embarrassed, yet titillated reactions, demonstrates Bridgerton’s specific references to P&P 2005. The tension in these scenes is something that many viewers today identify as an Austenian trait. A man and a woman, desiring each other so fiercely, but unable to express it due to the constraints of their situation or the time period. I love longing. I love how you can see characters wanting each other so badly it hurts them. However, stifled desire and longing are not definitively Austen, nor are they central to her characters.
P&P 2005 highlights a specific longing in its characters, a longing that, believe or not, does not take place in the actual novel. Joe Wright takes the idea of Darcy’s struggle, which is much more than an awkward, shy man with feelings he isn’t used to having, and creates a sense of longing in order to produce a more romantic movie. Jane Austen’s writing is distinctively character focused, and she expertly employs the romance genre to satirize social systems and human nature. So while we can say that Jane Austen does write a form of romantic comedy, her works push the romance genre further than it had ever been, ultimately concocting satires of the social spheres around her. Creating a sweeping romantic tale is not the main goal. Longing and desire make for a great romance film, but in the case of Austen, it can often demean the important critiques that the author made in her novels.
With the upcoming release of another Austen adaptation, Persuasion (2022), it is quite clear that the romantic concerns of P&P 2005 are still influencing Austen adaptations. The dynamic between the leads is all too familiar, with an audacious and witty woman opposite a serious, but soft-hearted man, and yet nothing like the characters from their respective novel. To the detriment of a classic and loveable trope, this dynamic, just as with Kate and Anthony, is what audiences perceive as an enemies to lovers framework today, and it is how audiences perceive complex works like Pride and Prejudice. The popularity of P&P 2005 is very much responsible for the ways in which modern audiences digest Jane Austen’s most famous characters, and subsequently how those characters and their story is interpreted. In 2022, Austen means “Regency-era Romantic Comedy Drama.” It means angsty romantic leads in clean, gilded rooms with overly large paintings, pretty dresses, and silly misunderstandings. It means reduction. I do hope that we can one day delete the notion of an “Austen-esque” work instead of calling it what it really is: Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice (American Ending).
