Elizabeth Bennet's Diary
Elizabeth Bennet is one of my favorite heroines of all time, cinematic or literary. How marvelous that a character created over two hundred years ago can still feel so fresh and contemporary! Even though the whole story is marriage-centric, it’s definitely something I would have a future daughter read, simply because Elizabeth is such a great female character.
While I also enjoy its 20th century update, Bridget Jones’s Diary, I don’t care for Bridget half as much as I do for Lizzy B. I actually find it quite worrisome that such an acerbic, intelligent, self-possessed individual has such a relatively pathetic modern-day counterpart. Elizabeth’s thoughts did not revolve around finding a man nearly as much as Bridget’s did; never was she tongue-tied or flustered, even when found in a legitimately embarrassing situation.
I wonder what Helen Fielding was thinking when she chose to characterize her modern-day Elizabeth in such a fashion. Was she simply trying to appeal to an audience raised on a steady diet of Nora Ephron-Meg Ryan vehicles? Was she simply just more interested in Pride and Prejudice’s plot, and not its characters? Or was she trying to make some sort of social commentary on female identity in the Sex and the City era? Ensconced in her pastoral English bubble, of course Elizabeth wouldn’t need to mind looking slovenly after a muddy tramp from Longbourn to Netherfield. With modern media’s constant barrage of technologically perfected female imagery, however, would she have remained so strong and confident?
