Happy year of our Lord 2025 to you, my dear readers! (For reasons quite unknown to me, his devoted mother, my youngest son is fond of concluding whatever date with “the year of our Lord”. Teenagers… don’t ya’ love ‘em?)
In but four short days, the anniversary of the likely most beloved of our most adored Aunt Jane’s novels, Pride & Prejudice, shall celebrate its 212th birthday. I am unsure if P&P is truly the most popular of Jane Austen’s novels – my personal favourite is Persuasion followed by Northanger Abbey, making P&P third – but no one can deny it is the most commonly variated and adapted amongst the JAFF community.
In the 16 years since my introduction to JAFF, I have read adaptations of all the original 6 novels, but over a thousand of those are P&P variations. One of my favourite JAFFs of all times is a modern Northanger Abbey crossover with North by Northwest – fabulous! Yet I write P&P variations because Jane Austen herself closed up so many holes in the other 5 novels. We know why each of her other heroines does or does not have a dowry. She tells us her heroines’ parents’ histories.
We know Austen “lop’t and crop’t” and revised First Impressions (her title of an earlier story), wrangling it into the published Pride & Prejudice. (I have heard it may have been cut by as much as 40%, but I cannot find confirmation.) However, there is no denying the end result: our dear Aunt Jane left so much OUT of the story that my mind start running amuck wanting to fill in the gaps.
In canon, we are given more backstory of Sir William Lucas, a minor character, than we are told about Mr or Mrs Bennet, the parents of our heroine who reside in the same household! And with such scant information, my mind starts running: Why are Mr and Mrs Bennet the way they are? Does he have a heart condition which requires calm? Is she bi-polar or have some other mental health condition? Is he on the spectrum, thus is overly sensitive to noise? How can she be so clueless to the consequences of her behaviour?
Then there are the contradictions: Why is Mr Bennet portrayed as both an intelligent father but also one who saves nothing for his family? As for Mrs Bennet: I know, historically, having favourites amongst your children was accepted in Georgian England. And I honestly believe Mrs Bennet genuinely loved her daughters and wanted their best interests, which I find contradictory to her constant scolding and belittling of her three non-favourites.
From these basic questions, these basic observations it is easy to justify the gamut of portrayals of Mr Bennet – from kindly gentleman who secretly saves for his family to twisted sociopath who delights in psychologically torturing his family – and his wife – from friendly, loving, and slightly scatterbrained mother to entirely self-centred abuser of her least favourite daughter. Then my brain asks additional questions: how would it change the story IF Mr Bennet had saved? IF he had taken time to assuage Mrs Bennet’s fears? How would the Netherfield party react if Mrs Bennet were calmer, better behaved? Etc., etc., etc.
And keep in mind, dear readers, this entire post is just on what is missing and what might be tweaked in but 2 characters of Pride & Prejudice. Multiply that against all the characters in canon, and you can see why there are so many P&P variations for us to enjoy.
Godspeed to you all until we meet again!
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