A Healer’s Geste

Keira Knightly’s Pride and Prejudice

At least Jane Austen’s name is not on the cover of this movie. Because it’s not Jane Austen.

Have you read Northanger Abbey? Probably not. In it, Jane Austen’s heroine spends so much time reading gothic romances that she imagines she is living in one. Happiness prevails only once she recognizes that reality is not gothic and reality is better.

This movie is Northanger Abbey in reverse. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy (the true Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy) are squarely entrenched in reality. In this movie, Mr. Macfadyen comes onto the scene emerging from the mists of the moor. In this movie, Keira Knightly wears heavy black eyeliner. In this movie, baroque architecture and art play a key role as the camera spins and twirls and pans out to show vast spaces. This movie has made Jane Austen, who detested the gothic, into a gothic romance. A closer-to-a-love-scene-than-the-original even happens in a classical ruin — a quintessentially gothic setting. It’s despicable.

Ok, so most of you don’t even care about that aspect, which is the most criminal twisting of a dead woman’s intent. Here’s my other beefs, which you will probably relate to more:

The guy who was supposed to be Mr. Bingley had downright awful hair. It flopped all over the place. He looked almost as ridiculous as he behaved. Mr. Collins had nothing on Mr. Bingley.

The back of the movie cover says “subtly sexy.” This movie can only be called subtly sexy in a culture that it used to outright sex in their films. Let’s see: Mr. Bingley trails behind Jane at the ball and slyly fingers the back of her drifting skirt; Mr. Collins makes an “intercourse” slip up while reading his sermon; when Keira is meeting Georgiana, the scene suddenly drops, with a shot of the someday lovers looking at each other, at this line “You must force her”; and, worst of all, after Keira has fallen in love with Pemberly, she is gazing intensely at classical sculptures in an art room, most of whom are naked and laying in provocative positions. She’s entranced, she’s staring, the camera is gliding along the lines of the silhouettes, when suddenly she — and the camera — comes abruptly to Darcy’s bust. That is when she is first attracted to him. It’s disgusting.

I have heard much of how this movie made life and the characters so much more relateable. They have a messy house that they have to scramble to pick up when guests show up, the animals are made much of, and everyone gets drenched in rain all the time. If Jane got a cold from such exposure, why wasn’t Keira sick the whole movie? Take a turn about a room to show off a figure? Why bother when you can walk in the rain instead?

No, Jane Austen is about manners. That’s why some people can’t take her and think she’s boring: they have none. Our culture has none. When it encounters a tale that is all about propriety and manners and social etiquette, it has to take it down a notch or two. Why can’t men burst into not only parlors, but bedrooms, unannounced? Why can’t a girl or guy go half-dressed into the morning mists? Why can’t family members say cutting and mean things to one another? No allusions are made to duty or responsibility, because the audience of this movie wouldn’t understand them if they were there. The audience hears Charlotte’s whining plea “Don’t judge me!” and is simply glad they don’t have to worry about being unmarried at 27 and they are glad they don’t have to bother with parental permissions. They probably wonder what the big deal was after all with Lydia, since although “scandal” was alluded to, it wasn’t even hinted that the primary problem was premarital sex.

Jane Austen is a comedy of manners, which one can only appreciate if one appreciates manners. Our society does not and so this is the version of Pride and Prejudice it turns out. It turns my stomach.

Clueless had more the spirit of Jane Austen’s Emma than this movie had of its namesake.