Mar 9th, 2007
Jane Austen - why the fuss?
Helen Fielding’s “Bridget Jones’ Diary” and the Japanese Manga & hit TV show and Anime “Hana Yori Dango” are just two of the modern works I know based on the works of Jane Austen, and women eat this stuff up. And why not? the plot revolves around an ordinary woman who suddenly finds herself being swept off of her feet by two very eligible, and very rich bachelors, and she has to choose which one to go for, the very charming playboy, or the very charming nice guy.
So what is it about these men that have women falling all over themselves? I’m not really sure, but men across the world will have the chance to find out as their girlfriends drag them to one of the several dozen adaptations of Jane Austen’s works due out this year, and that’s not counting the derivative reworkings that may fly under this news article’s radar.
It might not have been faithful to the book, but when Colin Firth, as Fitzwilliam Darcy, strode out of a lake in a wet shirt and breeches, in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, you could hear half the population applauding artistic licence.
After that now infamous scene, women across the land - single or not - said goodbye to waiting for their Prince Charming to come along and sweep them off their feet. They wanted a Mr Darcy.
…
“They are easy to read and have a simplicity that is hard to get as a writer, which Austen worked hard to achieve,” says Professor Janet Todd, the general editor of the nine-volume Cambridge edition of the Works of Jane Austen.
“But it’s a surface simplicity, there is a lot more going on. It combines wish fulfilment with a sense of the unlikelihood of it happening. There is always a modification to the romantic ending which points us back to real life.”