2000 (or thereabouts): I first read Pride and Prejudice when
I was 13. I can’t say I fully understood it very well, but I was proud of
having read it. I had a conversation with a supply teacher in an English lesson
once, who told me I was “too young to appreciate Jane Austen”, which incensed
me, and still irritates me now. He was partially correct in that I hadn’t got a
lot out of it the first time, but not in that young people shouldn’t try and
read difficult things. Anyway.
2012: I had heard of the P.D. James sequel, Death Comes to Pemberley. Despite
avoiding P&P-related sequels at all cost, I decided to read it as she is a
well-thought-of writer. I was not especially impressed; it seemed the book
could not tell whether it was a Pride and Prejudice sequel or a murder mystery,
and I didn’t think it succeeded in either venture. I also didn’t like the
constant referring back to the original book, as though James were trying to
constantly remind us of how familiar she is with it. Despite James’ own
attestation of how she had caught the characters’ manner of speaking, I didn’t
feel the language was particularly authentically Jane Austenesque, and the
characters especially expressed themselves in a very 21st century
manner at times.
Summer 2013: Although I have seen the BBC series several
times, as well as the 2005 Keira Knightley et al film, I hadn’t read it since
that first tender reading until last summer. The BBC series is beautifully done
and is the definitive version of the story,
but there is something very charming about the 2005 film – it’s
beautifully shot and some of the casting is lovely (though not that of
Lizzie…). I finally decided to re-read it during the summer break of 2013 after
having seen an amusing but sketchy outdoor theatre version (Mrs Bennet’s voice
was based on Sybil Fawlty, which gives you some idea), and couldn’t believe I
hadn’t done it sooner. In my mind, P&P was overrated compared to the rest
of Austen’s work, and cited by people who’d read no other classics but had seen
the series. I think I re-read it in about 4 days, I enjoyed it so much.
In tone it is quite light and very humorous, although with
great depths of characterisation and careful plotting. I found it moved along
at a good pace and allowed me to see the motivations behind many of the
characters’ actions that you just can’t get from a TV series, which seems
obvious but there you are. Ironically, I had been proud and prejudiced about
the similarly titled novel – but I will be re-reading it more frequently from
now on!
Christmas 2013: BBC broadcasted a lavish adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberley filmed mostly
at Chatsworth. Although I hadn’t enjoyed the book very much, I am always up for
a period-set drama because they always look so lovely – and for the most part,
this did. Some of the characters were very well cast (particularly Georgiana,
Lydia, and Georgiana’s lawyer love interest). HOWEVER:
-Colonel Fitzwilliam was completely villainised, even more
so than in James’ book, which is awful as in P&P itself he is a kind,
lovely young man whose only reason for not proposing to Elizabeth himself is
clearly that he is a younger son and can't afford to marry an almost penniless wife.
-I LOVE Anna Maxwell-Martin as an actress. I think she’s
wonderful, and I’ve seen her in some great stuff (particularly BBC’s Bleak House), but she just isn’t Lizzie.
She has Lizzie’s inner spirit but she doesn’t have the bright eyes Lizzie
should have. Plus, her hair was a mess and she wore the same dress through all
3 episodes. You’re not telling me the mistress of a house like Pemberley
wouldn’t be having her hair done carefully every morning by a lady’s maid, no
matter how lighthearted and carefree she is by nature – it’s just what would
have been expected.
-I had the same plot grievances as with the book (see
above).
January 2014: Discussed Death
with a good friend who also studied English at uni with me, and she agreed with
my summary of it – in fact she didn’t watch more than the first episode of the
TV programme, although she read the whole book. Instead, she recommended a book
she had been given as a Christmas gift. Despite my busy weekend it distracted
me the whole time and I finished it in two days. It is called Longbourn, is by Jo Baker, and follows
the lives of the servants at the Bennet household in Hertfordshire. I did look
at the Author’s Note, though, and liked this statement: ‘…what the servants get
up to in the kitchen, unobserved, while Elizabeth and Darcy are busy falling in
love upstairs, is, I think, entirely up to them’. Here is what I really like
about Baker’s approach:
-unlike James, she is not trying to emulate Austen’s writing
style, realising this is going to cause more problems than it solves. Instead
she writes in a beautiful, quite literary, and very 21st century
style full of imagery and varied syntax.
-it is painstakingly researched; things you didn’t even
think you’d need to know about early 19th century life for servants
is reproduced in detail – making soap, laundry day, serving at meals… in this
respect I can only compare it to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies, which is high praise indeed.
-it exposes many hidden things about Austen’s world that
remain hidden in her novels, not just the lives of the servants. The
flourishing slave trade is brought to our attention from the opening pages, and
Bingley’s fortune is known to have come from sugar. There is briefly a love
interest between the main character and a ‘mulatto’ footman from Bingley’s
Caribbean estate. The realities of army life are exposed, not just the
light-hearted world of officers in provincial Austenesque towns.
-although the storyline and timing remains incredibly
accurate to P&P, that novel’s characters are of relatively little interest
to Sarah (the maid the novel follows) except as they interact with her – so we
see Mr Collins, Mary, Elizabeth, Mrs Bennet and Wickham in some detail, but Mr
Darcy is literally a back and a smell as a door is opened to him, and he is not
even mentioned until a quarter of the way through the novel. P&P is the
backdrop to this story, rather than the driving force of it.
The characters Baker describes seem as real as Austen’s, and
inhabit the flip-side of her world convincingly. Not a money spinner riding off
the success of the most famous of Austen’s novels, Longbourn is a thoughtful, careful alternative look at Pride and Prejudice which is carried
along by beautiful writing and imaginative plotting.
The moral of the story? Don’t turn up your nose at books
everyone raves about until you’ve read them, and if you’re going to write a
spin-off of a well-loved classic novel, don’t try and be the writer (like James)
– be inspired by them and use their work to springboard you into something new
creatively (like Baker).
