Judging a Darcy is like judging a fruit cake. He has to be easy on the eye, crusty on the outside, soft in the middle, extraordinarily rich, and not particularly fond of dancing. OK, the simile doesn’t quite stretch but you get the idea.

Here are the nominations:

William Darcy from Bride and Prejudice (2003) – Martin Henderson

William Darcy played by Martin Henderson

Bio: An American hotelier who arrives in India harboring stereotypes of the local culture, akin to Jane Austen’s Darcy’s preconceptions about life outside elite society.
Positives: Classic Hollywood good looks.
Negatives: Perhaps a little too “new-money” for Darcy. The real Darcy wasn’t merely wealthy, of course, and as a gentleman wasn’t one for holding down a job either, whereas this chap is never off his laptop.

Will Darcy from Pride and Prejudice: A Latter Day Comedy (2003) – Orlando Seal

Will Darcy played by Orlando Seal

Bio: A British publisher who receives a manuscript from a certain Elizabeth Bennet, he is initially contemptuous of Miss Bennet’s social circle, before inevitably love begins to blossom.
Positives: His Englishness definitely helps him to appear arrogant and superior at the beginning (I can say this, I’m English. Americans, please don’t leave comments agreeing with me!”)
Negatives: He featured in an episode of the comedy series ‘The IT Crowd,’ in which his name was Peter File. See the YouTube clip below. It’s just impossible to take him seriously after this. In Pride and Prejudice; A Latter Day Comedy, he also has the misfortune to be in a pretty bad film, which doesn’t help matters.

Mark Darcy from Bridget Jones Diary (2001) – Colin Firth

Mark Darcy played by Colin Firth

Bio: Mark Darcy is a stuffy, yet bizarrely well-connected human rights lawyer, who bumps into Bridget at a new year party and eventually becomes a rival of Daniel Cleaver, Bridget’s boss, for her affections.
Positives: He has a natural advantage of course, being for many people the “real” Darcy due to his fabulous performance in the BBC’s 1995 series. His turn in Bridget Jones, in which his head appears to be a perfectly good shape (regardless of Miss Amanda Price’s allegations) is very different of course, but still very Darcy.
Negatives: He is, of course, as socially awkward as Jane Austen’s Fitzwilliam Darcy but lacks the sheltered, aristocratic upbringing in comparison with Bridget. In fact, everyone in the movie is more or less equally posh.

Fitzwilliam Darcy in Lost in Austen (2008) – Elliot Cowan

Elliot Cowan as Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy

Bio: Cowan plays the ‘real’ Darcy from the book, of course, but his life is knocked off course by the arrival of Miss Amanda Price from modern-day London. Amanda seeks to bring Elizabeth and Darcy together, yet slowly the two become drawn to one another instead.
Positives: Cowan is suitably tall, handsome and yet superficially ‘toxic,’ then turns on the charm rather delightfully as the series progresses.
Negatives: Perhaps a little angrier and pricklier than Darcy as portrayed in the book and the major adaptations. Not just cold or insensitive at the beginning, this Darcy is baldly unpleasant.

My Two Cents

My winner has to be Elliot Cowan from Lost in Austen. He takes Darcy to the extremes of insufferability and affability, and somehow binds it all together into one consistent character. He is handsome, of course, but not in a pretty-boy way, and has great chemistry with Miss Amanda Price.

What do you think? Aside from the Darcys of the major, straight adaptations, who is the best of the rest?

Mrs Bennet - 'a real ball-breaker'

I particularly enjoyed Alex Kingston’s Mrs Bennet. She is a tougher, more consciously manipulative and formidable a character than we are used to seeing in screen adaptations. She is, as Amanda puts it, ‘a real ball-breaker.’ Kingston’s Mrs Bennet has her hysterical side, of course, but in her quiet moments shows also a ruthless streak that shocks even Hammersmith’s streetwise Miss Price.

There is a horrible scene in which Mrs Bennet is seemingly comforting Jane on her bed. The latter is inconsolable after Mr Bingley has slighted her at the Netherfield ball, when Mrs Bennet, cuddling her daughter and stroking her hair, whispers:

You are of more use to this family than all your sisters together. For you are elegant and kindly and obedient, and in the morning you shall come prettily to breakfast and sit beside Mr Collins that he may see this lovely long neck…

Unconditional motherly love?

She threatens Amanda with something wholly unagreeable, which shall come to her ‘like a thief in the night,’ and when she kicks Miss Price out of Netherfield, her delivery is so wonderfully spiteful:

The time has come Miss Price that we cannot in all conscience detain you with our hospitality. Upon your return to Longbourn you will collect what is yours and surrender what is not, and you will leave my house.

Even when suffering her famous attacks of nerves it seems like there is something contrived about her. To me, Kingston’s Mrs Bennet is at the opposite end of the spectrum to Alison Steadman’s 1995 interpretation. Steadman’s character is socially incompetent, impulsive, and endowed with a level of self-awareness usually bestowed on creatures that attack their own reflections when scientists present them with mirrors. Kingston’s on the other hand is actually a little frightening. When she tells her daughters how to behave for Mr Collins, for example, we see her as certain critics have described her – as essentially prostituting her own daughters for financial gain. Ironically for a comic spin-off, there is less of her to laugh about in Lost in Austen than there is in the straight adaptations.

Mrs Bennet pimping her daughters

Another thing I liked is that she is younger than her predecessors in the role, and perhaps closer to the age Jane Austen intended. In Alex Kingston, much remains of the beauty that attracted the young “Claude” Bennet to his future bride, so the fact they are together isn’t a complete mystery. She also has the social skills to suggest that not only a true masochist would join her in matrimony. Alison Steadman’s Mrs Bennet is so majestic in her awfulness, that why he would have proposed to her is anyone’s guess. With Alex Kingston’s, it’s as if she uses her hysteria on her husband because he has become numb to the feminine charms that once attracted him. She can’t threaten him as she does Miss Price, or manipulate him as she does her daughters, so she she shrieks and flaps around him until he caves in.

To be fair, she is redeemed a lot towards the end, as she sees the true ‘Prometheun misery’ of her daughter Jane in marriage to Mr Collins, and it’s nice when she threatens Lady Catherine de Bourgh with being turned upside down and used to scrape out Lady Ambrosia’s sty!

Mrs Bennet in defence!

What did you think of Alex Kingston as Mrs Bennet in Lost in Austen? What’s your interpretation of my interpretation of her interpretation (so to speak)?

Please let me know your thoughts!

Your ever so slightly scared friend,

Lizzy

Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. This preservative she had now obtained; and at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good luck of it.

What manner of degradation and subjugation could lead someone to feel lucky for securing a husband like Mr Collins? Nevertheless, Charlotte is unswervingly loyal to her new husband. Elizabeth can’t help looking at her for signs of discontentment, but sees very little.

[Elizabeth] looked with wonder at her friend that she could have so cheerful an air with such a companion. When Mr. Collins said anything of which his wife might reasonably be ashamed, which certainly was not unseldom, she involuntarily turned her eye on Charlotte. Once or twice she could discern a faint blush; but in general Charlotte wisely did not hear.

Charlotte and Elizabeth have a giggle over the ridiculous Mr Collins in the 1980 adaptation

To me, this just makes it all the more horrible. She can’t complain about him to her friends, nor tweet nor blog of her troubles. Rather, she must express gratitude to her husband and of course his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and avoid giving any signs of her discontentment. What she does say, for example about encouraging Mr Collins to spend time in his garden, is in a kind of code.

Charlotte appears 'cheerful' and 'content' at Hunsford in the 1995 BBC and 2005 movie adaptations

This all has the potential to be very dark, but in the major adaptations the filmmakers have generally tried to keep it fairly light. In the 1980 adaptation, Charlotte and Elizabeth even share a giggle over the former’s new husband. Extra little comedic scenes with Collins are added to lighten the mood, when it would surely have been more interesting to explore the reality of such a life. It is, after all, a future that Elizabeth only narrowly avoided through her own strength of will. In my view, the 1995 and 2005 adaptations both do the same to an extent, with the 1995 series coming closest to recreating the tone of the book.

Jane is understandably sickened by the creepy Mr Collins in Lost in Austen

Marriage to Mr Collins was, as critic Robert M. Polhemus put it, ‘a kind of socially respectable prostitution in which Charlotte acquiesces.’ Her plight is just one example of how the main story – so ‘light and bright and sparkling’ – nevertheless flirts with many darker themes. It’s interesting that, of all the dramatizations, it’s Lost in Austen that presents life with Mr Collins in the darkest and most uncompromising manner. They do this by transforming Collins into an almost unrecognizable middle-aged slimely, fetishistic letch, which lessens some of the impact.  In the book, so much is left unsaid between her and Elizabeth that it only adds to the sense of gloom.

Darcy

Here are My Pride and Prejudice’s all time top 10 pictures of the beautiful, kind and good-natured Jane Bennet.In no particular order and from all the major screen and TV adaptations we have Rosamund Pike (2005), Susannah Harker (1995), Sabina Franklyn (1980), Maureen O’Sullivan(1940) and Morven Christie (lost in Austen).

Lucy Brier's Mary Bennet infinitely prefers a book to a ball!

To me, there is a certain meanness in the writing of Mary’s character. Jane Austen writes very unsympathetically about her in the novel, but we have little control over our physical appearance, none over our natural musical ability, and only a limited amount over our way with words. Mary struggles to better herself in a commendable way; she doesn’t give up because of her lack of natural advantages, but rather doubles her efforts. Her comments are longwinded, and largely lacking in substance, but this hardly a capital offence. Her pomposity, for example when she is at the ball having to sit by herself as nobody has asked her to dance, can surely be forgiven. It is probably better to pretend that you do not wish to dance than suffer the humiliation of sitting longingly alone all evening.

Mary probably disappointed her parents from birth. A third daughter would have represented the dwindling chance of producing a male heir to inherit Longbourn. Again, since Mary had no choice over her gender, one would expect this to be a cause of sympathy rather than mocking. Nevertheless, along with the more deserving Lady Catherine and Mr Collins, Mary is generally used as a target of Jane Austen’s humor.

A cute and likeable Mary Bennet

While we all probably join Amanda Price in pining for the more civilized society and manners that her novels represent, in most ways I think we’re becoming gentler and more forgiving since Pride and Prejudice was written. Lucy Briers’ 1995 Mary is pretty close to Jane Austen’s vision, but in other cases she has been softened greatly for modern audiences. In the 1980 adaptation she is completely adorable. Tessa Peake-Jones’s Mary seems younger than Kitty and Lydia, is not at all ‘plain,’ and performs with such sweetness that all her pomposity can be put down to childish insecurity. The 1940 Pride and Prejudice, that seeks to make everyone likeable (even Lady Catherine de Bourgh), as nerdy and bespectacled, but sprightly and cute.

Likewise, in Lost in Austen, Ruby Bentall’s Mary is just about the cutest thing to appear on screen since Tiny Tim in the Muppet’s version of A Christmas Carol. She even gets excited about balls and joins in with her sisters’ silliness at every opportunity. In the 2005 movie, it’s hard to say much because Talulah Riley doesn’t get a lot to do, but in all the adaptations (save possibly for the 1995 version) Mary is a quirky, but likable young lady.

It seems that we’re not so comfortable with treating a character that hasn’t really done anything wrong so dismissively. We want to make her likeable, lovable even, while Jane Austen showed no particular need to do this herself. In our society we’re still incredibly judgmental and unpleasant of course, but I’d like to think that we’re less willing to aim our laughter so unambiguously at the misfortunes of others.

Your nerd in solidarity,

Lizzy

Jane Austen wrote nothing about the hair color of Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice (although she does have dark eyes), and was similarly silent about Darcy’s, Jane’s and Bingley’s barnetts, so where does this certainty come from?

A decidedly dark Elizabeth Bennet

Casting directors have seen it differently in the past. In the 1940 adaptation, Greer Garson’s Elizabeth has blonde hair, while Jane Bennet (Maureen O’ Sullivan) is a brunette. Also, in the 1980 series, Elizabeth Garvie has light brown hair and, again Jane’s (Sabina Franklin) hair is dark. However, from the 1995 BBC production the hair color has been fixed, as is evident in the 2005 movie and in the TV spin-off Lost in Austen.

Hair color is of course richly symbolic within our culture; blonde shades, like the color white, signify sexual and moral purity. Jane Bennet, for this reason, could never join the Pink Ladies. Also, blondeness – unfortunately for some (including me!) – still hasn’t lost its association with dumbness in our culture. Perhaps binding these together is our association of blondeness with childhood, puberty being the time when hair thickens and becomes darker.

Three Blonde Moments - A most definitely blonde Jane Bennet

Dark hair and features are of course more readily identified with moodiness, mystery and danger. It’s obvious, therefore, why it suits Elizabeth and Darcy’s fiery courtship. Perhaps it’s also considered more masculine. Andrew Davies did describe Elizabeth as something of a tomboy, because of her love of country walks, her very ‘unladylike’ habit of arguing with her superiors, and her willingness to get muddy. He said he thought it might be Jane Austen’s code for saying Elizabeth had lots of sexual energy (there he goes again!)

Tall, dark and handsome Mr Darcy

Dark hair is also symbolic of the generally more complex world of the adult. Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship is contradictory and complicated from the start. They both struggle to contain their emotions. Bingley and Jane’s relationship is far simpler. Theirs is such an innocent courtship that it’s hard to see it as adult at all. Bingley is indecisive and Jane is shy. Both are, of course, childlike traits.

The blonde and boyish Mr Bingley

In fact, it doesn’t take a major stretch of the imagination to see the relationships of Elizabeth and Jane, and Darcy and Bingley, as both containing Parent-Child elements. Elizabeth is both awed and saddened by the naivety of Jane’s worldview. She is like a parent with no way to protect her daughter from the cruelty of the adult world. Likewise, it’s only when Darcy ‘pretty much’ gives his permission for Bingley to marry Jane, that the former finally proposes. His words, therefore, must have carried greater authority than those of a typical friend. Moreover, despite trespassing on his younger friend’s hospitality at Netherfield, he speaks to Bingley with an abruptness that few friends would tolerate.

I’m sure there could be other reasons for the automatic way in which most of us associate Elizabeth and Darcy with dark hair and Jane and Bingley with blondeness, but these are what occurred to me. Did I miss any other hints in the book as to their appearance, or have we just filled in the gaps with our own cultural associations?

Lizzy