Conceivably the Most Popular of Classic Novel Adaptations Of

CHAPTER FIVE THE 1995 MINISERIES: FAITHFUL TO THE FEMALE AUDIENCE Conceivably the most popular of classic novel adaptations of all times, the 1995 television interpretation of Pride and Prejudice brought fame to its actors and revived that of Austen. Although only one of seven Austen adaptations of the decade, it was the one that effectively set off the wave and has come to represent the “Austen Renaissance” of the 1990s.1 It caused more “Austenmania” among viewers than any of the others.2 It coincided with new technology that made films more accessible: over the Eighties and Nineties the home video-machine became common, changing the role of the audience. For the first time, viewers could use the rewind-button to watch favourite scenes over and over again. And the scenes that viewers were most fascinated by were those added by the film-makers to fill in Austen’s gaps: the Darcy scenes. Nearly two decades later, these scenes remain significant bits of our cultural iconography, echoed not only in later Austen productions like the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, the 2008 Lost in Austen,3 and the 2013 Austenland,4 but in other novels-turned-films: Bridget Jones’s Diary 1 The ensuing enormous interest in Austen and in classic novel adaptations in general is referred to as the “Pride and Prejudice Factor” (Robert Giddings and Keith Selby, The Classic Serial on Television and Radio, Basingstoke, and New York, 2001, 116). 2 One early reflection of the impact of this is found in Roger Sales’ 1996 “Afterword: Austenmania” for the new paperback edition of his 1994 book (Sales, Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England, 227-39). The wave had struck between the two editions. 3 Like the main character, Amanda Price, the viewers are “having a bit of a strange, postmodern moment” as Mr Darcy obediently wades into a fountain and comes out with a wet shirt, to recreate the female fantasy caused by the 1995 adaptation. This kind of self-referential awareness suits the tone of an Austen film. 4 A modern American woman (named Jane) can find no one to match Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy, until she arrives at an Austen theme park. 130 Irony and Idyll (2001) and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004),5 in web discussions, in Austenware like t-shirts and mugs, and inevitably reflected in popular and scholarly writings since.6 So, how does it relate to Austen’s irony? The BBC team led by Simon Langton (director) and Sue Birtwistle (producer), and the scriptwriter Andrew Davies chose an approach that is both reverent and innovative. Irony is not the main focus of the adaptation, but it is an ingredient that sometimes tips the scales. The major ingredients are, however, a subtle eroticism and a new masculinity, the second running the errand of the first. In the end attraction is preferred to distance, fatherly love to patriarchal failure, and the kiss replaces the laugh. Andrew Davies, of the same generation as Fay Weldon, has been a television scriptwriter since the mid-Sixties; and his adaptations read like a shortlist of English literary history. His Pride and Prejudice falls between Middlemarch the year before and Moll Flanders the year after. He has since done three more adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels: Emma (1996), Northanger Abbey (2007) and Sense and Sensibility (2008). All of them combine an ear for Austen’s tone with a distinctly modern interpretation/presentation. He also wrote for the Bridget Jones films, incorporating intertextual echoes of the 1995 adaptation. The enjoyment of Austen’s witty exchanges, striking phrases and well-composed conversations is retained in the 1995 series, especially since excellent acting makes the two-hundred-year-old dialogue come convincingly alive. There is nothing left of the declamatory, theatrical style sometimes seen in early adaptations, here the naturalness and 5 Helen Fielding’s novels of the same titles of 1996 and 1999 were really a response to the impact of the television series. Bridget is a victim of the post-95 Austenmania, or more precisely, Darcymania, and her swooning over Colin Firth as Mr Darcy is mixed with her flirt with Colin Firth as Mark Darcy in an interfilmic joke of using the same actor. Fielding’s intertextual reliance on the plot of Pride and Prejudice for her first novel and that of Persuasion for her second is extended with such film-to-film references. 6 The Jane Austen Centre in Bath offers badges, bags, balms and bookmarks that declare a love for Darcy. While Homes & Gardens recommends a particular country house hotel with the words: “Not since Colin Firth emerged from the lake at Pemberley have we been so enchanted by a country house. Although there’s no guarantee you’ll meet a modern-day Mr Darcy …” (“We love Coworth Park”, Homes & Gardens, February 2011). .

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