Mr Darcy, You Are Just Not Rude Enough.

I am enjoying a delicious, rare day off where i have nothing planned and nothing to do.  So to indulge myself I have made a plunger coffee and am sitting down to watch some Regency finery in Pride & Prejudice.

NOT the classic 90s BBC Mini-Series with the delectable Colin Firth, but the atrocious 2004 version starring my nemesis Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen.

I have many problems with this movie. The first being Keira Knightley is a wooden actress and a terrible choice to play one of the greatest heroine in literary history. It always looks as if she is trying to hard and can’t breathe. 

My second issue is that Mr Darcy is all wrong.  Usually I enjoy MacFadyen as an actor, especially in Spooks,  but he could officially be the worst Mr Darcy in history.  Hot, yes.  Haughty? No. Disdainful? No. He’s all over the place. 

Mr Bingley is portrayed as an idiot and they only give him one sister (Did Mrs Hurst die in some strange accident that the movie goer is unaware of?).  Mrs Bennet is not nearly annoying enough.

Also the movie goes against societal mores of the time. When Jane Bennett is sick in Netherfield, Mr Bingley would NEVER have presumed to go into her room.  To do so would be practically to confirm and engagement.   

So I am baffled as to why I put this movie on this morning on my day off. Especially because I am perfectly aware that Knightley makes me want to staple my ears and eyes shut so I don’t have to look or hear her. 

Next time I’ll stick to Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

Why I'm Forever Lost In Austen

Once or twice a year, or whenever I feel the flu coming on, I pick up a tattered copy of Pride and Prejudice, proudly presented to me by my Father at age 7, I open and...

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that...”

I had a particularly nasty day today, and the comfort that the familiar words between Elizabeth and Darcy bring me still, after a love affair between them and I lasting nearly 20 years, is inexplicable. But it comforts me. Like a hug from Dad, tea from Nanna, one of Pa’s hankies when my nose is runny, it is one of the things in life I don’t think I could ever live without. Desert Island scenario.. I honestly think one of things I would want to be stranded with is my copy of Pride and Prejudice.

Jane Austen is one of my heroes, I will read, watch, listen to anything even remotely to do with her or her stories. I even have a copy of “Jane Austen’s Guide to Dating.” I cannot offer up any rational reason as to why I love her so, but I think it is because I secretly wish to belong to a simpler time, when it was scandalous for a gentleman to be alone with a lady and thrilling if they brush the skin of the upper arm where the sleeve meets the glove. A man that could dance was not considered a “dandy” and one’s world was one’s village. I love the freedom that (Western) 21st Century woman enjoy, and am proud of the Suffragettes who fought so hard for our liberation. But secretly, deep down, I want Mr Darcy to gallop towards me on his noble steed, preferably adorned in wet shirt a-la the delectable Colin Firth and lay his coat over a puddle so my feet will not get wet *sigh*.