Mary Bennet: Just no main character energy
Do we really need Mary Bennet from ‘Pride And Prejudice’ as heroine of a new 10-part mini series? Is this the beginning of the Jane Austen Cinematic Universe?
The 1995 BBC Pride And Prejudice miniseries is an iconic piece of pop-culture that has passed into canon for Jane Austen fans. Nevermind that Mr Darcy never really took a dip in the Pemberley pond in Austen’s novel—it is literally set in stone today; immortalised by a statue of Colin Firth in a diaphanous shirt rising from a lake in London’s Hyde Park. Of all Austen adaptations, it is generally considered the most faithful and tonally right—the 2005 version starring Keira Knightley comes close in popularity but never in authenticity for Austen fandom. Over six one-hour episodes, the mini-series captures the heart of Austen’s famous novel—it is not slavish in its adherence to its source material (refer to the pond scene) but is slow and thoughtful enough to catch all its frothiness as well as its emotional drift.
And now, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of this beloved show, we must have a 10-episode mini-series featuring the middle Bennet sister, Mary, as protagonist. Yes, the same Mary who is dealt, in the novel, one of Austen’s sharpest and quickest character sketches—she appears in half a dozen scenes at most, and yet we know Mary. What is more, we all know a Mary—she is the sanctimonious, moralising know-it-all who will have a worthy, smug and utterly unoriginal response to everything. If Mary lived in the 21st century, she would be the constantly virtue-signalling person on Twitter who swoops in to correct your pronouns a second before you correct them yourself. Why Mary?
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Fan-fiction writers have mined Pride And Prejudice to write copious amounts of spin-offs—not one character has been spared a closer look. From shifting the perspective of the novel to look at it through its hero’s eyes instead of its heroine’s (like Mr Darcy’s Diary by Amanda Grange and An Assembly Such As This by Pamela Alden, both fun reads) to giving it a subaltern twist by seeing it through the eyes of a person who never even featured in the original work (a housemaid, in the brilliant Longbourn by Jo Baker), it has all been done. There is a zombie version (Pride and Prejudice And Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith), a minor character version (The Heiress: The Revelations Of Anne de Bourgh, an unexpectedly deep and sombre read), and a murder mystery version (Death Comes To Pemberley by no less than the venerated P.D. James). It’s natural, then, that Mary has her own fan-fiction, with Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister, a thoughtful novel that gets the period and its language just right, leading the charge.
There’s no fanfiction like Pride And Prejudice fanfiction, and you could reasonably argue that the romantic comedy genre itself is one massive homage to the book. These books are for hardcore Austenites, and they satisfy the urge to linger in her world a little longer than multiple re-readings of her novels will allow. A high-profile TV show based on Hadlow’s novel, however, is quite another thing. Is this the beginning of the franchisification of Jane Austen? Are we going to see the Jane Austen Cinematic Universe?
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I blame Bridgerton. It’s telling that a new edition of Hadlow’s book is being sold with this tagline: “The Perfect Regency Novel for Fans of Bridgerton". It’s enough to make a true Austenite want to drum her heels in frustration, because Bridgerton itself is the worst kind of Regency novel fan-fiction—full of the trappings of that world without any of its wit or sharp social commentary. And yet, because of its success, and a clamouring fanbase that can’t have enough of its candy-floss cuteness (Bridgerton-themed balls are common in the US today), we are getting this show based on a book based on a character whom Austen clearly despised, or at least laughed at. Hadlow’s book tries its best with the character— giving it a tragic backstory of being neglected by her parents, an introvert in a family of extroverts, a plain girl among pretty sisters—but the best it can do is turn Mary sad, because not all the sympathy in the world will turn her into a heroine.
All minor characters are not interesting. Not every one of them needs their stories to be told in full, and very few deserve a 10-part mini-series. Will I watch it? Of course I will. I may even enjoy it. But it will be just another period drama, and nothing to do with the iconic novel that is its own genre.
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