I don't know what I'd do without The Mary Sue, which linked me to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, aka what would happen if Lizzie Bennet lived in 2012 and decided to do a video blog about her life (plus a tumblr, plus twitter, plus facebook...). It's hilarious, and the writing & acting are really superb. As entertainment, I highly recommend it.

As a Jane Austen fan who overanalyzes the shit out of things, I have thoughts.

It is one of the better modernizations of any Jane Austen novel I've seen -- though I still think Clueless is the best, and Bride & Prejudice will always have a special place in my heart. But it also highlights for me how almost impossible it is to move Austen's stories into the modern era.

Austen's novels are satire. They're strongly heteroromantic, but their primary purpose is to critique the society of Austen's time and the limited choices offered to women of Austen's class -- too genteel to work for a living, but too poor to be easily married off. And that's just not the case today, in 2012, in America, where The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is set. There are still strong social pressures for women to marry, and especially to marry men with wealth, but it is no longer a matter of survival. Austen's Elizabeth did not have the option of getting a job, except perhaps as a governess -- the webseries' Lizzy may not easily find a job in mass communications, but as someone with a college eduction, she can find some kind of employment without losing social status.

That socio-economic quandry is critical to the motivations of the characters, and how they interact & perceive one another.

Mrs. Bennet is not ridiculous because she wants her daughters to marry and marry well. She's ridiculous because she is crude about it -- she has no delicacy or empathy. She is desperate and openly grasping, all of which makes the task of actually getting her daughters married much harder. When you take away the economic importance of being married, you make Mrs. Bennet a complete joke and greatly flatten her character.

It also turns critique of Lydia's behavior basically into slut-shaming, which I am not comfortable with. In Austen's era, pre-marital sex had extremely high consequences not just for the woman involved, but for her family. Lydia living with Wickham before getting married, if it became common knowledge, would have all but ruined her sisters' marriage prospects. It is understandable and sympathetic that Elizabeth would be humiliated by Lydia's flirtatiousness, and try to curb her sister's ability to meet and flirt with the soldiers.

But in America, in 2012, in the socio-economic class that the writers chose to put Lizzie Bennet in, Lydia's behavior does not affect Lizzie's financial survival, or even her ability to get a date. This is obvious, because Lizzie is the one to tell the entire internet that her little sister is a "slut," and that they're all glad "she's too old to qualify for any reality tv show about teen pregnancy." (In a VIDEO BLOG, TOO. WHERE PEOPLE CAN SEE WHAT HER SISTER LOOKS LIKE.)

That's part of what's bothering me about the whole conceit of the series, too. Austen's Elizabeth is sassy, proud, and a little judgmental, but she's also very private. She would not put her family's antics on display for the entire world to see; a large part of her frustration with her family is that they do put their antics on display for everyone to see, that they have very little concept of private behavior versus public behavior. While the internet and the modern era in general has changed what we perceive as private versus public behavior, I still find it very hard to see this as something Elizabeth would do. Kitty and Lydia, yes -- I could definitely see them as digital natives, gleefully putting everything on display for the world to see, and Lizzie being uncomfortable with that. But The Lydia Bennet Diaries doesn't have the same selling power, because for most people, Pride & Prejudice = Lizzy and Darcy.


And I miss the social critique. That's really the problem with bringing Austen's work into the modern era in America -- the really iconic bits, the parts that most people recognize as Austen, don't work as social commentary on our time. You can either take the heart of the story, and build a satire on modern society around that - which is what Clueless did with Emma, and what Jane Austen in Boca does with Pride & Prejudice - or you can take the recognizable skeleton of the story and make it purely a romance. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is cute and funny and I can't wait to meet Darcy & Bingley, but I don't see it making any commentary on contemporary American culture.


Hat tip to the series, though, for having Charlotte and Bingley as Asian-Americans. I thought "Bing Lee" was a nice touch.