Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice

Remember when Jane Austen’s Emma met contemporary high school culture in the 1995 film Clueless?  Then there was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (book 2009, film 2016), featuring the Bennet sisters as masters of martial arts.  Now there is Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice, in which the Bennet sisters meet Yoga, Crossfit, and reality TV. 

There is also a pregnancy by artificial insemination, non-marital sex, a lesbian couple, a transgender character, and an interracial relationship.  The Bennet family is nothing if not up-to-date in Cincinnati.  At least the sisters are; the parents still need some convincing, especially when it comes to a transgender son-in-law. 

I saw a PBS interview with author Curtis Sittenfeld, and was immediately hooked.

Bingley and Darcy are medical doctors, as well as wealthy eligible bachelors, and Elizabeth writes for a fashionable and feminist New York magazine called Mascara. 

But, never fear, Mrs. Bennet is still firmly focused on traditional marriage to unattached men of means for her five daughters; Mr Bennet is his curmudgeonly self; the younger sisters are as superficial and silly as in the original; and there is the same irresistible combination of biting Austenesque snarkiness, romantic misadventures and misunderstandings, lovers’ quarrels, pathos, heartbreak, sidesplitting one-liners, comic absurdity, and, of course, all that ends well.

Jane Austen is well known for taking the popular courtship plot of the 18^th century and transforming it into her own unique brand of incisive social satire combined with the enduring appeal of a romantic love story.  But what is it about Austen that inspires these ongoing adaptations and updates?

In the PBS interview Curtis Sittenfeld said it is the way Austen’s plots create sexual tension by throwing obstacles, misunderstandings, and bad timing in the path of powerful attraction.  You have these two characters who are obviously drawn to each other but who either resist that attraction or manage to miss every opportunity for any kind of consummation, even if it’s just that first confession of romantic feeling or that first kiss. 

As Shakespeare said, “the course of true love never did run smooth,” and Austen was a genius for dramatizing, not only that proverb, but also the sheer foolishness and comic absurdity that seems to accompany the human experience of either looking for love, stumbling over it, or missing it entirely.  At the same time, she could capture the authentic pathos of human longing and the joy of fulfillment.

In Pride and Prejudice, we have two characters, both determined to preserve their dignity while in the throes of a strong attraction; both caught in a web of circumstance, gossip, and misunderstanding; leading to a kind of love-hate relationship that raises the sexual tension to an extreme level, until neither the characters nor the reader can stand it no more.

This love-hate relationship is manifested in a martial arts duel between Elizabeth and Darcy in the Zombie version, and if anyone doubts the sub-text, it is fully revealed when Darcy’s sword slices off the buttons off Elizabeth’s bodice.  In Eligible Darcy and Elizabeth have what she calls “hate sex” because their mutual attraction is always masked by their constant conversational sniping.

But for all the humor in these romantic situations, Austen does not ignore the tears that lie just below the surface when human longing is frustrated or denied.  Indeed it is that depiction of genuine human suffering in romance that is a major part of her enduring appeal.

Similarly, for all the outlandish comedy in Eligible, like Austen, Curtis Sittenfeld recognizes the emotional pain that often accompanies the human drama of love and romance.  At one point Elizabeth, having finally admitted to herself her attraction to and longing for Darcy, is certain that Darcy is actually dating Bingley’s sister, Caroline.  She goes for her usual run, shedding tears most of the way, then collapses on a park bench, puts her face in her hands, and sobs.  A black woman passing by stops to check on her, and the normally reserved Elizabeth, exclaims to this stranger, “I am heartbroken!”  The woman responds, “Oh, honey, aren’t we all?”  I include the detail about the stranger’s race because it underscores part of the appeal of Jane Austen that Sittenfeld captures, namely her representation of human experience that transcends, not only race, but all the other social categories we use to divide ourselves from one another. 

And for all the spoofs, parodies, updates, and adaptations of Jane Austen, it is that universal human experience, whether it be comic, romantic, or tragic, at the heart of her novels that ensures her reputation and standing as, not only a perennial favorite, but as a classic writer of literature.

"Rip Van Winkle"

Nathaniel Hawthorne is known for his ambiguous fiction:  Will Robin “rise in the world” without help from his Kinsman Major Molineux? “Had Young Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch meeting?”  Was it guilt, sorrow, or allegory that led Rev. Hooper to wear a black veil? Did Dimmesdale really confess to being the father of Pearl?  (See previous post on The Scarlet Letter, Oct. 2012)  However, the device of alternative explanations was not his invention. Hawthorne had to look no further than his own predecessor in American fiction, Washington Irving, perhaps our best early satirist.

Like Irving, Hawthorne was an ironist, but, unlike Irving, he was also a strong moralist.  Though a product of the Enlightenment, Hawthorne could not quite shake the influence of his Puritan upbringing.  Thus he was both a romanticist and a mock-romanticist.  Irving’s satire is more pronounced, but his famous sketches, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow“ (see next post) and “Rip Van Winkle” (1819/20) are more often adapted as straight gothic tales without much hint of satire.  The alternative explanations of Irving’s original versions are often left out.  The character of Rip Van Winkle, for example, usually emerges as a poor, hen-pecked husband, whose encounter with the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew playing nine pins in the Catskills conveniently and quite innocently saves him from the “yoke of matrimony” and “petticoat government.”  Irving’s references to those who winked and smirked at Van Winkle’s story and those who “insisted that Rip had been out of his head” are frequently omitted.

Based on German folktales, such as “Peter Klaus,” and the tradition of the magic mountain, Irving’s story, like the original, could also be read as a 19^th century update of an ancient mythic theme, that of identity, the loss of selfhood, and its rediscovery or reinvention.  Having slept for twenty years, Rip awakes to an unfamiliar world, no longer certain of who he is.  Conveniently, his “termagant wife” has died, and, reunited with his now married daughter, he is free to live out his days as a doting grandfather and village patriarch, spinning stories of olden days and, of course, his mountain adventure and long sleep.

Similarly, it fits the pattern of the gothic tale, as ordinary reality collides with an irrational world of ghosts, phantom bowlers on the mountain, a magic potion, and a twenty-year nap.  Part of Rip’s life is lost, but ultimately he escapes the burdens and pains of his previous life and is reborn, so to speak, into a new life of idleness and ease.

It is difficult to take the story too seriously, however, given the introduction, the Note, and the Postscript that Irving appends to the tale, in which he cites his source, Diedrich Knickerbocker, a “historian” who primarily researches local legends and reports them as “absolute fact.”  Irving acknowledges a possible source for “Rip Van Winkle” as the German “superstition about the Emperor Frederick der Rothbart, and the Kypphauser mountain,” but insists Knickerbocker is a reliable source for the truth of the story.  It is not hard to detect that Irving’s tongue is planted firmly in his cheek. 

The effect is to mock the naïve believers in myth, legend, folklore, and superstition and satirize “romance” as a literary style that allows too much license with reality and truth. 

Nevertheless, Irving is able to tap into the popular appeal of local fables and gothic tales to enhance his own literary reputation and line his own pockets, at the expense of the gullible and to the great entertainment of his more sophisticated, urbane, and enlightened readers.

Those more educated and rational readers would also have noticed the political allegory that Irving embeds in the story.  It seems that Rip has slept through the Revolutionary War.  The portrait of King George III at the local inn has been replaced by one of George Washington.  When Rip returns, not only is he free of Dame Van Winkle’s “petticoat government, “  but the country is free of British rule.  Rip is clueless of his own history but easily adjusts to his new life.  Allegorically, Rip stands for the American colonies and Dame Van Winkle for the British tyrant.  We could dismiss this as Irving’s 19^th century sexism: how ridiculous to compare a nagging wife, dependent for her well-being on an irresponsible husband, to King George III!  However, it is also possible that Irving is a Tory sympathizer, depicting the colonies as backward, clueless, gullible hicks, who had their freedom dumped in their laps, not really knowing what to do with it, and occupying themselves by telling fantastic tales of revolutionary glory.

Just as “Loyalists” and “Patriots” disagreed about British rule before the Revolution, they no doubt disagreed afterwards.  Thus while British sympathizers are enjoying Irving’s satire on newly independent Americans, patriotic Americans are delighting in the “heroic” story of Rip achieving his freedom from domestic oppression.  Similarly, while educated city-dwellers are appreciating the mockery of gullible rural folks, villagers and townspeople are enjoying a romantic fable.  And Irving benefits by receiving accolades from both audiences. 

Elmer Gantry

What George Lakoff analyzes scientifically and linguistically (see previous post), Sinclair Lewis dramatizes (somewhat melodramatically) in Elmer Gantry, his 1927 fictional satire on evangelical Christianity in America. Gantry is a master manipulator and rhetorical razzledazzler, who uses religion and human gullibility to gratify his own ego, satisfy his own desire, and build his own social power. He instinctively knows how to find the right frame and milk the right metaphor to take optimum advantage of his rhetorical situation.

Lakoff does not address the ethics of strategic framing, manipulation of metaphors, and the use of emotional appeals. Back in 1927, Lewis used those same methods to expose how they can be misused by a skillful and charismatic rhetorician to deceive, mislead, and harm an unsuspecting and ill-prepared audience.

Lewis uses the well-established frame of the American success story. In three different episodes Elmer Gantry rises from relative obscurity to a position of power. In the first third of the novel, he goes from irreligious student in a Baptist college to ordained minister to small congregation pastor. After disgracing himself, he begins the second episode as a traveling salesman and rises to prominence as right-hand-man and lover to a nationally known touring woman evangelist. After a fire destroys his evangelical ambitions as well as his lover and patron, Gantry joins the New Thought movement before becoming a Methodist minister, marrying a minister's daughter, who has been groomed as the perfect minister's wife, and moving up as a leading crusader against vice and the first radio broadcasting preacher in his state. He is nearly brought down by a couple of scam artists, who use sex and flattery to trap him in scandal, but, as on previous occasions, he manages to wriggle free, return to his pulpit, and begin eyeing his next young conquest in the choir.

Each episode follows the pattern of a rise to social power, sexual temptation, a fall from power, and a restoration. Gantry's success story is, of course, a satirical inversion of the popular narrative, designed to target evangelical hypocrisy, of which we have seen enough in the last 40 years to make Gantry's exploits seem tame. Lewis' satire seems almost equally directed at the naive and gullible followers of unscrupulous evangelism. It could also be read as a critique of the archetypal American success story itself, which not only falsifies the typical American experience but undermines the validity of the socially successful hero.

The irony is that, like every other creative writer, Lewis uses the methods of narrative framing, metaphor, strategic appeals to values, and emotionally connotative language in his critique of those who misuse such methods and those who fall for them.

Another way of viewing the novel is as a trickster narrative, in which the mischeievous "hero" clarifies the social norms by breaking them. The trickster character is often admired for challenging the social rules. In the case of Elmer Gantry, however, the character functions to expose the hypocrisy of our most socially admired social heros, our religious leaders.

While, in some respects, the novel seems dated, in others, it seems all too reflective of current reality, in which public figures in both religion and politics who uphold principles of "sexual purity" and "family values" and are vocal in their conemnation of those who don't act in accordance with such principles are revealed to be as two-faced and hypocritical as the now iconic Elmer Gantry.