Does a novel retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice have anything to teach us about our reality-TV-obsessed culture? Surprisingly, it does.
(Please note: in case you haven’t found time to read the original in the past 203 years, spoilers for both it and the update follow.)
At first glance, novelist Curtis Sittenfeld’s new book, Eligible, is nothing but a banal promotion of liberal mores masquerading as an homage to Austen; the novel appears to be yet another remake that assumes Jane Austen’s values were merely a product of the era in which she lived, rather than a central part of her character and a crucial reason for her skill as a novelist.
For example, in the original Pride and Prejudice, Austen vividly depicts the wretchedness of the youngest Bennet sister, Lydia, which ensues after she chooses to run away with Wickham and live with him without the benefit of marriage. In Eligible, by contrast, one sister is sleeping with a married man, another is in love with a transgender man, a third is single but trying to get pregnant via a sperm donor, and a fourth is no stranger to the sentiment that propelled Pink’s “U + Ur Hand” anthem. Oh, and there’s (pre-martial) “hate sex,” too. No judgment.
And yet, although Sittenfeld’s Eligible demonstrates little understanding of the values that undergirded Austen’s moral perspective, it does ultimately share—and in some ways, push further—Austen’s insights into how poorly we often judge each other. And it does this by putting our culture’s obsessions with celebrity and fame front and center.
Sittenfeld’s books contains numerous modern twists on Austen’s tale, such as her transformations of Lydia and her sister Kitty from army officer-chasing flirts to Cross Fit aficionados. But the most effective is her casting of Mr. Bingley as the past star of a reality television series called “Eligible,” a thinly-veiled rip off of The Bachelor. Bingley’s participation in the show—and his decision to return for a show reunion—play a major part in the book’s plot.
The more we learn about “Eligible,” the more we see how fake the “reality” television show culture really is. Sittenfeld, who told Vogue she “actually interviewed a former Bachelor producer, and I was just thrilled with the material I got,” makes the final act of “Eligible” an on-set wedding for the reality show. She shows how selective editing, careful questions from staffers eager to gin up drama, and straight-up lies make the show more farce than reality.
And yet it is on the set of this reality show—albeit with mics torn off and cameras distant—that Darcy and Liz finally admit their mutual love. In this sense the journey taken by Sittenfeld’s Liz closely parallels Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet, as both learn to step back from their initially harsh judgment of Darcy and comes to realize that he isn’t a horrible man. But in its modern setting it is deeply ironic: on a reality TV show that churns out fodder for audiences to indulge their inner snarky critic, Liz realizes her own flawed and unfairly judgmental assessment of Darcy’s character.
But that’s not all Sittenfeld’s Liz and Darcy teach us. It’s easy to walk away from Austen’s Pride and Prejudice resolving to give people you meet a chance, no matter how dismal your first impressions of them are. But Eligible demands something more provocative: a consideration of how our Elizabeth Bennett-style judging is affecting all of us, as we create a culture where we consume an increasing amount of other people’s “real” lives as entertainment. What Sittenfeld’s book suggests is that in some ways our celebrity obsessed culture has left us as stagnant as Elizabeth Bennet before her Darcy epiphany. We’ve forgotten the real lesson of Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennet didn’t merely gain a wedding ring; she also grew in moral insight and character. If we’re to do the same, we might want to reconsider our slavish devotion to reality television. Jane Austen would approve.
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