Pure as the Driven Snow

To be a purist living in a postmodern society is to be a tortured soul.

I've experienced a bit of this--being a borderline Austen purist. You can read about my disgust with the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice here. But, since being a purist is such a misunderstood and, in the end, fruitless enterprise, I have tried to be a bit less stringent.

Which is why, though I generally eschew fannish retellings or sequels to Austen's books, I did willingly join Erin in watching Lost in Austen a few weeks ago. The miniseries follows Amanda, a devout Pride and Prejudice reader as she switches places with Elizabeth Bennet through an inexplicable (and unexplained) door in her bathroom.

Immediately upon entering the world of Pride and Prejudice, Amanda, despite her love of and familiarity with the book, begins changing the story. Her inadvertant actions cause the plot to spin out of control, no matter how she attempts to fix it. By the time Jane is married to Mr. Collins, and Charlotte Lucas has gone to be a missionary in Africa, you wonder if anything can be made right again.

To the credit of the series and its willingness to tell its own story, not everything Amanda changes is fixed in the end. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy never quite connect, and it is Amanda who'll move into Pemberley after the credits. Wickham is no longer all that wicked and Jane and Bingley will become Americans to escape the scandal of her annullment. And yet, the story is essentially the same. Mr. Darcy still falls head over heels (and into ponds) for a little moxie. It is still a comedy of manners--though the manners are severely violated.

I think I have to say, to my chagrin, that I really enjoyed Lost in Austen. But why? I guess my goodwill is not that hard to garner. It helps that, unlike the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, this quite unfaithful adaptation retained the comedy and sense of humor that I value in Austen. In addition, the very fact that it didn't remotely pretend to be an accurate or realistic depiction of the book allowed me to overlook breaches of etiquette that might otherwise bother me. I think I might have a similar appreciation for the fun to be had in Lost in Austen that I do for Hamlet 2. It's different from appreciation of the original and separate from a successful retelling (like the Shakespeare Retold versions of Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer's Night Dream, and, my favorite, Much Ado About Nothing). Instead, it's like the literary version of an inside joke, poking fun at our usual reverence. I'll take that over bad adaptations any day.