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Me & Mr Darcy by Alexandra Potter
75 Plays18 days ago
What if Pride & Prejudice was set in the modern day? What if Mr Darcy was an interdimensional time-traveller? What if Elizabeth was a lovelorn American who was confounded by English ducks? Join Stefanie and Melinda as they discuss falling in love in a week, why you need to pack clothes as well as books for a holiday, and why Mr Darcy would not be caught dead at night with a woman dressed only in her knickers, in: Me & Mr Darcy by Alexandra Potter.
Links & Mentions
Read Cherry Potter's wild take on "the Darcy syndrome" here.
If you need subtitles or a transcript, these are available through Apple Podcasts. Please note they are auto generated so we apologise in advance for it not correctly understanding our accents on certain words.
As always you can find us (and our memes) on Instagram @janeaustenremixed and you can contact us via janeaustenremixed@gmail.com.
Join us every second Monday to hear all about a new adaptation of our favourite classic novel. Next episode we will be reading Unmarriageable: Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan by Soniah Kamal. If you're reading along, we encourage you to buy secondhand or support your local independent bookshop, where possible.
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Transcript
Introduction to Jane Austen Remixed
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey Melinda. Hey Stephanie. What if I told you that Elizabeth Bennett was actually an American named Emily and that Mr Darcy was real?
00:00:11
Speaker
feel like there are a lot of women who would love the fact that Mr Darcy is real.
Introducing 'Me and Mr Darcy'
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome to Jane Austen Remixed, the podcast where we examine the wild and wonderful world of Pride and Prejudice adaptations. I'm Stephanie, and for today's episode, I will be introducing Melinda and yourself, dear listener, to the 2007 novel, Me and Mr. Darcy by Alexandra Potter.
00:00:46
Speaker
Now, this book was a gift from my mother and from memory it was given to me for a birthday sometime around the publishing date. So it's been in my collection for quite a while.
00:00:58
Speaker
As Melinda set up in the last episode, we're going to start off with the blurb. After a string of disastrous dates, Emily Albright decides she's had it with modern-day love and would much rather curl up with Pride and Prejudice and spend her time with Mr Darcy, the dashing, honourable and passionate hero of Jane Austen's classic.
Plot Summary of 'Me and Mr Darcy'
00:01:18
Speaker
So when her best friend suggests a wild week of margaritas and men in Mexico with the girls, Emily abruptly flees to England on a guided tour of Jane Austen country instead.
00:01:30
Speaker
Far from inspiring romance, the company aboard the bus consists of a gaggle of little old ladies and one single man, Spike Hargroves. a foul-tempered journalist writing an article on why the fictional Mr Darcy has earned the title The Man Most Women Would Love to Date.
00:01:48
Speaker
The last thing Emily expects to find on her excursion is a broodingly handsome man striding across a field his damp shirt clinging to his chest. But that's exactly what happens when she comes face to face with none other than Mr Darcy himself.
00:02:04
Speaker
Suddenly, every woman's fantasy becomes one woman's reality.
00:02:12
Speaker
Are you ready? Are you ready? don't know, I could barely make it through the blurb. And now to the spoilers. So get off here if you're a pre-reader. Okay, now we're alone.
00:02:24
Speaker
So far, so standard copycat romance. That's what you're thinking, right? Wrong. The blurb we just read out makes it sound like a really normal run-of-the-mill adaptation.
00:02:35
Speaker
But once you get into the book, you will realize that this novel is completely deranged in a way that I cannot explain to you without a lot of examples. Two main examples that I'm going to get you to read out, I think, really illustrate the insanity that we're dealing with.
00:02:50
Speaker
So at certain points, I have sent you a brick of text to read. And it's because I really want you to feel how I felt rereading this book more than 10 years after I was first gifted it. Because believe me, I did not remember most of it.
00:03:03
Speaker
Right, to the plot. I'm going to step you through the main thrusts of the storyline because my aim is to give you a really good grounding in the more WTF moments of the book. And there are a lot of subplots that have absolutely nothing to do with the original storyline.
00:03:18
Speaker
I have cut those out. So if you have read the book, yes, there is a lot that we don't have time for.
Critique of Characters and Plot
00:03:23
Speaker
Things like green card marriages, old Hollywood starlets and long lost daughters. They've all been cast aside. They've all been cast aside.
00:03:30
Speaker
Aww, okay.
00:03:34
Speaker
Trust me. So we first meet our protagonist Emily at the end of a bad date. The penultimate straw is the guy wanting to split the bill down to the last dime, literally the last dime, and the final straw is that he tries to kiss her, which he deftly deflects, then takes the last cab and speeds off into the frosty winter's eve, leaving her alone on the sidewalk.
00:03:52
Speaker
We reconvene with her the next morning in her bookshop. Emily is complaining to Stella, her best friend, about men and dating and declares that she has sworn off dating because she's already found the perfect man.
00:04:03
Speaker
Stella is at first excited and then dismayed to realize that literally means Mr. Darcy, a fictional man that apparently Stella has never heard of despite working in a bookstore and being the best friend of someone who is obsessed with the works of Jane Austen.
00:04:17
Speaker
How has she never heard of Mr. Darcy? Like I feel like at this point Mr. Darcy is just a cultural icon. Stella doesn't do books, she does fashion.
00:04:29
Speaker
Oh, I'm sorry. I apologise. Sorry, Stella. My mistake. Sorry, Stella. Stella then announces that she has the perfect antidote to Emily's dating run, a week in Mexico with Stella's other friends for New Year's.
00:04:44
Speaker
Emily is, of course, completely off the idea. And while she flaps around trying to find a reason to avoid Mexico, I can see you nodding, Melinda. She spies a mystery pamphlet on her shop counter, advertising a week-long bus trip in England to all of the Jane Austen hotspots.
00:04:58
Speaker
She latches onto it, declares she can't possibly go to Mexico, then promptly books the last spot on the book tour and some flights to London. Like, which, okay, how much is she earning? I mean, would love to last minute go, yes, I'm going to England and this week. Okay, bye. Yeah.
00:05:15
Speaker
The tour sounds amazing, by the way. It does. It sounds like so much fun. And you will see how Emily ruins it. So Emily's getting ready for her trip, forgoing packing clothes in favour of packing what seems like every single book she owns, including the entirety of Jane Austen's works.
00:05:33
Speaker
She has mentioned many times already in chapter one that she finds fashion terrifying. Okay, but at least can you pack clothes for a trip without needing to be a fashion expert?
00:05:44
Speaker
So once we have established that she's too smart to need clothes, the next thing we know she's landing in London and is seemingly baffled by the fact that England is full of English people. What? sir There is a particularly interesting question mark question mark scene here where Emily gets to border control and because the English border guard doesn't smile back at her, she immediately goes into an anxiety spiral and thinks she's going to be deported.
00:06:09
Speaker
It is unfathomable. And I've bookmarked it for you to read. Oh, good. All right, so we have a border control person. What kind of tour?
00:06:21
Speaker
asked the officer, breaking off momentarily to flick through my passport. My stomach nosedives. Clearing my throat, i swallow a few times. A week the English countryside to explore the world of Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice, I add weekly.
00:06:37
Speaker
Pride and Prejudice? she repeats sharply, without looking up, her fingers freeze on the keys. Did you just say Pride and Prejudice? Uh, yes. I nod uncertainly.
00:06:49
Speaker
She looks up, her face flushed with excitement. Oh, my giddy aunt. Okay. I can't believe it. I love Pride and Prejudice. She shrieks loudly.
00:07:00
Speaker
Clutching at her polyester chest, she throws me a dazzling smile. just saw the film adaptation with Keira Knightley on DVD. Wasn't it wonderful?
00:07:13
Speaker
Leaning back in her chair, she loosens the top button of her blouse and begins banning herself with my passport and that Mr. Darcy rolling her eyes as she shoots me a lustful look.
00:07:33
Speaker
Do I really have to say the next slide? Oh, goodness. Sex on a stick.
00:07:45
Speaker
what
00:07:48
Speaker
hey
00:07:55
Speaker
ah Leaning forwards, she winks conspiratorially. i tell you what, I wouldn't kick him out of bed, she whispers and giggles girlishly.
00:08:07
Speaker
Wow! What border control agent would ever be that friendly? What sort of lunatic thinks that they're going to be deported because the border agent didn't smile at them when they walked up? She's American.
00:08:23
Speaker
They have the most angry border control people I have ever met. Sure, I've been to a couple of places where the border control agents do sort of banter a little bit. Not a lot, because that's not their job. but I'm sorry, what person is fanning themselves with their passport and... And screeching at the top of their lungs.
00:08:47
Speaker
About a fictional character. Yeah. I didn't make you read out the worst bit, which I think is the worst bit, whereas as Emily walks away, she says to herself, thanks, Mr. d Oh dear.
00:09:03
Speaker
Okay, so now we know what we're dealing with here, I am going to present her trip to England as a series of vignettes broken down day by day because a lot happens in the next week of book time.
00:09:17
Speaker
Day one. Emily arrives at the bus and is very disappointed. Read that as rude as hell to see her companions are all older ladies. That sounds like a lovely trip. It does. It sounds so relaxing.
00:09:28
Speaker
Also, if she wanted to hang out with young people, why isn't she in Mexico drinking margaritas? Excellent point. This changes when the last attendee arrives in a whirlwind of shouting and car revving. It's a guy by the name of Spike Hargraves, who we later find out is a journalist who's been forced to cancel his New Year's ski trip with his girlfriend, who is the source of the aforementioned revving and shouting, because his editor read an in-universe survey which showed more women would date Mr Darcy than any other fictional man.
00:09:56
Speaker
Naturally, this is the sort of hard-hitting news that requires an editor to force his subordinate to cancel his presumably non-refundable holiday in order to spend a week on a bus full of elderly Austin fans in order to untangle this mystifying proposition.
00:10:11
Speaker
That's, yep, that is 100% how journalism works. Totally, totally how it works, yeah yes, yes. Newspapers definitely have this money. Emily really outdoes herself here as she describes Spike as being big, mentions he has a belly, and then goes off on some weird thought tangent about him being a, and I quote, handsome
Jane Austen’s Intentions and Misunderstandings
00:10:33
Speaker
stranger, which is odd because he was clearly dropped off to the bus by his girlfriend.
00:10:39
Speaker
Emily is reading the scene from the book, literally, the book text is inserted into this novel verbatim. You'll get used to this. It happens all the way through. She's reading the scene where Darcy is rude to everyone at Meriton, thereby telegraphing that Spike is our Darcy stand-in, which is compounded by him then first glaring at the bus driver.
00:10:59
Speaker
Ernie and then Emily as he walks past her which is supposed to make us and Emily hate him presumably as part of the setup for the Elizabeth and Darcy enemies to lovers arc that we might be about to see.
00:11:11
Speaker
Day two. Emily is still in a funk about how old everyone is. However, nature calls to interrupt her self-pity. Yes, this is sadly relevant. So she makes her way down the bus to the loo and we are treated to a vivid description of her hovering over the pea-covered toilet seat and her love of Kegel exercises.
00:11:30
Speaker
What? I can't make this up. I chose not to make you read this bit out. Thank you. While she is engaging her pelvic floor, she overhears Spike on the phone through the toilet door.
00:11:42
Speaker
Personally, i would have been too horrified that people could potentially hear me peeing that I wouldn't have been able to eavesdrop, but here we are. Spike is complaining about being on the bus instead of being, and I quote, in the Alps with my hot French girlfriend.
00:11:57
Speaker
No, he does not call her by name. Meanwhile, Emily is getting hot under the collar because she hears him mention that he snowboards and she thinks that's sexy even though, and I quote, his beer gut made me presume he was unathletic.
00:12:11
Speaker
I know it was 2007, but my god, the body shaming. We're only in like chapter three. Oh, and she's still hovering over the Lucy through all of this.
00:12:22
Speaker
Spike then calls Emily dull and average looking and says that her being American is just the pits. Emily starts to cry and sits down on the pea-covered seat in distress. Again, this is described in detail. She then flounces back to her seat in the bus, picks up Pride and Prejudice, and miraculously opens the book and starts reading the exact bit where Darcy calls Lizzie tolerable.
00:12:44
Speaker
End scene. Wow. like I don't really, wow All right, next big plot point. We're still in day two. They're on a tour of Chawton Manor.
00:12:56
Speaker
Emily sneaks off because she's so horribly jet lagged. She decides that she's special enough to ignore all of the signs, climb over the barrier and sit down on a piece of the original antique furniture and have a little nap.
00:13:08
Speaker
no Yeah. When she wakes up, there is a tall, dark and handsome stranger in the room in a funny outfit asking why she's there. Emily introduces herself and he reciprocates by introducing himself as, wait for it, Mr. Darcy.
00:13:24
Speaker
Shocker.
00:13:27
Speaker
Emily, of course, thinks that he is an actor playing Mr. Darcy it just a tad too realistically. And honestly, this is her only normal reaction to anything in this book, to be fair. So she tries to flirt with him and she's confused as to why he's taking his job so seriously and not breaking character.
00:13:43
Speaker
She declares to herself that she has a massive crush on this guy after two minutes of strained conversation and then rushes out of the room and the mysterious man mysteriously disappears. So now it's night time and we're still on day two.
00:13:56
Speaker
Emily decides to go to the pub alone when she runs into Maeve, one of the little old ladies from the bus. She kindly invites Maeve for a drink and then proceeds to whinge internally about how much of a drag it's going to be to hang out with an old person the entire time they're hanging out.
00:14:12
Speaker
Why did she invite her in the first place then? Because she feels sorry for her because she's like old. Oh, that's... Old people are nice. she meets She's old and like her
Narrative Choices and Resolutions
00:14:23
Speaker
life must be just terrible because she's old.
00:14:25
Speaker
Stuff happens. Spike tricks Emily into getting wasted on very strong alcoholic cider. What a gentleman. And Maeve has a nice flirty night with Ernie the bus driver. Day 3.
00:14:36
Speaker
Maeve is upset and withdrawn after talking to Spike. Emily is a nosy cow about it and then takes herself off for another nap, hungover nap this time, outside of Winchester Cathedral.
00:14:47
Speaker
I know it's a literary device, but the inability of this woman to not nap is insane. It's like she is a toddler. Surprise, surprise, Mr Darcy shows up. They flirt, he gives her his scarf, and she sees the date on the newspaper he's carrying says 1813, not 2006. And she thinks that either she's going insane, or maybe she has actually gone back in time.
00:15:10
Speaker
Though she shows him her copy of Pride and Prejudice, but the whole back end of the book is missing. The pages are blank. How peculiar. He poofs out again, but he leaves a scarf behind.
00:15:20
Speaker
So is he real? Or is she dreaming? Later on, Emily is reading the bit from the book where Darcy starts to fall for Elizabeth. Again, the whole scene is dropped into the book verbatim.
00:15:31
Speaker
Obvious connections are made that do not need to be spelled out like this because suddenly Spike interrupts her to try and befriend her and interview her for the article that he's been forced to write. Emily thinks catty thoughts about his teeth because, of course, all English people have bad teeth.
00:15:47
Speaker
And then they argue about his girlfriend? Because Emily is incredibly offended that he has one, even though she's trying to convince herself that she hates him. They have a pages-long, laborious conversation where she tries to stay mad at him, but he's so charming that she can't.
00:16:04
Speaker
Apparently he is simply irresistible because he's a real journalist and says things like, I find the English language fascinating, which makes him not like other boys, like Emily is not like other girls.
00:16:16
Speaker
Excellent. They sound like they're made for each other. Except that really he has a girlfriend. He has a hot French girlfriend. This is true. Very important detail.
00:16:29
Speaker
Day four. They're in Bath. They're visiting a whole lot of Jane Austen sites like her house, the pump room, the Jane Austen Centre. And again, we are treated to Emily's interior monologue about how bored she is and how she can't wait to get away because all of the history of her favourite author is so dull.
00:16:45
Speaker
Bath is a delightful place. Bath is amazing. It's such a beautiful place. the The pump room is gorgeous. The museum there is stunning. The Jane Austen Centre is really fun.
00:16:58
Speaker
And she likes Jane Austen and chose this trip. She's made Pride and Prejudice her entire personality. And yet she's just not interested in it at all.
00:17:10
Speaker
can Can I go instead? Yeah! Take me! I'll go! I'll appreciate the nice ladies and the awesome tour. So, to escape from her boredom, Emily has a nice cosy lunch with Ernie the bus driver and he tells her to stay away from Spike because Spike once punched Ernie in the face and broke his nose.
00:17:34
Speaker
What? Where did that come from? Turns out Ernie was a driver at Spike's newspaper lol, newspapers don't have drivers. And that's how he met Spike's mum, Iris.
00:17:47
Speaker
They fell in love and when Spike found out, he flew into a rage and beat Ernie up. Of course, Emily believes him completely. and realises that Spike must have said something mean to Maeve about Ernie, which is why she was so sad and withdrawn.
00:18:04
Speaker
So this is our wicker mark. Emily is feeling unwell from the afternoon's revelations and takes to her bed to read and fantasise about Mr Darcy for the evening.
00:18:15
Speaker
Of course, the author handily drops in the sections of the text where Wickham tells Elizabeth how Darcy wronged him. She knocks back some sleeping pills, snuggles down, and is woken up by Mr. Darcy throwing rocks at her hotel window like a love-lawn teenager.
00:18:30
Speaker
So they go for a moonlit walk. He rows her out onto the lake to look at the stars, and she complains that he's too serious despite being such a hottie. Wow.
00:18:42
Speaker
Okay. I'm not going to lie, this whole scene threw me off because when she went to bed and knocked back the sleeping pills, I was fully expecting Spike to burst in through the door and declare his love. Like I thought that's what was coming.
00:18:53
Speaker
All right. Yeah. Day five. It's New Year's Eve and there's going to be a faux Regency ball and Emily has nothing to wear except her books. Of course not.
00:19:06
Speaker
When she finds a mysterious package containing a brown satin beaded slip dress. Apparently it's really sexy. Now, my traumatised brain has tried to forget early aughts fashion, but was brown beaded satin ever fashionable?
00:19:22
Speaker
Regardless, she goes gaga over it despite fat shaming herself in the process. Fun. Then when she goes downstairs, she is intimidated by a hot woman in the same dress and nearly leaves before realizing it's her own reflection she's seen.
00:19:40
Speaker
And she's really impressed by how hot and fierce she looks. Now, I think it's meant to be this big girl power moment of self-actualization, but... a yeah I was really hoping you were going to say it was Maeve.
00:20:00
Speaker
Would have been a better twist. Later on, Spike asks Emily to dance and she takes the opportunity to care about someone other than herself and tries to take Spike to task for upsetting Maeve and ruining Ernie's life.
00:20:13
Speaker
only to be interrupted by the hot French girlfriend calling Spike's phone and he has to leave. Emily bumbles outside to find a random group of youths and bums a few puffs of a joint off them, like they're just hanging around outside this building, they're not the party. She then proceeds to get utterly stoned out of her gourd.
00:20:31
Speaker
Of course, while she's stumbling around in the cold, Mr Darcy pops up. After some brief concern that she is out and about in her underwear, he declares he has a surprise for her, which is, wait for it, late night, unchaperoned, horse riding.
00:20:47
Speaker
Alone. With a lady who is, by his estimations, in her knickers. Yeah, that's creepy. Anyway, I've tagged several key moments from the scene for you to read because it really is something. thing It's not the whole scene and I really encourage you guys to get a copy just to read it in full because it goes for many, many pages.
00:21:13
Speaker
Okay, I'm concerned after the last little bit of reading so brace yourselves. Would you like me to help you mount... Mr. Darcy politely holds out his hand.
00:21:25
Speaker
Thanks, but I'm fine. I can manage, I reply, smiling confidently. There's then word that is just like and U, three R's, three G's and three H's that's like, I do believe what you're looking for is. ah Grunting loudly, i pull myself up onto the saddle and swing my other leg across.
00:21:48
Speaker
Smiling triumphantly, I glance over at Mr Darcy. He looks stunned. I feel a beat of pride. It's as I thought. He's obviously really impressed.
00:22:01
Speaker
In fact, he's almost speechless. Do women not ride side saddle in America? He inquires, stumbling over his words. I realise Mr Darcy is staring a gog at my naked thighs. the Is that reading dramatic enough for you?
00:22:21
Speaker
didn't mean to, but that's where it finished. Smiling happily to myself, I sneak a sideways peek at Mr Darcy, who's riding alongside me.
00:22:32
Speaker
Erect in his saddle, his strong shoulders thrown back, his jaw clenched, his eyes looking directly ahead. He might as well have, I am the sexiest man you have ever seen, written on his forehead.
00:22:48
Speaker
I feel an ache in my groin. What is this book?
00:22:55
Speaker
Funnily enough, it's a book utterly devoid of sex scenes. Continue. We're here, alone, just the two of us. And what with the moonlight? It's all very seductive.
00:23:07
Speaker
Sure, Emily. He turns to look at me. His dark eyes lock with mine. I can feel his warm breath close against my neck.
00:23:18
Speaker
Stephanie, what do you have me reading out loud?
00:23:23
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Oh, Rose, the heart's sick! I jolt slightly, startled by Mr Darcy's voice in my ear, the invisible worm.
00:23:34
Speaker
Invisible worm? I feel a jerk of confusion. What on earth's he going on about? Oh, now I get it. I realise, recognising the words from the time, reorganised the poetry section at Mackenzie's.
00:23:50
Speaker
It's the poem by William Blake. He's reciting poetry to me. It's incredible, except I don't want sound ungrateful. What woman wouldn't want Mr Darcy reciting poetry to them in that gorgeous cut-glass accent of his beside a moonlit castle on New Year's Eve?
00:24:11
Speaker
But to be honest, I'd rather have that kiss. God, it's all a bit heavy, isn't it? Oh, Emily... Irritation bites. I've come all this way out here on a horse in the freezing cold and I don't even get one little kiss.
00:24:28
Speaker
So what am I supposed to do now? Applaud, swoon, or... My thoughts are silenced as Mr. Darcy suddenly pulls me close. Suddenly, without warning, lightning lets out a loud whinny and rears up on her back legs.
00:24:44
Speaker
Then she bolts. Yep. Wow. Yeah, so then we are treated to several pages of Emily flying through the woods on the back of a horse before headbutting a branch and passing out.
00:24:58
Speaker
Of course she does. Wow. Okay. Yep. I have a few thoughts. Apparently, we have to suspend our disbelief on two fronts here. One, that Darcy is a totally uptight, old-fashioned boar who can still fall for a woman that he has never seen to his mind properly dressed.
00:25:17
Speaker
Pull the other one. and that, too, he would compromise the honour of a woman he was courting by being alone with her at night for the second time while she was in nothing but her knickers, from his understanding.
00:25:31
Speaker
He kind of sounds like beginning of the book Darcy, but without any of the Regency England manners. Yes, it's unfathomable. Day six.
00:25:43
Speaker
We're only at day six. This woman is packed so much into six days. Emily wakes up in her hotel bed and the first thing she does is check beside her in the bed for Darcy. What?
00:25:57
Speaker
Hmm. Hmm. o Instead, Spike is in her room and he informs her that it is 4am and he found her passed out on the ground near the stable outside.
00:26:09
Speaker
Just at that moment, she realized she is stark naked under her bed covers. And this is when Spike decides to declare that he is crazy about her. What?
00:26:20
Speaker
Okay. Why is she all of a sudden stalkers? It's not addressed. Not addressed. From what I can piece together from the text, he found her outside, passed out cold, nearly hypothermic, and the other old ladies were there as well. They'd gone looking for her because she'd gone missing from the ball.
00:26:40
Speaker
And I'm guessing the implication is that the old lady stripped her clothes off and put her into bed naked. Yeah, so anyway, none of that is addressed. Spike has declared his love for Emily.
00:26:52
Speaker
Emily is delighted, even though she continues to cling to her hatred of him. Then Spike informs her that even though she's not his type because she's neither hot nor blonde, she's normal and her being American is still the worst, he just can't help himself.
00:27:09
Speaker
She's not like other girls, and he also, just several hours before, dumped the hot blonde Frenchie over the phone so that he and Emily can be together.
00:27:20
Speaker
Oh boy. Emily, of course, tells him that he is the last man she would ever date, and finally manages to actually tell him off for upsetting Maeve and ruining Ernie's life.
Episode Conclusion and Next Teaser
00:27:31
Speaker
Okay. First proposal, dick. It's an interesting scene. You know what we discussed in the last episode about Darcy coming across as a bit of a douche because like the first like declaration of love comes out of nowhere. This guy literally, it's 4am, he dumped his girlfriend on the phone at 9pm.
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's you do not make big life decisions 4am. No, you don't. Especially not when the object of your affection has hypothermia and concussion, we assume?
00:28:04
Speaker
yeah no. So after a few hours of sleep, Emily drags her probably still concussed self down to breakfast to learn that Spike has left the tour early and gone back to London. Emily is devastated by this news for some unfathomable reason.
00:28:20
Speaker
She mopes about and then she decides to check her emails. First, she learns that her bosses are selling the bookshop she manages, which sure, that is a devastating thing to happen while you're on a very expensive trip in another country. And then she spots an email from Spike.
00:28:34
Speaker
Because it's 2007, she prints it out on paper and goes to her room to read it because she's been on the computer in the corner of the dining room in the hotel.
00:28:46
Speaker
Printed out emails. This is something we used to do, guys. Yes. Yeah, yeah, for the youths listening in, that's something that we did. Okay, so Spike's long email relays that Ernie the sad old bus driver is in fact a love rat that steals lonely old women's hearts and then runs off with all of their money.
00:29:04
Speaker
And in fact, he did just that to Spike's mother, leaving her heartbroken and destitute. Spike didn't want to see him get his hooks into Maeve, so he kindly warned her off. Side note, this letter scene kind of mashes the two points of Darcy's original letter together.
00:29:18
Speaker
Like Ernie is Wickham and Spike's mum is Georgiana but also Maeve is Jane and Bingley being simultaneously warned off an undesirable match with a gold digger and having her happiness ruined by Spike's well-intentioned meddling at the same time.
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah, all right. So it's a few things that are smooshed together. it sure does trim the story down as we don't functionally have a Jane or in fact any of the other Bennetts in this story.
00:29:45
Speaker
Emily is upset that she was taken in by Ernie, so she goes for a bike ride to clear her head, and of course she runs into Darcy again. She falls sobbing into his arms after he says that he's happy to see her, then gets all annoyed because he's repressed and brooding and doesn't give her a bear hug in return.
00:30:06
Speaker
Anyway, he's packed them a picnic and he starts behaving like an arrogant twat because of course they have very different table manners. She guffaws about him being rich when he mentions his servants and I quote, God, I'd forgotten how posh he is.
00:30:20
Speaker
Who on earth has servants apart from the queen? Well, that would be Fitzwilliam Darcy, who was part of the upper gentry in Regency England, who is almost like the Queen Emily. Yes.
00:30:32
Speaker
But also, this woman lives in New York City, where people absolutely do have household staff. Emily then proceeds to tell Darcy that she's worried she might lose her job when the bookstore is sold, and then comes possibly the most inexplicable scene in the book.
00:30:49
Speaker
There's something more inexplicable than the other things I've read out? Emily starts an argument with Darcy and calls him sexist to his face because he thinks it's weird she has a job, and she thinks it's weird that he isn't down with her modern-day Destiny's Child independent woman attitude.
00:31:06
Speaker
She decides he is a, and I quote, selfish, sexist pig, a crushing boar, and a stuck-up snob. Oh, that's disappointing.
00:31:18
Speaker
The whole scene is excruciatingly long and clearly designed to try and make the readers rethink the idea of Darcy as the perfect man. Which, to be fair, as we continue through these adaptations, a lot of, like, we as readers carry a lot of goodwill for Fitzwilliam Darcy because of the original book.
00:31:37
Speaker
So, and a lot of the characters that they've written are not great people, even though they are Darcys. To try and do this for supposed actual Darcy is a choice.
00:31:51
Speaker
It's bizarre. So we're on to day seven now. The tour is in Lyme Park. And Emily gets lost in the garden. Mr. Darcy appears to profess his love. Emily tells him that he's in love with Elizabeth Bennet instead and leaves.
00:32:06
Speaker
She then has a bunch of flashbacks of Spike being really nice to all of the old ladies that she's been a horrible cow to and she realizes she's in love with him. Day 8 Emily is in London alone, having been dropped off by the two women from the tour who have inexplicably decided to buy Emily's bookshop and gift it to her.
00:32:24
Speaker
Wild. what So what is a girl supposed to do except get herself a personal shop or a top shop, man, this is a cultural relic that takes me back to my uni days, and then rock up unannounced to Spike's work to tell him that she loves him?
00:32:38
Speaker
She's nervous. The secretary is super weirded out by her being there because let's remember Spike broke up with his girlfriend while he on holiday so the secretary probably thinks he still has a girlfriend.
00:32:48
Speaker
And also side note there's a big lol here because Spike has a corner office as a staff reporter. Tell me you've never worked in publishing without telling me you've never worked in publishing.
00:33:01
Speaker
Side note for the readers here, Melinda and I met working in publishing.
00:33:08
Speaker
We did not have corner offices. and We we windows yes co-shared half offices that piled with stuff. wow This is not real.
00:33:20
Speaker
Anyway, Spike says he loves her too. They kiss. And then Emily immediately heads to the airport and leaves the country.
00:33:31
Speaker
There's a small time job and Emily is in her freshly renamed bookshop waiting for Spike to arrive at JFK because now he's her boyfriend. I'm not rushing this. This is how quickly it happens in the book.
00:33:43
Speaker
The whole denouement is like 20 pages and that is it. That is nearly the same length as the the ball and horse riding scene. Wow.
00:33:55
Speaker
Okay. So let's start at the beginning for our analysis. First off, Emily, our protagonist, is completely insufferable. She spends every waking moment reassuring herself that she is not like other girls.
00:34:09
Speaker
She likes books and intellectual conversations, and she finds makeup and fashion both terrifying and tedious because those things are for basic women. The first chapter really illustrates the main character's insufferable pick-me-girl attitude, and by chapter two, she really cements this self-congratulatory tone by talking about how she learned to read by two and a half and that her first words were, please be quiet.
00:34:34
Speaker
Because she's a smart baby whose parents banned television and made her hang out in the library. It's exhausting and we're only on page 12. However, we are also supposed to believe that this apparently super smart woman could be discombobulated by the following things.
00:34:52
Speaker
English snacks having names like custard creams. English ducks stick their butts in the air just like American ducks. And there are no Humvees or Starbucks in small English towns. And that England has furniture?
00:35:05
Speaker
What? I'm going to read this one to you. Having lived for as long as I can remember with birch veneer flat pack from Ikea, it's a bit of a shock. Real furniture and stuff that looks like it belongs in a museum, I think with amazement.
00:35:23
Speaker
I mean, you also have that furniture in America too. She lives, again, for the record, in New York City. You can't tell me this woman's only ever seen Ikea furniture.
00:35:37
Speaker
I mean, i feel like Grand Central Station alone would have benches that are more historic than... Right. Insane. Like truly insane areas. We're introduced to Emily's prejudice early in the book.
00:35:50
Speaker
She believes everyone is beneath her. Early illustrations of this are the meant to be funny, but actually just cruel descriptions of the men from her most recent dates. And then there is the recounting of how she met her quote unquote bestie.
00:36:03
Speaker
Stella applies for a job at the bookshop where Emily works. And apparently Emily was so horrified by the other applicants One who, gasp, has a blog, and one who lives with their parents and likes jazz music.
00:36:16
Speaker
So apparently Stella was the only possible choice. A woman who, by her own admission, has no interest in books or reading. What was Emily supposed to do?
00:36:26
Speaker
i don't know, Emily. Maybe were supposed to hire someone who can actually help your small independent bookshop be able to, i don't know, sell books. Yeah, and those women sound delightful.
00:36:37
Speaker
Don't know jazz music. Tell me about jazz music. Blogging was at, like, its height in 2006. Everyone and their mother had a blog. Adding to that, Emily's shock that her Jane Austen buster was full of older women with whom she refuses to engage in anyway is so bizarre. She constantly calls them boring, like, this woman is stuck up, this woman is stupid, this woman's too quiet. That's Maeve, by the way. It's insane.
00:37:03
Speaker
This theme will continue throughout the entire novel until the end, where apparently Emily changed these women's lives so much for the better that one of them gave her hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy a bookstore after seven days of knowing her.
00:37:18
Speaker
Sweetie, no, we've seen her hiring practices. Save your money. Yeah, that bookstore is going to go out of business with Emily at the helm. Also, she changed the name of it. What did she change the name to?
00:37:29
Speaker
Is it said? Her own name. Yeah, she changes it to Albright's, her own surname. People are familiar with the brand of the bookstore, McKenzie's, as an independent bookstore. If you change the name of it, they will just stop coming.
00:37:42
Speaker
That was the first of three main beefs I have with this book. Now, don't get me wrong. We're not here to dunk all over authors and their work. Potter is a very successful author who's found a great niche for herself. And this is just my opinion of a book that by all accounts sold very well.
00:37:56
Speaker
However, my second beef is with this novel piggybacking off Austen in a particularly egregious way. So first up, the entire main storyline of the book takes place in just over a week. There is a little time jump at the beginning and at the end, but the crux the storyline, as you saw, happens so fast it gives you whiplash.
00:38:12
Speaker
I get that the conceit is that they're on a bus tour for J-Nights, but it really it's actually just for Pride and Prejudice fans. The rest of Austen's books are literally never mentioned. A couple of them like get their titles in a sentence, but like nothing else about those books is mentioned. It's just about Pride and Prejudice.
00:38:28
Speaker
And that's fine, but the actual falling in love part takes two days, and suddenly Spike is her very serious long-distance boyfriend. o Also that tour, the places that they go. Okay. So Bath and the Jane Austen Centre are very much, you know, general Jane Austen locations. So is, and I'm going to pull the book up on a point here.
00:38:49
Speaker
I'm pretty sure it's Chawton House, not Chawton Manor, but Chatsworth House and Lyme Park are the Pemberley locations for the 2005 movie and the 1995 BBC series. Yes. and the ninety ninety five pbs yeah series So they've gone Chawton House, Bath for a museum, and two Pemberleys.
00:39:07
Speaker
So you're right. There is no other reference to any other Jane Austen work. None whatsoever. Not even in Bath when they go to the Pump House, which is a location in in one of the books. It's location in Persuasion, I'm pretty sure.
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah, is it Persuasion or is it Northanger Abbey? It's in one of the others. Additionally, almost all of the supporting characters that we love are missing. In fact, it comes apparent early on in the book that Emily not only doesn't have a relationship with her parents, side note, they're academics who travel the world and functionally abandon both their children when they're in college,
00:39:37
Speaker
or her brother, again, who is literally mentioned once at the start of the book, not even by name and is never mentioned again. It really seems also that Stella is her only friend. No other friends are ever mentioned. And let's be honest here, Emily barely tolerates Stella.
00:39:52
Speaker
There is a scene where Stella calls her from Mexico in tears and Emily barely listens and can't get off the phone fast enough. This is no Lizzie and Charlotte relationship.
00:40:03
Speaker
Those strong female bonds that we discussed in Undeceived are entirely missing here too. She holds all the women in the trip at an arm's length except for Maeve who is sort of Jane and then she's sweet and lovely but she's also sort of supposed to be Lydia.
00:40:16
Speaker
It's a mess. Okay, so that brings me to my final beef. I don't think Potter has ever read Pride and Prejudice in full. Interesting. Don't get me wrong.
00:40:27
Speaker
I think she's read tiny bits of it, like specifically the bits of the book that she quotes verbatim as Emily is reading it, but I don't think she's ever read and loved the original herself. Overall, most of the main plot points are entirely ignored. There is, of course, only the bus driver as a Wickham stand-in, but that's dealt with very quickly and forgotten just as fast.
00:40:45
Speaker
There's a ball for New Year's Eve, but most of that Emily isn't at because she's often the aforementioned stoned poetry horseback riding tangent. Most of the original storyline references are just key scenes repeated verbatim from the novel, strung together by either Emily being awful or willfully obtuse, or more unfortunately, a consistent barrage of older women being, and I can't believe I'm about to say this on a podcast out loud, being wildly, loudly and very publicly horny for Mr Darcy.
00:41:15
Speaker
It's embarrassing. It makes them look deliberately foolish and I hate it. You got a tiny taste of it with that scene with the border guard, but it continues through the whole thing. The older ladies on the bus when they are allowed to speak are often fanning themselves and being like, Mr Darcy wouldn't kick him out of bed. And that's basically all they say.
00:41:33
Speaker
And it's meant to make them look foolish. Emily clearly has a lot of disdain for them. Okay, so this is a safe space. It's a Pride and Prejudice Adaptations podcast.
00:41:46
Speaker
We all like Mr. Darcy. Like that's part of the appeal. But to make them look foolish while doing that is kind of a weird choice. Like, yes, we talk about having crushes on fictional men and book boyfriends and all that kind of stuff. Like, I get it.
00:42:02
Speaker
It's fun. It's entertaining, whatever. But to make them look foolish while doing that is a really weird choice. It's a really weird choice and i will come back around to that later.
00:42:13
Speaker
So back to my argument that Potter hasn't read the book. Emily constantly references throughout the story how sexy Mr Darcy is and how every woman wants a man to stroll across a field in an open shirt looking dishevelled to declare his undying love for her.
00:42:26
Speaker
And because Darcy does this, that's what makes him the perfect man, which is quite clearly a reference to the 2005 movie adaptation. because it's not in the book. Another time, Emily flips open Pride and Prejudice and sighs contentedly because she's opened the book to one of her favorite places, which is, and I quote, a sexually charged scene between Elizabeth and Darcy.
00:42:47
Speaker
Now, I don't know about you, who But I don't particularly find any of the scenes in the book sexually charged in a modern sense. And side note, this is one of the few times Emily is reading the book where it doesn't quote the text verbatim to illustrate her point.
00:43:02
Speaker
who So she's not referencing the original text. She's piggybacking off the recent, to the time of publication, movie adaptation that she's banking on her readers having seen. This is my conspiracy theory.
00:43:15
Speaker
I mean, it's a good point because the two things that most people remember about that 2005 movie are, one, the hand flex and the hand to the carriage, and the second is Matthew McFadden walking across that field towards Keira Knightley. Mm-hmm.
00:43:32
Speaker
So now that we're through my beefs we're into full tinfoil hat territory, I want you to cast your mind back to everything that we've gone through. I really and truly got the sense through this whole book that the author despises Mr. Darcy, or the concept of him, the very least.
00:43:48
Speaker
Throughout the novel, the women who love him are treated as foolish, the main character falls out of love with him after facing the harsh reality of what he would be like in person, and the romantic lead is a journalist who thinks the fact that Mr Darcy was voted literature's most eligible bachelor is the worst thing that's ever happened to humanity.
00:44:05
Speaker
So what is a girl to do but dust off her jaunty tinfoil chapeau and investigate if the idea of this book was actually triggered by Potter reading a real-life article, similar to the one that has Spike's editor's knickers in such a twist in the book?
00:44:20
Speaker
Quick aside here, tinfoil chapeau would absolutely be my drag name if I ever needed one. Drumroll, please, because I am 99.9% sure in question because...
00:44:31
Speaker
i found the article in question because In 2004, one Cherry Potter wrote an article for The Guardian entitled, Why Do We Still Fall for Mr. Darcy?
00:44:44
Speaker
No! And let me read you the first paragraph. Mr Darcy is women's favourite fictional romantic icon. According to a recent poll conducted by the Orange Prize for Fiction, 1900 women across the generations voted for Mr Darcy as the man they would most like to go on a date with.
00:45:04
Speaker
He was also the fictional character women would most like to invite to a dinner party, which strikes me as odd because surely Mr Darcy would spend the evening either gazing at the ceiling, grunting with boredom, or glowering at the guests.
00:45:17
Speaker
No! No! I will now read for you the first paragraph of Spike's hard-hitting news feature that he's researching on the trip, which is included in full as the coder of the book.
00:45:36
Speaker
Mr. Darcy, the dream date. Mr. Darcy, the dashing hero of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, has topped a survey of men women would most like to go on a date with.
00:45:47
Speaker
Regular bloke Spike Hargraves goes on a literary tour and asks, what does Mr. Darcy have that he doesn't? Ahem. Austin's creation beat other fictional heroes such as James Bond and Superman in the poll run by the orange prize of more than 1900 women, which seems strange to me because surely he'd spend the evening glaring at you across the restaurant table and being rude to the waiters.
00:46:11
Speaker
Also, I'm sorry, the things you pulled were Superman and James Bond. James Bond, famed womanizer who has very, very iffy boundaries with consent.
00:46:27
Speaker
Oh. They're the two you pulled. Not even George Knightley or Captain Wentworth or- know. Even Mr. Rochester at this point is better than James Bond and he also has iffy boundaries with consent.
00:46:40
Speaker
So anyway, let me read you out another brick of Cherry's text that I think definitely proves that these two writers who mysteriously share a surname both have utterly the wrong end of the same stick when it comes to the character of Mr. Darcy.
00:46:52
Speaker
Please note I have edited this for length. The whole article will be linked in the show notes. Here is the rub. Austen leaves us to assume that her heroine's marriages are happy despite portraying very few idyllic marriages in the rest of her texts.
00:47:06
Speaker
But as modern women, with our wealth of relationship experience and all the benefits brought about by feminism, we should know better. The fact is that dark, smouldering, broody, charismatic, arrogant Darcy types, whom we hate at first sight and then later find ourselves falling in love with, often, particularly after we've married them, turn out to be rigid, dominating, and controlling.
00:47:26
Speaker
On the one hand, women say they want men who are emotionally intelligent, sensitive, flexible, who enjoy sharing equally and are fun to be with. But these same women are swooning over a fictional character who is the epitome of the dominant patriarchal male.
00:47:40
Speaker
Far from swooning over the latest Pride and Prejudice adaptation, those of us who have experienced the dark side of the Darcy Syndrome should be warning younger women who may be in danger of repeating our mistakes.
00:47:53
Speaker
I'm sure Jane Austen would be cheering us on. But also, you can see the parallels, right? The willful misunderstanding of the reason why so many women still swoon over Darcy. As we've already discussed, ad nauseam, he's not the epitome of the dominant patriarchal male.
00:48:08
Speaker
If he was, he would never have gotten out of his way to right his wrongs and become a better man. There is a really irritating thread through this real article and also the fictional one that women tell men they want a quote unquote nice man, but their love of Darcy sends a confusing message to the men they're dating because he's quote unquote controlling and domineering.
00:48:27
Speaker
Thanks. I hate it Darcy is nice. Just stop it. He might be socially awkward or dealing with the manners of his time where he wasn't allowed to speak to women without a chaperone. Like there are a lot of rules in place as to why he was quote unquote more uptight.
00:48:44
Speaker
But once Elizabeth broke through those barriers and the other people did too, she came to see that he is actually an incredibly kind and generous person. Yes, exactly. Both of these writers make it very clear that they think Mr Darcy is conceptually awful and that the women who lust after his literary pantaloons are completely foolish because if they were to meet him in real life, they would apparently find his attitude stifling because he's a Regency man with old-timey values. To which I say, let women have their literary fantasies in peace.
00:49:14
Speaker
The appeal is that Darcy becomes a good man in order to be worthy of the woman that he loves. The appeal is not a hot man wandering around in a wet shirt being rude to you. I mean, unless he's Colin Firth. Unless he's Colin Firth then he can do whatever wanted.
00:49:29
Speaker
yes Side note for the curious, I did actually check and Cherry and Alexandra are not the same person using a pseudonym, although Cherry is old enough to be Alexandra's mother. I'm also not suggesting that Alexandra plagiarised Cherry. I am working under the assumption here that they knew each other and this was all agreed upon.
00:49:46
Speaker
They have the same surname. Back to it. What worked in the book? Yes, I will give credit where credit is due. Potter's Switch sees Wickham go from a wildly attractive womanizer to an older man who love bombs his female companions before duping them out of their money and disappearing, and it works really well.
00:50:04
Speaker
Here, instead of the trope of the handsome man being trusted because of the implicit culture-driven trust we have in good-looking people, we have an older man, the kind that we implicitly trust because of a different set of socially conditioned values, one who preys on the kind of women who fall through the cracks in Western society. Those who are older maybe don't have strong family ties anymore, whether through divorce or widowhood, and they're vulnerable.
00:50:26
Speaker
I'm not going to lie, it gave me a high degree of whiplash to sit through pages of Emily saying things like, quote, go grey and everything stops. It's like menopause is some sort of biological Berlin wall and who wants to be on the wrong side?
00:50:38
Speaker
to then have a nuanced presentation of this predator preying on the unique loneliness of older women. It's by far the most insightful part of the book. It touches on elder abuse, the pressure that women feel at all ages to be seen as desirable and worthy of relationship.
00:50:53
Speaker
It's an excellent interpretation of the Wickham storyline that is sadly, like everything else, rushed through and abandoned far too soon. Between one evening and the next, Ernie the bus driver simply disappears.
00:51:06
Speaker
Sorry, I'm still hung up on the whole Berlin Wall metaphor. I threw that one in for you. Thank you. I knew you'd enjoy that. And I've actually saved the best and strangest, most deranged part of the book for last.
00:51:21
Speaker
This is the part where I came so close to heaving this book off my balcony and into the garden. There is a character I haven't mentioned yet, very deliberately. Now, how do you think our dearest, loveliest Emily came to learn of this Jane Austen-themed bus tour in England?
00:51:37
Speaker
Do you think a tour company dropped the pamphlet in her bookstore to attract literary nerds? Or perhaps it fell out of a literary magazine she had been flicking through? Oh, my sweet summer child, no.
00:51:48
Speaker
She found out because a mysterious visitor to her bookshop left it deliberately as a ploy to get her onto the bus so she could meet Darcy and meet Spike, a mysterious figure who turns out to be the host of the bus tour.
00:52:04
Speaker
A mysterious figure who we find out in the last pages of the book is actually, drumroll please, Jane Austen herself. What? yeah That's right.
00:52:17
Speaker
couldn't see my face because she was reading that, but my jaw just slowly started dropping and I'm like, where is this going? was thinking you were going to say Mr. Darcy dropped the pamphlet off. Like I was genuinely thought, oh, that's... Jane...
00:52:32
Speaker
Jane Austen is a character in this book. A character who pops in and out of the narrative to show our dear protagonist that Mr. Darcy, Jane's own character, is not all he's cracked up to be and perhaps the right man for her all along was in fact the, as we are constantly weirdly and awkwardly reminded, little bit tubby Spike Hargraves.
00:52:53
Speaker
Now it's supposed to be a mystery that's hinted at throughout the story. What's the true identity of the mysterious tour host who goes by the name of Una J. Stein, who incidentally is the one who gave Emily her sexy brown dress, a phrase literally no one has ever said before. And then the big reveal at the end is that her name is an anagram of Jane Austen and Emily figures it out in a big wide-eyed moment that nearly inspired the aforementioned book defenestration.
00:53:19
Speaker
It's just so unnecessary. And I just can't wrap my head around the fact that Jane Austen is presented as not even liking her own great romantic hero. Remember what that Guardian article says at the end? Jane would be cheering us on to avoid Mr Darcy. Mr Stain, as she's called throughout the narrative, I assume so no one sees the anagram until the end, makes multiple sassy remarks about Darcy to Emily.
00:53:43
Speaker
and the vibe is very much that she doesn't like him. At one point, even weirdly commenting to Emily that Mr Darcy's not a patch on Colin Firth?
00:53:54
Speaker
Well, well... I mean, true, but also weird. Yeah, weird. There is part of me that thinks that maybe Jane Austen would find it really weird how big a focus Fitzwilliam Darcy becomes in any sort of play or adaptation of the original.
00:54:14
Speaker
He's often the only focus. Well, yeah, because that's what we seem to want. And I think she might have a problem with that because it puts aside Elizabeth and it puts aside those sister relationships and the things that Elizabeth learns through those.
00:54:31
Speaker
But I don't think she would hate him No, i think she would be confused. I think she deliberately chose to illustrate the lives of women and the deep interior lives of women in her work. So I think she would probably be a little bit disappointed that Darcy's become the main focal point for a lot of these adaptations.
00:54:51
Speaker
But the thought of her hating him and wanting modern women to not enjoy him as a character is very, very strange. And you can tell that her focus isn't on the romance angle. One of the things that got pointed out to me, slight nerd credential drop. I did a Jane Austen course at university and we went through each of the texts and we had sort of a couple of lectures on each.
00:55:15
Speaker
The lecture on Pride and Prejudice focused on why we are obsessed with the romance angle with Darcy. And what the lecturer pointed out, and it's something that's always stuck with me, is that the most quote-unquote romantic parts of the book, Jane deliberately doesn't write in detail.
00:55:33
Speaker
So she details verbatim the first proposal because that's a nightmare. But Darcy's declaration of love at the end when he re-declares it, sure, he says one line, it's like,
00:55:46
Speaker
you're too kind to trifle with me for any longer, that bit. But the rest of it is told in two lines of third-person narration and that's all we get. Yeah, it's really glossed over.
00:55:58
Speaker
Yeah. So it's clear that for Jane that is not the purpose of the story. Completely agree. So that's the whole thing. I was thinking about getting you to read out the horrendous full text of Spike's article that finishes the books because as people who used to work in publishing and as people who used to write feature articles...
00:56:22
Speaker
I wanted to, A, know what thought of Spike's efforts and B, wanted to know if you were his editor, how fast you'd fire him for filing this article because he literally spends the entire time talking about himself being on a date with Emily and how Mr. Darcy doesn't matter because he met his new hot girlfriend.
00:56:38
Speaker
Oh no And she doesn't even like Mr. Darcy anymore because she thinks Mr. Darcy is a sexist bore. It's horrendous and I'm not going to get you to read it, but that's how the book ends. That's how the book ends.
00:56:49
Speaker
And that's it. That's, that's me and Mr. Darcy. So to finish up my rating, as I'm sure you have all guessed by now is Unhinged. Woohoo. This book is so barely about pride and prejudice. I actually struggled to call it an adaptation, but also I just had to share it with you.
00:57:06
Speaker
Anyway, to finish off a bit of housekeeping, you can find us on Instagram at Jane Austen Remixed. Please give us a rating wherever you listen to your podcast to help us reach some new listeners. Share this episode with any Janeites in your life you think would enjoy it.
00:57:19
Speaker
Anyway, join us in two weeks when we examine Unmarriageable by Sonia Kamal. So Steph, before we finish off, we have a very important question that we have to ask.
00:57:31
Speaker
Did this Darcy dive into a lake? He did. left that bit out. He did. um left it out. Yes. When she's in Lyme Park, she sees him in the distance. He dives into the lake and then she goes searching for him, gets lost in the garden. And then when he appears, he's already fully dressed again. He's not even in a wet shirt, so it doesn't count.
00:57:55
Speaker
Well, Lime Park is where they filmed the 1995 version, so that is wild. Which is why it's in this, but he doesn't even turn up in the dripping wet shirt. He's fully dressed again by the time she finds him, which is very strange because she's between him and the house.
00:58:08
Speaker
Wow. So ah see you next time.
00:58:46
Speaker
you