A Story with a Face Lift

A Story with a Face Lift

There are many versions and interpretations of Pride & Prejudice. There was a 6 hour TV adaptation done in the 80's, a blockbuster movie with Kiera Knightley and most recently a youtube adaptation named the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. The first two mentioned are adapted very closely to the book. They have the exact same characters, in the same setting and time period and with the same conflicts. But with The Lizzie Bennet Diaries it was set in the modern day and several things were changed. One of my favorite parallels between Pride  Prejudice and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was the relationship between Charlotte who is Elizabeth's best friend and Elizabeth's cousin Mr. Collins. In the book Mr. Collins and Charlotte get married but since the Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a modern adaption that's a little more difficult to translate but they did it very well. What they did was instead of them is getting married they formed a business relationship. It was a really clever way of keeping the storyline true to the original book but having it translate well into the 21st century. Ultimately Charlotte and Mr. Collins' relationship was in fact business. During the 18th century every parent worried about getting their daughters married off because in those days if your daughter wasn't married they would most likely live out the rest of their life in poverty because of the inequality between men and women at the time. So Charlotte and Mr. Collins didn't marry out of love. They married because it would benefit both of them.
Another clever transition from the original setting to 21st century was the concept of Pemberley Estate. In the books Pemberley is the estate that Darcy owns. It's an important factor in the story and something you can't just take out. But in the 21st century it's not like people still own estates so how do you transfer that? Well the way they did it was Pemberley became a company that Darcy was the CEO of, and it's title was tweaked to become Pemberley Digital.
One great thing about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is how easily you can enjoy it without having read Pride & Prejudice. Although I highly recommend reading the book along with watching the series it isn't required because everything is explained in the series because it's as much of it's own story as it is an adaption of another. Pride & Prejudice is an easily adaptable book because of it's universal story concepts of love and drama. It's kind of like a well that won't ever run dry because it leaves so much room for interpretation, modernization, and adaptations.