Pride And Prejudice A Contemporary View Essay

Pride And Prejudice (A Contemporary View) Essay, Research Paper

Pride and Prejudice: A Contemporary View

The hardest thing about this project, in my opinion, was in fact not the kind of research it took to arrive at the conclusions presented in this paper, but the process of grouping them together into something that might make any sense at all. I have come to learn that there are so many parallels between Pride and Prejudice and its modern counterpart, You’ve Got Mail, and to a lesser extent The Shop Around the Corner, that putting them together involves more than one might imagine. In any case, I found that You’ve Got Mail is more of a combination of The Shop Around the Corner and Pride and Prejudice than The Shop Around the Corner is related to Pride and Prejudice at all.

In reviewing Pride and Prejudice and You’ve Got Mail, I found that most major aspects of the film are similar to issues presented in Pride and Prejudice. However, the frequently rearranged presentation of these events when portrayed in You’ve Got Mail initially led me to see them as different. This had more to do with the concept of role reversal than anything else. Nevertheless, there were a few minor differences, each of which, along with the major and minor similarities between the novel and the film, I will thoroughly examine and discuss in this essay. Above all, I would have to say without a doubt that You’ve Got Mail is a successful adaptation to Pride and Prejudice, with the single most powerful connection between the two being the expression of a changing society.

As would be obvious to any viewer, reader, or analyst, this is done successfully through the characters of Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox, who in different ways represent Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Fitzwillam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. When I say different I mean that Kathleen is not always Elizabeth and Joe is not necessarily Darcy. In fact, when compared to their corresponding social situations in Pride and Prejudice, Kathleen is Mr. Darcy, while Joe represents Elizabeth.

I say this because I realize that when we give our sympathy to Kathleen’s plight in You’ve Got Mail and to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, thereby connecting the two characters, we are not thinking of how readers of Pride and Prejudice when it was written felt when reading it. In their opinion, it had to have been Darcy who faced the dilemma, not Elizabeth. You see, in both the book and novel the traditional ways, whether they are of Victorian Era England or the Upper West Side, are being inevitably replaced by new social or economic standards. In Pride and Prejudice the noble class was sinking as the middle class rose, with the middle class seen much like a modern chain store in comparison to a classic book shop that had been in business for generations. It is in this way that Elizabeth’s family is shown as a virus in aristocratic England much as the FoxBooks franchise is to proud Upper West Siders.

Not only was the societal situation of Pride and Prejudice well represented in You’ve Got Mail, but also FoxBooks perfectly mirroring the “invasion” of a noble family by one with disgraceful connections played it out with the takeover of Kathleen’s shop. It was this and a difference of manners that initially kept the characters apart in both books but was conquered by a growth in their understanding of each other.

In any case, the characters of You’ve Got Mail help show the connection to the novel’s societal aspects mostly in that of Frank, Kathleen’s boyfriend. He represents the values in a character that were shown in one like Lady Catherine, in which he despises the idea that the new world and technology are taking over. “You think this machine’s your friend, but it’s not” are his initial words to Kathleen about her use of the computer. As a part of modern society, he hates it, and because of her situation, she is somehow expected to share those feelings. She does not, which is a large part of her connection to Darcy’s character, which is expected by all, including Elizabeth, to be proud and to never associate with those of a less noble blood than his own. Kathleen’s breakup with Frank broadcasts their internal differences, just as Darcy is written as different from most aristocrats in his ignoring class lines in recognizing morals.

Kathleen Kelly is always shown as the heroine in You’ve Got Mail because of her struggle to keep her small, pricey shop open in the shadow of the ‘terrible’ FoxBooks Store. In the same way, Darcy can be seen as courageous in his internal conflict of whether or not to break away from social standards placed upon him by his family. These same expectations are in some form placed on Kathleen, who runs her store in her mother’s shadow. She loves the store, but in some ways is shown as one of those in You’ve Got Mail who is the least affected by its closing. The people who most actively wish the shop to stay open are those who have grown up with it in their neighborhood. As Kathleen declares in a fit of passionate anger to Joe, “People may not remember me, either, but lots of people remember my mother.” In comparing Kathleen’s noble struggle to that of Darcy’s, I am not discrediting Elizabeth Bennet as the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, instead I am simply comparing two characters whose situations in life compare, regardless of anything else.

Although the economic