Change vs Simplification

[anghraine]

[reposted from wordpress]

Just a very short point, which came up regarding the 2005 Pride and Prejudice. Darcy proposing outside, in the rain, and explaining his motivations re: Bingley is a change. For Darcy and Elizabeth, disasters always happen indoors; morever, book!Darcy is just enough master of himself to know that he isn’t master of himself and certainly should not try explaining anything, which bizarrely allows him to finish that disaster off with a modicum of grace. P&P3’s version is not remotely similar to what happened in the book and therefore alters his characterisation.

 

A simplification, on the other hand, merely reduces something down to the bare bones; something may be lost in the translation, but it isn’t fundamentally different, just . . . well, simplistic. Someone was protesting P&P3 Wickham’s line, ‘he [Daddy Darcy] loved me more and Darcy couldn’t stand it.’ Crude, utterly without subtlety– yes. I’d defend any complaint there. But is it a fundamental change from the original version, care of Wickham, of the Mr Darcy/George Wickham/Fitzwilliam Darcy backstory? I don’t think so.

[Darcy behaved out of a] thorough, determined dislike of me — a dislike which I cannot but attribute in some measure to jealousy. Had the late Mr Darcy liked me less, his son might have borne with me better; but his father’s uncommon attachment to me irritated him, I believe, very early in life. He had not a temper to bear the sort of competition in which we stood — the sort of preference which was often given me.

I’ve always read that as ‘Darcy hates me because his father liked me better’ myself.