"The Lizzie Bennet Diaries," a Modern Take on a 19th Century Classic

"The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" tells the story of Pride and Prejudice from an interesting, modern perspective. In this web series, Elizabeth "Lizzie" Bennet is a communications grad student who starts a series of video diaries documenting her life. The series, while updated to reflect modern times, surprisingly follows the plot of Pride and Prejudice fairly closely. The web series includes many of the most famous scenes like Mr. Collins proposal, Darcy's confession, and Jane and "Bing Lee's" relationship. The scenes were however updated to fit with the modern time period. Instead of proposing marriage, Mr. Collins proposed a partnership to Lizzie. There are of course some differences, instead of five Bennet sisters, the show cut down to three, Lizzie, Jane, and Lydia, while Mary became their cousin and Kitty was Lydia's cat. The characters are all very similar to the source material. Lizzie is too prideful and witty, Jane is a shy but sweet person, Lydia is a wild child, Darcy is serious and collected. Even characters who do not appear on screen like Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are given accurate characterization based on Lizzie's acting. While the two never appear as their own character the way that all of the others do, Lizzie reenacts scenes for her blog using "costume theater" where she dresses up as different people and acts out different events.

This costume theater is also how we get to see how different scenes happened such as Lizzie's first meeting of Darcy, all of the different parties, and other events that didn't work in front of a camera. In this adaption we also get to see the relationship between Lizzie and Darcy evolve and grow in a slower but more realistic pace. The change from despising each other, to tolerating each other, to falling in love happens at a pace where it is completely believable that her feelings have changed.

This web series allows for a lot of interesting discussion of gender and how it is treated throughout the adaption. A lot of the show was showcasing the relationships between the Bennet sisters and female friendship in general. Lizzie and Charlotte's friendship is heavily defined and seen all throughout the series, a friendship that is often lacking in a lot of adaptions. The adaption also put in the effort to showcase more modern perceptions of gender which makes sense because it was a modern adaption. Lizzie jokes that her mother is a member of the "2.5 WPF Club" which stands for a home with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. the very first installment starts with Lizzie holding up a t-shirt that says the traditional first line and claiming that her mother gave her the shirt and that she would never wear it.

One of the most interesting scenes that they adapted to a modern story line, was Lydia's running away and then marrying Wickham. in this adaption, Lydia ran away to Vegas and ended up hooking up with Wickham. Wickham later manipulated her into letting him film them together, claiming that if she loved him, she would let him film. without her consent he sets up a website that within a few days would release the sex tape. Jane and Lizzie both run home to their sister and help her through until the site is mysteriously taken down. during this scene we get to see the Bennet sisters care for one another as they help Lydia through this nightmare. A lot of this scene involves Lizzie constantly reminding Lydia that it was not her fault and that Wickham was taking advantage of her, a very modern and feminist approach to leaked nudes. Even in 2019 when a woman's nudes are released, far too many people's first reaction is to blame the woman for taking the pictures in the first place. In this adaption, not a single character tells Lydia that she is as fault for the abuse and Lizzie constantly reminds Lydia that even though she agreed to let him film, it was not her fault that Wickham abused that trust and put it online.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: An Understanding <--- This clip shows Lizzie comforting Lydia while she is going through this traumatic experience. It's very emotional and shows the love between sisters as well as has a discussion about where to place blame in a situation like this and how the blame should never be directed at the victim.

This adaption is a wonderful retelling of the story in a way that is much more accessible to a wide audience but still keeps the spirit of the original story.