I’m sure it is, on its own terms, a remarkable book, but I have no particular desire to remake the world of the original. But I have not read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books, 2009), and I feel no great urgency to do so. I enjoyed the two most famous movie adaptations of the novel (19), and Melissa Nathan’s modern and layered retelling in Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field (HarperCollins, 2001). And while her opposite number, Darcy, begins the book as a rude misogynist, he too is worthy of continuing affection, if only because he is a man who respects (or at least, learns to respect) a woman who says ‘no.’īecause I love Pride and Prejudice, I am wary of adaptations and spin-offs. But the reason I, and generations of other women, love Elizabeth Bennet is because she is capable of saying ‘no’: without blushing, and without prevaricating, she is a wholly feminine, intelligent woman who has no qualms about refusing the narrative that has been laid out for her. Every devotee of Pride and Prejudice will tell you that it is Elizabeth Bennet who is the heroine of the story, despite the fact that the narratives of her older sister (Jane) and younger sister (Lydia) both follow the more standard trajectory of romantic and moral narratives. It is, for one, set in a remarkable context – the family at the center of the novel are not members of the 1%, where most of the novels of the period take place, but members of the 15% where the pressures from below and above are most keenly felt.

I loved it when I read it for the first time in fifth grade, I loved it even more when I understood it more fully in high school, and that love only grew deeper during re-readings in college and afterwards when I could reflect more consciously on the gender and class dynamics that the original novel depicts. And I will defend the novel, on literary and social grounds, before all comers.

In the interest of full disclosure, a confession: I love Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Longbourn by jo baker