Austen’s Popularity Continues With ‘Pride And Prejudice’

This may be the crowning year of the booming Jane Austen revival. All her books still sell well 179 years after her death, “Persuasion” is still playing in theaters, and “Sense and Sensibility” is screening in most of the country. And now there is the U.S. premiere of the A&E cable network’s six-hour “Pride and Prejudice” to cheer about.

And cheer you will, if you appreciate exceptionally well-crafted television productions filled with gorgeous scenery, scintillating performances and a script that preserves the best of Austen’s witty, insightful language while underscoring the book’s amazing relevance to the continuing struggle of women for equality.

Most important, though, is the ageless appeal of Austen’s story about a determined young woman who teaches a fundamentally decent but insufferably arrogant young man that he may have to swallow his enormous pride in order to win the heart of a woman who’s his equal in every way that really counts.

It’s great fun to analyze and debate the sexual politics stirred up by Austen’s story, but it’s also possible to just sit back and thoroughly enjoy the way she works everything out for Elizabeth Bennet and the difficult Mr. Darcy.

Once you sort out all the people introduced in the first hour and figure out where they fit into the scheme of things, the new “Pride and Prejudice” really whistles along to its immensely satisfying climax.

Austen first began writing “Pride and Prejudice” exactly 200 years ago, but it wasn’t published until 1813. Though far from a social tract, the book was severely critical of the second-rate status of women in the late 18th century and began making waves as soon as it was read.

It’s easy to understand why. The imperative of her story is the notion that a father of only daughters is cursed because that means he has no heir. Only sons could inherit estates, so the father of daughters must do everything in his power to marry off his daughters to men with their own estates.

Austen clearly didn’t like that idea, so “Pride and Prejudice” devotes a great deal of time to exposing the absurdities of that tradition.

As the story begins, Mrs. Bennet (Alison Steadman) is in a dither over the news that the wealthy young Mr. Bingley (Crispin Bonham-Carter) has taken over a nearby estate in Hertfordshire and may be looking for a wife. She has five daughters to marry off and hopes at least one will land such a man.

There’s a strong motive. Since daughters can’t inherit, Mr. Collins (David Bamber), a distant cousin, is heir to Mr. Bennet’s (Benjamin Whitrow) estate. Collins, a priggish clergyman, has every right to evict Mrs. Bennet and the girls once Bennet dies.

Fortunately, Bingley is strongly attracted to the eldest Bennet girl, the beautiful Jane (Susannah Harker), but his close friend, the even richer Darcy (Colin Firth), is tantalized by her younger sister, Elizabeth (Jennifer Ehle), a bright, sharp-tongued young woman who’s put off by his conceit.

“She’s tolerable, I suppose,” she overhears him remarking about her, “but she’s not handsome enough to tempt me.”

Truth is she tempts him plenty, not so much with her beauty, but with her forthright and often brutal honesty. The brooding Darcy recognizes her as a singularly independent woman in an era when men of his station saw mainly fawning behavior from eligible women.

The rest of “Pride and Prejudice” deals with Elizabeth’s slow discovery of Darcy’s true character as an admirable man and his realization that this stubbornly defiant woman has a peculiar talent for forcing him to adapt and change for the better.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “Pride and Prejudice” airs tonight, Monday and Tuesday at 9 p.m. on the A&E cable network.