Review of The Other Bennet Sister

Well, where to begin. I want to say that I’ve read the book The Other Bennet Sister and I really enjoyed it, even if it did make Charlotte Lucas and Caroline Bingley both bitches of the first water. However we generally expect that from Caroline so there wasn’t much surprise there. I was disappointed that they did the same to Charlotte Lucas, even though I understand why she did it. I just dislike books/adaptations that make Charlotte Lucas as being rather more mercenary then she actually plays in the book – in the book Charlotte Lucas marries mainly, I always thought, for practicality and because it’s a pragmatic choice. Admittedly Lady Lucas is pleased as punch because Charlotte will in the end inherit an estate (Longbourn) and Mrs Bennet is furious because Elizabeth has refused Mr Collins and therefore the estate will pass out of the Bennet family. I do not know if Charlotte was actually thinking of the estate she would inherit when Mr Bennet died, or rather Mr Collins would inherit, although it is still my strong belief that Charlotte would really be the one in charge. I think Charlotte could see the writing on the wall and she could see that her life was likely to be one of an unmarried spinster forever dependent on her married relations, spinsterhood was not an enviable estate during the Regency, in fact the attitude was that spinsters would be ‘ape-lead in hell for not being able to get married’ or perhaps that should be should be for not getting married. Considering the restrictions that were placed on women in that era, sometimes I think it’s a wonder that any of them ever got to courtship let alone being able to get married! And considering that Jane Austen herself never married, although we know that she did receive a proposal, it must have been quite difficult for her to come to terms with the fact that she would remain a spinster rather than entering the married state.

I can understand why they softened Charlotte, with the benefit of a modern perspective, I can understand why a mercenary/cruel Charlotte might not sit well with readers of Pride & Prejudice and to realise that Charlotte is portrayed as an inherently selfish and self-centered person cuts deep, especially when she and Lizzy were such good friends, it throws everything off kilter because it suddenly makes the reader wonder if they were ever friends. Lizzy may have thought so, but the reader is left to wonder if this is in fact the case.

 But to get back to this TV Adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister, I was really looking forward to it, I thought the it’ll be nice to see Mary’s point of view considering that she is often the most overlooked by her sisters and constantly denigrated by Mrs Bennet herself, but I’m sorry to say that I was a bit disappointed. What has disappointed me the most is this insertion of ‘black’ characters into the narrative where they simply would not have been. I’m not saying there weren’t black people in London, or that there weren’t black people in the country, but they weren’t as common as this adaptation seems to portray. Certainly a black person would not have been an optician/oculist or studying to be a doctor at that time even if they’d had the wherewithal/intelligence to do so it just would not be possible. The other thing that truly annoyed me and really took me out of the TV Production was the inclusion of black people as part of the Regency ton, it just didn’t happen and by trying to make it seem as though it did it makes people believe that this was reality (like Bridgerton or the Channel 5 Anne Boleyn – where Anne is portrayed as being ‘black’.) Hint: Anne Boleyn was NOT black, Queen Charlotte (she who was married to George IV) did not have ‘black’ ancestry, so I’m sorry to tell you this but that’s fabrication, the problem is that people see these TV Shows and believe it and it really, really annoys me. I’ve complained on a couple of YouTube channels about this race-swapping and I believe it’s done so that the BBC can fill in some quota about including black people in various historical dramas that they ordinarily would have had no place in. I keep saying that if race-swapping isn’t an obvious attempt to insert other nationalities into works that they would ordinarily not be included in, then at my reaction is why don’t we remake Zulu and this time put the Africans in the British uniforms, and the white soldiers in the Zulu loincloths holding the shields and assegais. Can you imagine the outrage?

There are two other things that really set my teeth on edge in the TV Adaptation. The first is the presence of Lydia at Pemberley. Now I don’t want to disillusion you, dear reader, but there is no way, on God’s green earth that Darcy would allow Lydia Wickham anywhere near Pemberley. Wickham is the man who very nearly persuaded his beloved younger sister to elope with him so he could get his hands on Georgiana’s £30,000 dowry.  Lydia almost ruined the entire Bennet family and almost ruined the chances of any of her sisters marrying at all because of her elopement with George Wickham. It was only Darcy seeking the couple out in the murkier parts of London that enabled Lydria to be returned to her family and forced Wickham into marrying Lydia. Darcy depises Wickham, there’s no way he’d let Lydia anywhere near Pemberley. Plus this Darcy is a real pushover, whenever Mrs Bennet causes a scene, he either walks away or hides behind his newspaper. I don’t like this Mr Darcy much.

I know that I’m in the minority complaining about this, mainly because when they do complain nobody else seems to take it seriously, but I feel that all the big media outlets are trying to erase our actual history and replace it with something that isn’t history, but is their version of the history that doesn’t exist. So this is my attempt, shouting into the Void to say that while I have watched the first episode and will watch the rest, because I always been interested in Mary Bennet both as a character and as somebody who is so often overlooked in her own family, I have been rather disappointed in what I feel is this ‘insertion’ of black characters who weren’t in the book, and who wouldn’t have been in those positions in Regency England spoils the production for me and takes me out of the book. It makes me wonder how much control the author, Janice Hadlow, had over this production of her book and I would rather be a writer whose work is never widely publicised that have to to subsume my beliefs in order to placate the BBC.