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Published: January 17th 2011
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I stumbled across this
blog from Sparknotes in one of those happy chances that the internet sometimes gives to us (you click on one link and then another until you stumble upon a gold mine). My eye was caught by this tagline "Would a Modern Day Darcy be a Dirty Hipster?" At this my heart almost stopped. "God I hope not I though" but my interests were roused. The blog is telling Pride and Prejudice as if it were happening today and told over a teen blog. It also talks about the rules of teen novels and so on. The best part of the entire thing was the use of modern teen slang to help explain the plot and character of the novel.
A particularly wonderful section I thought was of course about Mr. Collins
When introducing him in the blog it says...
“It turns out that Mr. Collins is a first class numbskull. He can only do two things: brag about being buds with an old lady and her sick daughter OR apologize. Dinner goes something like this:
Mr. Bennet: Welcome to at Longbourn!
Mr. Collins: I've longed to be at Longbourn. I'm sorry!
Mrs. Bennet: Here
is some food.
Mr. Collins: It's so good, yum. At Longbourn is almost as fun as at Rosings, where I hang out with an old rich lady because I'm a really big deal. Hey, y'all can cook!
Mrs. Bennet: We don't cook. We have a cook.
Mr. Collins: JESUS, I am sooooooooo sorry I assumed you cook!
Mrs. Bennet: S'okay.
Mr. Collins: No, it's not. I really—
Lizzy: —I'm going to barf up a pickaxe and slap you around with it. (probably how she is really feeling. An astute observation)
Mr. Collins: I'M SO SORRY YOU'RE FEELING ILL.
Boring, nervous, apologetic, and a booger, Mr. Collins turns out to be the ultimate anti-Darcy. He also reveals to Ma and Pa Bennet that he feels guilty about inheriting the Bennet estate, and plans to marry one of their daughters so that he can share his inheritance with a Bennet—you know, keep it in the family. After learning that the bleach blond sex bomb Jane Bennet is already in love with some guy who's not her dad's cousin, Collins fixates on Frizzy Lizzy as his future bride.”
Another glorious Collins sections comes a
little later with…
"Lizzy despises Mr. Collins, and tells him she honestly doesn't want to be his wife. The reasons she probably doesn't like him are that he's horrible listener, he doesn't even know her, he's related to her, he smells like overcooked turnips, and he always manages to brag and apologize in one breath. He says stuff like, "I am the greatest man, and I am terribly sorry I'll be staying with you for a few weeks," and "My glorious nose hairs bloom like lotus blossoms upon my face for all the world to see, though I'm deeply sorry I said this if you are blind."
Pretty much everything Mr. Collins does is infuriating. If this book were about him, it would be called The Cat in the Hat, because no one would ever read a book about him (especially when Dr. Seuss is around).
Since Mr. Collins is a suck sandwich full of pride and bologna (my favorite passage), he refuses to take Lizzy's rejection seriously. To add suck to more suck—or more suck to suck?—Lizzy's mom is really mad at her for refusing Mr. Collins (and thus losing the Bennet estate, which Collins will inherit when Mr. Bennet dies). Luckily, Lizzy's buddy Charlotte Lucas comes over and defuses the situation by chatting up Collins the whole night.
But wait, why is Charlotte doing this? Out of the goodness of her heart? Or is there something else going on? Austen doesn't give a clue, but..."
I also thought the pictures were pretty hilarious as well.
Two of my personal favorites
Of Course Mr. Collins Lydia's Marriage Both had great pictures and the word bubbles added in were too funny.
My first reaction to this blog was a knee jerk one. All I could think was that they were defiling the sacred text of my favorite book. But in reading more and more of the blog and thinking about it more I have really started to enjoy it and see some very Jane Austen humor in it. I think the blog does not take itself too seriously (can any blog that describes a character as “a suck sandwich full of pride and bologna” really be that serious). Yet while Austen is serious about her work, she is also has fun with it. She wrote most of her earliest writing for the enjoyment of her family and they were not serious but very tongue in cheek. Think of the famous passage of Love and Friendship "Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!" Her all of her juvenilia seems to be a playful dialogue between herself about having a little too much fun with writing. I see the author of this blog as playing with the plot of Pride and Prejudice just like Austen played with stock plots in her day. The more I think about the bigger smile it brings to my face because I think this author is doing what many writers of sequels cant, laugh at herself, her work, and Austen’s too.
In the most recent blog it ended “JaneWOW (a play of the Jersey Shore character of JWow), however, spends her evening chatting away with Bingley. After dinner, the girls go down to the basement to play Rock Band (a great video game), and Jane assures Lizzy that she has not fallen for Bingley again.
"Tell that to a judge (slang for nobody is gonna believe that terrible lie)," Lizzy says. And then she does the robot (WTF? What a great moment of being modern teens and sisters).”
This is such an odd mixture of pop culture, satiric humor, modern slang, and Pride and Prejudice that I find it oddly charming.
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