Even when some plot details feel rooted in Austen’s era, for Dow the “universality” of the characters and story allows the book to stay relevant.
“We’ve all misunderstood people we’ve met for the first time,” she says. “We all have pragmatic friends like Charlotte Lucas and impetuous friends like Lydia Bennet.” She adds that we also “all know a Mr Collins,” the character known for his chronic sycophancy and name-dropping of his benefactor Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
Though the book often gets boiled down to being the love story of Lizzy and Darcy, for Joyce its success is down to the fact that the book is about numerous romances. These appeal to everyone from believers in love at first sight (Jane and Bingley) to those cynical that marriage is always happily ever after once the story ends (Mr and Mrs Bennet).
When Joyce first read the book, her sympathies were with Lizzy, who she says “it’s hard not to want to be because she’s so quick-witted.”
Since having children, however, she has started to empathise more with marriage-obsessed matriarch Mrs Bennet. “She can be outrageously stupid,” she says, “she is doing everything in her power to make sure that they survive.”
Even her less well-drawn characters have their fans. For Bruccoleri, it was the fact that Mary was so often portrayed as a “one-dimensional stereotype of preachiness and awkwardness” in adaptations that drew her to want to bring a fuller picture of the character to the screen.
Nearly every character in the books has had their story taken on by later authors, including Charlotte Lucas (in Rachel Parris’ 2025 book Introducing Mrs Collins), Georgiana Darcy (in Laura Masselos’ Georgiana Darcy’s Diary) and Mr Wickham (in Claudia Gray’s The Murder of Mr Wickham, which also brings in characters from other Austen novels for good measure).
With so many adaptations and productions on the way, we are sure to continue to ‘ardently admire and love’ Pride and Prejudice for centuries to come.
