“You had 96 episodes to think of a costume for me, and you came up with pigtails and a book?”

First real post today! Hooray! Today, I'm going to start discussing a show that is very near and dear to my heart. It's also the reason I started this blog in the first place: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. It's a modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. In this version, Lizzie is a grad student who starts a vlog to talk about her life. Quite spectacularly, life happens whenever she turns on the camera, and it's kind of amazing. It's so funny and true to the story, the theme, and the main characters of the novel. There are some things that change as the story is rebooted for a modern audience but I like these changes. Now, I should say straight out that if you haven’t watched the show, you should. Not only because it’s a good show but because this post is going to be full of spoilers. I'll be posting the playlist here so you can stop everything and go watch this show. It's truly wonderful.

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There are many, many things I love about this show but one of my favorite things about it is the empowerment given to the female characters. Austen made Elizabeth Bennet a strong female protagonist who takes charge of her life but in the book she’s pretty much the only character who truly follows her heart. I’ll be talking more about Lizzie’s evolution in the show but for this week, I'll be discussing some of the other female characters in the story. So first up... Charlotte.

 

In the novel, Charlotte Lucas launches into a sort of independence by marrying Mr. Collins and while it’s evident that she has a significant impact on her husband’s decisions, I’ve always wondered if Charlotte was truly happy. I mean, she’s an intelligent woman stuck in a presumably loveless marriage to an unintelligent man whom she has married solely for the sake of stability. Years down the road, would she get tired of having to encourage Mr. Collins to go on a walk? If they had children, would she have been ok with Lady Catherine telling them how children should be raised? Charlotte’s situation leaves much to be desired, in my opinion.


In the show, however, Charlotte accepts Mr. Collins’ proposal – not of marriage but of employment. I confess that when I first watched the show and got to the part where Mr. Collins proposes to Lizzie, I felt let down. And when she rejected him, I didn’t sympathize with her; I just thought, “how irresponsible!” It wasn’t until I watched the show a second time that I realized that this is exactly what the writers wanted me to think. They wanted me to be shocked that Lizzie didn’t accept such a lucrative proposal. In Austen’s day, rejecting an offer of marriage when you have little dowry and your family estate is to be entailed away would also be considered irresponsible and selfish. After I realized this, I thought about it a bit more and realized that the job offer isn’t just a job; it’s a career. Lizzie wouldn’t have been able to take the job for a few years until she found something more enjoyable; she’d be stuck with it for the rest of her life. And for that, I can certainly understand her point of view.

 

Now, when Charlotte is offered the job, it isn’t entirely Mr. Collins’ idea. The audience gets to see her basically manipulate him into offering it. So, when she accepts, we’re not terribly surprised. I like seeing the proposal and I like that Charlotte drives the whole situation because it makes her feel like more of a powerful character and it paves the way for her to be a more dominant role in their subsequent relationship. We see Charlotte, not as a housewife sending her pesky husband out for long walks so she can have some peace but as a right-hand man, making sure the company she works for succeeds. The dynamic changes when the relationship is moved from the home to the office and I think it works better. When Lizzie visits Collins & Collins, she sees her bestie impacting the business plan, the policies. And rather than belittling her employer, she encourages him and supports him; yes, he doesn’t realize that she’s controlling as much as she is but it’s pretty evident that the company is more successful with Charlotte in it. At the end of the show, when Charlotte becomes the head of Collins & Collins so that Mr. Collins can start a new branch of the company in Canada, we see a female executive who carved her own path. I’ve always liked the character of Charlotte and with this version of her, I can truly be happy for her when the story comes to an end.

Charlotte Lu is one of the first characters we meet in the show and one of the last characters we see. She's featured in more episodes than Darcy or Bing and the friendship between Lizzie and Charlotte is, in my opinion, more prominent than any of the romances. Charlotte is a voice of reason in a world filled with drama, emotion, and skewed perspective. With Lizzie as an unreliable narrator, Charlotte's viewpoint becomes important to the audience as she is a character we find we can trust. And while we may not always agree with Charlotte as opposed to Lizzie (as an optimist, I often found myself on Lizzie's side of a few discussions), the audience can trust Charlotte's word when it comes to story-telling. Basically, Charlotte has a lot of things going for her as a major female character. And in addition to all of these things, she's also incredibly strong. To be honest, all of the female characters are remarkably strong. I'll go into more details about each character later but Charlotte's strength shines through in the way she unapologetically stands up for the people she loves. She stands up to Darcy about his involvement in Jane and Bing's relationship, even though it could cost her job. And she more than adequately matches Caroline Lee in one of their only confrontations.

In other words, Charlotte is one of my favorite characters in the show. She's intelligent, strong, ambitious, kind, practical, and powerful.