Pop Culture Happy Hour - Rereading Pride & Prejudice

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

This year, readers around the world are celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th birthday. Today we’ve got an episode of NPR’s Books We’ve Loved where Linda Holmes, Andrew Limbong and B.A. Parker discuss Austen’s seminal novel Pride & Prejudice. The trio weighs in on how the romance genre continues to reference the book’s “enemies to lovers” story – and why the tale’s leads Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy still make us and laugh and swoon even today.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Linda Holmes. This year, readers around the world are celebrating Jane Austen's 250th birthday. So today on Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're bringing you an episode of NPR's Book of the Day podcast. They have a new series called Books We've Loved. Our pals, Andrew Limbong and Bea Parker are making timeless books timely again by rereading old favorite books and telling us why they matter today. Recently, I joined them to talk about pride and prejudice. We chat about how the romance genre continues to reference the book's enemies to lovers story and why Lizzie Bennett and Mr. Darcy still make us laugh and swoon even today. Here's Andrew. Well, we're about to enter a world I'm relatively new to.

To not tease this out anymore, we are talking about Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It's a big one. Yeah, it is a big one. This is a doozy. It looms large in many minds. I'll just put it that way. A hundred percent. Wait, are you a big Austin head, Linda?

I'm not a big Austin head. I have read some of the books and I have seen some of the films, but I am not the kind of Austin head that many of my acquaintances and friends are, which is to say one of my friends has, like, led Austin tours around parts of England. And it's, I'm not that kind, but, you know. I guess that that friend has been. booked and busy this year. Yeah, and I really, really, really like this book. Yeah. All right. For the people who haven't read it, I just got a quick synopsis here. It's about how you cannot tell Lizzie Bennett what to do, right? This book follows Elizabeth Bennett and her four sisters travails with men and marriage. The central relationship in the book is the courtship

between Lizzie, who comes from a relatively poor family and the super-rich Mr. Darcy. There's a lot a poor communication between the two, which sort of gives the book its juice until, spoiler alert, they end up happily ever after. Mm-mm-mm-mm. What? Yeah. So, we'll see, yeah. I think that's fair, right?

That's a fair summation. Mm-hmm. I'd never read this book before. Andrew. I somehow made it through my life. It was never assigned to me in high school. By the time I got to college and was serious about, like, studying literature, I was pretty focused on, like, American modernism, and I just had no time for anything else.

Sure. You and Carolac, and you were just like, no more. You know the deal. Come on. Nobody reads everything. There are just certain people who are very good at giving you the impression that they read everything. They actually don't. Yeah.

But, you know, this is the big 250th anniversary of Jane Austen. I know there's a lot of stuff going on, and I felt incumbent to give it a shot. I'll just, like, give it the top line. Quite a fun read. Mm-hmm. Not bad. It is a fun read. I'm into it.

It is a fun reen. I think that's the thing that sometimes surprises people. if they think of this as like a swoony romance book, I think when people find that it is a really funny book, they are sometimes a little bit surprised because, I mean, it is a general problem throughout society that people think jokes were invented in like 1980. You know what I mean? And it is sometimes really funny when people come across, like, one thing fairly early in the book that I had highlighted is this moment when Darcy is talking about the fact that he had noticed that she has, like, lovely eyes, and he's starting to kind of be attracted to her, and then

talks about her eyes, and then the book says, to this discovery, succeeded some others equally mortifying, which is very funny. It's the idea that, like, he's horrified to find how pretty she is when he had been kind of trying to keep distance from her. And those kinds of little asides, I think, sometimes startle new readers to this book who expect it to be very staid and very what they think of as early 19th century British. It's a very funny book. Oh, I found it to be hilarious, like reading this as an adult because I'd read it as like a teenager, was, oh, this isn't as romantic as I remembered it to be. It's a way more practical approach to relationships. Wait, Parker, when did you first read it?

I read it when I was, I want to say 15, because I... Is it like a school thing? No, the first DVD I ever got was for Christmas. It was Bridget Jones' diary. go that my mom got me and then so i saw that was my connection to bridget jones's diary and then i got the book from the library of bridget jones's diary and then i got to jane austin so it was a little backwards way of getting there what about you linda when did you first read it you know i don't remember exactly when i first read this book i may have come to it via the bbc adaptation in 1995 that colin for

is in and Jennifer Ely is in. This, Bennett, please allow me to apologize for not receiving it properly just now. You were not leaving. We were, sir. I think we must. I hope you're not displeased with Pemberley. No, not at all. Which is a very specific kind of take on the book.

And I think for people who are American adults now, I most often encounter people who, from a film adaptation perspective favor either the BBC adaptation with Colin Firth or the 2005 film adaptation that Joe Wright directed with Kira Knightley and Matthew McFadion, who if you've seen Matthew McFadion as Tom on Succession, we'd be very surprised to see him playing Darcy's a little different. Yeah. Well, like we said, this novel does loom large in culture, which we're going to take a break and then get to the sort of cultural impact of Pride and Prejudice. We'll be right back. All right, we're back.

Before the break, we talked about our personal connections to Pride and Prejudice, but I want to zoom out and talk about the sort of cultural influence of the book. I'll just run through some quick Jane Austen bio, just to give us some grounding here. This book, Pride and Prejudice, was first titled First Impressions. Austin completed the draft in 1797, but the book itself wasn't published until 1813. All sexes of her novels published during her lifetime were,

credited only as by a lady, and her name didn't appear on a book until after her death. She didn't really pop off. She had a modest readership, but wasn't, you know, capital J, capital A, Jane Austen until later in the 19th century. She sold the rights of Primate Prejudice for 110 pounds, which I think amounts to about 9,000 pounds today. Yeah. So she never got any royalties. You know, she signed one of those bad deals, like she was like a Motown act. You know, back the day.

And then she died relatively young. She died at 41. All of that said, my first sort of way to talk about how this book is around us culturey is Elizabeth Bennett is on the Mount Rushmore of I'm not like those other girls. Right? I think so. Am I wrong here? I think so. But it's like it's her and maybe like Joe March.

I feel like in my teenage brain, they were on the same. level of like, I'm a fierce independent. I'm not like, I'm not silly like these other girls who are focused on marriage and money. I think that's right. I think one thing that's interesting about this book is it was published at a time when marrying for position was still expected from probably a larger proportion of people than it's expected from now. And yet, there is a yearning to marry for if not love, then affection. The interesting. The interesting, thing about the sort of transmogrification of Lizzie Bennett into Bridget Jones is that Lizzie is not as insecure as Bridget is. Bridget kind of takes the Lizzie Bennett idea of being outspoken and sort of not fitting in. And it's seen through a lens of being very self-doubting and sort of self-loathing, whereas Lizzie is very, for much of the book, she's very like, well, this is how I see it. This is what I'm going to do. This is what I'm not going to do. Like it or lump it. And so in that way, I like her as a character for that reason.

Yeah, it's interesting. So while we're on the topic of Bridget Jones, I dug up this interview with Helen Fielding, who's the author of Bridget Jones, that she did with NPR back in 1998. Shout out to Talk of the Nation. Yeah. Our colleague, Lanieri, was hosting this day. So the topic of this segment was approaching female singledom with humor. And here is what Fielding had to say about Pride and Prejudice. I think, you know, Bridget has got quite a lot of links with Jane Austen.

I've based the plot on pride and prejudice. And in some ways, times are very similar to Jane Austen's day, and women's preoccupations are the same in some ways. But what is different is economic power now and that a woman can make a very good life for herself on her own in every sense. And so there is a lot more to give up. And I think probably what's happening is lots of women are not prepared to compromise and not prepared to be with someone who is unkind to them or doesn't get on with them or whatever.

And that's the reason perhaps why there are many more single women than there were, but they're still looking for an identity. I think it's an interesting reading, right? Because the implication here is that women, again, this is in 1998 that she's talking, right, have more to give up because they have more agency. So that means, like, people in Lizzie Benetam has, have, less to give up because they lacked agency. But I don't know, when I was reading this novel, I found that because they had no agency

in other spaces of life, marriage was such a huge step and a huge decision to make it. And to me, it seemed like they had more to give up because they had no other like outlets for decision making. Yeah, because I think a part of, I would say my maturity reading this now as an adult is I finally sighed with Mrs. Bennett. I'm like, wait, Mrs. Bennett is right. Like, does she lack discretion and is easily vexed? Yes.

But she understands the rules of the game that, like, this society has created in a way that the Bennett daughters don't fully grasp. She wants her kids to be okay because she can see essentially the writing on the wall about, like, what are the family's options. This was like the first time I was like, oh, Mrs. Bennett's. I get it. Like, are you embarrassing sometimes? Yeah, but like, you just want everyone to be okay. I was really frustrated with, I just watched the 2005 Kieran Knightley virtual movie yesterday. I was really frustrated with the depiction of the mom with Mrs. Bennett in that film because in the book, I read her as like, listen, she just knows the game. Whether, you know, whether you like it or not, she just knows how to play. She's irritating sometimes, but she understands how. She is genuinely,

genuine, it comes out of a place of like worry and care for her kids. Right. And in the movie, she's portrayed as this, like, ditsy, kind of dumb and, like, all over the place woman. And the dad, played by Donald Sutherland, is played by it as this, like, kind and gentle father figure. I was like, that is not at all. Your mother insists on you marrying Mr. Collins. Yes, so much you'll never see her again. And then from this day onward, you must be a stranger to one of your parents.

Who will maintain you when your father is dead? Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins. And I will never see you again if you do. Mr. Bennett. Thank you, Papa. That version is so, like, whimsical. And it's, like, it's sweeping. And it allows for the idea that this is, like, a romance book.

So when you go back to reading it and read, like, it is about manners. And it is about, like, women being practical in their decisions. Because there is, there are parts in the book where Elizabeth Bennett very, like, practically, is, like, maybe I should marry Mr. Darcy. Like, he is kind. and maybe I jumped the gun and made a bad decision. Whereas in like a very like practical, I need to be married kind of way. That it wouldn't be as romantic if said in the movies.

Can we talk about where the swoony reputation comes from? Is it because of these adaptations or is it because of up until reading this today, my only experience with the book was through like cultural osmosis, right? And so you got male or whatever, you know, and they're talking about how like romantic it is. Is it this book's fault that we, as a culture, or walk away with that interpretation, or is it like the a bazillion other iterations of this book, you know, things that have been inspired by this book, yada, yada, yada. I mean, it is a romantic book.

Like, it is a book with a love story, right? It is a book with a love story where, you know, the people meet. They don't like each other. I mean, this is sort of like your basic enemy. But you're like Star Wars is too, right? This is your basic enemies to lovers. People sell a million copies of this to this day, right? Yeah.

It is that. It's just that it's also a bunch of other stuff. And I think the adaptations have in some ways found it easiest, particularly when you're dealing with something shorter, like a feature film as opposed to a six-part miniseries, have sort of found it easier to streamline in favor of the romance. I think that I also just think that we as a culture are guilty of reinterpreting things to benefit our perceptions of what role.

romances. Like, we think Romeo and Juliet is the greatest romance of all time, but they're, like, 13-year-olds who kill themselves. Like, we need to, like, look at some nuance. With, like, Jane Austen, I do feel, like, me personally, I think some of her work has been flattened in the culture. Mm-hmm. And just, like, put into this box of, like, Regency era, like Bridgeton. You're the bane of my existence and the object of all my desires. All this kind of stuff that we need. to like get that love dose real quick where it's like we're all guilty of being Mrs. Bennett and being like three of my daughters are engaged at the end of the book's success.

Like that is everyone's doing like that is she won she won she won. Like that's how we consider success on the terms of these books and how even when I was talking to you, Andrew, about the movie earlier. I was like did you get the American version or the British version of the 2005? film. Because in the British version, Darcy and Elizabeth don't kiss at the end. In the American version that we get, they kiss. They did not know that. Yeah. So it's like... The British version, the one that's on HBO Max, ends with Donald Southern smiling happily. Love him. RIP, but that's not what we're here for. So, like, even now, like, I'm like, they didn't kiss at the end. Does it count? Well, yeah. I mean, it's interesting because you can,

easily stand in judgment, as we've talked about, stand in judgment of Mrs. Bennett and her attitude that a romantic attachment is the goal of everyone, right? But on the other hand, any piece of traditional romantic fiction, when you talk about what the elements of a romance novel are and the romance community, I think, certainly much of it embraces this as a romance novel, not everybody. The romance novel has to end with the people getting together at the end. And I think that the key ingredient is the romance genre asks for the people to be happy. And Mrs. Bennett only asks for the people to be married. And I think that's maybe where the tension comes in between those two ways of thinking about this kind of story.

Oh, word. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And then after that, we're going to dig into the meat of the book, get into some textual business. We'll be right back. All right. Linda, you're in the romance world, right?

I am in the romance world. in the scene, right? No one's up. You refer to this book as a classic sort of like enemies to leverage trope. Is this like the

patient zero of that? I think the vast majority of tropes like this go back much farther than that so I would not call it the patient zero. I would definitely call it one of the most frequently referenced

probably versions of that. Although, as I said, the interesting thing about it is this book denies you some of the pleasures of a traditional romance novel and some of the beats that would be expected to be included. But I think what you see in this book is a really funny, really clever and witty and timeless story about a couple of people who are both super stubborn. There's a great moment where

Lizzie basically says to him, well, I think you're a lot like me. I don't think either one of us says anything unless we think it's going to impress everybody in the room. And I just thought, that is Clever and self-knowing. Yeah, it's emotional intelligence, yeah. It's a really sharp and pleasurable book, I think, and so it should not be read as work, and it should not be read as necessity. It should be read as pleasure, which I think it is. Do you know what's interesting?

I keep thinking about how relevant the questions in this book are today, particularly in, like, non-Western cultures, where these discussions of like marriage is much more like it's still a business, right? It's like, you know, my folks got married, partly not 100% out of love. There was like immigration stuff to deal with. There's like status stuff to deal with. And it's like, oh, this is like maybe this is why I'm so forgiving to Mrs. Bennett because she reminds me of like my mom. You know what I?

And it's like, okay, I completely understand where you're coming from because these are questions my aunts are still having today with their kids. 100%. It's very overbroad. as I think some people who are contemporary white Americans, maybe, is what I mean to say. It's wildly overbroad to say, you know, now people marry for love. They used to marry for position and money. Now they marry for love. First of all, plenty of people who don't marry for position in the traditional sense are not marrying for love, right?

Yeah. There are plenty of places where people are very invested still in lots of things besides your personal fondness for. each other. So if anybody in this book kind of decides to set aside the need to marry for status, it's Darcy, probably, right? Because he's a very fancy person. Lizzie is a less fancy person. And there's an interesting moment in the book when Jane, her sister, asked Lizzie, like, when did you first know that you loved Mr. Darcy? And she says, I think it was when I saw his house. Like that's a, that's a, And listen, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, like texture to that scene. She's saying a bunch of different things, I think.

But it is a funny line in light of that kind of hyper-romantic. Don't marry a rich guy, because he's a rich guy, marry for a love, a guy who happens to be rich. Like, that's, there's an interpretation of the story that I think is unfair if you see it in that way. That's, like, a really thoughtful interpretation that I've never really thought of, like, is the marriage the win or does the love the win? Well, I mean, Jane and Lizzie both end up marrying men that they loved and wanted to marry. And who loved and wanted to marry them, who love and treasure them. And so they win in that regard. They just happen to be in positions of power and stature and wealth.

Right. Whereas Charlotte, Lizzie's friend, who marries Mr. Collins, has succeeded according to Mrs. Bennett because she is married. She is secured in her future. She has a place to live. She has a husband. She's not going to, as is mentioned at one point in this book, die an old maid. But it's clear in Austin's vision that she does not have the same kind of happy ending as Lizzie and Jane because they marry someone who's lovely to them. Well, there is that moment in the book where the family comes together and is like completely embarrassing.

But they're being their true selves, though. Like, the sister wants to play the piano. The, like, the mom wants to gossip. The dad, I mean, like, everyone is. The one wants to run off and have sucks with a soldier. You know what? If you like it, I love it. But, like, but it is who they are.

And there's a moment where Darcy is brutally honest about his, like, he's in love with Elizabeth Bennett, but is also brutally honest about who her family is. And there's a part of me that couldn't get past. that of like he's like it doesn't shift that much it's a very tough moment and I think one of the things that I find fascinating about this is that they you know Austin doesn't give you a lot of super demonstrative business about him and his feelings beyond this kind of outpouring to her which turns out to be really not well done at all because he comes in and he's like it's a terrible idea because you're not suitable and I hate your mother and all this other stuff is,

you know, you're completely unsuitable, but I love you anyway. So marry me because it's too painful for me if you don't. And she sort of has this wonderful, I think has this wonderful reaction. It's basically like, thanks. And then she just sort of says, no, thank you. You have done this in a very horrible and insulting way. Plus, she is carrying a couple of misunderstandings about things that he has done. But she sort of reacts with a revulsion, I would say. It doesn't want anything to do with him. And it takes other information coming to light about these other things that she was under the impression that he had done that perhaps he had not done to kind of repair that.

But to me, yes, to me, it would be very difficult to get over some of the things that he said about. Christmases would be difficult. Yeah, it would be difficult. It would be difficult. Although, is it Colin Firth made me less difficult. I'll push through. Up next, we'll have our final verdict, some recommendations, and hear from another fan of Pride and Prejudice. Stick around.

All right. We're back. I think I know the answer to this, but the final question is, why do we think this book is worth reading today? I would say, one, for its influence on other elements of culture. which is always worth understanding. And two, for its love story, which despite how unusual it is

in some of the ways that we've talked about is still really compelling to me. And three, because it is so funny and so much fun. And mean. And mean, at times. At times, it is mean. She is cutting. Yeah.

I mean, Austin's feelings are strong. I think it's like this becomes this kind of shorthand when we are trying to navigate some of these stories about relationship. Like, oh, this is clearly like an Elizabeth Bennett character. And I think the way that we started with Andrew being like, he read it to understand like where more contemporary works are like getting, not that they're ideas from, but like. It's like listening to the Beatles is what I was thinking of it. You know, it's like you got to.

Yeah, listen to the Beatles before you can. You got to understand contemporary music. Before you can get to take McRae. Like, I don't know. Yeah. Sure. Great. Well, I was going to say it's like reading the Bible in some ways that even if you don't, even if it's not your religion, it's very influential and you're going to hear about it a lot. So for some people, it turns out to be worth knowing what it says even if they don't have a religious attachment to it.

Yeah. So even if you do not have a spiritual attachment to Jane Austen or to romance, perhaps it's worth knowing what's going on in there. Yeah. All right. I think it's time for, if you like this, read that. Parker, do you want to go first? Sure. Okay. So I think it was in 2019. I have a friend from Pakistan who was like, you've got to read this book called Unmarriageable. And so I read it. It's like, oh, it's basically it's Pride and Prejudice set in contemporary Pakistan. And it doesn't retread a lot of the plot of Pride and Prejudice, yes. But it leans itself to the cultural mores of today within Pakistan and how it relates to that. Austin world. And I just think it's a really lovely, funny, like, quick read, to be honest, unmarriageable by Sonia Kamal. I said before that by the time I was, like, getting serious about literature, I was, like, really thinking a lot about, like, American stuff. And the book I was

thinking a lot about was William Faulkner's Absalom Absalom, in this sense of, like, the weight of the family is on your shoulders. Fairly or unfairly. You can complain and whine and moan about like the game sucks and the deck is loaded against you, but the weight of the family and the family honor is rested on your decisions. And what you do speaks to your family name. And that's a heavy burden to carry. Nice Paul. I like it, Andrew.

Yeah. I would say if you come to this conversation as a romance reader, you already know this book, probably. But if you come to this conversation as not a romance reader, then maybe you don't. I would mention red, white and royal blue, which is a romance by Casey McQuiston, which is about a prince who's a member of the British royal family and the son of the U.S. President. And they meet and they hate each other and they are enemies. They can't stand each other. And then they start like emailing and texting and they fall in love. And it is a pretty hot book.

If you miss there being sex and pride and prejudice, this is a hot book. But it's also, it has a lot of stuff in it about the burden. of family and the sort of the public implications of your relationship. And some of that is related to the fact that they're both guys, but some of it is really just the what's expected of them because they're both incredibly high profile. It's also just a super charming book. Casey McQuiston is one of the current like super major writers in that genre. So their work is always worth paying attention to.

All right. Well, cool. Linda, thank you so much. This is a lot of fun. I really appreciate it. Oh, thank you. I'm glad that you guys motivated me to reread this book because I definitely had not revisited it in a bit. And that's the show. This episode was produced by Cher Vincent and edited by Megan Sullivan. Engineering support by Robert Rodriguez and our executive producer is Yolanda Sanguini. Thank you for listening to Books We've Loved from NPR. We'll see you next time.