Jane Austen's Unnamed Character: Exploring Nature in Pride and Prejudice (2005)

The 2005 film Pride & Prejudice opens with sound rather than picture, but it is not the expected man-made musical score that fills the air. Rather it is nature’s music: the song of birds, particularly blackbirds. As Lydia Martin’s article “Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice: From Classicism to Romanticism” states, “The film’s opening with overlapping birdsong, heard even before the first image appears on screen, suggests the awakening of nature.” Then picture fills the screen, and the audience can see a shot of a beautiful green field. Lush trees stand proudly at the end of the stretch of grass, and piano music begins to play as the rising sun peeks over the trees. Mist starts to dissipate and a golden glow fills the shot as morning arrives.

Shortly after, the sun accompanies Elizabeth Bennet, played by Keira Knightley, as she strolls through the fields reading quietly. Lydia Martin analyzes the shot, saying, “The cinematographer films Elizabeth in a slightly low-angle shot to present her harmonious relationship with nature.” Though the text of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice opens with a narrator followed by a conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, in this film it is nature that is seen first. As an author writing during the Romantic period, Austen devotes space to describing the landscape that her characters inhabit; however, recent film versions emphasize the landscape in ways the narrative does not. Sara Wingard confirms this in her article, “Reversal and Revelation: The Five Seasons of Pride and Prejudice,” that “there are no long descriptive passages on the beauties or terrors of nature in her [Austen’s] work.” In the 2005 adaptation Pride & Prejudice, through the director’s different uses of the environment, (including both the weather and landscape) nature itself becomes an unnamed but essential character to the audience’s understanding of the story. In the film, nature acts as a narrator by mirroring Elizabeth’s inner thoughts (which audiences are not privy to due to the lack of a human narrator) and takes on a role of its own as it subtly hints to and influences Elizabeth as to what it thinks is best for her. This largely contrasts the way that Austen uses nature in the original text of Pride and Prejudice, merely sprinkled in, but without a starring role.

Released in 2005, Pride & Prejudice was directed by Joe Wright, starred Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, and was based on a screenplay by writer Deborah Moggach. Moggach’s screenplay was in turn, based on the novel Pride and Prejudice. Written by Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 and remains popular with readers even two hundred years later. Beloved by audiences, Austen’s classic about Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy has spurned numerous adaptations. Besides the plentiful unofficial sequels appearing in print over the years, there have been several film and television versions. One of the most popular was 1995’s BBC/AE six episode television miniseries: Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet. Because of the popularity of the 1995 BBC/AE miniseries, which was only produced a scant ten years earlier, expectations for Wright’s film were high.

One of the main problems Wright faced while filming was the running time. Due to the 1995 series being filmed for television, it ran five hours long. This meant the 1995 adaptation had the advantage over Wright’s film, because Wright was forced to condense or eliminate certain scenes due to time constraints (which were two hours). With such a short amount of screen time, Wright had to carefully consider who or what made the cut. Characters like Mr. and Mrs. Hurst, Mrs. Younge, and Maria Lucas were among many who do not appear in the 2005 film. Mr. and Mrs. Philips along with many of the militia also did not appear in Wright’s film. Several scenes from the original text were combined or cut. Wright could have made the decision to stay truer to Austen’s text, but instead favored scenes with landscape over characters he believed were not necessary. He used these outdoor scenes to create a new character, nature, who becomes just as important to the audience as the named characters.

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, dialogue and characterization take preeminence over setting. Rosemarie Bodenheimer explores this in her article “Looking at the Landscape in Jane Austen.” Published in Studies in English Literature in 1981, Bodenheimer says that “Austen’s landscape writing is related to romantic narrative and poetic technique in the sense that it points inward” and that Austen is “constantly pulling the emphasis away from pictorial description itself” (622). Bodenheimer argues that “the actual nature writing” actually “marks the strains and limits in Austen’s romantic tendencies” (606). The lack of nature and landscape is especially felt in the beginning of the Pride and Prejudice. Austen does not even mention anything regarding landscape until a few chapters into the story, as nature remains in the shadows of Austen’s text until Jane is invited to dine with the Bingley’s. Mrs. Bennet believes it is about to rain and has no qualms about using the rain in her quest to get her daughters married. This facile ploy succeeds, as the narrator muses, “Jane had not been gone long before it rained hard” (Austen 77). Austen’s text continues from Mrs. Bennet’s point of view, “‘This was a lucky idea of mine, indeed!’ said Mrs. Bennet, more than once, as if the credit of making it rain were all her own” (77). nature, it seems, is playing the part of matchmaker with Mrs. Bennet, though it isn’t receiving any credit.

The film version takes this tiny bit of text to the next level. While Austen’s text reads that it “rained hard,” there is nothing else said about Jane’s journey in the rain. In the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice, the doors of Netherfield open and Jane is seen standing in downpour. Dripping wet with the rain pouring down behind her, she opens her mouth to talk and sneezes instead. Wright’s scene gives details to the audience that Austen’s text does not, and in doing so, nature becomes a narrator. Wright could have had an actual narrator saying, “And then Jane stood dripping wet in the pouring rain. The doors were flung open and she opened her mouth to talk but the poor girl sneezed instead. Clearly she was sick!” Instead, nature’s own actions become the narration and allowed audiences to understand a little more easily how Jane could have gotten sick from travelling in the rain.

Nature continues its role as matchmaker when Elizabeth, as Sara Wingard puts it, begins an “impulsive muddy walk to Netherfield to nurse her sister.” In the text, Pride and Prejudice’s narrator tells readers that Elizabeth ends up “crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity… and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise” (Austen 79). The text’s narrator tells the audience that Elizabeth ends up with “dirty stockings” and “her petticoat, six inches deep in mud” (79, 82). Kathleen Anderson explores Elizabeth’s wardrobe somewhat in her article, “The Offending Pig: Determinism in the Focus Features Pride & Prejudice.” Anderson points out that Elizabeth “wears mostly deep, rich colors” and that in the opening scene, Elizabeth wears a dark brown dress, which reinforces her affinity with the earth.” This Elizabeth is not afraid of a little mud, despite some of her struggles through it. The 2005 film version does not portray this trudging as vividly as the 1995 version, but it does still capture some of Elizabeth’s difficulty. Audiences see that because nature can control the weather and its effects on the landscape, it has more power than Mrs. Bennet and can continue to assist the mother in her quest to get husbands for her daughters. nature is making it difficult for Elizabeth to reach the Bingley’s in order for Jane to have more time with a potential husband. The sun is purposely not strong enough to dry up the puddles from the previous rain, and the fields are quite muddy. Both of these would deter most people from taking such a long walk, but Elizabeth continues.

The scene is shot from afar, displaying Elizabeth walking briskly across a field with one lone tree as dark clouds fill the sky. Says Sarah Ailwood in her article ““What are men to rocks and mountains?” Romanticism in Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice,” that “Wright uses a distant shot to silhouette Elizabeth against a white sky: she and a solitary tree are the only two figures in a rural landscape.” Elizabeth is like the tree in that she thrives in the outdoors. The observant watchers will notice that she slips once as she squishes through the grass, but the rest of the audience will see her unkempt appearance amidst the finery at Netherfield. nature is not just attempting to help Jane in this scene, but also Elizabeth. nature knows something that Elizabeth does not: Mr. Darcy is quite attracted to Elizabeth’s eyes, especially when they are “brightened by the exercise,” as Austen’s text reveals (82). Without the difficult walk on the fields still wet from the earlier rain, Elizabeth may not have appeared quite as attractive to Mr. Darcy. It is nature that influences Elizabeth and gives her that extra push, while Wright’s film shows it happening.

One scene where Wright gives the landscape a bigger part than Austen intended is where Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham come face to face. In the 2005 film, Elizabeth is walking along a riverbank with Mr. Wickham as Lydia, Jane, and Kitty walk shortly ahead of them. The group comes across Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy on horseback. Though Elizabeth can sense the tension between Mr. Wickham and Mr. Darcy, it is made even more obvious by the structure of the landscape in this scene. The two men are divided by the placement of the river, which runs between them and is difficult to cross, as Wright uses nature to emphasize the emotional distance between the two men.

In contrast to Wright’s film, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham meeting in town. The narrator says, “Darcy and Bingley were seen riding down the street” (Austen 116). Of Mr. Wickham and Mr. Darcy, Austen’s text declares, “Both changed colour [sic], one looked white, the other red. Mr. Wickham, after a few moments, touched his hat – a salutation which Mr. Darcy just deigned to return” (116). Wright could have filmed this on a street, as Austen’s text does, but instead shot the scene in nature—Elizabeth’s comfort zone. Wright’s use of the landscape allows nature to hint to both Elizabeth and the audience that there is something very wrong between these two men. Austen’s original lack of landscape and nature in her text is explored in a biography by Park Honan. In Jane Austen: Her Life, Honan believes that there was once much more text describing nature and landscape in Pride and Prejudice, but much of it was lost in the final version. Honan claims, “This is a much pruned comedy” (309). He goes on to say that “Nature is nearly excluded – and few novels of country life have had so little rural scenery” (Honan 309). Wright’s film takes pains to add nature where in Austen’s text there was little, and gives nature a starring role.