Mr. Darcy

I shall be extremely delighted to discuss the virtous nature of the British miniseries version of Pride and Prejudice.

I had occasion to view the Keira Knightley version in theaters earlier this year. While I am not a fan of Keira and her little mouth and flat but perky cheek bones, I really enjoyed the movie, because girls are genetically predisposed to adore Pride and Prejudice.

This is because all women identify with Elizabeth Bennet, a woman who, while not the prettiest, possesses other virtues including the ability to comprehend books and converse while taking a turn about the room.

More importantly, all women want their non-obvious and rarely-recognized virtues to result in the obsessive and debilitating adoration of one handsome, brooding, and rich stranger, who silently falls in love with her. They also want the normally confident stranger to articulate his affection for her in an insecure but tender fashion, wherein he declares that he cannot stand being apart from her for any longer and that he wants nothing else but to love her with unending devotion for eternity.

Jane Austen shows us how romance can be.

I digress...

Overall I like the most recent version better, but I have two words: Colin Firth. Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy ruins things for woman-kind.

Every time he was on-screen I gasped. I, like Eliza Bennet, looked forward to seeing him, and was much distressed by his being away.

Girls, if you ever have slightly less than 6 hours to spare, you must watch it.

I want so much to gush endlessly about Colin Firth but I will not, as I have other things to tend to such as a doctor's appointment, lunch, fretting about stupid new health insurance that seems to have caused a slight accumulation in bills at a time when I really can't be spending money, lamenting not being able to go to the bowling world championship, performing damage-control on D's new haircut (more later), and staring at my face in fabulous new glasses in any possible reflective surface.