I was either 11 or 12 when my father shoved, and I do mean shoved, one of his copies of Pride and Prejudice in my hands and said, “Read this. It’s a far sight better than any of those crappy teen romance novels you’re reading now.” (At the time I was hopelessly addicted to the young adult version of Harlequin romances, and was reading some claptrap novel called Love is a Wonderful Thing — the title of which I only remember because my father turned it into a song — and please note that this is well before Michael Bolton’s time — that I will happily sing for you if you ask nicely and buy me a drink.)
And of course I resisted. Of COURSE I resisted. Despite the fact that at the time I thought my father was infinitely cooler than my mother because he introduced me to Mel Brooks movies and let me watch R-rated movies and even let me drink a beer once (in his presence — it was Grain Belt, and it was AWFUL), he was still a parental unit and so anything he thought would be GOOD for me, and he was clearly telling me that THIS was going to be GOOD for me, would be in fact painful and brutal and torturous. So of course I resisted. But he made me read it, really. He sat with me and watched me read it. (My father was, and still is, a rather peculiar person. I love him dearly, but he is.)
(That said, I can TOTALLY see myself sitting in front of my own child watching him or her read something I think they NEED to read for their OWN GOOD.)
And oh, did I want to HATE Pride and Prejudice. I wanted to shove it back in my dad’s face and yell “this is the worst piece of garbage ever written, and you know nothing! NOTHING!!” Because I was 11 or 12, and I knew what was best for me, I knew what was good for me, and no one else did, and never would, period.1
The flaw in this plan, as you might have guessed, is that it was fundamentally impossible for me to hate Pride and Prejudice. I was an 11- or 12-year-old girl who was just coming out of her tomboy phase and already embarking on the wonderment that is puberty and I was very much into the romance genre. 6 pages in and I was done . . . but I couldn’t let my father know that, oh no. I had to put up a front. I was 11 (or 12).
So I pretended to hate it. My father offered up this reward: get through half the book and I could watch the movie version. At that point, the movie version was the 1940 Laurence Olivier/Greer Garson film, the screenplay of which was written by Aldous Huxley. (Did you know that? I did not. Does it not boggle your mind?) He knew me, more than I would’ve care to admit, frankly, since he clearly knew that I would love the book and probably, though I cannot confirm this, saw through all of my protestations, but at the very least he knew that I loved movies, and that the movie adaptation of the book would win me over if nothing else did. And while I loved the book, I loved movies more, so I hit the halfway mark, passed the quiz my father administered2, and watched the movie. (And then I went back and finished the book, without telling my dad. Though I am sure that he knew.)
It’s been a very long time since I’ve watched that movie — in fact, it’s entirely possible that the summer of 1982 (or possibly ’83) was the first and last time I watched that version — though I see it is available on Netflix Instant Play, so I know what I’m doing as soon as this posts (guy next to me at pub: “Are you going to watch a movie at the bar?” Me: “Would that be so wrong?”). It is also entirely possible that this was the movie that set up my . . . well, prejudice, if you will, against modern adaptations of classic literature.
(Bear with me, more is on the way.)
(Soon, even.)
(Really.)
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