And who knows-Charlotte may end up as a hero rather than a wife in the end. We are getting the marriage plot after all, with all the perils that go with it. My problem with season #1’s conclusion was that Charlotte appeared to be heading back to an obscure life in the country, where she would be unable to exercise her powers in any way that we could see.īut now that there has been a season #2, and with a season #3 on the way, I’m more forgiving.

A pretty good joke at his expense*, one that could prod him to grow, never sees the light of day. Jane Eyre may undergo remarkable growth in the course of Charlotte Bronte’s novel but, on the last page, she is triumphantly proclaiming, “Reader, I married him.” Elizabeth, meanwhile, must curb her satiric tongue-what we love best about her-once she is engaged to Darcy. Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre may flirt with the bildungsroman, she observes, but in the end the marriage plot wins the day, with the protagonist dwindling from hero to heroine. To elaborate, feminist Rachel Blau DuPlessis, in an influential book, sees the marriage plot warring with the bildungsroman in much of 19 th-century women’s fiction, with the marriage plot invariably winning out. I would have been more than happy with a bildungsroman (growth story).

It’s not that I was demanding a traditional marriage plot. When Charlotte doesn’t marry either of the two very attractive prospects available to her (for her part, Austen never gives us more than one attractive bachelor per heroine), I speculated, “Perhaps the filmmakers were trying to capture the disappointment we feel over Austen’s own unfinished ending.” Two years ago, not realizing that the PBS Sanditon series was going to experience a second season, I expressed my dissatisfaction.

Pbs jane austen