Following the Daisy Edgar-Jones-led film adaptation of Sense And Sensibility and the BBC drama The Other Bennet Sister earlier this year, another new series for Austen-heads to swoon at is almost upon us.
And with just weeks to go until it begins streaming, Netflix has now dropped the trailer for its new take on Pride And Prejudice.
Starring Emma Corrin as Lizzie, Jack Lowden as Darcy and Louis Partridge as Wickham, the upcoming series looks to follow the original 1813 book pretty closely.
However, fans couldn’t help but notice one key difference to the story in the trailer when it premiered on Tuesday.
Olivia Colman‘s Mrs Bennet has been given one of the story’s most famous lines, originally said by the book’s narrator and previously spoken in other screen adaptations by Lizzie.
Yes, in the new trailer, the line “it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” which famously opens Jane Austen’s original novel.
Writer Dolly Alderton, who penned the script for Netflix’s Pride And Prejudice, explained that she felt Mrs Bennet should be the one to say this line “because it’s the central drama of her story”.
“It’s all she’s thinking about,” Dolly said (as reported by Metro). “It’s a preoccupation that any time a single man comes into her orbit she’s thinking, ‘this might be safety for all of my daughters, this might be salvation not just for one of them but for all of us’.”
“So the fact that this is so in her mind all the time felt that it had to be her line. It was most natural for her to take it because it’s all she thinks about,” the Everything I Know About Love author added.
Mrs Bennet has usually been portrayed as a harsh, antagonistic character in the tale, standing in clear opposition to the romance the readers are rooting for.
But Dolly’s words have led fans to wonder whether this upcoming adaptation will soften the character of Mrs Bennet.
“It suggests the rather loathed character is about to be given a modern, sympathetic reappraisal, which is a logical step in a culture that has become obsessed with looking at the way classic villains have been misunderstood,” suggested one fan on a period drama-themed Reddit thread.
Another user in the same post was less impressed with the switch, asking: “Can we please just let female characters be complicated and flawed?
“Does every new adaptation have to revise characters so that viewers who lack emotional maturity or understanding can sympathise with them?”
Fall in love with Pride And Prejudice when the series premieres on Netflix on Thursday 3 December.
