Nora Ephron’s enchanting comedy, You’ve Got Mail, is my favorite film version of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Directed by Nora Ephron and written by Nora and her sister Delia Ephron, it is not an exact retelling but is playfully allusive. Set in New York in the ’90s, it is also a romance of bookshops.
Ephron’s modern Elizabeth and Darcy meet on AOL and fall in love over their charming emails. They don’t know each other’s real names, and have never met “face-to-face,” but they are in the same business (sort of). Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) owns a small children’s bookstore and Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) owns Fox Books, a national bookstore chain. The two are about to become business rivals: Kathleen’s shop is in jeopardy because a branch of Fox Books is opening around the corner.
We are expecting a Frank Capra movie, where the little guy, i.e., Kathleen’s bookstore, survives. But Fox Books puts Kathleen’s bookshop out of business. Of course they are the perfect couple and we are delighted when they fall in love; yet because her shop closes, a large part of her future is missing from the movie. Coldn’t Joe have saved her bookshop? That would have been lovely. Will she work at Fox Books? But one of her former employees is now in charge of the children’s book department. What will her role be exactly? Shouldn’t Ephron have wrapped things up better professionally for Kathleen?
The best thing about re-watching You’ve Got Mail is that it inspired me to reread Pride and Prejudice. In one of my favorite scenes, Joe reads P&P, because it is Kathleen’s favorite book. He comically wonders aloud which character is Pride and which is Prejudice.
On this rereading of Jane’s most beloved book, I noticed immediately that Darcy lacks Joe Fox’s charm and good manners. Both are rich and good-looking, but Darcy doesn’t have much humor. At a country ball, Darcy declines to dance with the local girls. And when his friend Mr. Bingley suggests that he ask Elizabeth Bennet to dance, he answers.
“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough tto tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”
Elizabeth overhears this and laughs at him. Of course later in the novel Darcy falls in love with her and proposes. But, being Darcy, he adds that he is embarrassed by her family. And it takes Elizabeth and us readers several more chapters to realize Darcy is afflicted by pride (or is it prejudice?) and that Elizabeth has been afflicted by prejudice (or is it pride?).
By the way, Austen took the title, Pride and Prejudice, from Fanny Burney’s Cecilia.
Near the end of that brilliant if sprawling novel, Burney writes, “The whole of this unfortunate business… has been the result of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.”