Charlotte:
I've been dating since I was fifteen. I'm exhausted. Where
is he?
Miranda: Who? The White Knight?
Samantha: That only happens in fairy tales.1
"Modern
women need cheat sheets to remind us romance isn't dead."2
Jane Austen's
heroines do not only exist in early nineteenth century literature.
"Cher" is an up-to-date Emma in Amy Heckerling's
Clueless. The titular character in Bridget Jones's
Diary is reminiscent of Pride
and Prejudice's Elizabeth Bennett—only now she's
a hip London "singleton" navigating among the "smug
marrieds." Written in the spirit of Ms. Austen, four
New York singletons offer their own Girls'
Guide to Hunting and Fishing with cosmopolitan wit
in HBO's Sex and the City—a smash in both the
commercial and critical sense.
Faithful
to the ideal of romantic love is sweet Charlotte, originally
an art dealer and now a divorcee. Miranda, a corporate lawyer,
represents sensibility bordering on skepticism. Damn the torpedoes
sexual temptation is embodied in publicist Samantha. Main
character Carrie Bradshaw considers and synthesizes these
and her own disparate perspectives on the love and war front.
Carrie shares Elizabeth Bennett's "quickness of observation."3
She poses questions, carries out research, and reports on
the city that never sleeps' escapades and exploits. (Note:
The first episode of the series begins with Carrie interviewing
an English journalist named Elizabeth, and ends with her bumping
into her own Mr. Darcy, enigmatically christened "Mr.
Big.")
These
single successful career women are engaged in love/lust relationships
confined to twenty-two square miles of Manhattan. Like the
village in which Jane Austen locates her select society, Sex
and the City, based on author Candace Bushnell's column,
is only a ". . . small subset of high-profile New Yorkers:
fashion people, media honchos, money people, famous-for-fifteen-minute-artists."4
Sex
and the City's universe is specific—yet its themes
are universal. What intrigues Sex's writers, and ultimately
its audience, are the same kinds of thematic conflicts Austen
writes about:
"[Jane
Austen] is interested in dramatizing sex in everyday social
life—in the drawing room rather than the bedroom. The
courtship plots she creates allow her to explore the relations
between sex and moral judgment, sex and friendship, sex and
knowledge—that is, between sex and character. . . . The
very publicity of sex in Austen's novels—the constant
awareness, the relentless dramatization—is what makes
her examination of social life so powerful."5
The writers
for Sex and the City are not restricted to the drawing
room. What happens behind closed doors is on screen in full
view, yet the salacious is only a diversionary hook. Discourse
on mores and manners, particularly givens associated with
gender roles, is what constitutes the show's substance, much
like in Austen's world:
"The
lives of Jane Austen heroines, who spend much of their time
at balls, dinners and on extended visits, should not . . .
be considered trivial. Essentially they are engaged in receiving
an education in manners, the subtleties of which can be fully
explored only in the context of the formal social occasion,
and are thus being prepared for their role as arbiters of
manners and preservers of morals. By undergoing this process,
and by eradicating the deficiencies in manners . . . the heroines
eventually become as useful to society as any politician,
soldier or clergyman."6
Sex
and the City is a comedy, and as such the leading ladies
have a vast comic repertoire to draw from (broad humor for
Carrie's "fashion roadkill"7 pratfall;
black humor for Miranda's mother's death)8.
Comedy is the essential accessory for trifling issues: Manolo
Blahniks or Jimmy Choos shoes? as well as the severe "running
with scissors"9 situations. The
fifth's season finale leaves the New Yorkers still girlfriends,
still single, and still cynical—yet romantic enough to
fall sway to the strains of a song playing at an acquaintance's
wedding reception: "Is that all there is? Is that all
there is? If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep
dancing . . ."10
As ever,
everything that's classic is fabulous again. Whether we are
perusing Jane Austen's literature or tuned into Sex and
the City, we can all relate to the "delightful commentary
upon the little foibles of human nature"11—a
"perpetual human comedy, in which we all have to play
our parts."12
Footnotes
1"Where There's Smoke." Writ. Michael Patrick King.
Sex and the City. Created by Darren Star. Dir. King.
HBO. Season 3: Episode 31. June 4, 2000.
2"Are
We Sluts?" Writ. Cindy Chupack. Sex and the City.
Created by Star. Dir. Nicole Holofcener. HBO. Season 3: Episode
36. July 16, 2000.
3Swisher,
Clarice. Ed. Readings on Jane Austen. San Diego: Greenhaven
Press, 1997.
4Franklin,
Nancy. "Sex and the Single Girl." The New Yorker,
July 1998: 74-77.
5Fergus,
Jan. "Sex and Social Life in Jane Austen Novels,"
in Jane Austen in a Social Context. Ed. David Monaghan.
Macmillian Ltd., 1981.
6Monaghan,
David. "Jane Austen and the Position of Women,"
in Jane Austen in a Social Context. Ed. David Monaghan.
Macmillian Ltd., 1981.
7"The
Real Me." Writ. King. Sex and the City. Created
by Star. Dir. King. HBO. Season 4: Episode 50. June 3, 2001.
8"My
Motherboard, My Self." Writ. Julie Rottenberg and Elisa
Zuritsky. Sex and the City. Created by Star. Dir. Michael
Engler. HBO. Season 4: Episode 56. July 15, 2001.
9"Running
With Scissors." Writ. King. Sex and the City.
Created by Star. Dir. Dennis Erdman. HBO. Season 3: Episode
41. August 20, 2000.
10"I
Love a Charade." Writ. Chupak and King. Sex and the
City. Created by Star. Dir. Engler. HBO. Season 5: Episode
74. September 8, 2002.
11Moore,
Catherine. "Pride and Prejudice." Masterplots.
Ed. F. N. Magill. Englewood: Salem, 1976.
12Priestly,
J.B., "Afterword," in Four English Novels.
Eds. J.B. Priestly and O.B. Davis. New York: Harcourt, 1960.
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