Narrative and Cinematic Doubleness: Pride and Prejudice and Bridget ]ones's Diary

Without question, the phenomenal success of Bridget Jones's Diary-both novel and film-comes largely from pilfering plot and narrative strategies from a writer who knew nothing of film: Jane Austen. Helen Fielding has freely admitted her debt to Austen: "The plot of Bridget Jones's Diary was actually stolen from Pride and Prejudice. I thought that Jane Austen's plots were very good and had been very well market-researched over a number of centuries, so I thought I would actually steal it. I thought she wouldn't mind and anyway, she's dead." 1 While clearly Fielding was referring to Austen's novel, she was writing the newspaper columns that eventually became the book while the British nation was obsessed with the BBC miniseries starring Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet. In fact, Fielding freely admits that she had Colin Firth in mind as she created the character of Mark Darcy. As such, the novel owes as much to Andrew Davies's screenplay as to Austen's novel.