The Other Bennet Sister: Why Austen Readers Should Watch The BBC Hit

Additional comment from Dr Shelley Galpin, a lecturer in Media, Culture, and Creative Industries at King’s College London.

Adapting a book for a TV show or movie means some readers are sure to be disappointed (take, for instance, Emerald Fennell’s controversial Wuthering Heights). 

The BBC’s The Other Bennet Sister is no exception. Focused on Mary, the largely forgotten sibling in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the series takes significant enough liberties with the author’s original work for some readers to dub it “fanfic”. 

Personally, I’ve never seen that as much of an insult (what are Clueless or Bridget Jones if not very well-done Austen fan fictions?).

If anything, though it has its flaws, I think The Other Bennet Sister is a fun, highly watchable series that fits as neatly into the book’s premise as a mid-2020s TV show can. 

It’s not the best screenwriting, I grant you. But the 1940 Pride and Prejudice film adaptation, which included the lines “At this moment, it’s difficult to believe that you’re so proud.” “At this moment, it’s difficult to believe that you are so prejudiced”, made a (clunky) point. 

The book is all about how we see and unfairly judge one another, including as a reader. And speaking to HuffPost UK, media, culture, and creative industries lecturer Dr Shelley Galpin said, “The [BBC] series works well as a development of those ideas”.

Of course, Lizzie misunderstands Mr Darcy and Wickham in turns, and Mr Darcy is unkindly snobbish about the Bennets. 

But we know that because Austen explicitly paints the picture for us. Her real art is in making us question the characters the book itself portrays negatively: if Mrs Bennet is so irrational and silly, how come the far better-off Mr Bennet married her – and why do some of her schemes, like sending a rain-sodden Jane off to sneeze over the nearest herd of poshies, kind of work out?

Why didn’t Lizzie, or most readers, trust Charlotte Lucas when she (rightly) said Mr Collins was perfect for many of her needs?

Not to pummel the remains of a long-dead horse further into the ground here, but the book makes us ask: were we proud, or prejudiced, when we read it?

I was pleased to see that the Richared E. Grant Mr Bennet’s head-in-the-sand approach to raising children is a lot more explicit than in, say, the 2005 film (even if Mrs Bennet, played by Ruth Jones, is more flatly harsh – both Dr Galpin and I felt the speech she gives at the end of the show was not quite enough to redeem her being “such a nightmare” the rest of the time).

Other characters were reframed, too.

“I definitely felt that some of the more irritating or comic character elements were softened a little [in The Other Bennet Sister] – Mary and Mr Collins were both a little less ‘preachy’ and lacking in social awareness than in their original iterations, so I felt that some artistic license was taken with the characterisation, but this is perhaps consistent with the show centring on Mary’s view of the world more,” said Dr Galpin.

“I... liked the slight rehabilitation of Mr Collins, who is, at the end of the day, trying to do the right thing, even if he is far from the ideal romantic hero.” 

Mary, whom I always saw as quite similar to the shy, bookish, devout Fanny Price protagonist in Mansfield Park, was well overdue for a similar reinterpetation, though Dr Galpin pointed out that her TV self might be closer to the original novel than I realised. 

“It struck me as I watched it that Mary is essentially playing the ‘Lizzie’ role from P&P. In Austen’s novel, Lizzie is supposed to be a little awkward and lacking in social niceties (in comparison to perfect Jane!) and less attractive than her sister.

“She also continually irritates her mother by making supposedly imprudent marriage choices. Mary essentially steps into this persona in the series. The rivalry with Caroline Bingley also echoes Lizzie’s role in the original novel,” she said.

So, when the BBC show depicts Mary as strong-willed, ambitious, self-aware, and bloomingly confident once she reaches London, it’s not a correction of Jane Austen’s book but a natural extension of it.

It makes as much sense as a spin-off TV series as Mr Collins’ (relatively) successful marriage, or Caroline Bingley’s genuinely well-meaning Wickham warning, do in the novel; not what we were led to expect initially, but hey, what sucker doesn’t question their first impression?

That’s Austen, baby – and in my opinion, the witty, touching, and fun BBC adaptation has bottled it perfectly.