Pride and prejudice (a contemp
Pride and prejudice (a contempPride and Prejudice: A Contemporary View
The hardest thing about this project, in my opinion, was in fact not the kind of research it took to arrive at the conclusions presented in this paper, but the process of grouping them together into something that might make any sense at all. I have come to learn that there are so many parallels between Pride and Prejudice and its modern counterpart, You've Got Mail, and to a lesser extent The Shop Around the Corner, that putting them together involves more than one might imagine. In any case, I found that You've Got Mail is more of a combination of The Shop Around the Corner and Pride and Prejudice than The Shop Around the Corner is related to Pride and Prejudice at all.
In reviewing Pride and Prejudice and You've Got Mail, I found that most major aspects of the film are similar to issues presented in Pride and Prejudice. However, the frequently rearranged presentation of these events when portrayed in You've Got Mail initially led me to see them as different. This had more to do with the concept of role reversal than anything else. Nevertheless, there were a few minor differences, each of which, along with the major and minor similarities between the novel and the film, I will thoroughly examine and discuss in this essay. Above all, I would have to say without a doubt that You've Got Mail is a successful adaptation to Pride and Prejudice, with the single most powerful connection between the two being the expression of a changing society.
As would be obvious to any viewer, reader, or analyst, this is done successfully through the characters of Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox, who in different ways represent Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Fitzwillam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. When I say different I mean that Kathleen is not always Elizabeth and Joe is not necessarily Darcy. In fact, when compared to their corresponding social situations in Pride and Prejudice, Kathleen is Mr. Darcy, while Joe represents Elizabeth.
I say this because I realize that when we give our sympathy to Kathleen's plight in You've Got Mail and to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, thereby connecting the two characters, we are not thinking of how readers of Pride and Prejudice when it was written felt when reading it. In their opinion, it had to have been Darcy who faced the dilemma, not Elizabeth. You see, in both the book and novel the traditional ways, whether they are of Victorian Era England or the Upper West Side, are being inevitably replaced by new social or economic standards. In Pride and Prejudice the noble class was sinking as the middle class rose, with the middle class seen much like a modern chain store in comparison to a classic book shop that had been in business for generations....
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