Rewriting Austen… Again?

By Ellie Somers

To take inspiration from an author to recommence the construction of their world is already an ambitious task. When that author is Jane Austen, and the world belongs to that of her magnum opus, Pride and Prejudice (1813), that same ambition grows all the more precarious. Two centuries on from its publication and in an age where Austen’s spirit (wrongfully) persists as intellectual property more than it does that of a generational wordsmith, such precarity does little to deter Janice Hadlow. Her debut novel, The Other Bennet Sister (2020), which situates awkward, moralising middle child Mary Bennet as an emotional centre, has been adapted for the screen by BBC One, with up-and-coming Irish actor Dónal Finn playing the role of Bennet’s love interest Tom Hayward [1]. The instinct behind such fanfiction is not difficult to grasp. Austen’s universe feels vast, so much so that it almost implores return.

Hadlow’s novel, and now its onscreen counterpart, commit a seemingly graceful act by granting a previously overlooked Mary Bennet the interiority Austen denied her. On paper, she certainly makes an ideal candidate for revision (albeit not Austen’s paper, on which she is reduced to being the “only plain one in the family”). The Other Bennet Sisters’ opening episode stokes this fiery assertion, as Mary tersely attests that “to be poor and handsome is misfortune enough, but to be penniless and plain is a hard fate indeed” [2]. Perhaps what Austen neglected to bring to the fore is a heroine who is not effortlessly charming or desirable, and more refreshingly, whose story is not driven by the sole promise of marriage. The Other Bennet Sister leans into questions of self-perception and autonomy, offering something that feels more aligned with contemporary concerns than the traditional Austenian tale.

Amidst the canonical pressures of social comparison and evading financial ruin, Mary grapples with the quiet humiliation of knowing one must marry well to merely survive. This adaptation skilfully juggles Regency constraints and modern anxieties, all the while honing characters Austen leaves otherwise moored. Matriarch Mrs Bennet, so often enlisted as comic relief, transforms into something much more pointed when seen through Mary’s eyes. What reads as absurdity to Austen’s Elizabeth can, and does, feel like hostility to someone less equipped to deflect it. Through intricacies like this, the series justifies its existence.

That being said, it would be wilfully ignorant to qualify Austen’s treatment of Mary as an oversight. Pride and Prejudice is a novel of sheer precision, its characters deployed with the utmost care and its scarce silences employed as meticulously as its dialogue. Deputising those silences alters the balance Austen so carefully crafted and runs the risk of over-explaining what may have been better left unsaid. Whether the result is weaker is more subjective, but it is different, and not always in ways that feel necessary.

This tension remains rife throughout much of Austen’s afterlife, for lack of a better word, and is dealt with more compellingly, I propose, in Jo Baker’s Longbourn. This novel retells Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of servants in the Bennet family home of the same name, and is cited as a successful, subversive reimagining precisely because it shifts the lens more radically [3]. It does not attempt to deepen Austen’s central characters so much as relocate them, grounding their world in the labour that sustains it. By contrast, Death Comes to Pemberly (P.D. James; since adapted for the screen also) illustrates the risks of overextension, fusing a murder mystery onto Austen’s setting with mixed results. The familiarity of the characters does much of the work here and garners a ready-made audience of Janeites [4], but it also exposes how little is gained from returning to the former without a clear need, or dare I say, vision.

Then there is Bridget Jones’s Diary (if you can believe it), perhaps the most effective Austen spin-off to date precisely because it refuses to behave as one. While it does not attempt fidelity, Austen’s social dynamics are catapulted into a contemporary setting, allowing for both recognition and reinvention. It understands that Austen does not endure through her plots alone, but also through the structures beneath them, which can oftentimes be carried forward much more persuasively than her characters themselves.

Not every character requires rehabilitation, nor does every silence demand filling. There is nothing wrong with returning to Austen; in fact, the persistence of her work is only a testament to its strength. But at what point does the reluctance to leave that world behind start to look less like appreciation and more like dependence? The Other Bennet Sister demonstrates that there is still life to be found in Austen’s margins, give or take a limb or two already in the grave. Is that a justifiable amount to warrant the continued expansion of her world? Doubts, I’ve had a few.

References

[1] Cafolla, Anna. ‘I Hope the Joy Comes Across’: On Set (and on the Water) With the Cast of The Other Bennet Sister. Vogue, April 9, 2026. https://www.vogue.com/article/the-other-bennet-sister-behind-the-scenes

[2] Quintrell, Sarah. The Other Bennet Sister, “Chapter 1.” BBC One, March 15, 2026.

[3] Clark, Clare. Longbourn by Jo Baker, The Carriage House by Louisa Hall – review. The Guardian, August 14, 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/14/longbourn-carriage-house-austen-review

[4] García-Periago, Rosa. Traumatized by Jane Austen? Janeites and Austenites on Screen. Jane Austen Society of North America, Winter 2023.