Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

Julia Quinn’s The Viscount Who Loved Me

A Senior Capstone Experience by Emma Russell ’23

Submitted to the Department of English

Advised by Dr. Katherine Charles

Contributor Biography: Emma is a Washington College alumnus who graduated magna cum laude with departmental honors with the class of 2023. She is the recipient of the Maureen Jacoby Prize which is given to the graduating senior who has demonstrated dedication to student publications at Washington College and has strong potential for a future in the field of editing or publishing as well as the Stewart Theatre Award which is given annually to a senior who has made outstanding contributions to the College through dramatic and speaking ability. During her time at Washington College Emma served as the Editor-in-Chief for The Pegasus and was the Student Life Editor for The Elm. She also worked for The Department of Theatre and Dance as the costume shop manager and served as a member of Gibson Crew. Emma was also very dedicated to her sorority, Alpha Chi Omega, where she served as the Vice President of Philanthropy. Emma currently works as the Editorial Assistant for Vita Poetica, a literary magazine that publishes work by artists with themes of spirituality and next year will be participating in the Disney College Program. 

Description: For my SCE I studied Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and its influence on the contemporary romance genre through the second book in the Bridgerton series by Julia Quinn, The Viscount Who Loved Me as well as their respective film adaptions, the 2005 Pride and Prejudice film and season two of the hit Netflix show Bridgerton. Though Quinn’s name does not carry as much weight as Austen’s, who has carved out a place for herself in pop culture and has defined genres, both share in the fact that their work is criticized for appealing to and being enjoyed by a mostly female audience. So, the question remains: why? Why are men so repulsed by something women enjoy so thoroughly? By a book that has been around since the early 1800s and a Netflix tv show that has has garnered 627.11 million views since its launch. The answer: desire, but desire specifically shown through a female lens. Female readers seek out tension and heightened desire plots in fiction as a form of escapism from a patriarchal society. Though some would argue that a woman who must be forced to marry a man to ensure her livelihood (a driving force in many historically written and based novels) enforces patriarchal ideals, the idea that women can still find joy, love, and fulfillment in a society that actively works against them, serves as a beacon of hope and encourages women to ignore societies judgments for having the courage to take control of their own pleasure. Both authors wrote about women in ways that, for the era, were empowering. Through my findings I found that in her works Austen showed that women were actually people, meanwhile Quinn demonstrated that women can be sexual beings, both things that were historically attributed to men, and men alone. Neither can be properly credited as the first to do so, but their impact on the romance genre makes them stand out to those invested in likewise communities. The film adaptions helped translate desire from book format to a more accessible screen format placing an emphasis on touch, or lack of and what it means to the characters. The end result was the creation of well-loved, often relatable, characters, whose book and on-screen presence encourages female readers and watchers to take control of what it is they desire from their everyday lives, so they too can experience a happy ending of their very own. 

Read Emma’s SCE below: