Bridget Jones Has Finally Learned
the Virtues of Jane Austen

Katrina Trinko | Acculturated – September 22, 2016

Maybe the best romances are founded on differences, not compatibility.

That’s the intriguing question raised by Bridget Jones’s Baby, the third movie chronicling the hapless adventures of the unhappily single Bridget Jones. While Bridget – whom we last saw in 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason – has finally whittled herself down to her ideal weight and kicked her smoking habit, she’s still… single.

Previous movies showed Bridget torn between Mark Darcy (the original Bridget Jones’ Diary book borrowed heavily from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice) and Daniel Cleaver (the cad based on Wickham from Pride and Prejudice). Ultimately, Bridget chose Darcy, setting herself up to join the ranks of the happily ever after.

Except she didn’t.

In the new film, we learn that the workaholic tendencies of Darcy, a human rights lawyer, regularly frustrated Bridget. We see that the differences between her bubbly, carefree personality and his intense, dignified manners led to problems, from their mutual embarrassment when a nearly naked Bridget opens the door to Darcy – and a crowd of others he had brought home – to Bridget’s insecurities that Darcy made her feel like a pattering fool.

And when Bridget leaves Darcy, after sleeping with him when they were reunited as the godparents for a friend’s child, she does so with an emotional letter that describes how she thinks she cannot once again enter this cycle of trying to make it work.

So when Bridget discovers she’s pregnant, it’s tempting to hope that the father isn’t Darcy, but Jack Quant, the dating site entrepreneur and charmer Bridget met (and yes, slept with) at a music festival her younger friend had dragged her to. Jack is smiley and cheerful, with none of Darcy’s brooding. He has an easy way about him that Darcy will never have. It’s impossible to imagine Darcy doing what Jack does in one delightful sequence: reenacting what would have happened if he and Bridget had had a longer relationship, from bringing the first dinner over to presenting the flowers he would have given her after their first fight to assembling Ikea furniture together to prove their commitment to their relationship.

And there’s one more clincher: he and Bridget are compatible.

After Bridget fesses up to Darcy and Jack that she’s not sure which of them is the father of her child (when she realizes that an amniocentesis – which could test her baby’s DNA but also has a small chance of leading to a miscarriage – could hurt her baby, Bridget indignantly storms out of the doctor’s office, hand protectively over her stomach), the two men warily scope each other out and seek to one-up each other over helping pregnant Bridget.

In one scene, Darcy visits Jack’s dating web site, which relies on an algorithm that shows compatibility. Darcy plugs in his and Bridget’s names and discovers their compatibility score is 8 percent. Then he plugs in Jack and Bridget’s names and discovers their compatibility score is over 90 percent.

It’s an unexpectedly poignant moment, a woefully bleak expression appearing on Darcy’s face as he realizes his own helplessness to be compatible with the woman he loves. (Incidentally, while Renee Zellweger, who plays Bridget and who has gone through tabloid hell over her changed looks, Colin Firth, who plays Darcy, has significantly aged as well – and both of their changed appearances add an extra poignancy to this movie, showcasing just how long Bridget and Darcy have been trying to find happiness with a partner.)

But here’s the surprise: Bridget, once again, picks Darcy.

It seems like a baffling choice, a return to another toxic habit. Sure, she and Darcy have a rich history, but they also have a lousy track record. Jack offers a bright, shiny future – an easy life of laughter and love.

But that assumes that easy happiness is the goal of romantic love.

We see all that went wrong in Bridget’s past relationship with Darcy. But we also see that the flighty Bridget of yore has now become a news producer – something it’s hard to imagine could have happened if she hadn’t learned about world affairs from the more serious Darcy. And in an emotional scene, as Bridget discovers she’s in the throes of contractions, Darcy gets a work call – and throws his phone out the window, saying Bridget is his world.

They have both taught – and can still teach – each other. And that’s precisely because they aren’t fully compatible, because they don’t share many of the same virtues and vices. There’s no doubt Bridget and Darcy will have more clashes and misunderstandings than Bridget and Jack would have. But there’s also no doubt that they will experience more personal growth than Bridget and Jack would have.

In the original Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen showed how Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy both changed each other for the better, with Elizabeth learning to be less judgmental and Darcy learning to be less proud. In this third Bridget Jones movie – which perhaps significantly had Emma Thompson, the screenwriter behind a movie adaption of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, as one of its writers – the Bridget Jones saga finally finds its true Austen roots.

Love stories aren’t just about happiness. They’re also about growth, building character, and transforming oneself. It’s fitting that Bridget Jones – whose dedication to self-improvement led to her dogged persistence to lose weight and stop smoking – would bring that same dedication to her love life, and refuse to settle for anyone less than a man who would both challenge her and make her happy.