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Some Consolations of the Single State One of the least attractive developments in the current English press is
the proliferation of columns exposing the details of the journalist's
emotional and domestic life. Plainly this is the result of pressure brought to
bear by editors whose market research has told them that readers, even of
otherwise sensible newspapers, must be served with marital bickerings and lack
of success in pick-up joints, the terminal illness of friends and all the most
delicate bits of the passage of children into puberty, or else they will start
to chafe after a change of paper. But because a life is a big thing to sell,
and it thickens the soul to do it, some writers have looked for another way to
answer requirements. An obvious solution is to write under a fictional
persona, like the wonderful Craig Brown or like Helen Fielding, whose column
in the Independent as Bridget Jones is the basis for this novel. It is
extraordinary that something with the lightness and vigour of Bridget Jones's
Diary could have issued from under the screw of this crass directive, but it
has. One can only marvel at human ingenuity. Bridget Jones is a woman somewhat older than twenty-nine, with a
low-flying job in a publishing house and, crucially, no serious boyfriend.
This unsatisfactory state of affairs is attributed variously to a number of
personal deficiencies which, unless excised, can only result in a tragic
spinsterhood of the sort that is eventually discovered by kind neighbours who
have noticed the milk bottles accumulate, half-eaten by an Alsatian. Bridget is persecuted for her single state; her married friends cluck
insincerely over it, her mother's friends think perhaps she has failed to
notice it: "You career girls! Can't put it off for ever you know:
tick-tock-tick-tock." Meanwhile, Bridget takes consolation from a great
many drinks and fags and smoked salmon pin-wheels, and the certain knowledge
that an effective programme of self-improvement will begin tomorrow. She will
stop smoking, drink less, weigh under nine stone, stop obsessively making 1471
calls to see if her evasive semi-boyfriend has called, and be, as the occasion
fits, more like the late Kathleen Tynan (who had inner poise), more like Tina
Brown, "though not, obviously, quite so hardworking", more like a
member of an African, or possibly Turkish, family (who has warm and serene
feelings about the prospect of cooking dinner for nineteen in a tiny flat), or
just more like the women she meets around London, all of whom fit comfortably
a description like: "thin blonde who rises at five each morning, goes to
gym, rubs herself down with salt and runs an international Merchant bank all
day without smudging mascara". Inevitably, Bridget's good intentions are
unseated by her habits, and the world proves an unworthy heir to her efforts;
nothing, however, deters her. Doubtless these are the staples of comedy, but
Helen Fielding's skilful timing and her intermittently exact ear for the
ludicrous utterance ("I'm taking you to have your colours done",
announces Bridget's mother, "& you look like something out of
Chairman Mao") have made them look young again. Translating a serial into a book has necessitated some changes and
reworking of the original material. Unlike a newspaper column, a novel
inclines to a conclusion, and to supply that potential the character of Mark
Darcy (a rich Human Rights lawyer, originally conceived as a terrible prig)
has been reinvented as the Ideal Lover. This, and the suddenly raised chance
that a rush at perfect felicity will ensue, has had in turn the effect of
exposing Bridget Jones's roots, previously concealed, growing in the unlikely
soil of the novels of Barbara Cartland. The clue to this is given when Mark
Darcy tells her: "All the other women I know are so lacquered over."
For, although Bridget is drunk, sluttish and most emphatically not a virgin,
she manifests the definitive Cartland virtue of artlessness (albeit in the
form of inept artfulness), which is the traditional weapon for seeing off a
hard-boiled sophisticate in an expensive négligée. Quotation fails this novel. Its humour is not remotely aphoristic; and no
quotation can convey the quality that constitutes Bridget's claim to be as
durable a comic figure as Nigel Molesworth or the Provincial Lady. As with
these, Bridget Jones's Diary rings with the unmistakable tone of something
that is true to the marrow; it defines what it describes. I know for certain
that if I were a young, single, urban woman, I would finish this book crying,
"Bridget Jones, c'est moi." |