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In
this review I will discuss my experiences teaching one recent British
novel that has made a highly successful transatlantic crossing, Helen
Fielding's bestselling comedy of manners Bridget Jones's Diary. In
addition, I will also outline how this rich and versatile text lends
itself to a range of pedagogical approaches as a result of its
addressing a series of issues central to contemporary life. Though I had
read a great deal about Fielding's novel following its publication, it
wasn't until after two former students had raved to me about the novel
that I seriously considered incorporating it into my course on
twentieth- century British literature. While I was admittedly somewhat
apprehensive about teaching such a famous (or infamous) work and one
that had recently been adapted into a heavily promoted film, I was
certain that my students would enjoy reading Fielding's social satire
and knew that they would benefit from the keen insight her novel offered
into contemporary life in Britain. What I did not come to understand
until later, though, were the varying and at times surprising ways in
which my students responded to Bridget Jones's Diary. For
those who haven't read the novel, a bit of background information is in
order. First published in the United Kingdom in 1996, Bridget Jones's
Diary had its origins in a weekly column that appeared in the London
newspaper The Independent. In this column, Fielding, a freelance
journalist who had previously worked for the BBC as a television
producer, chronicled the comic adventures of an attractive,
thirty-something woman working in the publishing world and living in the
fashionable neighborhood of Notting Hill. Though she periodically
consulted her own diary entries while composing these pieces, Fielding
chose to create a fictional persona for her column because, as she
confessed in a 1997 interview: "If you write as yourself, you can't
help but want people to like you. If you write as somebody else, you can
be honest about the secret, stupid, shameful things." Throughout
Bridget Jones's Diary, the heroine is depicted as a
chain-smoking, wine-drinking, calorie-counter who obsesses over her
fluctuating physical appearance, her stalled career, and, most
importantly, her tumultuous love life. The novel is structured around a
year's worth of diary entries, each of which is prefaced by a listing of
calories consumed, cigarettes smoked, alcohol units imbibed, phone calls
logged to friends and lovers, and moments spent having negative
thoughts. Although she endures a series of trials - including a
pregnancy scare, the midlife crisis of her mother, and the apparent
disappearance of one of her closest friends - Bridget eventually attains
her stated goal of "inner poise" (however momentarily) and the
novel closes with her looking back happily on what she deems "an
excellent year's progress" (271). While
conducting my initial research on Fielding's novel, I soon discovered
that a number of critics were concerned about how this decidedly
"British" novel would be received by an American audience.
More often than not, British reviewers asserted that American readers
wouldn't find Bridget Jones's Diary as amusing as their English
counterparts because, put simply, they fail to appreciate irony. A
typical response came from Suite101.com's Arabella Clauson. After
questioning whether American readers "could stomach [Fielding's]
fine art of self-deprecation and irony," Clauson added,
"Popular consensus in the U.K. insists that U.S. citizens lack some
fundamental structural components of the humorous faculty (an
understandable assumption, in my opinion, after watching someone like a
googly-eyed [Jim] Carrey flapping around on screen for the past ten
years)." Nor were British critics alone in their concern as
American reviewers were also eager to see how, as Harper's Bazaar contributor
Shane Watson put it, Fielding's heroine would be received in "a
country where self-nurturing and the having-it-all philosophy are alive
and kicking." In
spite of these reservations, the American edition in fact made few
stylistic concessions outside of such minor alterations as converting
"stones" to "pounds" and changing a
"ladder" in Bridget's stocking to a "run." Of
greater concern to me from a pedagogical standpoint was the fact that
Fielding's novel remains a work that is thoroughly steeped in
contemporary British culture. Not only is Bridget Jones's Diary peppered
with British slang terms that are largely unfamiliar to my students
(i.e., "bollocks" and "fags"), but it also contains
numerous references to popular magazines such as Hello! as well
as to political and cultural figures like Denis Healy, Kathleen Tynan,
and the "Sloane Rangers." Yet, despite my trepidations, I
quickly learned that, although I occasionally needed to gloss certain
allusions, Bridget's references to Cosmo sex quizzes, feng shui,
and John Grey's Mars and Venus books were all well within the
cultural framework of my students. Familiar, too, were Bridget's
everyday quandaries of choosing the appropriate clothing for a first
date, proper flirting etiquette, and dealing with hangovers. One
key point I stressed to my students early on was the phenomenal impact
that Bridget Jones's Diay had on cultural life in England. After
pointing out that Fielding's second novel won the 1997 British Book of
the Year Award and stood atop the bestseller list for over six months, I
explained how, as a cultural phenomenon, Bridget Jones's Diary quickly
insinuated itself into British popular culture, not only by introducing
the terms "singleton," "smug marrieds," and
"emotional fuckwittage" into the vernacular but also in the
ways in which the novel's heroine came to assume the status of a
cultural icon. As Tamsin Todd noted in an early review of the novel:
"Your name's an adjective, verb and noun, all at once. ('That's
very Bridget Jones'; 'I pulled a Bridget Jones last night')." I
also told my students that the Bridget Jones syndrome was so prevalent
in late 1990s England that it generated a barrage of television
documentaries and magazine articles while also spawning a slew of
knockoff books, including the memorably entitled Does My Bum Look Big
in This? by Asabella Weir. The
two aspects of Bridget Jones's Diary that were central to our
class discussions were the novel's satirical tone and its use of the
diary format. I was eager to explore these aspects in depth because I
wanted my students to appreciate the fact that, beneath its humorous façade,
Bridget's chatty, first-person account delivers a stinging attack on the
various ways in which movies, books, and fashion magazines have
negatively permeated the daily lives of all women,
"singletons" and "smug marrieds" alike. However,
based in part on the reservations cited earlier, I was at first
concerned that my students would fail to pick up on Fielding's satirical
intentions. While confident that they would enjoy such farcical scenes
as Bridget's awkward introduction to Mark Darcy, her foolish appearance
at a tarts and vicars party, and her disastrous dinner party near the
close of the novel, I wondered whether they would be able to discern the
more subtle ways in which Fielding uses her heroine's obsessive behavior
to expose the undue influence that today's mass media has had in shaping
women's attitudes toward physical beauty, self-fulfillment, and romantic
love. Ultimately, I wanted them to see the way in which Bridget Jones
is, in the words of Daphne Merkin, "both Everywoman and an
implicitly ironic observer of Everywoman." To
do so, we took as our starting point the revealing passage in which
Bridget, after completing the arduous ritual of preparing herself for a
date, muses: "My back hurts, my head aches and my legs are bright
red and covered in lumps of wax. Wise people will say Daniel should like
me just as I am, but I am a child of Cosmopolitan culture, have
been traumatized by supermodels and too many quizzes and know that
neither my personality nor my body is up to it if left to its own
devices" (52). Such a passage is characteristic of Fielding's
satirical method in that, though filled with pop culture references and
delivered in Bridget's blithe, self-deprecating voice, it nonetheless
highlights the physical and emotional difficulties inherent in meeting
the demands of an image-conscious society that privileges youth and
beauty. By getting them to acknowledge how easily Bridget has co-opted
such views, my students were better able to see how Fielding's heroine
functions as a vehicle for spoofing social mores. One of the most
difficult tasks involved in analyzing Bridget Jones's Diary was
recognizing the complexity with which Fielding uses the diary format.
Part of the problem with such an analysis is that, as even the novel's
detractors admit, Bridget Jones's Diary is able to draw readers
in quickly because it is a funny book and a very fast read. In fact, a
number of my students admitted that they actually felt guilty because
they had enjoyed reading the novel so much - a sentiment that,
unfortunately, speaks volumes about student reading habits as well as
their perceptions about what constitutes "literature."
Moreover, because of its confessional tone and intimate revelations, the
novel makes it difficult for readers not to sympathize with Bridget's
viewpoint. As one of my students remarked, though she frequently makes
dubious decisions and often appears ridiculous, we tend to laugh with
Bridget, rather than at her. However, because readers are
voyeuristically drawn into the heroine's self-absorption, it is
difficult to step back and evaluate whether the diary form serves as a
viable vehicle for self-awareness. Indeed, one of the questions I posed
to my students was whether Bridget's diary was more than simply a ledger
of her actions (as some critics have maintained) or if such a format
truly allowed for reflection and personal growth. Based on our
discussion of these points, the consensus seemed to be that, although
she alters her outward behavior little during the course of the novel,
by the close of her account Bridget has become more focused on what she
must do in order to achieve both professional success and personal
happiness. While
examining the novel's satirical tone and diary format enabled the class
to address important stylistic and thematic concerns, our most lively
sessions involved discussing the book's controversial depiction of
gender politics. Before soliciting their views on whether or not they
considered Bridget Jones's Diary to be a "feminist"
work, I first detailed to my students how deeply divided reviewers were
regarding such an issue. To demonstrate my point, I culled together
passages from a series of reviews of Fielding's novel, ranging from
popular magazines and literary reviews to more specialized publications,
and then passed them out to the class. As these excerpts revealed, one
could roughly divide the critical response to Bridget Jones's Diary into
two distinct camps. On
the one hand were those reviewers who praised Fielding's heroine as a
"poster child for the confused woman of the 1990" and who
argued that her farcical adventures accurately depicted the personal and
professional trials faced by many contemporary women. In her review of
the novel in the New York Times Book Review, for instance,
Elizabeth Gleick asserted, "People will be passing around copies of
'Bridget Jones's Diary' for a reason: it captures neatly the way
modern women teeter between 'I am woman' independence and a pathetic
girlie desire to be all things to all men." Similarly, in her Times
Literary Supplement review, Nicola Shulman wrote that Fielding's
novel: "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.'" Conversely, there were a number of
critics who found Fielding's novel to be superficial and who viewed
Bridget Jones as a vulgar caricature of a helpless, marriage-obsessed
single woman. For example, writing in the New York Times, Alex
Kuczynski, though conceding that "Bridget Jones is satire, a sassy
spoof of urban manners," nonetheless felt that "Bridget is
such a sorry spectacle, wallowing in her man-crazed helplessness, that
her foolishness cannot be excused." At
the close of one class period, I had students respond in writing to
these differing interpretations. However, tackling the book's
ideological underpinnings was somewhat problematical because, for the
majority of my students, male and female, the term "feminism"
tends to have largely pejorative connotations. In fact, when commenting
upon gender-related issues in the novel, many female students would
preface their remarks with the following caveat, "Though I don't
consider myself a 'feminist,"' as if this were an inherently
derogatory term. Given such attitudes, it was at times difficult getting
them to see how Fielding's novel, while readily adopting the terminology
of contemporary feminism, nonetheless pokes fun at how Bridget and her
friends routinely view themselves as empowered "Sex Goddesses"
when experiencing romantic difficulties and how quickly they threaten to
release their "inner bitches" on those men who they feel have
mistreated them. In a pedagogical phenomenon that seemingly echoed the
divided critical reaction to Bridget Jones's Diary, my own
class displayed radically opposing responses to Fielding's novel. I
began our treatment of Bridget Jones's Diary by first going over
a chronology of the author's life and works and then by soliciting what
I call "gut reactions" to the novel from all eighteen members
of the class. Almost immediately, it became clear that their responses
to Bridget Jones's Diary were divided almost exclusively along
gender lines. Several of my female students responded with unbridled
enthusiasm. After prefacing their remarks with "This is by far the
best book we read all term," many of these initial responders spoke
of how funny the novel was - a number even mentioned that they had
called up friends and family members in order to read them passages over
the phone. The majority also noted that they found Fielding's depiction
of the trials Bridget undergoes to be, in the words of one student,
"Totally true." In
contrast to such a positive (though not unanimous) reaction to the novel
among female members of the class, my half-dozen male students responded
to the text in a much more lukewarm manner. "It's OK for a chick
book," remarked one student, a comment that met with a nodding of
heads among other males in the class. While conceding that Fielding's
work was humorous in parts, several of my male students candidly
admitted that they "couldn't see what was so great about the
novel." The one aspect of Bridget Jones's Diary that seemed
to bother these students the most were the lists of calories,
cigarettes, and alcohol units that precede each entry. While recognizing
how these listings serve as an accurate gauge of Bridget's level of
happiness, they nonetheless quickly grew tired of such litanies.
Interestingly, several male students also thought that Bridget was too
self-absorbed - a charge they had not leveled at previous first-person
accounts such as Margaret Drabble's The Millstone and David
Lodge's Therapy. That the novel's portrait of male-female
relations had struck a chord with my female students was most evident in
the fact that, when it came time to select a topic for their oral
presentations, over two-thirds of them chose to integrate aspects of
Fielding's novel into their reports. Conversely, only one male student
even alluded to Bridget Jones's Diary during his presentation. Looking
back on my experiences teaching Bridget Jones's Diary, I
realize that, when I teach the novel again, I will make several key
changes. First, I will explore more fully Fielding's use of irony in her
depiction of the novel's heroine. That is, although my students were
able to recognize that Bridget's neurotic actions are often exaggerated
for comic effect, they nonetheless appeared to lack the critical
sophistication to discern the subtle ways in which Fielding uses her
heroine as a vehicle for social satire. Part of the reason for such a
phenomenon can be traced to the fact that so many of my female students
clearly identified closely with the social and interpersonal dilemmas
faced by Bridget Jones. In addition, I will also press my male students
more on why they responded to the text less enthusiastically than their
female counterparts. In particular, I will ask them whether one has to
be a woman to appreciate fully Bridget's experiences and to what extent
the novel's depiction of most men as "fuckwits" (as Bridget
and her friends frequently call them) factored into their tepid
response. While considering these issues, I will also seek to bridge the
gender gap by asking all of my students to consider the following
questions: Aren't the personal goals that Bridget Jones strives for
universal in nature? Who doesn't want to get the perfect job, attract
the perfect mate, and behave properly in all social situations? Isn't it
true that almost everyone feels that he or she should exercise more, eat
less, and give more money to charitable organizations? In effect, don't
we all aspire to become, in Bridget's words, the "perfect
saint-style person"? These
strategical changes aside, however, I realize that many of my high
expectations regarding teaching Bridget Jones's Diary were indeed
well founded. As I had hoped, the students (for the most part) relished
the humor of Fielding's novel and appreciated the insight into
contemporary British life it provided. Moreover, I was especially
pleased to see that, once my students began to recognize that the world
Bridget Jones inhabits is not so different from their own, they were
able to look more critically at the pivotal role mass media has in
shaping how they lead their lives. As a result, far from seeing Bridget
as a "sorry spectacle," the majority of my students were able
to empathize easily with her self-absorption and obsessiveness. In so
doing, they ultimately came to appreciate how cleverly Fielding's
"sassy spoof" captures both the comic and semitragic aspects
of single life in the 1990s. Although
public discussion of the novel has died down since I last taught it, Bridget
Jones's Diary still remains a vital and highly adaptable text to
teach for a host of reasons. In fact, while initially considering how
best to integrate Fielding's novel into my own seminar, I came across a
wide range of courses that featured the text. Among the dozens of
schools that have taught Bridget Jones's Diary in both
undergraduate and graduate courses are the University of Kansas, Western
Michigan University, Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania,
Ohio University, Kansas State University, Miami University, and
Northwestern University. Tellingly,
Fielding's satire has not been relegated solely to literature
departments; the novel has appeared on the syllabi of film courses,
cultural studies courses, and women's studies courses. Indeed, several
of the latter taught Bridget Jones's Diary in conjunction with
canonical texts that explore the socio-political dilemmas women have
faced throughout the ages. One such course, "Women in the Literary
Imagination," utilized Bridget Jones's Diary in its
investigation of how women's marital choices, sexual practices, and
economic rights in England have changed over the last two hundred years.
Another course, "Truth[s] Universally Acknowledged: Jane Austen in
Her Time and in Ours," examined Fielding's novel, whose overall
narrative structure strongly parallels Pride and Prejudice, within
the context of the recent literary phenomenon known as
Austenmania." Whereas
I taught the work in an upper-level course on twentieth-century British
literature, Fielding's novel has figured prominently in introductory
courses that chart the development of the British novel from its
inception to the present day as well as in more narrowly focused
seminars such as "The Confessionalist Manifesto: Consumer Behaviour
and Self-Construction in High Fidelity and Bridget Jones's
Diary" and "Lights, Camera, London: Versions of
England in Fiction and Film." With its highly popular film
adaptation, Bridget Jones's Diary is ideally suited to film and
literature courses, particularly those that examine the codes and
conventions of the romantic comedy. One
area where teaching Fielding's novel would be especially fruitful would
be in a course devoted to bestsellers or popular fiction. As I noted
earlier, many of the students in my seminar felt guilty reading Bridget
Jones's Diary and even wondered whether this highly readable novel
should be considered real "literature." The following catalog
entry from A. Baird-Baidinger's Cornell University course, entitled
"True Romance," captures well the provocative literary and
cultural issues inherent in a course that draws together Pride and
Prejudice, The Philadelphia Story, When Harry Met Sally,
and Bridget Jones's Diary: "This course will pay
close attention to texts that aren't always taken together or taken
seriously: fictional and 'real life' romantic narratives delivered to us
by cinema, TV, advertising, and print media. How 'true' are they - and
true to what? What do they tell us about the cultural meanings assigned
to 'romance' and 'love,' and how can they help us understand gender,
identity, and desire in contemporary culture?" As such a
description illustrates, Bridget Jones's Diary is not only an
important text to teach because it is a commercially successful novel
that skewers such relevant issues as contemporary culture's obsession
with physical appearance, it is also a work that offers valuable insight
into the current zeitgeist regarding feminism, marriage, romantic love,
and what Bridget Jones herself, in the novel's closing entry, calls
"the secret of happiness" (267).
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