“‘How much I shall have to tell!’…‘And how much I shall have to conceal’”: The Interpretation
At the end of the British version of the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew Macfadyen’s Mr. Darcy do not kiss.1 Although this display (or lack thereof) of romantic love is atypical of modern film, it creates a visual equivalence with the proposal scene of Austen’s novel, in which Mr. Darcy’s exact words are transcribed while Elizabeth only “force[s] herself to speak; and…[gives] him to understand, that her sentiments had undergone so material a change…as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure, his present assurances” (263). Like the proposal scene, many conversations in Pride and Prejudice are written not as dialogue, but as description of the tone of a character’s response or their body language.
by Jordan Javelet
Copyrights of all Verge articles and editorial material belong to the authors.
