The ever lovely Bridget Jones is back in the news before the release of the franchise’s fourth instalment, Mad About the Boy. In an article for the Times we are told “24 years on from Richard Curtis’s box office hit, the film’s co-stars have agreed that the character of Daniel Cleaver would fall foul of modern HR rules for seducing the office junior.”
And of course this is true. The shamelessly flirtatious bad boy Daniel Cleaver, played by the shamelessly flirtatious Hugh Grant, flirts with Bridget Jones the good old fashioned way, through e-mail and not caring a jot what the trolls in the Human Resources department would say. “Come on, Jones, for God’s sake. You’re sexy,” Cleaver says in the film. “You make me laugh — at you of course, not with you. And you were, incidentally, the best shag I ever had.” He also sends suggestive messages about her short skirt. “Serious problem,” he types from his glass-walled office. “You seem to have forgotten your skirt. Is skirt off sick??” Bridget Jones is played by the delightful Renée Zellweger who also plays the delightful Dorothy in one of my favourite films of all time, Jerry McGuire.
I rewatched Bridget Jones a few months ago and I enjoyed its warm and funny take on modern women. It showcases London perfectly, although I have my doubts that a young woman in PR could afford her own flat in zone 1, even 25 years ago.
It certainly made me reminisce as I watched the characters talk to each other, without phones, over dinner. They could also smoke inside a restaurant and of course no one would ever dream of working from home. Thankfully I was spared the work from home phenomenon in my 20s (which would have been hideous). If you work from home then your boss can’t flirt with you. It is just you and your computer, the highlight of your day perhaps being a zoom call.
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The problem with Bridget Jones now, 25 years on, is not the inappropriate flirting or the power imbalance or whatever, or even the puritans in the HR department, prowling around the place making sure no one is having any fun. No, the problem is that for all the implied feminism, it is ultimately a fairy tale.
Daniel Cleaver may stretch the bounds of acceptable workplace behaviour but is the character Mark Darcy, based on the aloof and proud Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, that really steps outside the bounds of reality.
Bridget Jones makes women believe that extremely successful human rights barristers will go for the slightly chubby, dipsy, PR girl “just the way you are.” Give me strength.
This clip, where Darcy speaks to Bridget is what young women I believe, actually believe.
Darcy tells Bridget that “I like you very much, just as you are.” This comes just after he lists all her weaknesses such as but not limited to ‘there being elements of the ridiculous about you’ and ‘you tend to let whatever is in your head come out of your mouth without much consideration for the consequences.’ The rude lawyer stick insect lady then summons him in.
If there are any young women reading this piece, and perhaps there are two, let me be very clear, in real life Darcy does not like Bridget just the way she is. This is feminist propaganda, lies piled upon lie.
I used to move in these circles and trust me Darcy would not date Bridget in a serious way. He might see her briefly but that’s it. He certainly would not marry her. Lawyers like Darcy will marry the rude lawyer stick insect lady, who in one of my favourite lines of the movie, asks disdainfully when on a weekend trip to the country, ‘does nothing working outside of London?’ And the answer to that is, no nothing works outside of London, any more than anything in Ireland works outside the Pale.
Listen, enjoy the film if you want – but don’t think you are going to bag yourself a lawyer like Darcy by letting whatever is in your head come out of your mouth without much consideration for the consequences. All lawyers do is think extremely carefully about what comes out of their mouth. Their entire careers rest on considering the consequences of what they say. And trust me this applies to their life partner.
These days most lawyers marry other lawyers. If they are feeling rebellious they might marry an academic lawyer but that lawyer will have to have been awarded a first class honours degree from Oxbridge. A commercial lawyer could marry a musician if she plays in the LSO because it says that he is so filthy rich he can bill 15K for a 10 minute conference (yes I heard this once) so he doesn’t have to worry about what his extremely talented and beautiful violinist wife earns. That is neither here nor there.
The only way Mark Darcy marries a PR professional is if she runs the company and the company does the PR for National Gallery. Fact. Don’t shoot the messenger.
My other problem with the character Darcy is how he gets into a fist fight with Daniel Cleaver. In fact, it is Bridget‘s gay friend that describes it as ‘a fight, a real fight.’ Again, and I’ll say this slowly for the cheap seats at the back KCs, serious barristers, do not get into fist fights with anyone. If you do that, you get disbarred.
And the reserved, haughty and proud Darcy is not going to get himself disbarred over a woman like Bridget Jones who “smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish and dresses like her mother.”
At one point in the fight Darcy hits Cleaver so hard I reckon it would have killed him, or at least it would have killed him once Cleaver’s head hit the cobble stones. This is known as one-punch manslaughter and you do time for that kind of thing.
The fact that the pair go on to destroy a few restaurants just adds to the ridiculous notion that two men like Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy would fight over Bridget Jones. Sure, I like her. I’d enjoy a night out with her but the rest is just fantasy.
Now, I know what you are saying. What’s wrong with you Laura, get a hold of yourself, can’t you just enjoy the film for what it is? Sure, and I did. But I really do believe there are young women out there who believe this stuff. That the men will come fighting for her as long as ‘she is just the way she is.’ This is about as likely to happen as a prince coming along to kiss you and wake you up from a deep sleep. It is about as likely to occur as those coffee beans growing into a giant beanstalk and you securing your financial future from the giant that roars, Fee, Fi, Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Or a west brit. Whatever.
Enjoy the film. But just remember. It’s a fairytale.
Originally published at Laura’s substack.
