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Looking back to Bridget Jones

66 replies

MsAmerica · 03/11/2023 23:43

Bridget Jones Deserved Better. We All Did.
Helen Fielding’s ditzy heroine was all the rage when she was introduced to American audiences in 1998. Today, her nuttiness and self-loathing read like a relic from another time.
By Elisabeth Egan

Before we tackle the question of whether “Bridget Jones’s Diary” is even remotely amusing in today’s post-Roe, #MeToo, politically polarized world, let’s turn the page back to the summer of 1998, when Publishers Weekly declared, “It’s hard to imagine a funnier book appearing anywhere this year.” Fielding’s British publisher told British Vogue, it’s “not just a book phenomenon, it’s a phenomenon. Like ‘Catch-22,’ it’s gone into the language.”

In her New York Times review, Elizabeth Gleick wrote, “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.”...

She was the toast of book clubs, the subject of editorials, a lightning rod for morning-show debate and fodder for late-night comedy. Some readers were charmed by Bridget Jones; others were disgusted.

“Bridget is such a sorry spectacle, wallowing in her man-crazed helplessness, that her foolishness cannot be excused,” Alex Kuczynski wrote in a Times column headlined “Dear Diary: Get Real.” She disliked that the book made “humor out of the premise that being neurotic is cute. That women eat too much. That we succumb to the lure of too many cocktails. That if we don’t enjoy our jobs, we just stick around and, heck, sleep with the boss (who never calls us back).”

For the whole article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/books/review/bridget-joness-diary-helen-fielding.html

OP posts:
O0oO0o · 01/12/2023 14:59

Loved the book when it came out.

I watched the film recently and it defo has "attitudes of its time" - sexual harassment and racist comments are passed over with little more than an eyeroll, which I don't think would happen so much now. And all the smoking of course.

mrsnjw · 01/12/2023 14:47

The films have fabulous soundtracks.

Morechocmorechoc · 01/12/2023 14:35

It is a great film. Why does everything have to be politically correct these days. Can't we just watch and enjoy something lighthearted without the need to rip it apart. It's hardly like things are better today.

BadSkiingMum · 01/12/2023 14:32

Gwenhwyfar · 01/12/2023 14:28

Do you think? All the silly things happened in the book too, the blue food from using the blue string, the sliding down the fire poll, the pretending not to understand why Daniel Cleaver wanted her to try on her bunny outfits for him and turning up dressed as a bunny/tart to a party that wasn't fancy dress in the end.

Show quote history

Oh you see I only knew the Bridget from the columns and didn't read the book before watching the film. Column Bridget seemed fairly sensible although equally obsessed with her weight and Mr Darcy!

Gwenhwyfar · 01/12/2023 14:29

FaintlyMacabre · 01/12/2023 08:57

Agree with everything Squiblet said.
I was a bit younger (17-18)when it came out and enjoyed it immensely but didn’t get the unreliable narrator aspect. On re-reading a few years later I realised that Bridget was never overweight in the first place, but since I was a teeny adolescent 9st seemed huge to me. Now I can only dream of being that slim!

She never claimed to be overweight, just wanted to be slimmer.
Helen Fielding later said that she left out her height on purpose so her size was never known.

Gwenhwyfar · 01/12/2023 14:28

BadSkiingMum · 01/12/2023 08:57

Yes, film Bridget was far more of a chaotic mess than the original Bridget!

Do you think? All the silly things happened in the book too, the blue food from using the blue string, the sliding down the fire poll, the pretending not to understand why Daniel Cleaver wanted her to try on her bunny outfits for him and turning up dressed as a bunny/tart to a party that wasn't fancy dress in the end.

SaltyGod · 01/12/2023 10:53

I’m off to buy a copy now. Thanks all!

SummerLightning · 01/12/2023 10:49

I loved Bridget Jones - pre book I was completely obsessed with the independent column. I can still remember looking forward to reading it every Wednesday aged about 15.
I was the same weight and also thought I was fat!

Mollyplop999 · 01/12/2023 10:45

Mamette completely agree with everything you've said.

pastypirate · 01/12/2023 09:26

TodayInahurry · 01/12/2023 07:26

I read the book and laughed. We went to the film and laughed! In our puritan modern world we are not permitted to laugh and enjoy ourselves. Times were better in the past!

Agree with this too.
I was too young to get a lot of original Bridget but I was a lone parent by the time Mad About THe Boy came out and it made me cry so much I nearly had a breakdown. I found it very powerful.

Squiblet · 01/12/2023 09:22

BadSkiingMum · 01/12/2023 08:57

Yes, film Bridget was far more of a chaotic mess than the original Bridget!

This really annoyed me! They got it all so wrong.

Sally Phillips should have played Bridget, and co-written the script.

FaintlyMacabre · 01/12/2023 08:57

Agree with everything Squiblet said.
I was a bit younger (17-18)when it came out and enjoyed it immensely but didn’t get the unreliable narrator aspect. On re-reading a few years later I realised that Bridget was never overweight in the first place, but since I was a teeny adolescent 9st seemed huge to me. Now I can only dream of being that slim!

BadSkiingMum · 01/12/2023 08:57

Yes, film Bridget was far more of a chaotic mess than the original Bridget!

MarisPiper92 · 01/12/2023 08:25

Another one agreeing with @Squiblet. As another PP said, Bridget is an unreliable narrator - which is why the books work much better than the films. In the films, she's a bit of an idiot; in the books, she thinks she's an idiot, but all the reader has to go on is Bridget's own opinion. The facts of her life (nice flat, easily jumping from publishing to TV, lots of great friends) suggest she's actually doing pretty well.

The first two books are also spectacularly funny. Book 2 is based on Persuasion (Austen's finest imho), and Bridget's friends feature much more than in 1. But then, I am a 30-something singleton in central London which is perhaps why it resonates...

Sluj · 01/12/2023 08:16

I agree with @Squiblet, I was Bridget's age in London at the time and many aspects of it rang true although obviously dramatised. The whirlwind life, friendships and lechery at work were all going on around me though, sadly for me, Colin Firth was not involved.
i always think of BJ as very London, does it resonate with others from different places at that time?
Generally I don't see why people are so quick to condemn films of that era for being outdated or misogynistic. Maybe some of them are but that's what life was ( and still is) like! I don't want to see films with perfect characters in stable situations- that's not realistic or interesting 😕

Squiblet · 01/12/2023 08:03

It is a complete nonsense to imagine that she reflected anything genuinely characteristic of the position of women then.

I was in my early 20s when the first book came out, and it mirrored my own life so closely it was eerie. Especially the difficulty of dealing with creeps at work and the drinking culture.

Fielding never claimed that BJ represents all women - how could any novelist ever make such a claim? - but she certainly did skewer the self-regarding London media world, which considered itself to be a progressive, liberal and fair environment for women, but was actually just as toxic as any male-dominated industry.

bookworm14 · 01/12/2023 07:34

What sqiuiblet said. Bridget is an unreliable narrator - it’s clear that her weight issues and insecurity are entirely in her head. When she does get down to her ‘ideal weight’, all her friends comment on how ill she looks and how they thought she looked better before!

Desecratedcoconut · 01/12/2023 07:33

TodayInahurry · 01/12/2023 07:26

I read the book and laughed. We went to the film and laughed! In our puritan modern world we are not permitted to laugh and enjoy ourselves. Times were better in the past!

Agreed. How fucking boring it would be to read stories about perfect people making good choices with no imperfections to engineer a little humour..Fucking yawn.

TodayInahurry · 01/12/2023 07:26

I read the book and laughed. We went to the film and laughed! In our puritan modern world we are not permitted to laugh and enjoy ourselves. Times were better in the past!

Notonthestairs · 01/12/2023 07:24

After the Woman of Substance, Scruples, family sagas and bonkbusters Bridget Jones and Sex and the City were a breath of fresh air.

Her friendships featured more heavily in the book - the banker stuck with the shitty negging boyfriend as an example. Perpetua endlessly discussing house prices.

It might not have directly reflected my life but few books do (and I'm not sure I'd want to read them if they did).

Needmorelego · 01/12/2023 07:15

I read the first book in my 20s but didn't really "get it" as it was completely unrealistic to my life and I couldn't relate to Bridget at all.
Then I saw the film which I loved - and re read the book and enjoyed it. I think because the film is essentially a comedy and I then realised you weren't meant to take the book so seriously.
I've read all the books and like the fact that although Daniel was unsuitable as a boyfriend he remained loyal to Bridget as a friend - even babysitting her children.

GoodOldEmmaNess · 01/12/2023 07:10

Perhaps americans were too po-faced to take it with the lightness that its deliberate silliness deserved

GoodOldEmmaNess · 01/12/2023 07:06

As if anyone other than a lifestyle journo in pursuit of column inches ever took Briget Jones seriously at the time, as a genuine picture of how young single women were!
As I recall, the auther was herself a columnist. These are people who live off of spurious trends that they can claim to observe (if they squint hard enough) and then squeeze a few words out of. I think the novel was premised on some ersatz journo waffle about 'singleton' trends, which it enlarged to the point of deliberate stupiudity, albeit with genuinely funny results.
It's social analysis was on a par with the kind of flummery that you read in today's lifestyle pages about how "everyone" is doing yoga with their pets , eating braised tofu, etc.
It is a complete nonsense to imagine that she reflected anything genuinely characteristic of the position of women then.
Honestly, it is only as you get older that you begin to understand that half of what people say about the past springs from the self-absorbed fantasies of the present.

MermaidMummy06 · 01/12/2023 07:06

Well, I was going to comment, but @Squiblet has summed it up perfectly.

Squiblet · 01/12/2023 07:01

Argh - it always frustrates me when people misinterpret Bridget Jones (the novel, not the film).

The character is always beating herself up for being stupid, overweight, etc. But Helen Fielding makes it clear that she's actually quite clever & witty, and also thin. She even puts her actual weight in the diary entries to show us that Bridget has been brainwashed by cultural expectations into thinking she's fat when she's really not. (There's a great passage where BJ realises she has managed to convince herself that eating any kind of food at all is a lapse of willpower.)

Readers tend to take the character at her word and assume Fielding is taking the piss out of a silly young woman. Really she's showing us how societal expectations, and male privilege, undermine young women to the point where they make bad decisions.