Pride and prejudice in Jane Austen's novel

Pride & Prejudice Influence on Later Work

Frantz, Sarah S.G. "Darcy's Vampiric Descendants: Austen's Perfect Romance Hero and J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood." Persuasions On-Line 30.1 (Winter 2009); n. pag. Web.

Frantz's area of academic focus is popular romance fiction of the sort that, as she notes, constituted "the largest share of the consumer market in 2008," and which ranges from the mass-market paperback fiction published by Harlequin in the U.S. And Mills and Boon in the U.K., to what is more commonly termed "chick lit," to supernaturally themed romantic fiction aimed at a primarily female readership. Frantz begins by noting that "readers and authors" of this particular genre "claim Jane Austen as the fountainhead of all romance novels." Frantz notes that the popular contemporary genre of romance is itself rather flexible, and that "a story requires just two components to be considered a romance: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." This allows for the inclusion of supernatural elements in some of the work in this genre.

Fascinatingly Frantz's article was published in 2009, the same year as the unexpected bestseller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- this fact is supportive of Frantz's actual argument, which is to show that the basic template for a male protagonist which Austen established in the character of Darcy is so central to this genre of popular romance that indeed the requirements of the genre can be satisfied even with wildly heterogenous elements (such as zombies or vampires) included in the mix. Frantz begins her survey of how Austen's influence is registered in later romance fiction with a look at earlier readers of Austen in the nineteenth century, such as the novelist Mary Russell Mitford or Annabella Milbanke (later the wife of poet Lord Byron), who read the novel specifically for the depiction of Darcy. Frantz sees Darcy's development within the novel as constituting the same "appeal of modern popular romance for female readers: confession by the hero of the necessity of his love for the heroine to complete his integration into moral society." This basic template -- which depends in particular upon Austen's scene depicting Darcy's sudden confession, his tears, and his recognition of the positive effect on his conduct that Elizabeth's criticisms have had -- is seen by Frantz as the largest instance of borrowing in the later genre.