The following contains spoilers for Barbie, now playing in theaters.
Late in Barbie, when the titular heroine is going through her third-act breakdown, a hilarious ad plays for “Depression Barbie.” Among other hallmarks of the depressed and sad such as sweatpants and isolation, the film reveals she binge-watches BBC’s Pride and Prejudice miniseries over and over again as a sign of sorrow, even playing a clip from the series. While this clip may ring true for many a female viewer, it does raise some interesting questions.
While Jane Austen’s iconic novel has been adapted many times, the 1995 BBC miniseries starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle has remained the most beloved and popular. It tells the story of the witty but judgmental Elizabeth Bennet (Ehle), who lives with her many sisters in a family that needs its daughters married before they lose their home while having an enemies-to-love romance with the haughty but moral Mr. Darcy (Firth). It is a comedy of errors, love and personal growth, which is similar in a lot of ways to Barbie.
Why Barbie Called Out Pride and Prejudice
As a fun and mostly easygoing romantic comedy, Pride and Prejudice certainly makes for good “comfort food. But any fan of the story will argue there is more to Pride and Prejudice than simple light-hearted joy. The novel is well-regarded among many feminist literary critics as an early example of women defying their system. Elizabeth, in particular, refuses to be sold into marriage for the sake of security. So, given Barbie‘s feminist leanings, the implied call-out of the classic novel adaptation seems a little odd.
Barbie‘s ultimate message is that, in the end, it is better to live in the complicated, messy real world than it is to live in a fantasy land. While Pride and Prejudice certainly didn’t take place in a fantasy land, being a piece of contemporary realism, to audiences in the modern era, Austen’s world holds the position of escapist fantasy. It is set in a time before women had the right to work or vote, and despite being progressive for its time, it’s still a story about finding fulfillment through marriage. But as wonderful a story as it is, to the 21st-century woman, there is little to be learned about how to navigate life in the modern world.
What Barbie’s Pride and Prejudice Moment Is Really Saying
The time period and world of Pride and Prejudice was one of absolute patriarchal power. There were limited options for women aside from marriage and homemaking, and some who enjoy Pride and Prejudice like it more for the fantasy of marrying a wealthy, handsome suitor who changes himself for the perfect woman than the character development Elizabeth goes through or her personal journey. And given that Depression Barbie appears late in the film when the Kens have taken over Barbieland and transformed it into a patriarchy where the Barbies play the roles women were expected to have in the 1800s, perhaps the brief mention of the miniseries was meant to imply something more sinister: the desire to escape from the complicated modern world by regressing back to the patriarchal times, a seemingly simpler and less complicated system.
Of course, a closer look at Pride and Prejudice, or any Austen novel, demonstrates that that system was not easier or less complicated than the modern world. Perhaps what is being called out then is not the popularity of Austen but rather the tendency to use it as a means to escape reality rather than to better understand it. Barbie‘s turn to patriarchy seems easier at first, as many of the girls give in because it seems “easier.” But perhaps the real lesson to learn from Pride and Prejudice is the importance of paying attention to the world and people here and now.
Barbie is currently playing in movie theaters.