My housemate and I have a serious problem. We’re addicted to period dramas. I know that makes us the most awful girly stereotypes in the world, but there’s just something about curling up on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon and escaping into a world where men dress in riding boots and girls can’t go out without gloves. When I was a teenager the BBC screened the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice and my mom gave me her 30-year-old copy of The Complete Works of Jane Austen. From then onwards it was a downward spiral for me. I fell for every hero in every period piece. There Christian Bale in Little Women, Greg Wise in Sense & Sensibility, James Purefoy in Vanity Fair…basically if the man had a high collar, a tailcoat and a fantastic line in smirking, I was smitten…
Writers like Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and Elizabeth Gaskill have a lot to answer for. So do Andrew Davies, Emma Thompson and co. for adapting their stories for television and film. What modern man can live up to brooding heroes like Mr Darcy, Mr Rochester, Captain Wentworth and Rawdon Crawley? Richard Armitage might be a bit of a dreamboat in modern dress, but turn him into John Thornton in ‘North & South’ and you’ll find me in a puddle on the floor. I can’t really put my finger on what it is that suddenly elevates these men in my estimation the moment they put on a hat and a waistcoat. The aforementioned housemate is convinced it’s the high collars that do it. I’d say it’s probably more likely to be the codpieces. That and the melted chocolate voices (think Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon in Sense & Sensibility and JJ Feild as Mr Tilney in Northanger Abbey).
I know, as a modern career woman, if I actually met a man like the ones in most of these period pieces, I’d be fed up with him in the first five minutes. The gentry of yore were not exactly supportive of the idea of a woman working for a living, and there’s only so much needlepoint, playing of the pianoforte and ‘taking turns around the room’ that a girl can do to pass the time. Alexandra Potter’s very un-Austen-like novel ‘Mr Darcy & Me’ proves this point perfectly. In it a modern day woman stumbles across the real Mr Darcy and finds him a bit too intense and incredibly dull, eventually dumping him for a modern man.
With all this in mind I suppose it’s good to see that the latest BBC period adaptation – Cranford – actually concentrates on strong female characters, rather than brooding men. Ironically, the fabulous scene-stealing Jenkyns sisters are played by two actresses who’ve previously played the awful Lady Catherine de Bourg in P&P; Eileen Atkin and Dame Judi Dench. One episode in and I’m already hooked…and for once it’s not because I fancy the lead male.
Still, if anyone ever wants to woo me, may I suggest some britches, a pocket watch and the ability to recite Shakespeare like Willoughby. Yum.