Where It All Goes Down
The Countryside in Turn-of-the-19th-Century England…But with Zombies
You could spend weeks reading really thick books about 19th-century England to better understand what life was like for the people who lived there. You could also hop on over to our guide on the original Pride and Prejudice to get the deets, too.
But this novel isn't actually about Jane Austen's Regency England—at least not as we know it. In this rendition, Miss Austen's world has been overrun with zombies.
Right.
Okay, so, why zombies? Well, mostly because adding zombies to the refined and elegant sitting rooms of 19th-century England is kind of funny. But there has to be more to it than that, right?
Well, for one thing, zombie stories usually reflect the times, and this book is no different. We like to think that Elizabeth Bennet isn't just battling zombies; she's also battling societal expectations of what a woman should be.
Like, a woman should be accomplished, but not so accomplished that she scares off men. She should marry for money and not for love or compatibility. And for goodness' sake, she should always act like a refined young lady.
By creating a countryside overrun with zombies, this story sets up a metaphorical showdown with those societal expectations. The bumbling zombies represent the old order, the way things have always been done, and the Bennet girls are here to drop-kick it all into next week. Bam.
How would Jane Austen feel about all of this? We think she'd be cool with it. See, back in the late 1700s, there were tons of Gothic romances filling up people's bookshelves. Some of the most popular Gothic novels were written by female authors and featured heroines who would find themselves mixed up in supernatural mysteries filled with hidden passages and creepy castles.
Respectable people (i.e., men) didn't take these Gothic novels seriously—or if they did, they didn't say so. Of course, they were bestsellers, and tons of people read them. That's why when Mr. Collins "protested that he never read novels" (14.13), we know that it's not supposed to be a point in his favor. Jane Austen, of course, loved Gothic novels because she wrote her own Gothic parody, Northanger Abbey.
Basically, she was doing horror comedy way before it was cool. Take that, Seth Grahame-Smith.