Abigail and I watched disc two of the BBC Pride and Prejudice yesterday, skipping around for “the good parts” – by which I mean “the parts where Colin Firth looks the most smoldery.” Everyone always talks about the lake scene at Pemberley, and, you know, it is pretty great, but I also love when he runs up to Elizabeth shortly after, once he’s pulled himself together and put on the striped waistcoat and the green jacket and a properly tied cravat. His curly hair is still damp from the swim, and he just looks so sweet and earnest and awkward as he convinces her not to leave.
I laughed a lot, and Abby didn’t really get it, but she shouted “HA – HA – HA!” copying me, as she is wont to do. I’m looking forward to watching the miniseries with her when she’s old enough to appreciate it. Perhaps by that time it won’t always reduce me to the goofy grins and stupid giggling of a fourteen-year-old girl.
Meeting Colin Firth was a big thrill in part because I have so few legitimate celebrity crushes. And most of them are quite tame, really – perhaps because they were all formed when I was about fourteen, and have not evolved much since. But I have a much longer list of literary crushes, and on a whim, I have put together a list:
Fitzwilliam Darcy, ’tis as good as a lord!
Sir Percy Blakeney, savior of doomed aristos
Enjolras, chaste lover of liberty
Calvin O’Keefe, biological sport
Aragorn, King of Gondor, eventually
Faramir, had the good sense to fall in love with Eowyn
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey, Mr. Harriet Vane
Captain Wentworth, writer of beautiful letters – okay, it was just the one, but it was awesome
Henry Tilney, perhaps the only Austen man you’d like right from the beginning
So, I’m curious – who are your favorite fictional men?
Calvin O’Keefe, wow, that brings back a lot of memories, although I think I preferred the love quadrangle of “A Ring of Endless Light.” (Who to choose?!)
This was a lot harder to come up with than I expected. The Austen heroes don’t live on the page for me the same as they did for you, and I automatically struck all book characters who got more attractive on the big screen (sorry, Darcy). Also, characters who met tragic ends, because really, if we’re going to have a trans-fictional relationship, it has to be worth it in the end.
But I have to settle on a character who has not been well done on the big screen at all and probably wouldn’t even try to woo me, just say very beautiful things and go away disappointed. Isn’t that how they always are! Be mine, Nick Carraway; I won’t be careless with you.
Nick Carraway! Good one. It’s always been hard for me to see past the glitter of Jay Gatsby, but there is something stirring about Carraway.
I have to defend myself here; Darcy was handsome in the book. And Colin Firth is amazing, but you know, I think he’s about the right amount of attractive for Darcy – not the most gorgeous ever, definitely not an empty shell/pretty boy, just real and flawed and, in the end, hopelessly irresistible due to the sum of his parts.
I understand the criticism of Austen men, however, because even at their best they aren’t anything approaching the Austen women.
Oh, I didn’t mean that your love for Darcy was mostly based on the miniseries — just that mine was.
I don’t even know that mine was; I was 14 at the time it aired, so I hardly remember. I liked Darcy a lot by the time I saw the miniseries. But after all these years, he’s so intertwined with Colin Firth’s portrayal of him that it’s difficult to say for sure.
Faramir, had the good sense to fall in love with Eowyn
LOL. He was pretty cool in his own right, too.
Way to tie Abby back in to your Colin Firth blog.
Way to tie Abby back in to your Colin Firth blog
Yes, I thought it was rather a clever tie-in.
No fair commenting on this post without sharing your literary crushes! Spill it, sister.
Hm. A lot of the books I enjoy don’t really invite crushes. One doesn’t exactly fall head-over-heels for Haze Motes or Dr. Tom More, nor someone like Skink (however interesting). I really love Sam Gamgee, but I wouldn’t call it a crush. Landen Park Lane and The-Cutest-Boy-in-the-World (who isn’t fictional) are good guys, but I don’t really want them for myself.
I’ll try to think of someone!
I’m glad to see your indoctrinating your daughter into good taste for film and literature. Everything’s been so oriented around Twilight around here lately, I’m afraid I’m countering your good mothering.
I’d have to say big girlhood crush on Laurie, aka Theodore Laurence, from Little Women. Jo was a bo-bo not to pick him in the book, as was her movie counterpart Winona Ryder. C’mon, you throw Christian Bale over for Gabriel Byrne? Christian had me at Newsies.
As to teenage crushes, the prize goes to Benedick of Much Ado About Nothing. Partly because Kenneth Branagh had a stellar performance in the film, but also because I love a good smartass. “Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably” is the story of my life/marriage.
And ditto on Faramir, and Nick Carraway.
Oooh, Benedick. Good choice.
Jo not choosing Laurie is kind of where that book lost me. Laurie marrying AMY of all people is where that book got thrown across the room.
Benedick is awesome. I love Kenneth Branagh in Henry V – I should have mentioned Henry V as another literary crush, ever since a great production I saw at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (native bioregion shoutout) when I was a young, impressionable girl. Henry had me at the speech before the battle of Agincourt.
I just found a used DVD copy of the BBC version at a used book store a couple of weeks ago! (I know usually “book store” doesn’t mean movie versions of books, but oh well…) Anyway, it was only $5 so I couldn’t pass it up. I’ve already watched it twice! I’d forgotten how good it is!
It’s really the gold standard of Austen adaptations. Did you happen to catch the recent Jane Austen Season on Masterpiece Theatre a couple of years ago? They aired new productions of Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility, and then an Austen biopic that was clearly supposed to be more authentic than the film Becoming Jane.
Wow, no, I didn’t but I went a fair number of years without a TV– I loved it but felt very out of the loop… I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for any repeats of this amazing sounding Jane Austen tribute!
You definitely should! A lot of us were rather disappointed by the new films, but they were still better than 99% of television, of course.
There’s already a better Persuasion (one was made in the ’90s with Amanda Root as Anne Eliot) than the remake, and the Mansfield Park wasn’t all that great either (could have something to do with the fact that Mansfield Park isn’t that great). But the Northanger Abbey one was excellent and almost too adorable. And the S&S remake was pretty good, too (though the novel S&S is probably my least favorite of the Austen books).