Pride and Pastiche: Humor and Intertextual Parody in Bridget Jones’s Diary

Abstract

Criticism of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) has generally been limited to interrogating its literary value as ‘Chick Lit,’ feminist analysis, and noting its complex intertextual mesh of allusions to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and movie/TV versions of both novels. Less attention has been paid to why or how P&P functions as a parodic text informing BJD. This paper argues through a close reading that Fielding uses the language registers, behavioral codes, and wider romance tropes and canonical scenes of P&P to serve as a humorous contrast against Bridget. Bridget is funny because she aspires to this fantasy romantic ideal of poise, control, and prestige which is comically denied to her or deflated. Fielding’s parodic technique is neither critical to P&P nor to Bridget but is rather sympathetically playful, so that Bridget earns the reader’s sympathy and identification.