Last night, I turned on the quintessential go-to Jane Austen adaptation, Pride and Prejudice, while I made dinner. I was looking for something mindless and British to watch while I cooked and it was recently added to Netflix for all of you romantics out there to fawn over, so I thought it would be the perfect choice. It wasn’t until I got a message from my friend exclaiming, “YouTube the last two minutes!” that I realized there even was two different endings, one for the UK and the rest of the world, and one for the dreamy, Darcy-obsessed Americans across the pond. (Side note: Darcy isn’t the be-all and end-all Austen man. There are others who are much more interesting! I promise.)
In the UK’s ending, after Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett realize they do actually like each other, despite all of the various reasons they should not, Mr. Bennett grants his permission for Lizzie to marry Darcy and the story ends. It’s all happy and good and the credits roll and no one has anything to say about it. In the US version, though, there is one last scene at Darcy’s home, Pemberley. In this scene, in order to satisfy American audiences, we see a romantic and intimate scene between Elizabeth and Darcy, and we see the only kiss in the film. Americans were happier as they thought it was more realistic that two lovers might actually kiss on screen, but the British found it to be downright silly. If you’ve ever read Pride and Prejudice, you know there was no kissing in the book. It didn’t fit with Jane Austen or the time she wrote in. So, while the UK ending might seem unfinished to us Americans, the US ending doesn’t feel right to the British, or to many of the people who have read the book.
So then what do you do when there are two endings, or as in the movie Clue, three? Do you watch one at random? Choose your favorite? Watch them all? What about when you were a kid choosing your own adventure in those awesome books with the multiple endings? Did you choose as you went like you were supposed to, or did you cheat and read a few alternate ways to go and then decide? Should the creators of Pride and Prejudice have given in to American needs for romance, or leave the movie as they had envisioned it when they first made and showed it in the UK? Should all endings be happy, romantic, and lovely, or is it okay to have something be sad, upsetting, or alternatively realistic?
There’s something about humans that makes us always want to get the best possible ending, but I don’t think we necessarily know what that ending looks like. It’s why college students change their majors over and over in the hope of having the perfect fit. It’s why I add more classes than I need to each semester so I can test them all out just in case I’d be missing out on something. It’s why when someone asks you what you want to do when you grow up the answer changes from astronaut, to veterinarian, to artist, to doctor, to actuarial scientist, and so on. It’s why I’m sitting here in front of my computer unsure how to end this post because I want it to be perfect so it doesn’t let anyone down. But, I don’t know what will let you down, dear reader. I have no idea. So instead of ending this in a finite way with some grand realization about how things should end in books and movies and life, I’d just like to bring up Jane Austen again. What a lady. She wrote six full books and influenced countless writers after her. And isn’t that the best ending after all—a lasting impression from the people who love you?
