Pride and Prejudice and Bride and Prejudice - A

            "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." "Pride and Prejudice," the acclaimed novel by Jane Austen published in 1813. This first line establishes the framework for the narrative of courtship and class issues that will serve to reinforce the story. Additionally, the Bollywood adaptation of Austen's novel, known as "Bride and Prejudice," by Gurinder Chadha released in 2005 that carries the tagline, "Bollywood meets Hollywood and it's a perfect match" (Wilson 2006: 323). This film sets the narrative about love and a cultural conflict that will take place simultaneously. Both of these lines highlight the uniqueness of the two stories, but they also represent the similarities between them. The first line of the novel examines the notion of a blurred true/false reality in the novel, whereas the tagline from the movie brings in the theme of a conflict between cultures. The essay will further examine the similarities and differences between the literary text and the film adaptation through a consideration of the variations on the original (style and content), and how these variations in the adaptation change the meaning and effect of the original. From this it will be clear that Bride and Prejudice can be seen as a film that assimilates two partners that are meant to be together, as a way of maintaining and modernizing the cultural critique of the novel. .
             It is worthwhile to note that the style of the two stories was presented in different ways. In the book, the characters were more spirited, in the Victorian sense, lacking that exuberant, while the characters in the movie were just the opposite, as they were far more energetic and spirited in their portrayals of the character. This is the influence of Bollywood, but it also speaks to the broader difference between the two stories, one is set in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, where women were very repressed and controlled, while the other is set in contemporary India where women are still treated in this way, but they have also been exposed to the influences of globalization and Western culture.