Before anything else, I must confess something, dear reader: it wasn’t until May 2025 that I finally watched the 2005 film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, while I finally read the book just this past September 2025. I know, a capital sin for someone who claims to be a lover of romantic movies and books. It is, however, my reality; and I must admit that I was bewitched, body and soul, just by watching (and fangirling over) Joe Wright’s adaptation of this literary classic. The setting, performances, and score had me completely immersed in this historical love story and definitely left me questioning why I’d waited so long to finally jump on the Pride & Prejudice bandwagon. This is clearly a classic love story that has earned all the praise it’s received.
Imagine how excited I got when the book club I’m a part of announced that we’d be reading Price & Prejudice as our September pick. Expecting to see the original version of such a wonderful love story, I happily got to reading… and was faced with a pretty different story. Logically, I know that movies need to cut down on a lot of material when it comes to adapting books, but I hadn’t expected such a stark contrast between the yearning and miscommunication-based film and the artfully-written and (admittedly) verbose book that featured several subplots and a plethora of characters who I didn’t know about. All this is not to say that the book was bad because it was too wordy; both the movie and the book have their charm, but the book takes care to actually develop things in a complex, three-dimensional way that the 127-minute film doesn’t necessarily get the chance to.
The Bennets
In the movie, the Bennets are still technically part of high society, though they’re portrayed as not being well-off, as seen through the disrepair of their home and the mismatched clothes the daughters are usually seen wearing. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are portrayed as a sort of awkwardly loving couple, with Mr. Bennet sighing along as Mrs. Bennet — plus Kitty and Lydia — stumbles her way among other nobles and potential suitors for their daughters. In Austen’s novel, however, the Bennets are actually landed gentry and their marriage is very dysfunctional. Their dynamic is most certainly rooted in how they chose to marry the wrong person out of convenience.
Wickham and Collins
Though these two are very different people in both the book and the movie, the differences between their respective counterparts is palpable. Wickham in the book is much more of an overtly antagonistic force, as he’s constantly seen disparaging Mr. Darcy and scheming to marry one of the Bennet girls (first Elizabeth, then Lydia). In the movie, his subplot is diminished to nearly nothing, merely reduced to having the reveal of his elopement with Lydia via a letter to Elizabeth — after not being mentioned for like half the movie. On the other hand, Collins’ unpleasant nature in the book is due to his sense of self-importance and admiration for his Lady Catherine, not the physical unattractiveness and lack of social tact the film pushes onto him.
Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy
As for the protagonists of this iconic love story, both Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy differ greatly from text to film. Where their relationship in Jane Austen’s original version of the story is based on great amounts of banter and mutual acknowledgement, the film takes a more visual approach that’s more heavily based on tension and miscommunication. Elizabeth is also more mature in the book, whereas her character in the movie is the feistier kind of female protagonist that was popular in the early 2000s. Mr. Darcy was taken from a proud man of high standing who finds the artificiality of high society stifling in the book, to a shy, tragic character who’s almost immediately victimized by the woman he grows to love in the 2005 adaptation. Yet the characters’ changes from page to screen ultimately make sense for the atmosphere and story Joe Wright wished to portray.
At the end of the day, both Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice are extremely enjoyable, classic pieces of media. They both focus on the same story in different ways, embracing their own respective aesthetics, which lets people interact with the content through whichever medium they prefer. This is a story that is ultimately about love, and the reflection and courage it requires at its core to be seen, and we all deserve to enjoy that. That’s certainly a reason why people have come to love Pride and Prejudice. Most ardently.