What are men to rocks and mountains? Romanticism in Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice

The 2005 Focus Features adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, directed by Joe Wright, is an insightfully Romantic interpretation of Austen’s novel. Wright’s Pride & Prejudice takes as its central focus Austen’s concern with exploring the nature of the Romantic self and the possibilities for women and men to achieve individual self-fulfillment within an oppressive patriarchal social and economic order. Pride & Prejudice foregrounds this aspect of Austen’s novel in its narrative and thematic concerns and in its representation of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy as Romantic figures, presenting Austen’s novel as a Romantic text. Pride & Prejudice selectively identifies and highlights the Romantic qualities of Elizabeth and Darcy’s respective personalities and functions within the novel, particularly in terms of their relationships as individuals to the social worlds in which they operate. Wright also uses the capabilities of film in visualizing Elizabeth’s character, and in the extensive use of natural settings and landscapes, to present Austen’s treatment of the conflict between individual desire and the social order in terms of Romanticism