The Bridget Jones phenomenon

Being Bridget Jones, a TV documentary about the Bridget Jones books and films prompted a re-evaluation of the character. What made the Bridget Jones character so memorable? Is there anything more to be said about her?

It was clear from the documentary that what is memorable is not the males, however much screen entertainment they provide (usually based on rivalry). Hugh Grant versus Colin Firth, or Colin Firth versus Patrick Dempsey was not what we remember about the films: three of them, from Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001), based on the book of the same title (1996), up to the film Bridget Jones's Baby (2016). By the end the story declines into wish-fulfilment, but there is enough in the earlier films and books to reflect on. 

No, the abiding achievement of Helen Fielding is to record female insecurity. Women have gained so much in the last 150 years, and yet hesitancy and lack of confidence remain very common in women. As Germaine Greer stated in the TV programme, we all of us have Bridget Jones moments, waiting for the phone to ring. I realised when she said this that she was referring to women, but it could equally refer to men. Here is a limitation of these films: all the leading males are secure in their roles; they are strong-jawed ciphers. Real men might sit waiting for the phone to ring, but not these males. Even Colin Firth, although he may be slow to reveal his true feelings, is a world-class lawyer.

Of course the reality is more complex than that. Bridget is the woman who is on the edge of her class, as you sense her creator Helen Fielding is. Fielding grew up in a small industrial suburb of Leeds in Yorkshire, and then went to Oxford as an undergraduate in the 1970s, where she will have encountered a very different, more polished world. “She seemed not to have read any books”, said her contemporary Richard Curtis, revealing perhaps more than he realised. It would be typical of Jones to reveal that she hasn’t read books, which the more poised public-school educated male undergraduates haven’t read either, but can confidently talk about in conversation.

The Bridget Jones character sits uncomfortably with feminism. Already, 20 years after the first film, we all realise that the attitudes would no longer be tolerated – groping women’s bottoms is not a matter for laughter any longer. The Jones character is not what many women want to dwell on (however much her attitudes, fear of failure, obsession with trivia, chronic insecurity) might be shared by males. “Will I get married” is not high on the feminist agenda.

While we can all agree that the obsession with weight and body image is sad and misguided, although very much the result of a world presenting images of female models who are spectacularly thin as a norm to be emulated, we might be a little more uncomfortable about other aspects of Jones’ character.

Making a mess of things in public (particularly with lawyers, given that Mark Darcy is a barrister) makes us feel at one with Jones, but sometimes the character exploration goes further and raises some questions. Jones’ talent for making a fool of herself in public is, I think, more than simply representing her background and openness. Fielding/Jones argues for a particular female attitude, not just rejecting the driven professionalism of some of the women in the TV company where Bridget works, but in the second film, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004), her journalistic efforts are lame and amateurish. By comparison, Hugh Grant reveals himself to be an accomplished and relaxed presenter. He would get a job over her any day. Am I reading too much into the stories, but is there perhaps some underlying plea by Fielding for human failure rather than business success? After all, at the end of three full-length films, Jones finally gets married. Who does she choose? The charismatic, sexy, supremely confident and talented millionaire, or the repressed English lawyer who is anything but streetwise, but looks honest. The fact that he’s probably also a millionaire doesn’t mean she is marrying only for love.