Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth Grahame-Smith (Guest Post!)

Yes, I've gotten so sorry at keeping up with this blog that I now have to farm it out to other people. No, really, I am quite honored that my former student (not that I actually taught her anything) and one of Massey Hill's finest graduates, the frightfully smart and delightfully droll Caroline Thomas, agreed to write a guest post on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I haven't quite finished yet. I now hand it over to her with my greatest appreciation:



Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a new literary masterpiece. It will be read by schoolchildren for centuries to come. Author Seth Grahame-Smith uses a lot of Jane Austen's original text (Pride and Prejudice) and adds a zombie subplot and makes a few changes. It's amazing. To start on a serious note, it has been a while since I read the real book; for the last few years, I've been living off movie versions of it (Colin Firth's 1995 gift to women everywhere [amen to that, Sister--JMC], and Keira Knightley's respectable 2005 attempt), spoofs of it (UK miniseries "Lost in Austen"), and things based on it (The Jane Austen Book Club, Bridget Jones's Diary) so much that I had forgotten that there are so many things you can only get from reading the book. So I'm grateful to Seth Grahame-Smith for giving me a chance and a reason to read Austen's text again, albeit slightly altered. It still makes me smile like a little girl.

The characters in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies are a little edgier than in the original; obviously, some of them slay zombies, and others vomit occasionally, but, aside from the obvious, they do and say things that readers have always wanted them to do and say, but propriety always got in the way. For example, Darcy is meaner to Caroline Bingley, which readers know she totally deserves:
Caroline: You write uncommonly fast.
Darcy: And you prattle uncommonly much ... Miss Bingley, the groans of a hundred unmentionables would be more pleasing to my ears than one more word from your mouth. Were you not otherwise agreeable, I should be forced to remove your tongue with my saber. (40)
There's obviously body humor that comes naturally with zombies and the slaying thereof: blood, brains, "soiling", vomiting. Even Elizabeth vomits a bit when, at the Collinses' home, one of the skin sores on zombie Charlotte's face bursts, and blood drips down into her mouth, which she apparently finds delicious. And that's where another aspect of humor comes from—watching poor Charlotte Lucas's transformation from regular old maid to a nine-tenths dead zombie married to such an odious man as Mr. Collins. Poor Charlotte. What did she ever do to Seth Grahame-Smith? It is hilarious but a little painful and sad to see her deteriorating, mumbling incoherently through conversations, and coming very close to copping a squat and being really sick in Lady Catherine's drawing room (she is rescued by Lizzie, seemingly the only one aware of Charlotte's undead condition, who takes her to the restroom).

Another refreshing addition to the dialogue is ball jokes. Yes, jokes about balls. Darcy makes one to Caroline Bingley that she is totally oblivious to, but Elizabeth catches it and is pleasantly surprised at "his flirtation with impropriety" (45). When Elizabeth later visits Pemberley and encounters Mr. Darcy, he gives her a gun to defend herself and her party on their walk. At the end of the visit, he reclaims the weapon. Then she "remembered the lead ammunition in her pocket and offered it to him. 'Your balls, Mr. Darcy?' He reached out and closed her hand around them, and offered, 'They belong to you, Miss Bennet'" (205). When her sister Jane asks how long she has loved Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth replies, "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing the way his trousers clung to those most English parts" (305).

It is this kind of juvenile humor (balls, zombies, barfing) that makes these characters and this novel endearing and real for a 21st Century audience, and it keeps the material light: when Darcy first proposes in that ungentlemanlike manner, Lizzie delivers a blow that sends him crashing into the mantelpiece. Right after they finally declare their love for one another, they come across a group of zombies "crawling on their hands and knees, biting into ripe heads of cauliflower, which they had mistaken for stray brains" (302). Whenever Austen's original contains moments that border on serious or important, Grahame-Smith throws in some fighting or zombies or ninjas (yes, there are ninjas, too).

The book is chockfull of other goodies as well. There are more than ten graphic and hilarious illustrations, including the one on the front cover, which depicts a woman (Lizzie?) missing half of her face and with blood on her dress. There are ten discussion questions at the end to help guide your deeply philosophical conversations about this novel:

6. Some critics have suggested that the zombies represent the authors' views toward marriage—an endless curse that sucks the life out of you and just won't die. Do you agree, or do you have another opinion about the symbolism of the unmentionables?
7. Does Mrs. Bennet have a single redeeming quality?
8. Vomit plays an important role in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Mrs. Bennet frequently vomits when she's nervous, coachmen vomit in disgust when they witness zombies feasting on corpses, even the steady Elizabeth can't help but vomit at the sight of Charlotte lapping up her own bloody pus. Do the authors mean for this regurgitation to symbolize something greater, or is it a cheap device to get laughs?

The book is a lot of fun. It's probably best for those who have read the original, but it's good fun either way. I've heard rumors that Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is on deck, and we may be able to expect Persuasion and Poltergeist after that.