Darcy’s Daggers
By Juliet LeClerc

Could Jane Austen’s iconic classic really be improved?  Read on to find out why zombies may be the next big thing in literature.

ow could I not be intrigued by the title alone? Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! I would have to be mad to not grab up the book and quickly skim through it for telltale signs of Jane Austen’s classic novel. I scanned the pages to see if the “real” Fitzwilliam Darcy made an appearance amidst all the other words. Yes! He was there. So, what was this novel about then?

Without a standard introduction, I couldn’t tell if this was a joke or a creative attempt to play with literature and create a “hypertext” à la Jean Genette. Genette said in his book of essays, Palimpsest, that there is an interconnectivity among all literary works. That would definitely seem to be the case with this novel. How can our contemporary world appreciate the mores and customs of Victorian society? By adding zombies to it, evidently.

Initially skeptical, I was quickly converted to the sheer silliness when reading this clever adaptation by the illustrations interspersed throughout the novel. Austen’s main text is predominantly preserved with an occasional change and addition of text relating to zombies, making for a zaney tour of genteel 19th-century English society.

There were a number of moments where my uncontrollable laughter forced people looked at me oddly. But I didn’t care. I was enjoying Austen’s novel anew and from a different perspective. It made me contemplate how other classics could be “tinkered with.”  How about Oliver Twist on a reality show? Come to think of it, I think I’ll start writing that now.

If you are up for a chuckle and don’t take yourself too seriously, I highly recommend reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. If you think that literature should not be touched, then by all means, pass on this novel—and the entertainment that comes with it.