It is a truth universally acknowledged that any Janeite in possession of cold, hard cash must be in want of the new Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Austen’s “co-author” Seth Grahame-Smith serves up delicious thwarted love, delicious Regency manners, and delicious “bone-crunching zombie mayhem.” And his new Austen parody also has lovely period-style woodcuts, such as the Bennet sisters’ Pentagram of Death, shown below:
As you can see, the ninja-trained Bennet girls are in fine form at the Assembly ball. Which is part of the problem with Grahame-Smith’s version of Austen’s classic novel: highly skilled in the deadly arts, the Bennet girls don’t need the arrogant, zombie-killing Darcy, the ineffectual, vomit-prone Bingley, the obtuse, lazy Collins, or any man at all.
Jane Austen’s world posits marriage as the most important financial decision of a woman’s life. Unable to make a living except as governesses, Austen’s heroines must marry prudently, or spend their lives in poverty and dependency. At the same time, they must resist the temptation to accept a mercenary match: they must not give up their chance for love.
Something very different is at stake in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. But what can we expect from a novel whose opening line is not about a wealthy man’s desire for a wife, but rather about a hungry zombie’s desire for brains?