Sources

Hatch, Donna. "Being Presented to the Queen." Histoical Hussies, Blogger.com, 2 June 2009, https://historicalhussies.blogspot.com/2009/06/being-presented-to-queen.html

Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, Touchstone, 1993, New York.

Music

Nature 28 [nature documentary series] Produced by Sascha Ende

Transcript

Dearest listener. This is Adapting Ink to Screen: The Bridgerton Series and I’m your Host Nadia.

Let me start by introducing the idea behind this podcast. I am a fan of the Bridgerton books and series. And following the most recent season, I have been, to my friends annoyance, bugging them with all of the changes that were made from the books to show, and what my thoughts were on them. I joked that I could write a PhD dissertation on it. At some point the joke wasn't so jokey and I decided why not instead of writing about it, um, I do a more casual podcasty vibe for it. So, here we are.

Keeping this in mind, I have established a few questions to help guide my discussion:

What has been changed?

What do these changes do to the narrative?

What problems to they solve or cause?

Was it a good change in my opinion?

So let's talk about what this podcast isn't?

Anyways, I’m also not going to be commenting on the acting (great), the sets (gorgeous), or costumes (to die for). It's just not the point of the podcast. We're talking about narrative here, not the actual production quality.

Now you might be asking yourself, Who am I? And should you trust me?

Like I said at the top my name is Nadia. I recently graduated with an MFA in Writing, which I doubt really helps me, but I’m happy to hold it up as my certificate of authentication or whatever. Mostly, Bridgerton falls into my already well established obsession with this time period, this history, this culture, but mostly it’s fashions. I could go at length about it and to be honest, I can’t be sure I won’t indulge in some of that discussion. But I'll try my hardest.

I don’t want you, the listener, to think this is going to be me being an angry fan girl crushing perhaps what is a favorite show for you. That isn’t my goal. So I thought I’d share a few things that I absolute love about that series that aren’t in the books:

First of all, the music. I love love love love the instrumental arrangements of pop music. I listen to the music frequently. And they are all bangers.

I, also, love the sets and costumes. I love the look of the show. It’s beautiful. The colors are bright and fun with copious amounts of vibrant flowers everywhere. The hairdos are elaborate, I mean the Queen's outfits alone are a reason to watch the show. I love it so much I don’t mind the historical inaccuracies…for the most part. I will say people do not wear gloves enough. And they should wear hats. Glove and hats--they are a necessary accessory.

Last thing I'll list here is I really love some of the added characters that are not found in the books: the Queen and Lady Danbury chief among them. I know it's shocking to find out that the Queen isn’t in the books. Lady Danbury is but her position, her, her character is much smaller. This is a good point to point out this has got a ton of spoilers in it right? Spoilers for the show spoilers for the books. I'm going to spoil all of it. So if you don’t want to hear any spoilers, mute the podcast and keep it playing please. So I get some good listens, okay? I'll take all the listens I can get.

It’s probably time that I get on with it. Let me give you a quick run down how I’m going to organize the episodes. Each podcast episode will surround an episode of the series and I will be going in the order of the Netflix series. I will discuss the changes and add any terms or context that I think might be helpful to the listener. Basically it's the show. You only really need to be familiar with the show. You don't even have to be a reader of the books.

On that note, let’s define some terms for this first episode and we'll get settled in the narrative.

What is the Season you ask? What a wonderful question, thank you for asking. The Season or social season is the same time as when the British, when the British Parliament is sitting. The government doesn't run year around. It was only active for part of the year. This has to do with travel conditions and, um, weather issues, right? And that all of these people in the government also have estates in the country that they must occasionally go to. So when all the important people would leave their country estates and come to London. They do that during Parliament. The nobility, or peers, which are like men with titles, they would serve in the House of Lords. Don’t worry I’m not going to get into the workings of government. But basically Parliament started to sit , would start around Christmas time. That's when it would open. Most of the families would actually not be in London at that time. They would stay in the country. And then, there's a break around Easter, and after the Easter break was when everyone would come back into London and the families would come and there was like three months of parties and balls, and Husband hunting. And then August 12 was when Parliament would close, and so, everyone would go back to the country.

Alright so the Season is starting and the ton is in town.

Oh, what’s that? You might ask. What’s the ton? Well, the ton is the members of the Peerage (families with titles—Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount, and Baron). I’ll forego a deep discussion into the Peerage and, like, Precedence—know those are in order of importance. And then there are other rich and important and rich families also. The term comes from bon-ton which means, which kind of implies that people have good breeding, good style, what we would call polite society, that kind of thing.

The ton is getting ready to present their eligible daughters to the Queen, for them to “come out” into society.

And we're already at a huge divergence with the books at this point. This is not how the books start. I’m gonna speed run real quickly all of the things that change, that are different at this beginning portion that isn’t in the books. Just to give you an understanding how different the start is:

Queen doesn’t exist as a character, which I already covered

There are four not three Featherington daughters and the father is already passed away. (the missing daughter is named Felicity and she is Hyacinth’s bestie and we're gonna, you know, poor one out to her later)

Marina is not in this book, nor is she actually a character that is in any of the books, she is spoken about in Eloise’s story (in book five if we are going off the correct order) but she never is a character and she is never a love interest of Colin’s

Simon having a nearly familial relationship with Lady Danbury is not in the books. He has a connection with her through her son, um, who he was friends with so he out of respect goes to her ball but not because he is particularly close with her.

Anthony having a mistress, not in the books, Anthony, per the books, has never been in love and has no interest in it and um, we will go into this a little later more so.

Berbrooke is less odious in the book. He's also not as old. Well, at least his age is not commented on, so it's not a large age gap

And the meet cute and proposal of the rouse is different, it happens in a different time frame

The show isn’t clear at this point whether presenting, being presented to the Queen only happens at the start of one’s first season or at the start of every season or some other thing. Lady Featherington tells Lady Cowper following the presentation to the Queen, that this is Penelope’s first season and she’s nervous, when Penelope is trying to bow out of attending the seasons activities. Which implies that not all ladies presented were in their first season. But it is Daphne’s first season, which is a divergence from the book where 21 year old Daphne in at the start of her third season. Which would make more sense since women “came out” around 17-18 and if we take her as 21 at the start of this that would meant she was 19 when she came out. This is further supported, in the book, by Anthony saying that Eloise and Francesca are due to “come out” in two and three years respectively when each would be 19. But like I said we aren’t certain what the ages are of everyone in the show, but there does seems to be less of a gap between Daphne and Eloise than in the book because it's the first four and then there's an age gap then Eloise and Francesca and then the rest come out one per year for a few years. I have notes but I'm really fighting my urge to look at them right now. Since we don't really know the ages, either Eloise is older that she is in the books or, perhaps, Daphne is younger. I would. I don't know which, which, but I don't think either change is like a good one but being 21 at the start of someone's first season is like not good, like historically, and I think we can understand that if like the average is people come out at 17 - 18 than 21 would be abnormal. right?

I’m gonna, let me stop and explain why this is, like a bigger issue. In the book, Daphne is in her third season and unmarried which isn’t made to be that big of an issue, she is concerned but not hysterical about it. She believes she is unmarried because “everyone sees me as a friend. No one ever has any romantic interest in me.” Is what she says in chapter 5.

Let’s discuss “coming out” and and the Marriage Mart. Generally, speaking daughters came out, like I said, at the age of 17-18. They were presented to society and would start attending balls and parties in order to attract a husband. These young women would be considered “failures” if they didn’t get married after two or three seasons. If they reached the age of 30 they would be considered a hopeless and permanent spinsters. This creates a problem for modern authors of Regency romances, because marrying at 17 and 18 feel really uncomfy for modern readers. There are generally a few ways to get around this, or generally there are a few ways that they tend to get around this, first you can age up your heroine, which is what's done in the Duke & I, Daphne is 21. She’s not quite as uncomfortably young but within a reasonable age range to marry at the time period and it doesn't feel so bad to modern audiences. Or you can have the heroine be widowed at the start of the story, now she can be of a more comfortable aged, in her mid-20s even. and trying to find a second husband (Fun fact widows were afforded a lot more leniency when courting because their virtue or virginity cannot be compromised, right). But that's neither here nor there.

Back to the narrative, all three Featheringtons and Daphne are presented to the Queen and Daphne is told she is flawless, which is later something Lady Whistledown agrees with, caling her incomparable and “A Diamond of the First Water” (ding ding ding episode title). At which point we are introduced to Marina, who unbeknownst to Daphne will vie with her for the title of top beauty of the season.

We finally get introduced to Simon via Lady Danbury and we learn his father has dead and he hated his father.

And we finally get a meet-cute. Simon and Daphne meet at Lady Danbury’s ball. Which is where the meet cute happens also in the book. So in the show, Anthony is scaring off any man who even looks at Daphne, laying her future husband catching troubles directly at his feet. We meet Lord Berbrooke who is loathsome and in Daphne’s attempts to flee from him she runs smack into Simon, who is appropriately rude and dickish, very Darcyesque. Anthony joins the two and makes introductions.

There is some filler activities and events but the next real big scene for Daphne and Simon is the Vauxhall Pleasure Garden. Which is a famous place for the time period but they never go there in the book. Here Daphne is told by Anthony that she is going to be forced to married Berbrooke. She runs off upset. Berbrooke finds her alone. Daphne states she will never marry him, he gets angry and attacks her, ostensibly trying to force his attentions on her in some way. Simon overhears and rushes in to save the day, but Daphne punches Berbrooke and knocks him out.

Now what is, what, how is that different from what's in the book?

Everything, the meet cute, the punching of Berbrooke, and the proposed fake dating all happen at Lady Danbury’s ball. Everything happens within a few hour time period. Simon tries to sneak into the ball to say hi to Lady Danbury and leave without being announced at the entrance. Because he is trying to avoid all the marriage-minded mamas that Anthony had warned him about, because he's adamant he never wants to get married. I'm gonna add here at this point in the book the reader knows why and how seriously Simon does not want to get married and how deeply he has made that vow. Or, not just not maried never have a child, never sire and heir. Because the book starts with a prologue that is his backstory, so when he makes these declarations you understand and believe him from the beginning. But I'll go into that more later.

In his attempt to sneak in, he overhears Daphne and Berbrooke. Initially he is going to just walk away but then he hears things that makes him think this woman is in need of some help and he resolves to help her but makes it just in time to see the woman punch that man in the face and the man hit the ground. This is obviously very similar with what happens in Vauxhall. But the big difference is, Daphne and Simon do not know each other. Another big difference is that Berbrooke, Nigel is a drunk idiot and not an odious villain. He is desperate to marry and believes that Daphne is his only option. He tells Daphne, “Dash it all! If you don’t marry me, who will?” and then “No one’s as nice as you,” … “You’re the only one who ever smiles at me.” And when he is attacking her he says, “You have to marry me!” … “You have to! I’ll never find anyone else—“ In fact, Nigel is not actually knocked out, he’s in and out and they discuss whether he is also drunk. He says “I love you Laffy” which is what Simon calls her because they don’t know each other, they haven't introduced themselves yet. Also, Daphne defends Nigel to Simon, Simon just wants to drag him out and leave him on the street. She's like No he doesn't deserve that. He's like he attacked you. She says, He didn't attack me, um well, he wouldn't have done any harm anyways. I am not apologizing for Nigel, Berbrooke, whatever. It's weird that they call him Nigel the whole time, because it's, uh, it implies a familiarity that, you're not supposed to use people's first names, anyways, whatever. so I'm not saying he didn't do anything wrong, he clearly still tries to attack Daphne in this scenario, but doesn't seem to be like, uh, sexual assault attempt, in the books. Vibes are just different. Simone and Daphne, they bicker and banter, he even leers at her suggestively, or like, he ogles her, which she brushes and says male charms don’t work on her, like she is very experienced with how men, how like men are because she has four brothers. Again all of this happens before Simon knows that this is his very good friend, Anthony’s little sister. So, he’s free to have inappropriate thoughts about her, knowing he's not going to act on them because he doesn’t want to get married. Eventually Nigel comes to enough to actually call her Daphne and Simon realizes who she is. And this is when they are introduced. Daphne is also previously aware of Simon and was warned by her mother that he is a horrible rake and to never be alone with him. Simon is now kicking himself for having lusted after Anthony’s sister. Ultimately, Nigel gets propped up, he gets stood up, he kind of tries to go for Daphne again and he gets punched in the face by Simon and he is out cold for good. Daphne and Simon go their separate ways into the ball.

In the ball, Simon is accosted by the aforementioned mamas. Eventually the Bridgerton boys come over and start talking to him. They bemoan the balls and the crazy mamas. And they see Daphne who is with their mother miserable being forced to chat up with some dude. And they discuss that they should go save her. Simon gets roped into saving her. Simon goes and asks her to dance. This dance which occurs at Vauxhall, right? But in that part of the story it is treated as if it is a huge deal that they are dancing, which it really wouldn’t have been. All the ladies and all the men in attendance at a ball were expected to dance with people. They were expected to be dancing. And any single dance with one partner doesn't mean anything it's only like if you have more than one dance, like two dances with the same person, is considered, oh they are serious. During the dance, Simon proposes that they fake court so that Daphne will start getting callers, and the Duke won’t have to dodge all the Mamas when he attends social events. The way he makes his interest know is he has to call on her, after the ball. This is like going a little bit farther than the show really goes, like the first episode goes, But yeah, he calls on her the next day and has flowers and that's how you know someone is courting, right? Because he showed up at her, uh, house. After their one dance and stroll around the ballroom she already has a bunch of suitors at her door itching to talk with her.

I’m gonna, ok, I'm going to be upfront and say I think the start of the book is better. Specifically for the characterization of the main characters for the love story. So why does it get changed? I think it boils down to the change in format from book to series. When creating the show, they wanted to, they clearly wanted to treat the Bridgerton family as an ensemble cast through out the series as opposed to how the books use the family as roster of future love stories,right? You go from one sibling to the next one to the next one. And there are some characters that, side characters that weave through, but there's not like a consistent ensemble that shows up throughout all of the books. Each of the eight children get their own book. They each get their own romance, one per book, and in their book they are the focus and everyone else is very minimally side characters. But in the show, you kind of want to have consistent characters that the audience can fall in love with, they can root for and watch grow. So in order to support that all the, not all of them, but majority of the Bridgerton children get their own subplot. At least the older ones, is what we'll say:

Anthony has his romance with Siena

Benedict has what I’m calling his queer artist subplot

Colin has his Marina subplot

Eloise has her let's find Lady Whistledown subplot

And in order to support these subplots certain changes needed to be made. Baron Feathering needed to be alive so Marina as a reason to there. Um, spoiler alert, his you know, him being a gambling addict, so he owes Marina's father, so he has to have her their and cannot kick her out when her pregnancy is, you know, discovered. Prince Fredrick shows up. He intertwines the Queen with the main story and also ends up creating tension between Lady Whistledown and the Queen.

So what does the beginning of the first episode do? It creates situation where the audience can be introduced to a large number of characters and how they related to each other quickly. We start with the Featheringtons and that atrocious corset scene (I’m holding off till the end to discuss this), which settles us into the time period and gives us a little background. Then we get, meet the Bridgertons, her Lady Whistledown is describing the Bridgerton family and we see their portraits and we see the live ones, the live version of them running around. We get some group interactions between the siblings, we meet Violet and then the absence of Anthony is noted. Which immediately gets filled with the scene with him and Siena. Where he is being a bad elder brother. He is both being a bad man for the time period and also bad older brother because he is late. We meet the Queen who, of course, loves Daphne, because the Bridgertons are the epitome of popular and cool.

Except now we have a problem because if Daphne is well loved by everyone and is the incomparable, she doesn't have a reason to enter into the fake courtship with Simon. So, she has to have a fall from grace, she must be made to become desperate and since she has just been present to the Queen, in the span of a month (thanks to Marina’s lack of period that we know how long it's been) she is suddenly only desirable to one odious man. In my opinion, this timeline doesn’t work. It's significantly too rushed for what they are trying to get at. I think It’s very hard to think of anyone being so desperate after only a month of being out in society to marry off their sister to Berbrooke, who clearly is no one's idea of a good match. And thus forcing her to enter into a facade with Simon. It’s just ridiculous. But in order to have that big moment, those changes have to be made. Because you have to put her in a position where she she agrees to this fake dating. So I suppose the only other option would be to have the big moment but have her not be considered, you know, flawless. But I'm sure presents other problems.

For the same reason, the sort of big introduction, audiences are not introduced to Simon’s backstory. There is no time to fit in anything more about him other than, his father is dead and he hated his father. In my opinion, this flattens his character quite a bit. Simon has a righteous anger that is fueling him, one that the reader completely understands. The reader experiences Simon’s struggles with this stammer and his repeated rejection by his father until his father decides he's not a bad son and he tries to pretend he was never a complete ass to him. And Simon decides to run away abroad, and only returns to England after his father dies. I’ll probably go into this more in the next episode because I think that's when the series talks a bit about Simon’s backstory. But suffice it to say, I think presenting that after the meet cute, undermines its importance and makes it too easy to see Simon’s refusal to marry as the same as every other Regency rake’s refusal. I think it's easy for the audience to just not take him seriously.

Now the other big change, Anthony is extremely unlikable. Anthony in the book is affable, and reasonably protective of Daphne. Simon, prior to meeting Daphne, remarks at how good a brother Anthony is for not forcing her to marry the less than desirable men who had been asking for her hand. Within the span of one episode, Anthony goes from good big brother and a man of honor (offering his protection to Siena) to a bully and unreliable. The only thing I like less than Anthony throughout this series is his horrible sideburns. The man has no critical thinking skills. He goes from scaring away every suitor, to agreeing to a marriage so horrible no one is happy about it. He goes from making passionate promises, to like a douche bag kicking Siena out of bed and breaking up with her in one foul swoop. He’s such a big baby. I really hate him, and he doesn’t really turn it around at the end of the season, which I think is a strange choice considering he’s the romantic lead of in the next season.

I’m going to show a bit of my bias here, I think in general, the Bridgerton men get a very bad treatment by the show. They are really unlikable for huge portions, whereas the women are goddesses and they just deserve better.

I want to go back for a moment to the changes made with Daphne. Daphne in the book has more agency than in the show. This is going to be something I will come back to later in the season again I’m sure. But just in this episode, Daphne is batted around by forces around her. She is riding high when the Queen and Lady Whistledown praise her, only to come crashing down because of her dickhead brother. The societal pressures are heightened to such an extreme level that Daphne ends up looking like a trapped scared rodent and Simon’s offer is her only way of escape. In the book, Simon needs her more than she needs him. Her mother is, of course, trying her best to get Daphne married but the pressure is no worse than it is for the three older brothers really. She’s on her third season but there aren’t copious snide remarks about her almost being a spinster or anything like that. She agrees to Simon’s proposal because it might help her situation, although she's dubious that it will really do anything for her and she thinks he is getting more ot of the deal than she is. But she still agrees. She isn’t forced into it and I think ultimately I resent her agency being taken from her. Especially given how society does her dirty later in the story. It's interesting because I think one might say that the show is trying to modernize the story, right? That's the inclusion of a diverse cast, later there is more gender and sexuality, well, even in this season there is like, gay people exist. You know there are like acknowledging these realities. but they somehow make the story less feminist, it's less feminist, she has less agency, and she has less agency as a woman than she would, the she did in the books. Which I think is strange, which is a strange choice. And I don't love it.

Now to the rant about the corset. I don't understand why must we always have an obligatory shot of a some woman being squeezed into a corset as a metaphor for female oppression when we are doing like historical, historical fiction or historical dramas or whatever. The fashion changes were rapidly at this time period but generally the silhouette of the time was not one where they are trying to get a tiny, tiny waist and voluptuous curves. The silhouette was columnar, with a high waist, which sits just below the breasts, empire waist, right, and then they have a flowing delicate skirts. There is no reason to put a corset on someone, when their dress isn't gonna even, like put a corset that has tight small waist when the dress isn't going to show the waist. Like they wouldn't have done that. They had like stays and like half corsets but they didn't have these things that cinched the waist so much. Portia says that her waist was the size of an orange at her coming out so, that's why they need to keep cinching, anyways. The Victorian times. again, were the ones where they, uh, they really cinched the shit out of those corsets, and that's because they finally put metal around openings, the eyelets, so you could really pull, hard, without tearing the fabric. Uh, and then they would use padding mimic a smaller waist, so it wasn't like, just manual constriction through corsets. you would, um, add padding to make other parts of yourself look book so your waist looked smaller. But anyways the point is I really hate this troupe and am begging, I'm so begging Hollywood to stop doing this. It’s so annoying. And it's just not historically accurate. It drives me actually insane.

I'll leave it there. I hope you enjoyed this first episode of Adapting Ink to Screen: The Bridgerton Series. I'm hoping to get out an episode every other week. I will have sources and a transcript in the show notes. You can follow me on Instatgram @SpeculativeScribbler or check out my website nadiaaminarabbani.com for links on everything I'm working on. On my website you'll find links to an upcoming short story anthology that I am a contributor to called The Speculative Detective Agency and it's being published by Diversion Books. It's out this October. I'll have links for you to pre-order if you'd like to check it out. I'm really excited, really excited for this.