Pride and Prejudice as a YA novel

Consider Pride and Prejudice as a YA novel. Not only the archetypal romance, but the mother of Young Adult fiction, too. All the Young Adult tropes are right there, from coming of age to self discovery and moral choices.

The common tropes of YA fiction

At its core, YA fiction tells coming-of-age stories, told from the point of view of a young protagonist.

Lacking self confidence or in search of a grown-up identity, YA is about self-discovery, finding your place, resisting social pressure or the demand to fit in to social conventions. Often the protagonist struggles to build relationships. They are weighed down by trauma or loss, and struggle with difficult choices.

Usually they have an absent or dysfunctional family. This ties into the general theme that all adults are useless.

Add to this their outsider status and origins as a mundane or lower class citizen and you have the standard YA framework. Arguably, it isn’t YA unless there’s also a love triangle.

Standard Romance genre tropes also apply. There will be enemies to lovers in forced proximity, probably a forbidden love across class or social barriers.

Your typical YA heroine is often a damsel in need of rescue, even though she’s destined to be a badass action heroine.

As Austen wrote it

Pride and Prejudice is a boilerplate romance that stands after two hundred years. But it also ticks the YA boxes.

Elizabeth Bennett gives her age as twenty, which is the upper end of YA. Although she seems confident and sparky, she goes through a full character arc from youthful prejudice to adult wisdom.

She challenges social norms, outrages her ‘elders and betters’ and barely conforms. She had only one peer-level friend in Charlotte Lucas.

As for parenting, we see very little of Mr Bennett, while Mrs Bennett is sooo embarrassing that Lizzie tries to minimize contact.

The Bennett girls exist in apprehension of Mr Bennett’s death with the threat of poverty thanks to the Longbourne Covenant. Lizzie rejects the proposal from legitimate heir Mr Collins when family and society expect her to make the sacrifice. That’s after she rejects Darcy. Difficult decisions made for mostly selfish reasons…

The YA tropes creep in

But it seems Lizzie is the Chosen One, attracting proposals from eligible bachelors; first the chilly, older, Billionaire-rich Darcy, then Mr Collins. And for a while, uniformed cutey Mr Wickham completes the (fake) YA love-triangle with Darcy. The enemies-to-lovers trope plays out in the forced proximity of Regency drawing rooms and country estates.

Lizzie also has typical YA sibling issues, trying to steer Jane’s unlikely romance with Bingley and keep Lydia out of trouble.
With Wickham’s betrayal, Lizzie is reduced to helpless damsel in distress, while Lydia’s elopement is fixed by white-knight Darcy.

But isn’t the YA heroine supposed to be a badass action heroine? By the end, the respectable but no aristocrat Lizzie defies Lady Catherine. It’s not exactly Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but she sees off the entitled Lady Catherine.

Not convinced?

Run through the checklist and you see why Pride and Prejudice has so many re-writes and adaptations; more than six pages of them listed on Goodreads.

They run from Bollywood inspired borrowings (think Bride and Prejudice) to the most YA of them all, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. As if Napoleonic England isn’t dysfunctional and dystopian enough; a value system as oppressive and nonsensical as anything in contemporary YA.

And why the close scrutiny? Because I’m part way through a YA project of my own.