Jane Austen’s bad boys: model for ALFIE?
The Hartford Courant’s review of the film ALFIE, starring Jude Law in the title role, references Jane Austen’s novels, specifically the cads such as Willoughby and Wickham, and Daniel Cleaver of Helen Fielding’s BRIDGET JONES novels (who is, after all, based upon Wickham).
Women are clearly charmed by the cad. They are putty in his hands. They iron his shirts. They make him dinner. And they sometimes even cheat on their husbands and boyfriends for him.
But if the cad’s life looks enviable, for a time, he almost always has his comeuppance.
In Austen’s morally guided universe, cads are made to suffer the consequences of their sins. Both Willoughby and Wickham are married off to women they do not love. Helen Fielding’s Cleaver is, by the time the sequel rolls around, “getting help” for his chronic womanizing, even if the therapy is not having much effect.
