Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2018

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Department

English

Degree Program

English, MA

Committee Chair

Hadley, Karen

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Lutz, Deborah

Committee Member

Lutz, Deborah

Committee Member

Hall, Ann

Author's Keywords

adaptation; reality; simulacrum; community; transmedia; social media

Abstract

This project applies Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (1981) to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Hank Green and Bernie Su’s The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012). By applying Baudrillard’s theory, one can see that Austen’s marriage plot is a shrewd critique of how social simulacra, simulations of reality, dictate how society is structured and interacts. These manipulative simulations are able to be transgressed by the novel’s protagonists, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Their ability to find an unsimulated real is appealing to contemporary audiences caught in the hyperreality of the internet age. This leads to a panicked production to try and simulate access to the real which helps to explain the Austenmania of the 1990s-2000s. This continual simulation helped lead to the transmedia adaptation, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, where Lizzie Bennet, a 24-year-old graduate student, simulates her life through vlogs and social media posts. This adaptation continues the novel’s simulation issues to the point of creating a hyperreal text that blurs the boundaries between fiction and the audience’s reality. The combination of Baudrillard’s theory with these texts illustrates the growing mediation of humanity’s reality and how Austen along with Green and Su recognize and warn against the potential damage of such simulated reality.

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