Book 641: Unmarriageable – Soniah Kamal

Now this is how you do a modernization of a Jane Austen novel! I totally get why this one has received so much hype recently. I found it on a list of adaptations to look out for at some point last year and I finally got to read it after months on the library wait list.

Unlike what I wrote way back in 2011 about Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and the adaptations needing to be moved away from the main story, Unmarriageable stays very very close to the original (with a few slight modifications). Where else could a modern day almost exact retelling of Pride and Prejudice than a parallel situations when it comes to women and marriage?

Unmarriageable is set in Pakistan in the early 2000s (might actually be 2000) and the expectations of who a woman will marry and how they will marry them are pretty rigid, but you know right from the beginning that this is going to be a different story. I LOVED that this retelling kicks off with Alys (Alysba Binat/Elizabeth Bennet) asking the young women in her literature class to re-write the iconic opening line.

I loved the characters and the vibrancy of the setting. I felt that Kamal did a much better job of place setting than Ibi Zoboi’s Pride. I’m not 100% sure why this is the case, but it might’ve been because it was in an entirely different setting. I was going to say non-English setting, but I found out that English is one of two official languages of Pakistan (along with hundreds of others). I guess it just felt less forced because of the society it was in.

I thought Kamal did a great job dropping pop culture and literature in to the book and was so happy to see Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis mentioned (my responses here and here). There were so many books I’d never heard of that it took serious restraint not to list them all out to look into later. She also took Austen’s penchant for social criticism and pushing the boundaries to a perfect place in this work with smoking women, mentions of atheism and non-religiosity, and even a nod to gay characters.

“‘Paris, Aunty, Paris,’ Rum said. ‘Paris is also called Gay Paree, because it’s fun time all the time and not because of any gay thing, in case you were wondering. Not that there’s anything wrong with anything gay. It’s becoming very fashionable these days to have at least one gay friend, and we hope to make one once we get there.’ (Loc. 913)

I have to think Austen would approve, or at least laugh about it.

And then really, to top it all off, where this work really kind of blew my mind and I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing was it being set in a world with Jane Austen’s work being discussed at the same time that the almost exact mirror actions were happening:

“‘I’m the omniscient narrator and observer in Austen’s novels.’ ‘I think,’ Sherry said, smiling mischievously, ‘you’re that character who says no but ends up falling into a yes despite herself: You are Elizabeth Bennet.’ ‘Elizabeth Bennet,’ Alys said, ‘had to marry Fitzwilliam Darcy, and he her, because Jane Austen, their creator-god, orchestrated it so. And there would be no Charlotte Lucas today because marrying for financial security is no longer the only choice she’d have. Thankfully we don’t live in a novel, and in real life if I met someone as stuck-up as Mr. Darcy, I’d tell him to pack his bags, because there would be nothing that could endear me to such a snob, least of all the size of his estate. My views would frighten away a man like Mr. Darcy, who ultimately wants a feisty wife but also one who knows her place—'” (Loc. 2,300)

I mean is it a good thing or a bad thing? I’m honestly not sure. Is it an oh their names our different so it’s not the same, or is it willful ignorance or is it just creative license? It both impressed me and boggled me. When I was “writing” my “novel”, I struggle with this. Do you acknowledge the existence of the source material or does your work live in a world where the OG doesn’t exist? Kamal did it really well by acknowledging the existence and others have done it really well without connecting the two.

All of this being said it wasn’t all perfect, I think this could’ve had tighter editing. There were a few occasions that I seriously had to debate going back chapters to verify something, but ultimately it wasn’t worth the effort. The one thing that really stood out to me was that Kamal names one of the Darsee (Valentine Darsee/Fitzwilliam Darcy’s) friends/acquaintances Harris Bigg-Wither and then drops the Harris Bigg-Wither connection to Austen at the very end of the novel with no connecting the dots. Like it would’ve been better if one or the other hadn’t happened. This again happened with the religiosity of various families, referring to prayer beads as rosaries and my not knowing/remembering who was Christian/Muslim/none-of-the-above.

Recommendation: Read it. It’s one of the better adaptations I’ve read and I thoroughly enjoyed the new setting and new norms. Kamal did a wonderful job of updating the story but staying true to the concept and ideas of the original.

Opening Line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a girl can go from pauper to princess or princess to pauper in the mere seconds it takes for her to accept a proposal.”

Closing Line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” (Not whited out because it’s one of the most famous opening lines in English literature.)

Additional Quotes from Unmiarriageable
“‘Believe me, Rose-Nama,’ Alys said serenely, ‘life certainly does not end just because you choose to stay—’ ‘Unmarried?’ Rose-Nama made a face as she uttered the word. ‘Single,’ Alys said. ‘There is a vast difference between remaining unmarried and choosing to stay single. Jane Austen is a leading example. She didn’t get married, but her paper children—six wonderful novels—keep her alive centuries later.’ (Loc. 205)

“In the gymkhana library, Alys would choose a book from the beveled-glass-fronted bookcase and curl up in the chintz sofas. Over the years, the dim chinoiserie lamps had been replaced with overhead lighting, all the better to read Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Austen, the Brontës, Dickens, George Eliot, Mary Shelley, Thackeray, Hardy, Maugham, Elizabeth Gaskell, Tolstoy, Orwell, Bertrand Russell, Wilde, Woolf, Wodehouse, Shakespeare, more Shakespeare, even more Shakespeare.” (Loc. 353)

“It was all this nonsense about falling in love that was making catching a husband unseemly. Of course one must fall in love, but let it initially be the man who falls and then, once his ring is on your finger, you too may allow yourself to fall in love—though within reason, Mrs. Binat always cautioned, for the best marriages were ones where the husband loved the wife more.” (Loc. 867)

“Anyway, this is Pakistan. You’ve got very religious, religious, not so religious, and nonreligious, though no one will admit the last out loud, since atheism is a crime punishable by death.” (Loc. 1,020)

“‘You can,’ Alys suggested, ‘ask if friendships in Austen are more complex between friends or sisters. Or explore who jumps class in Austen and whose class cannot be forgiven, overlooked, or worked around. Or compare colonizer Babington Macaulay and Kipling’s “England’s Jane” with a “World’s Jane,” a “Pakistani Jane,” a “Post-Colonial Jane,” Edward Said’s Jane. What might Jane make of all these Janes? Discuss empire writing back, weaving its own stories.'” (Loc. 1,322)

“I’ll never be lonely,’—Alys gave a satisfied sigh—”because I’ll always have books.” (Loc. 1,540)

“For the truth was that behind every successful Pakistani girl who fulfilled a dream stood a father who allowed her to soar instead of clipping her wings, throwing her into a cage, and passing the keys from himself to brother, husband, son, grandson, and so on. Alys felt a headache coming on.” (Loc. 1,561)

“‘I’m not perfect,’ Darsee said to Alys. ‘Far from. My biggest flaw in this day and age is that I don’t suffer fools gladly. I hate sycophancy, nepotism, cronyism. I don’t care to be diplomatic.'” (Loc. 1,812)

“Erasing history is not the answer, so how does a country put the lasting effects of empire in proper context? Not deny it, but not unnecessarily celebrate it.” (Loc. 1,929)

“‘We are,’ Alys said, ‘a society teeming with Austen’s cruel Mrs. Norrises, snobby looks-obsessed Sir Walters, and conniving John Thorpes and Lady Susans.’ (Loc. 3,056)

“Valentine was instrumental in my getting a visa to come here as well as helping me locate my mother’s childhood house. I am so grateful to him. My boyfriend couldn’t make it. He’s a photographer. He would have loved it here. Hold on! I know where I’ve heard of Dilipabad. I believe Darsee was there recently, for a wedding.” (Loc. 3,581)

“Poor little rich boy Valentine Darsee. Such a hard life. Valued for what he has to offer rather than who he is. Welcome to a woman’s world, where we are valued for tits, ass, womb, sometimes earning capacity, but above all else being servile brainless twits. Have you any idea what it feels like to want to be liked for your brains and instead be coveted for your body?” (Loc. 3,668)

“And because she enjoyed her status as first daughter, Alys had chosen to overlook her father’s ridiculing her mother. It was not that her father was wrong, but he should not have turned Pinkie Binat into a joke between them. Should not the husband-and-wife bond be more sacrosanct than that between a parent and child?” (Loc. 3,979)

“It was a truth universally acknowledged, Alys suddenly thought with a smile, that people enter our lives in order to recommend reads.” (Loc. 4,016)

“A woman is nothing and no one without her virtue. Her virtue is the jewelry of her soul. But this is forgotten by modern women, who march around in their patloons under the impression that wearing trousers means they are now men. A woman is a woman no matter what she wears and must behave like a lady.” (Loc. 4,395)

“You can make faces all you want, but I promise you, one day Wick and I are going to be rich-and-famous celebrities and socialites who appear in Social Lights all the time, and then you’ll regret not believing in us.” (Loc. 4,520)

“That day, a lifetime of rage was unleashed at Lady, her mother, people who compared her to globular fruit, people who used ‘health’ as an excuse to mock her; her anger poured out of her and onto paper. She’d sent her words to a national newspaper: She was not just fat; she was fat and intelligent, fat and funny, fat and kind, fat and fun, fat and beautiful, fat and a good friend, fat and creative, fat plus every lovely attribute in the world. She was fat and happy and did not care about being thin—imagine that.” (Loc. 4,930)

“In reading English literature through a Pakistani lens, it seemed to me that all cultures were concerned with the same eternal questions and that people were more similar to one another than they were different.” (Afterward, Loc. 5,003)

“To the One who should have stayed but even went Unnamed, and to Khyber, and all lost to miscarriages—not a day goes by when your mother doesn’t think about you: You are in this book, my babies, because you live in me.” (Afterward, Loc. 5,049)