Sex Comes to Pemberley - “Pride and Prejudice” Re-visited

Sex Comes to Pemberley moves from innocence to experience. Kitty’s girlish fantasies about her dream-husband, Wickham, are shattered by a letter from Lydia, which gives a vivid account of her seduction in a seedy London inn. Contrary Mary cynically observes how the Bennet’s family life is dominated by the Georgian marriage market and then reveals how she came to lose her own virginity before deciding to devote herself to the life of a writer. After the novella’s central chapter in which love and lust meet harmoniously in the shady grounds of Pemberley, Jane’s private, sometimes coded, journal reveals unexpected truths about her own sexual behavior and the gay scene in Regency London. Finally, in a half-asleep monologue, Mrs Bennet reflects on the love lives of her daughters intermingled with memories and fantasies centering on the present, past and future of her own sex life.