Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy has fueled a thousand middle-aged female fantasies. And apparently he’s not done yet. Now, publishers hoping to ride the Fifty Shades of Grey craze for so-called “mommy porn” are sexing up Pride and Prejudice, along with other great works of English literature.
Thanks to publisher Total-E-Bound, you don’t have to imagine what a make-out session with Mr. Darcy would be like — their new version of the novel spells it out for you, word by awful word: “The grass beneath their bodies combined with the delicious scent of Darcy. Hot, spicy and all man.”
This, compared with how Elizabeth and Darcy’s reconciliation played out in the original Austen: “[Darcy] continued the conversation till they reached the house. In the hall they parted.”
Pride and Prejudice isn’t the only novel to be bastardized in the publisher’s ‘Clandestine Classics’ collection, which is available electronically. Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories (no more wondering about Holmes’ relationship with Watson!) and Jules Verne’s 200,000 Leagues Under the Sea also get the raunchy treatment. (Please tell us there a sex scene involving the giant squid.)
Nor have the Brontë sisters escaped an NC-17 rating. In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Catherine Earnshaw has a soulful romance bondage sessions with brooding hero Heathcliff, while in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the heroine has “explosive sex with Mr. Rochester.” (In the original, she simply marries him.)
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You may be asking, Is this even allowed? Actually, yes. With the copyright on the original titles expired, these classics are now in the public domain — meaning publishers can more or less do what they like with them, including forcing the deceased authors to share authorship credit with Total-E-Bound’s ghostwriters.
“We recognize it’s a bold move that may have a polarizing effect on readers but we’re keeping the works as close to the original classics as possible,” Total-E-Bound founder Claire Siemaszkiewicz told the Daily Mail. “It’s not our intention to rewrite or distort them but to create a whole new experience, enhancing the novels by adding deeper relationships, character development, and the ‘missing’ scenes for readers to enjoy.”
Did those relationships need to get deeper? Well reader, judge for thyself. Here are side-by-side excerpts from the ‘new’Jane Eyre:
Original:
“‘Jane, be still a few moments: you are over-excited: I will be still too.’ Mr. Rochester sat quiet, looking at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke; he at last said — ‘Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another.'”
New Version:
“‘Jane, be still a few moments, you are over-excited. I will be still too.’ My master captured my wrists and secured them behind my back, imprisoning me and preventing my movements… He exerted the force of his will as effortlessly as he schooled my person, relentlessly and with an inexorable force, he commanded me against his body… No matter how I controlled my mind, my very flesh was weak.”