Unlike “Recalled to Life,” the title of Episode 2 was not taken from Dickens’s novel. I wasn’t sure at first what it was supposed to signify. It could have referred to Lucie’s struggles to care for her confused father (Guillaume Gallienne) after she and Charles smuggle him out of Paris. Or it could have referred to Lucie’s rupture with Charles when he takes off for a fateful meeting with his orgy-prone uncle the Marquis (apparently uncredited, for some reason), leaving her and her father to make the crossing to England on their own.
In actual fact, it refers to a discovery Lucie makes after getting hot and heavy with Sydney in his office.
Look. Most modern readers and critics tend to agree that Lucie in the novel is too passive and perfect a heroine. But this is not the solution. This is so very far from being the solution. If a character needs a little livening up to hold the interest of today’s TV viewers, by all means, go ahead and liven her up. But don’t swap her out for a completely different character who acts not just unlike herself, but unlike pretty much any other woman of her station in her time period, in pretty much every imaginable way. And don’t insist you have to make the book’s famously asymmetrical relationships into a standard love triangle when the only possible result is that you get a heroine who — in direct contrast to what other characters say of her — doesn’t appear to know her own mind. It’s ridiculous, it’s annoying, and by the way, it’s going to confuse the daylights out of anyone who goes on to read the novel for the first time after seeing the show — and isn’t that the goal, or at least part of the goal? To help people to discover that great work for themselves?
Well, I mentioned last week that we live in a very weird era for adaptations, and I suppose all there is to do is grit our teeth until we get out of it. If you have some of the best source material ever written and you don’t trust it, this is what happens. And it’s a great pity.
(Image courtesy of MGM+.)
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