The hilarious social ineptitudes and telegraphic style of Bridget Jones' Diary had already provided a rich vein of comedy for E.M. Delafield in the late 1930s.
Bridget Jones’s Diary was hailed on its release as a defining novel about being a "singleton" in the modern world – balancing career with boyfriends; a mother with a sense of self-worth; the needs of fashion with those of getting to work on time after a heavy night. The Times Literary Supplement called it “true to the marrow” and the Sunday Express declared “a perfect zeitgeist of single female woes.” This was chick lit with a new respectability. For many readers, however, it was Helen Fielding’s style as much as the content which made Bridget Jones’s Diary compulsively readable, and phrases like “v v good” and “emotional ****wittage” appeared in general conversation.
Many of the stylistic traits in Bridget Jones’s Diary can also be found in the much earlier Diary of a Provinicial Lady by E.M. Delafield. Set in a small village in Derbyshire between the two World Wars, the Diary of a Provincial Lady is an equally witty record of the life of a very different kind of English woman. Instead of the urban sophistication of Bridget Jones, the Provincial Lady is continually busy around the house, looking after her children and helping with the village fete or Women’s Institute meetings. She does share Bridget Jones’ fears over her appearance, however, and the two writers’ approach is strikingly similar. For example:
Tuesday January 3rd
9. am. Ugh. Cannot face thought of going to work. Only thing which makes it tolerable is thought of seeing Daniel again, but even that is inadvisable since am fat, have spot on chin, and desire only to sit on cushion eating chocolate and watching Christmas specials.
January 22nd. – Robert startles me at breakfast by asking if my cold – which he has hitherto ignored – is better. I reply that it has gone. Then why, he asks, do I look like that? Refrain from asking like what, as I know only too well. Feel that life is wholly unendurable, and decide madly to get a new hat.
Delafield and Fielding both tend to abbreviate their sentences and miss out words, which gives almost any sentence an inexplicably hilarious ring:
Rose takes me to Literary Club Dinner. I wear my Blue. Am much struck by various young men who have defiantly put on flannel shirts and no ties, and brushed their hair up on end.
Cannot believe it. Am stood up. Entire waste of whole day’s bloody effort and hydro-electric body-generated power.”)
Their heroines also share a secret fear of being intellectually unworthy, and of embarrassing themselves at parties. In their different eras, the two books paint extremely similar portraits of women trying to manage the demands of their society, with consequences that are equally entertaining for the reader in either era.
