Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
"Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" is the sequel to Helen Fielding's popular novel and continues the story of the protagonist, Bridget Jones, one month and four days after her relationship with Mark Darcy begins. In this installment, Bridget's initial happiness is disrupted by a series of comedic misadventures and misunderstandings. Key characters, including the conniving Rebecca, challenge Bridget's love life and self-esteem, leading to a breakup with Mark fueled by jealousy and miscommunication.
As Bridget navigates the complexities of her personal and professional life, including a humorous interview with Colin Firth, she finds herself on a journey that leads her to Thailand. Here, she faces unexpected challenges, including a wrongful detention over drug charges tied to a romantic acquaintance. Through various trials, including a brief imprisonment, Bridget and Mark's relationship experiences ups and downs, ultimately leading them to confront their feelings for one another.
The novel combines humor with themes of love, friendship, and self-discovery, as Bridget seeks to reclaim her life and find her footing amidst chaos. The story culminates in a wedding where Bridget learns of Mark's true feelings, setting the stage for a resolution that emphasizes love's resilience.
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1999
Type of work: Novel
The Work
The sequel picks up exactly one month and four days after the first novel, the amount of time that Bridget and Mark Darcy have been boyfriend and girlfriend. Bridget’s boyfriend bliss, however, is decisively short-lived. From the outset of the novel, people and situations seem to conspire to keep the lovers apart. Their evenings together are ceaselessly interrupted by phone calls from Bridget’s friends; a case of mistaken identity makes it seem that Mark is a sexual pervert; and, worst of all, another woman has taken it into her head to woo Bridget’s man.
This woman, Rebecca, who was introduced briefly in the first novel as an acquaintance (not much liked) of Bridget and her friends, is a major player in the sequel. Thin and rich and many other things that Bridget is not, Rebecca is known among Bridget’s friends as a “jellyfish”; she is always sneaking up on a person unawares with her conversational stings. After inviting Mark and Bridget to a party at her parents’ cottage, Rebecca arranges an evening of discord for the happy couple. Having informed her teenage nephew that Bridget and Mark are splitting up, she makes space for the boy and Bridget to be alone, and then she and Mark “accidentally” walk in on the boy trying to kiss Bridget. The result of this setup is the eventual split between Bridget and Mark, the reunion of which is complicated by the often contradictory advice Bridget receives from her library of self-help books and the counsel she solicits from her friends. Soon after the party, Bridget sees Mark with Rebecca one night in town. Though he offers to explain the situation, Bridget—encouraged by the support of Shazzer and Jude, who are in her apartment when he calls—will not listen to him. Shortly after this conversation, Mark and Rebecca begin dating.
Single once more, Bridget has the time to devote herself completely to preparing for a freelance assignment her friend Tom has helped her land: an interview, in Rome, with Colin Firth, the actor who plays Mr. Darcy in the British Broadcasting Corporation version of Pride and Prejudice (as well as Mark Darcy in the film version of Fielding’s novels). Although the interview is supposed to focus on Firth’s role in an upcoming film, Fever Pitch, Bridget cannot help herself from constantly referring back to the character of Mr. Darcy. As she is not able to write an account of the interview in time for the deadline, the newspaper prints the complete transcript of the interview, to Bridget’s embarrassment and to great comic effect.
As in the first novel, world travel proves to be an impetus for Mark and Bridget to realize their love for one another, although Bridget journeys much farther away than her mother did in the previous book. Having recently dumped her library of self-help books into the dustbin and filled with hopes of detachment from her romantic struggles, Bridget joins Shazzer on a vacation to Thailand. On the plane, Shazzer meets a handsome stranger named Jed who strikes up a romance with her. For a week the two are almost inseparable, and Jed finds a hut next door to Shazzer’s.
Unfortunately for Shazzer, Jed, like Julio in the previous novel, has ulterior motives for romance. The day before they are to leave Thailand, Bridget and Shazzer find that their island hut has been broken into and their plane tickets and most of their money is gone. Bridget goes to the hotel nearby for assistance and finds Jed. He gives her money for the train to the Bangkok airport and a bag to carry the few things that were not stolen from their hut. Shazzer and Bridget go to the airport, where Bridget is detained by the Thai authorities. The bag Jed has given them is lined with narcotics, and Bridget is told she may be facing up to ten years in a Thai prison.
Immediately after hearing what happened, Mark flies to Asia, tracks down Jed, and extracts a confession for theft and planting drugs. Despite Mark’s efforts, Bridget still has to spend a little more than a week in a Thai prison. Upon her return to England, she receives a terrible scare: the “gift” in the mail of a live bullet inside a pen. While the police investigate who might be trying to kill her, Bridget keeps a low profile, staying first at Shazzer’s house and then, when he has been ruled out as a suspect, at Mark’s. Once there, both Mark and Bridget reveal their feelings for each other and begin sleeping together again. Shortly after this, the police discover the originator of the bullet-pen, a builder at Bridget’s apartment who has a record for stealing from the homes on which he works.
The novel concludes with the wedding of Jude and Vile Richard, during which Bridget overhears a conversation between Rebecca and Mark confirming that Mark indeed does not have any romantic feelings for Rebecca, but in fact loves and needs Bridget.
Bibliography
Marsh, Kelly A. “Contextualizing Bridget Jones.” College Literature 31, no. 1 (2004): 52-72.
Moseley, Merrit. “Helen Fielding.” In British Novelists Since 1960: Fourth Series. Vol. 231 in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale, 2001.
Murphy, Olivia. “Books, Bras, and Bridget Jones: Reading Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice.” Sydney Studies in English 31 (2005): 21-38.
Van Slooten, Jessica Lyn. “A Truth Universally (Un)Acknowledged: Ally McBeal, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and the Conflict Between Romantic Love and Feminism.” In Searching the Soul of Ally McBeal: Critical Essays. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006.
Whelehan, Imelda. Bridget Jones’s Diary: A Reader’s Guide. London: Continuum International, 2002.