Pet peeve

About twenty-five minutes into Audible’s new audio adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Sir William Lucas summons Elizabeth Bennet over for a chat. “Sir Lucas! Good evening,” she greets him.

That sound you hear is the irritated grinding of my teeth.

Mostly, I loved this adaptation. Sure, I could have done without the pop theme song and the occasional dialogic anachronism (“Bingley likes Jane a lot,” Charlotte Lucas says, sounding more like a twenty-first-century middle schooler than a mature woman of 1813).

But the voice acting is excellent and, with four and a half hours to play with, Lulu Raczka’s well-paced script manages to hit all Jane Austen’s plot points and include many of her best zingers. Despite Audible’s promise/threat that its new version was "Revolutionizing Jane Austen’s Most Beloved Novel," the adaptation is actually super-faithful in all the ways that count.

So what’s up with that “Sir Lucas” howler?

As anyone who has paid even a smidgen of attention knows, “Sir Lucas” is not the way that any English person addresses a knight (such as Sir William Lucas) or even a baronet (such as Sir Walter Elliot). Both these gentlemen are addressed using their first names: They are properly “Sir William” and "Sir Walter.” It is only in historical romances written by Americans that the title “Sir” is treated as if it were a fancy way of saying “Mr.” and therefore can be used interchangeably with that more plebeian mode of address.

You don’t have to understand every nuance of the English system of aristocratic titles to get this point.* All you have to do is read a few nineteenth-century English novels. Like, for example, Pride and Prejudice, wherein Charlotte Lucas’s father is referred to as “Sir William” roughly a half-dozen times and as “Sir Lucas” exactly never.

I’m a devoted reader of Regency romance, and this particular mistake is one of my pet peeves. Writers who make this error seem to take delight in vexing me. They have no compassion on my poor nerves.

But perhaps I’m being unfair in blaming this irritation on my fellow Americans. After all, the new Audible P&P is chockful of Brits. In the scene referenced above, Elizabeth Bennet is played by Marisa Abela--a Brit. Mr. Darcy is played by Harris Dickinson—a Brit. Sir William (see what I did there?) is played by Charles Armstrong—a Brit. They are speaking lines written by Raczka (Brit) and taking direction from Dionne Edwards (Brit). Why didn’t any of these British people notice the “Sir Lucas” problem?

No idea. Perhaps they couldn’t hear over the grinding of my teeth.

* Although if you want to understand every nuance of the English system of aristocratic titles, you could do worse than read this guide by K.J. Charles, one of my favorite authors of historical romance.