When people ask me about my favorite novel, I only ever have one answer. In some ways I wish it were Middlemarch or Rebecca or something, because those books are very long, and as a result of this, people think you are intelligent if you have managed to get through them with anything coherent to say.
But unfortunately for me, George Eliot doesn’t at any point go off on one about Dorothea’s potentially problematic drinking, nor does Daphne du Maurier’s titular heroine moon a TV camera by inelegantly sliding down a fire station pole. And seeing as both are essential to my enjoyment of any piece of literature, my heart truly could only ever belong to one book: Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding.
Initially adapted from Fielding’s column in The Independent—the fictional diary entries of a single London everywoman (though of course Bridget, being white and monied, sees the world through a very specific lens)—the novel was first published in 1996. And despite the specificity of Bridget’s perspective, Fielding’s descriptions of her adventures in professional incompetence and practical underwear proved to be so infectious as to be zeitgeist-capturing. For almost three decades now, the name “Bridget Jones” has been synonymous with the experiences of single women in their 30s.
I am 29, meaning that Bridget Jones as an archetype of singleness has been around for nearly my whole life (I first read the novel as a teenager). While Fielding has updated the character a couple of times in sequels and one-off columns, Bridget’s original iteration is the one that lingers. Considering, then, that both dating and circumstances for single people in general have changed a lot since the mid-1990s, it seems worth checking in. Is this supposed bible of singleness still applicable now? Or is the world just too different?
Dating apps don’t define how all couples meet in 2023, but they do probably comprise the biggest change in dating culture since Bridget Jones’s Diary was published back in 1996. So while fate does still intervene for many these days, we can’t all expect to encounter sexy and virtuous human rights lawyers (who end up being played by a young, Bambi-eyed Colin Firth) at Boxing Day turkey curry buffets. As such, when our everyday social circles aren’t throwing up the goods, digital means represent other ways into dating.
The apps are a strange phenomenon, because while for some they provide welcome alternatives to wallowing in heartbreak or boredom, for others their transactional nature can simply be a bit depressing. I know people who’ve never used dating apps because they hate the idea, as well as others who are in long-term relationships because of a couple of Sliding Doors-moment Hinge likes. Whatever your opinion, we can all agree that, while they provide a more convenient means of meeting someone, the reality of that is nearly always just as awkward as a Christmas sweater-clad IRL meet up.
Online flirtation isn’t totally missing from Bridget’s world. In one of the book’s funniest and most enduring sequences, she becomes romantically embroiled with her boss Daniel Cleaver in an exchange that begins when he IMs her: “Message Jones: You appear to have forgotten your skirt. As I think is made perfectly clear in your contract of employment, staff are expected to be fully dressed at all times. Cleave.”
Fairly obviously, a scenario like this is probably a bit less likely to unfold these days just because of society’s evolved understanding about power dynamics at work. This said, most of us are, realistically, probably no stranger to a workplace crush (excellent, if nothing else, for passing the time throughout the day), or to secretly messaging someone you fancy from outside of work for hours while you’re at the office, frantically flicking between desktop WhatsApp and a suspiciously sparse Google Doc whenever someone walks past. Whether now or in the mid ’90s, then, dating has always been a very welcome distraction from anything so tedious as one’s job.
Probably the thing that seems most egregious about Bridget Jones’s actual circumstances to many Londoners now—let alone single ones—is that she manages to live alone on a publishing PR salary (the 2001 Bridget Jones’s Diary film, even more hilariously, places her flat right next to Borough Market). Where Bridget may have existed in a sort of Blairite fantasy London, single people in the capital today often rent in groups into their 30s due to crises of both the housing and cost of living variety. And while living with mates can be fun, I don’t know many single people who wouldn’t grab Bridget’s sweet, sweet solo living deal with a very clammy pair of hands. There’s something truly bleak about cooking a grown-up date night dinner with four of your mates half-watching from the sofa.
One of the weirdest things about being single in your late 20s and early 30s is that half your mates still want to stay out all night every weekend, and the other half are literal parents. The ones with kids are, I’m sorry to say, largely insufferable about it, mostly because as nice as children are, having them seems to convince you of the notion that you are the only person who has ever done so. One kids’ party attended by Bridget sums up the very specific relief of being able to take your leave whenever you want: “Tea party was nightmare scenario: me plus a roomful of power mothers, one of whom had a four-week-old baby… I hadn’t been there 10 minutes before there were three turds on the carpet,” she observes. “Eventually made my excuses and drove home, congratulating myself on being single.”
Instead of a constant slew of group chat texts dissecting dates, Bridget gets calls from her friend Jude, talking in the bathroom at work from her “portable phone” about her boyfriend (Bridget calls him “Vile Richard”), who has “chucked her for asking him if he wanted to come on holiday with her.”
This is the type of rubbish break-up excuse you might still feasibly hear in 2023, and our friends who are also in the dating trenches remain our biggest support systems during sadness or disappointment, even if we are all just obsessed with our own issues (“Had to go through Jude’s problems with Vile Richard first as clearly they are more serious since they have been going out for 18 months rather than just shagged once,” Bridget muses at one point), but our go-to outlet for sharing is the group chat, rather than emergency calls or meetings in Café Rouge. It makes for a far more convenient way to broadcast our problems. (I should also mention that, blessedly, women’s friend groups’ insistence on giving every man someone dates a nickname—a selection from one of my group chats includes Bagel Man, The Boxer, Vape Guy, and so on—has not waned.)
There are, after all, some things that never change.