When Netflix released Bridgerton in late 2020, success was predictable. Created by the same producer of Grey’sAnatomy, How to get away from murder and other television hits, the series was able to understand with calculated precision the tastes of its audience. Lush dressing rooms, an irresistibly attractive cast and generous shares of romance -Prohibited, loving, passionate and all sorts of things- give life to a period fiction that caught both Jane Austen’s fans and those who never heard of her. Yes, success was inevitable. But what few expected — including Julia Quinn, The writer who created the story- was the scale of this triumph.
Turned just a few months after its premiere into the platform’s most-watched series, the Bridgertons ’adventures now have a taste for record and cultural phenomenon. Fans of Daphne and Simon discovered that behind the boom is a literary saga that awaits them. These are nine books that Julia Quinn (graduate in Art History) has been publishing since 2000, in which she explores the love affairs of eight brothers of the English nobility of the early nineteenth century.
In speaking, Quinn (a 51-year-old American) does so with a warmth more typical of a friend obsessed with reading than of a best-selling writer. He laughs fluently, apologizes when he takes a sip of coffee, and displays without a bit of arrogance an encyclopedic knowledge of the romantic novel genre.
Julia Quinn in the Bridgerton set: here with Simon, the Duke of Hastings (the British actor King-Jean Page).
On social media, her photos next to the production cast show that she is one more fanatic, His eyes as amazed as those of his followers. Its simple presence does not betray it, but in it there are plans and ideas that are not only worth millions: they give new life to a genre that is still loaded with sexist and literary stigmas.
One gets more credit if he avoids the happy ending: they teach us that tragedy is more important. How many of the award-winning films are comedy?
Julia Quinn, writer
-How did your relationship with literature begin?
-Since I was little I was a great reader: it was the girl who stayed awake with a flashlight under the sheets at night next to a book. And when I walked back from school, I always stopped at the library. I became a writer because I love to read – as simple as that. Not all great readers become writers, but every writer is a great reader.
-At what point did you discover that writing would be your vocation?
-I sold my first two books to a publisher the same month I was accepted into the medical degree. It was a very crazy thing. In the end, I left college because I was so excited about writing that if I had continued with my studies I would not have given myself the time. First I postponed them for a year, then there were two … I panicked and had the crisis of my twenties: my friends were about to graduate and I felt adrift, which is funny because I was getting that my books were published. Eventually, I became convinced that it would be best to write full-time, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
-At what point was the idea of the Bridgerton saga born?
-The first book, The Duke and I, Was published in 2000. I don’t remember how the idea came about, but I do remember how Lady Whistledown’s character was born. When you write a book, sometimes you have context data that you need in the story but that turns out to be heavy if you drop them all at once. Then it occurred to me to invent a character: a gossip columnist whose role was to give information so that I would not have to do it. I had a lot of fun writing his passages, although it brought challenges: I got an 1813 calendar with the real Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays on which the gossip would come out and calculated when each event happened in the books to match the columns of opinion. Later the idea arose to play the mystery and that the other personages did not know who is the writer, which became one of the most popular aspects of the saga. It was a very happy accident.
Bridgerton: The sex scenes between Daphne and Simon generated controversy.
-In the book, all the scenes revolve around the protagonists, Simon and Daphne, while the show includes new characters and subplots. How did you see this change?
-It was a great idea because there are things that work very well in books but not on television, and vice versa. In my novels there are secondary characters to whom I give my own life, but you never get into your head or have scenes outside of the protagonists. But television requires a wider range of stories. What the writers did was take characters who then become more important in the saga and give from the beginning, planting seeds for later conflicts. They read all the books and this allows them to think in perspective. A word-for-word adaptation would not have worked as well.
First book in the Bridgerton saga (Uranus Publishing), now reissued with the characters in the series on the cover.
-Something that has stood out from your work is that you played with elements of period novels, such as the role of the woman. Did you feel that certain commonplaces needed to be “updated”?
-The genre has always evolved. When they point out to me that my heroines are feminists, my answer is that if you read other books in the genre you will find many other characters who are also feminists, even if that word didn’t exist at the time. What I’m looking to do is stay historically realistic: my characters are feminists in terms of what society admitted to them and their life experience allows them to imagine. They are revolutionary because they start asking questions.
-How does this work?
-In the Netflix series, Eloise wonders what it would be like to go to college. I don’t think she would think of going to Oxford and asking to be admitted; it is something very far from its context. But the fact that he questions his reality is a beginning: recognizing when something is not right is revolutionary. Giving the characters these feminist sensibilities is historically correct. When we look back, there are certain women we call pioneers. But we must also celebrate those who allowed this empowerment: before these extraordinary feminists tore down the walls, there were others who removed the bricks to make it easier to throw. That’s how I think my women.
-The period romances seem to generate a very special attraction in the middle of the 21st century. Because?
-The historical time I choose for my novels, set in the early 19th century, is one of the most popular for the romantic novel. Partly because we grew up reading Jane Austen, or watching adaptations of her work. But they are also located at a fair point that is far enough away to feel inside a fairy tale, but not too much so that the actions of the characters are incomprehensible to us or difficult to empathize with.
If someone says, “There were no dukes with Simon’s skin color,” I would reply that there probably weren’t that many attractive single men without syphilis either.
Julia Quinn, writer
-What these novels are often resolved with a “happy forever” makes them the target of criticism. How do you stand in front of them?
-The happy ending is the definition of a romance novel. If you don’t have it, it’s not. It may be about love, or having certain elements of romance, but it’s something different. What happens is that one receives more credit if he avoids the happy ending: they teach us that tragedy is more important. How many of the award-winning films are comedy? It’s a shame: the darkness is great, but it’s not the only thing there is. then there is a certain contempt for the happy ending, but that with romance deepens.
-Because?
-Because it is mainly written and read by women. It’s something we do as a society: we despise the things we consider “feminine”. And it’s thought that way even though a lot of people read these books and they’re financially very profitable. The sale of these novels allows publishers to publish poetry: they subsidize it with romance. I hope that Bridgerton’s success as a series will help change these preconceptions. A lot of people saw the show without knowing that they would see a romance novel and maybe now look for something more like that.
-The series has changed the characteristics of some characters in order to be more inclusive. For example, black-skinned nobles in the nineteenth-century British aristocracy. How did you see this?
-I think it’s great and i feel grateful. The show’s creative team spread my world in a way I couldn’t have done. I am just one person and my diversity is limited to myself, while the writers of the series form a diverse group in gender, sexual orientation, race, and religion. Everyone was able to bring their own imagination into the narrative universe and love that they did.
Julia Quinn, happy in the Bridgerton set.
-Did you worry about being questioned for being historically incorrect?
-When we talk about romance, the only thing that matters is the feelings. The show did a great job bringing this to the screen in a way that more people can now identify as part of that experience. If someone says, “There were no dukes with Simon’s skin color,” I would reply that there probably weren’t that many attractive single men without syphilis either. If you’re already stuck in the land of fantasy, why not let more people feel deserving of your happy ending? My concern in writing is feeling and second, or third, being historically correct.
-There is a scene that has caused a stir, in which Daphne forces the educator to have sex. Did you expect the show’s success to lead to a consensus debate?
-It’s not a simple scene. Some suggested I had to pull it off, but these characters aren’t perfect and I think it’s too important for the story. It is fascinating to analyze the reaction the scene has aroused in time; it is a window into the evolution of our society. But the important thing is to see it in the context in which the characters live because it is about power and how it is distributed. Daphne was taught by society that her job is to get married and have babies, and her husband denies her that, coupled with the fact that he has total dominance and could do whatever he wants with her. Many are horrified at asking what would happen if the genres were changed, but it’s not that simple because one of them has all the power.
