Susannah Harker

I feel the hairdressers did Jane dirty in the otherwise perfect 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice.

It’s no fault of the actress, Susannah Harker. If you look at other photos of her, she’s lovely. A bit of volume left around her face, and she is comeliness itself.

A choice was made to give her that one particular period-specific, tight coiled bun, but they needn’t have. There were other period styles which would have better suited Ms Harker’s physiognomy. There’s no description of Jane in the novel which describes her wearing that hairstyle. Yes, it was highly fashionable at the time, but it happens to not have suited the actress at all. Why twist up her fine blonde hair so tight in this particular hairstyle, which gave her a tiny silly little knot? There were other options!

That style was better carried off by women with masses of thick hair that added up to a more voluminous coil. Yes, there are portraits from the era which show other women with fine locks looking equally as unfortunate as Susanna Harker did in that hairstyle. But Jane was meant to be a beauty, and the choice was made to dress her hair in a style that didn’t flatter her at all. Why?

Having her naturally pretty and bouncy gold hair arranged so tight and tiny made Susannah Harker’s head look too small, her back too broad, and her jaw too strong. It took a particularly slender, diminutive woman with a rounder face to look well in that hairstyle. It’s always bothered me, I’ve always felt injured on Susannah’s behalf!

They did her dirty and that’s all there is to it. If they’d let her have a bit of tendril and softness, a less taught and twisty arrangement (as they did for Jennifer Ehle), it would have made all the difference to her looks. Even Kitty was allowed a bit of natural volume.

I’m NOT suggesting anything like the sexy, messy, wind-blown “I just rolled out of bed” hairstyles that were on display in the 2005 film. Those were practically Edwardian! Pre-Raphaelite, romantic. Totally anachronistic.

I hope no one gets me wrong, the 1995 version is THE masterpiece. The 2005 version can’t hold a candle to it. But the choices made by the hairdressers when it comes to Jane were SO wrong that it’s still stinging 30 years later. Lately my TikTok algorithm is serving up a lot of ‘95 P&P, and new viewers fill the comments with questions, genuinely confused over why Jane would ever have been considered pretty. 😔 Whoever that hairstylist was, she not only did Susannah Harker dirty with that scraped-back, sad little pile, she messed with the story itself!