I WILL NOT
[...]
Sulk about having no boyfriend, but develop inner poise and authority and sense of self as woman of substance, complete without boyfriend, as best way to obtain boyfriend.
Bridget Jones's Diary opens with Bridget writing a list of New Year's resolutions in the form of declarations of things she will and will not do. In this passage, Bridget sets an intention to get a boyfriend instead of being upset about not having one. She believes that developing "inner poise" as a single woman is the best way for her to attract a boyfriend. Paradoxically, she thinks that appearing self-possessed and complete within herself will make her more appealing to a partner, and then she will not have to be alone.
Thinking moonily about Daniel Cleaver, I ventured that not all men are like Richard. At which point Sharon started on a long illustrative list of emotional fuckwittage in progress amongst our friends: one whose boyfriend of thirteen years refuses even to discuss living together; another who went out with a man four times who then chucked her because it was getting too serious; another who was pursued by a bloke for three months with impassioned proposals of marriage, only to find him ducking out three weeks after she succumbed and repeating the whole process with her best friend.
Early in the book, Bridget goes out with a few of her closest friends and discusses Jude's ongoing issues with Vile Richard, her emotionally insensitive boyfriend. In this passage, Bridget hopes that Daniel, her crush, will turn out to be different than most despicable men, which prompts her friends to list absurd instances of "emotional fuckwittage" that men in their social sphere have committed recently. The passage is significant because it speaks to how Bridget's straight female friends, who are all in their thirties, face pressure from parents and society to settle down and procreate while simultaneously putting up with their male counterparts' emotional immaturity and commitment issues.
Now I feel empty and bewildered—as if a rug has been pulled from under my feet. Eighteen years—wasted. Eighteen years of calorie- and fat-unit-based arithmetic. Eighteen years of buying long shirts and sweaters and leaving the room backwards in intimate situations to hide my bottom. Millions of cheesecakes and tiramisus, tens of millions of Emmenthal slices left uneaten. Eighteen years of struggle, sacrifice and endeavor—for what? Eighteen years and the result is 'tired and flat.'
Midway through the book, Bridget is delighted to discover she has lost seven pounds, now weighing 8st 7 (119 lbs). However, she goes to a social event with her closest friends and is disappointed to find that they do not celebrate her achievement; in fact, they tell her she looks tired. Later, Bridget calls Tom, who admits he thought she looked better when she was seven pounds heavier. In this passage, Bridget laments how she has spent the majority of her life trying desperately to lose weight while depriving herself of indulgences and wearing baggy clothes because she has been trying to achieve a thinner frame, which the media have led her to believe is most attractive. It turns out that the people closest to her agree she looks healthiest just as she is.
She's so beautiful, Magda. I watched her toying with her champagne glass despondently and wondered what the answer is for we girls. Talk about grass is always bloody greener. The number of times I've slumped, depressed, thinking how useless I am and that I spend every Saturday night getting blind drunk and moaning to Jude and Shazzer or Tom about not having a boyfriend; I struggle to make ends meet and am ridiculed as an unmarried freak, whereas Magda lives in a big house with eight different kinds of pasta in jars, and gets to go shopping all day. And yet here she is so beaten, miserable and unconfident and telling me I'm lucky.
In this passage, Bridget reflects on the irony of her friend Magda's claim that Bridget is lucky not to be dependent on a man and to have no children who depend on her. Bridget often envies Magda, who from a distance appears to live a perfect and secure life. In reality, Magda is dealing with the drama of having an unfaithful husband who she and her young children depend on for financial security. The passage is significant because it speaks to the difficulties both women face—whether they pursue a modern, independent lifestyle like Bridget, or a traditional marriage like Magda.
There, spread out on a sunlounger, was a bronzed, long-limbed, blonde-haired stark-naked woman. I stood there frozen to the spot, feeling like an enormous pudding in the bridesmaid dress. The woman raised her head, lifted her sunglasses and looked at me with one eye closed. I heard Daniel coming up the stairs behind me.
'Honey,' said the woman, in an American accent, looking over my head at him. 'I thought you said she was thin.'
After leaving the Alconburys' garden party early, Bridget drops by her boyfriend Daniel's flat, where he is supposed to be working. However, Bridget notices his odd behavior and immediately suspects he is cheating on her. Bridget searches the flat for signs of another woman, nearly giving up and regretting her suspicion. However, a scrape on the roof prompts Bridget to rush up to his roof patio, where a naked American woman is suntanning. In this passage, the dramatic revelation is complemented with a moment of comic relief when the woman casually and cruelly comments on Bridget's weight, which Bridget herself obsesses over. Following this incident, Bridget can't help but dwell on the woman's long-limbed thinness, which provokes her deepest insecurities about her own curvier body.
All the Smug Marrieds keep inviting me on Saturday nights now I am alone again, seating me opposite an increasingly horrifying selection of single men. It is very kind of them and I appreciate it v. much but it only seems to highlight my emotional failure and isolation.
Following her breakup with Daniel, Bridget wallows in self-pity while adjusting to the fact she is single again. Her coupled-up friends, who she refers to as the Smug Marrieds because of their condescension toward single people, immediately revert back to their habit of trying to set Bridget up with any single men they know, desperate to get her coupled up like them. In this passage, Bridget reflects on how it is nice of her friends to make an effort for her, but having to go to setup dinners only emphasizes Bridget's single status—the opposite of her friends' intention to make her not feel left out.
'How many calories in a boiled egg?' said Tom.
'Seventy-five.'
'Banana?'
'Large or small?'
'Small.'
'Peeled?'
'Yes.'
'Eighty,' I said, confidently.
[...]
'How do you know all this?'
Toward the end of the novel, Tom questions Bridget about her obsession with calories—a unit of energy used to express the nutritional value of food. In this exchange, Tom is shocked by Bridget's encyclopedic knowledge of how many calories are contained in everyday foods. To Bridget, the fact she has memorized so many numbers is unremarkable, but Tom senses that her expertise in counting calories may be indicative of disordered eating. Readers of Bridget's diary also understand that her obsessive interest is not healthy, as she tends to track calories either to shame herself for indulging or praise herself for eating less than the recommended daily amount.
Everyone knows that dating in your thirties is not the happy-go-lucky free-for-all it was when you were twenty-two and that the honest answer is more likely to be, 'Actually, last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little Angora crop-top, told me he was gay/a sex addict/a narcotic addict/a commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo,' than, 'Super, thanks.'
At the Alconburys' Turkey Curry Buffet at the beginning of the novel, Bridget laments how her parents' elderly friends ask probing questions about her love life. In this passage, Bridget speaks hyperbolically about the realities of dating in one's thirties: no longer the care-free context it was when she was younger, the London dating scene is far more complicated than her parents' friends could ever imagine, full of strange new understandings of sexuality, relationships, fashion, and sexual practices.
9st (what is point of dieting for whole of Feb when end up exactly same weight at start of March as start of Feb? Huh. Am going to stop getting weighed and counting things every day as no sodding point).
At the opening of the novel, Bridget begins most entries recording her weight and the number of calories, cigarettes, and drinks she has consumed in the past day. In March, she comes to this parenthetical conclusion about the pointlessness of obsessively tracking her weight and consumption habits when her weight only ever fluctuates within a few pounds. While she declares in this passage that she will give up counting calories, it is not long before Bridget returns to the practice, feeling shame when she has put on even a single pound and glee when she shows signs of weight loss.
Boyfriends 2 (but one only for six days so far)
Nice boyfriends 1
Number of New Year's Resolutions kept 1 (v.g.)
An excellent year's progress.
The novel ends with Bridget tallying up her consumption habits for the year and reflecting on whether she has abided by the New Year's resolutions she declared in the book's opening chapter. In this passage, Bridget concludes that she has managed only to keep one resolution, but the resolution is so significant to her that she considers the year as a whole to have been a success. Although she doesn't state the resolution she kept, she is most likely referring to her intention to form a relationship with a responsible adult. A week into her relationship with Mark Darcy, Bridget has achieved this goal and she feels optimistic about her future, despite the calamitous year she has been through.
