Can Two Rices Rewrite Austen—and Get Away with It?

It starts with a deadpan title: Stuck Up and Stupid. Somewhere, Jane Austen just adjusted her bonnet. And yet, here we are—Angourie Rice, best known for playing the daughter in someone else’s drama, and her mother, Kate, now playing literary gods with Austen’s most sacred text. A mother-daughter duo, rewriting Pride and Prejudice not with reverence, but with irony, sunscreen, and selfie culture. You get the sense they’re not asking for permission.

Their novel is bright, biting, and drenched in an Australian coastline aesthetic that feels half TikTok, half Tim Winton. And though they pitch it as a love letter, you begin to suspect it’s a dare. Because when two women—one barely out of adolescence, the other a screenwriter—take on the ur-text of feminine literary pride, what exactly are they saying back to it?

The Sound of a Classic Rolling Its Eyes

At first glance, Stuck Up and Stupid could be mistaken for a beach-read riff. It’s not. It’s a clever, calculated act of cultural commentary—wrapped in contour and teenage contempt. Set in a world of influencers and designer baggage, it trades bonnets for Balenciaga, but keeps Austen’s bones intact: biting wit, romantic tension, and women wielding social critique like a well-aimed fan.

“Lizzie Bennet was iconic,” Angourie says in interviews, “but she’d have absolutely roasted a wellness influencer.” This is the book’s tone: whip-smart, unprecious, and unapologetically aware of the absurdity of both Regency England and Byron Bay brunches. It doesn’t deify Austen—it dialogues with her. But the line between satire and simplification is a dangerous one, especially in a cultural moment where parody often passes as profound.

Still, there’s something arresting about the audacity. Because what if Pride and Prejudice isn’t sacred anymore? What if it’s simply raw material?

Austen in the Age of Algorithms

In publishing this book, the Rices are not just remixing a classic—they’re also performing a bit of modern authorship theatre. A young starlet who’s played Betty Brant in Spider-Man and now dreams of literary respectability. A mother who’s scripted family television and now builds narrative with her daughter. It feels part literary experiment, part PR ballet.

But here’s the quiet brilliance: they’ve hacked the canon. By filtering Austen through Gen Z self-awareness and post-internet irony, they make the text feel startlingly contemporary—not because of the setting, but because of the tone. In a way, Stuck Up and Stupid mirrors what Pride and Prejudice once did to 19th-century courtship: it unmasks the ridiculous while clinging to hope.

Is it literary sacrilege? Maybe. But sacrilege, done well, can be its own form of faith.

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And now we’re left with the image: two Rices standing cheekily in the long shadow of Jane Austen, holding not torches but iPhones, daring us to blink first. The real question is no longer whether they pulled it off—it’s whether we’re brave enough to admit we might need their version more than hers.