Why is there a pig walking through the house?

At one point we see a big sow trotting through the Bennet's home

Is this a goof?

You THINK you saw a pig in the house. What you actually saw was a pig walking through a passageway between the house and the farm buildings.

http://currentscene.wordpress.com

Because the idea behind this adaptation was to ignore Jane Austen and her beliefs, and the beliefs of her time. The means to do so was to make Mr. Bennett a farmer who was on intimate terms with his own pigs, which would have made a marriage between a wealthy gentleman like Mr. Darcy and the daughter of that Mr. Bennett impossible.

In the book the main social difference between the Darcys and the Bennetts is that of wealth, they are from approximately the same social class - hereditary country landowners who are "gentlemen" and who do not work, but who are not titled. In the book Lizzie Bennett is able to look Lady Catherine DeBourgh in the eye and say "He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.", and I hope they didn't do the same in this movie because the pigs established that no, there wasn't a ghost of a hope of social equality there. That was a very important statement according to the mores of the time, a man who could make his own decisions could marry a girl with no dowry and make her the lady of his manor without being laughed out of society if she were a "gentleman's daughter", but if she were a farmer's daughter even the servants at Pemberly would cut her dead if she tried to take charge! No, if Lizzie really were a farmer's daughter, she could never aspire to anything greater than being Darcy's mistress.


But that didn't matter to the people who made this film, they didn't give a rat's ass about historical accuracy and assumed filmgoers didn't either.

It’s symbolic play on the saying “making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”. Darcy looks down on country women as inferior and not worthy of notice. He discourages Bingley from falling for one too. He looks around the ballroom and sees sows everywhere. At the end of the film they all eat ham, symbolic of how Darcy’s misconceptions about country women have been slaughtered.

Ok, just kidding with all that. The pig was being led through an alley near the house. Country homes raised livestock for their own consumption and at smaller country homes, the barn was located close to the main house. Watch Cold Comfort Farm to see more of English country living.

Beats me. Apparently the idiots making this film wanted to take the "country bumpkin" theme with the Bennets a LITTLE too seriously.

And by the way, it was a prized male pig that should have been in his own pasture, waiting for the yearly sowing of his wild oats, not wandering through the house and making it dirtier than it already was.

The younger daughter?

Same thing happens in Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003). Next scene, you see the pig’s head on a platter 😞