Morning Has Broken
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy“Morning Has Broken” appears as the song Cat Stevens is singing in Bridget Jones’s imagined contrast between her household and Roxster’s. In the middle of a kitchen mishap, the title becomes a small but pointed measure of generational taste, family chaos, and Bridget’s fear that her children would rather live elsewhere.
The Song in the Scene
Bridget is searching through cookery-book instructions for the smoke alarm while Roxster turns off the gas and removes the sausages from the heat. As the alarm sounds and the household seems to have disappeared, she imagines that everyone has decided she is hopeless and gone to live with Roxster and his flatmates. In that imagined alternative, they can play video games without interruption and eat perfectly barbecued sausages while listening to popular music that is actually current, rather than Cat Stevens singing Morning Has Broken.
Contrast and Comic Effect
The song is not discussed for its lyrics or musical qualities; its effect comes from the contrast Bridget sets up. Morning Has Broken stands for the music of her own household, placed against the current popular music she imagines the children would prefer. The contrast sits alongside the scene’s practical absurdity: the sausages have been rescued from the gas, the smoke alarm is still part of the commotion, and Bridget is hunting for an instruction leaflet among old appliance papers. Her anxious fantasy turns these ordinary domestic details into evidence, in her mind, that Roxster’s home might be the more appealing one.
Narrative Function
The song enters through Bridget’s comic, self-deprecating inner narration rather than through a performance or a conversation about music. Its brief appearance sharpens the scene’s shift from kitchen confusion to a worry about belonging: while Roxster deals smoothly with the burning food, Bridget imagines her family rejecting her and her home. When the smoke alarm stops and Roxster reappears grinning, the imagined escape remains a product of her panic, not an event that has taken place.
