A Perfect Mr. Darcy?

First, let me just admit that I am bad at keeping up with things on my website in general and the blog in particular. I think about new blog ideas or something to add to the site and say - I'll get to it. Then - guess what? - I don't! I hope this blog is a a first in a series of regular posts but no promises!

Onto to the actual blog . . .

I want to talk about our favourite leading man - Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley. As imagined and brought to the page by our beloved Ms. Austen he is a hero worthy of all of the swooning and consideration he is given. But he is not perfect. The journey of Pride and Prejudice shows him acknowledging where he has failed and then doing better. This is part of what makes the story compelling - all of the characters have flaws, some of which are right there in the title, and we get to see several of them discover their flaws - sometimes as pointed out by a slightly angry and very frustrated would-be love interest - and make corrections to their character.

"Till this moment I never knew myself.” (Elizabeth while reading Darcy's letter)

Because we are mostly experiencing the story from Elizabeth's POV we get more explicit confirmation of her developing understanding of herself and her flaws, but through Darcy's actions and some of his conversation we are given insight into his journey.

On to the problem. I love P & P variations. Reading them and being endlessly entertained and transported again and again to one of my favourite literary worlds is what led me to start writing them. I wanted to bring to life some of my own what ifs. My favourites were usually the ones that stayed mostly within the plot and setting of the original but changed one or two key things and then let us see how that would affect the rest. I especially love a more engaged Mr. Bennet, a more villainous Miss B and an earlier meeting for our favourite couple. However, there are some tropes I do not enjoy and almost never read - forced marriage, bad Jane or Elizabeth is not a Bennet for example. There are many lovely stories with these plots I am sure but they are not for me. I am not about to get on my soap box to explain why they are wrong to exist. Why I am climbing up here is to complain about perfect Darcy stories. I feel like I have read a bunch lately and the thing is these are not clearly labeled so I am in it before I realise what I'm dealing with. A blurb will tell me Jane is going to be the big bad and I can move along and select another variation to read, but with perfect Darcy stories this is not so.

Here's the thing - I guess these books can also exist, I won't start a petition to ban them, but I think they are missing what makes Darcy so compelling and they are doing a disservice to Elizabeth. In my most recent accidental foray into this trope we had Elizabeth apologising profusely and often for all the ways she maligned and misunderstood his character and offering penance for her grievous blunders. It's like no, girl you got some of it wrong and maybe shouldn't have been so vocal about your disdain but for the most part you were right - he was, in many ways, insufferable. There was no difference from cannon in their actions from the Assembly to the proposal - it was just framed as she was wrong about him being wrong for any of it.

Me & the imperfect Mr. Darcy at the Jane Austen Museum in Bath

“What did you say of me, that I did not deserve? For, though your accusations were ill-founded, formed on mistaken premises, my behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest reproof. It was unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence.” (Darcy to Elizabeth as they reach an understanding)

He gets it. He was a tool. He was wrong, she was wrong. The beauty is in their realisations and subsequent actions.

So all this to say my new least favourite new trope is the ret-conning of P & P to make it so Elizabeth was all wrong and Darcy all right without any acknowledgment that this is a ret-conn. They were, neither of them, perfect nor did they act perfectly because they are well drawn characters with flaws, quirks and room for growth.

Okay rant over - maybe my next blog, which WILL come sooner than 8 months from now will be about tropes I love!