Are Elizabeth And Darcy Perfect Match?

Darcy and Elizabeth are wonderful characters for variations because Jane Austen leaves so much unsaid and unexplored about them. Depending on which passages you choose, you can form very different impressions of them. Part of the fun of writing variations is finding new aspects of their characters to explore in each book. Each Darcy and Elizabeth in my books is different.

Does this make the dynamics of their relationship different? My answer would be yes and no. There are certain basics about the Darcy/Elizabeth pairing that can’t be altered without destroying the basic dynamic, the one that makes them so magnetically drawn to each other. For example, Darcy avoids talking about his feelings and assumes Elizabeth knows more about them than she does. Elizabeth is lively and loves to tease, but because she does that with everyone, it is difficult for Darcy to guess what she means by it. And, of course, there is the profound sexual attraction – Darcy is fascinated by Elizabeth’s intelligence and wit, but that doesn’t stop him from meditating on her light and pleasing figure.

But within that dynamic, there are details that can change depending on which features I highlight. In Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World, Darcy’s lack of ability to read social signals, especially from Elizabeth, plays a prominent role. In most of my other books, Darcy is driven to pursue Elizabeth, but in this one, he withdraws. That means Elizabeth has to take more risks.

Elizabeth is complex, drawing on some passages in Pride & Prejudice often overlooked by readers. Jane Austen focuses her attention on Elizabeth’s lively spirits, but she makes it clear that her normally cheerful heroine also passes through periods of low spirits. During her weeks at Hunsford following Darcy’s proposal, Elizabeth ruminates at length on both her own failures and those of her family:

In her own past behaviour, there was a constant source of vexation and regret; and in the unhappy defects of her family a subject of yet heavier chagrin. They were hopeless of remedy….When to these recollections was added the development of Wickham's character, it may be easily believed that the happy spirits which had seldom been depressed before, were now so much affected as to make it almost impossible for her to appear tolerably cheerful.

After she returns to Longbourn after Lydia’s elopement, she mourns the loss of Darcy in a way that again depresses her spirits and keeps her awake at night:

The present unhappy state of the family, rendered any other excuse for the lowness of her spirits unnecessary; nothing, therefore, could be fairly conjectured from that, though Elizabeth, who was by this time tolerably well acquainted with her own feelings, was perfectly aware that, had she known nothing of Darcy, she could have borne the dread of Lydia's infamy somewhat better.

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