From Real Porn to Poverty Porn

Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, Chapter 9. So what happened?

We leave the Darcys to recover, and spend some time not with any characters from Pride and Prejudice, and not with one of the new characters we’ve met so far, but with Thomas Reed - a colorful, sociopathic criminal with a rich vocabulary.

We encounter Reed as he happily picks pockets in a crowd watching an execution at Newgate prison. He has recently escaped from the place, where he has been held on a murder charge himself, which you’d think would make him steer clear of it; a hanging day crowd is apparently too great a temptation. Reed is most excited by the possibility of seeing a woman hang, and is disappointed that he won’t have the opportunity that night: both condemned convicts are men.

Reed, an enterprising sort, doesn’t have a regular bed for the night - for that he relies on one Abigail Christie, who you may remember as the unfortunate chamber maid that de-virginized Darcy in an earlier chapter. She allows him into her room and her bed in exchange for...nothing as far as I can tell, as she is the one who produces the whiskey they share before retiring.

In the morning, in between sessions of beating Abigail’s teenage son, and literally picking his teeth with a big dagger, Reed extracts from Abigail the news that she and her son are headed for Derbyshire, where she used to work for one of the richest families in the county. Reed, not a deep or quick thinker, does manage to put this together with his knowledge that his brother is currently a footman for the same family.

Though not quick, Reed is possessed of a certain low cunning, so promptly leaves the unfortunate Abigail for the Darcy’s London residence, where he bullies one of the current footmen into fleeing his position, and bullies his brother into promoting him for the post. We leave Reed happily ensconced in gainful employment, and within intimate reach of our heroes.

Inaccuracies: what was obviously wrong here?

This chapter is weird and poorly written and grimy, but the portrayal of the neighborhood of St. Giles, and the broader London area surrounding Newgate, is a fairly accurate one. It really was a gin-soaked nightmare, to the point where satirical artists like Hogarth had been parodying it decades before this story takes place:

The poverty itself, and the issues that tend to accompany poverty, are not the problem. Working class people in this novel tend to come in two varieties: those willing to completely subsume their own desires before their adored employers, and sociopaths concerned only with self-preservation. Tom Reed is the later; poor Abigail, though she has been beaten down by years of poverty, drink, and abuse, is the former: she still defines herself by her association with the Pemberley family.

This trend of characterization is the foundation of the issue that makes this chapter so jarring: Linda apparently forgot that working class people are just people, with their own individual thoughts and goals and foibles. Linda Berdoll portrays them as an undifferentiated, teaming mass:

Brimming were the streets of St. Giles Parish that night. Reed bumped into several people. Fortunately, they were in no closer claim of their wits than he and, by unspoken agreement, simply righted themselves without offense. As a man suffering from the convergence of an ursine bearing and a caprine appetite, Reed routinely thumped anyone so presumptuous as not to clear his path. However, that evening his unsteadiness was fuelled by gin. That always left him in a better temper than ale.

The happy crowd was about, as was Reed, by reason of a hanging outside Newgate Prison that afternoon. (Sentimental celebration of blood lust always included a fair amount of drink.) A number of folk claimed the multitude that day was as large as the one that witnessed the Haggerty/Holloway double noose in ‘07. Reed disputed that. Whereas nearly thirty people were crushed to death in the melee at that illustrious execution, not a soul did he spy trampled in today’s mayhem. Undeniably, the entire spectacle was a disappointment. Only a pickpocket and sheep thief were hanged. ‘Twas hardly bloody worth the bother.

Dual disappointment for Reed was that both were men. He had heard that the legendary Maggie “Snags” was to swing. Miss Snags (affectionately named thus by reason of her teeth, which she filed sharper than a shiv) had a propensity to use them somewhat gleefully upon those who crossed her. She was but a malmsey-nosed dishclout, but it would have been diverting to watch some petticoats dance about.

Hence, the single consolation of amusement was that the pickpocket was a portly man, his weight causing his decapitation. Reed cheered along with the crowd.

Compare this scene to the one in chapter six, where the French crowd is horrified when a head is accidentally dropped during a routine Guillotine-ing. Executions in front of Newgate were quite common, which should certainly provoke a degree of callousness towards them. But they were happening more often during the reign of terror. Compare the reaction of the poor Londoners to the “Lord High Executioner” at seeing a decapitated head - wouldn’t you expect the latter to be more used to it?

Purple Prose: what’s the worst written line in the chapter?

Vernacular is tough to pull off, and I’m not sure what a convincing portrayal of the vernacular of London poverty in the 1810s would have looked like. Here’s the thing though: everybody speaks in a vernacular. Never is it thought necessary to spell Darcy and Elizabeth’s speech phonetically, even though they would have pronounced common words differently than modern English speakers on either side of the Atlantic ocean. We don’t need to be told when or whether they drop their Rs or Hs. Yet they undoubtedly must have.

The reason for this is obvious: Elizabeth and Darcy’s speech is normalized by the text. It goes without saying that their way of speaking is correct, and the speech of the lower class is an aberration. How else are we to know that Thomas Reed and Abigail Christie are ignorant and lower class, if they don't talk like this?

“Abby me luv, where yer off to?”
“‘ome.”
“Yer need company, donna yer?”
“Ye spent all the company me needs, Tom Reed. Yer pockets are at low tide, are they not?”
“Not so flat as as that.”

There are numerous exchanges like this, but I’ll just highlight this one.

First of all, there is no reason to phoneticize “love” as “luv.” There is no pronunciation difference to highlight; “love” and “luv” are pronounced exactly the same. The only reason to spell it like this is to point out the character’s illiteracy.

Second of all: “donna yer” for “don’t you” is just bizarre. “Donna yer” is harder and more awkward in the mouth than “don’t you,” and makes no sense as a contraction. “Doncha” would have been better, as something that has actually come out of the mouth of a human. All “donna yer” manages to convey, like “luv” above it, is that this is an ignorant person who says things the wrong way, even if it’s a mistake that’s there for no reason.

Lastly, “Ye spent all the company me needs” is awkward. This isn’t the kind of place someone would mix pronouns like this: using “I” instead of “me” before a verb is the easiest piece of grammar to remember. The only reason this mistake is here is because there needed to be a mistake, because we needed to remember that Abigail is stupid.

I also object to Tom Reed, as he is otherwise presented, referring to someone as a “malmsey-nosed dishclout.” “Malmsey-nosed” and “dischlout” both have their origins as insults in Shakespeare; I can’t find any references to their use outside of Shakespeare (apart from the use of “dishclout” as a perfectly generic word for “dishcloth.”) This smacks of somebody who picked up a book of old-fashioned insults - Darcy is more likely to call someone “malmsey-nosed” than Reed.

Asshole Award: who acts the most like a jerk, or the least like themselves?

We haven’t met Reed before, and he’s certainly an asshole, but for an unconvincing display of bad behavior I’m going to have to go with the “houseman” who hires Reed:

Contrary to his brother, Frank had been a dependable and complaisant employee, hence, when he gave assurances of his brother’s character to the rather prissy houseman, it was accepted as true as any other tale told in London. The houseman saw that the brothers held the greatest want of footmen, that of the same tall height and good leg. Additionally, Tom fit the newly vacated jacket. Could there possibly be anything else wanting? As easy as that.

Reed fancied the runty houseman’s eyes spent a little more time than necessary looking him up and down than professional appraisal would have demanded.

The houseman is “prissy,” “runty,” gives Reed long looks, and at the end of the chapter Reed remarks that the man’s testicles are “a waste on ‘im anyways.” He hires Reed on sight based on nothing but his height and good legs, putting a murderer in his own employer’s household.

Your homophobia is showing, Linda. It’s not a cute look.

Hey Look, a Lower Class Person: how are class differences portrayed in this chapter?

Well, they’re all around. This is merely a continuation of the book’s portrayal of poor people in general: drunken, violent, careless, and indiscriminately sexual, unless they have been deemed virtuous by their devotion to the Darcy family.

Hey Look, a Plot: does anything in this chapter move the story forward?

Reed will, believe it or not, cause quite a bit of trouble for the heroes before being dispensed with less than halfway through. By the end of the book, it will be as if he never existed.