Guess Who's Got A Surprising Madonna/Whore Complex?

Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, chapter 5. So what happened?

This is a flashback chapter, apparently for the purpose of letting us know why Darcy felt the need to get the hell out of town. You see, Darcy is a red-blooded masculine man, and his sexuality is so overpowering that he’s afraid he’ll ravish Elizabeth if he stays, and as she is An Innocent, it’s up to him, red-blooded masculine man, to protect her.

We are given a brief overview of Darcy’s sexual history. It begins with an obliging Pemberley chambermaid (one who had previously slept with Wickham) deflowering him unexpectedly. Darcy doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’s evidently a natural, and Abigail the chambermaid falls in love. She also, immediately, gets caught, gets blamed, and loses her job. Darcy never sees her again and doesn’t give any thought to what might have happened to her.

Darcy sets up all kinds of rules for himself henceforth regarding which women are ok to have sex with, and which are not, but they can be boiled down to essentially these: nice girls are not ok to have sex with. Bad girls are ok to have sex with, provided they’re not TOO bad and dirty and like, aggressive and provided they never ask him for anything or expect him to have feelings for them or act like they’re happy to have sex with him:

As he grew older, he occasioned affairs with women of station and allowed himself a passing interlude with a noted actress. He found her a disappointment and (third axiom) kept to his own social level thereafter. His understanding of honor demanded he never take a virgin, nor lie with a woman married or promised (four and five). Ultimately, though, he began to recognize an all too familiar expression upon the countenances of those with whom he intended intrigue. Just before carnal egress commenced, an expression of excited apprehension appeared. That, of course, announced that word of the generosity of his lovemaking (and that with which God endowed him, upon its behalf) had preceded him. He abhorred transgression of his privacy, and, in time, this abhorrence overtook any pleasure he might have had with his liaisons. His sixth axiom was instated: he would avail himself of no women of his social circle.

Of course, eliminating virgins, wives, the affianced, the forward, ladies of lesser rank, and those in his social circle from the reservoir of possible feminine gratification left little alternative. Finding no favor in self-gratification, he saw the irony that the two strongest needs he held – that of passion and that of privacy – were so perversely conflicting.

It would have been customary for a man of his position to take a mistress, but he did not seek a woman to dress his arm. His warm constitution sought only release, not company. Believing it a profound failing not to keep one’s physical needs under the same good regulation as one’s emotions, he strove to harness them both.

With that in mind, Darcy begins patronizing a high class brothel, where he can have all the privacy and apparently emotionless fucking that he wants, because whores don’t have feelings (apparently). This happy arrangement is thrown completely into disarray when he meets Elizabeth Bennet, and finds out that it’s possible to respect a woman AND want to go to bed with her at the same time. This does nothing to change his behavior, as he keeps patronizing the high class brothel, but now he does it with even fewer pretentions to romance or consideration than before.

Ultimately, Darcy can’t keep it up and proposes marriage; he is appalled at the result:

Her flat refusal of his proposal of marriage flabbergasted him. Personal prudence had seen that he had never been refused by a woman for anything, ever. Angered and mortified, it was of no comfort to him to know she had realized his vanity. Clearly it had led him to believe her in serious want of his application of marriage.

Faced with this refusal, Darcy finds himself unable to keep up his usual routine of joyless robot sex and decides that if he can’t have Elizabeth, he just won’t go to bed with anyone ever. Fortunately she accepts his second proposal, lest he die of blue balls (as can happen to real people in reality).

If I described this chapter with more detail than I have previous ones, it’s because I find this chapter appallingly offensive, probably more than any other part of this book.

Inaccuracies: What Was Obviously Wrong Here?

There are three things I want to talk about. The first is a relatively minor vocabulary error, which points to a non-minor problem with this book in general. That non-minor problem is this: Linda Berdoll keeps using words that she clearly doesn’t know.

Here are the lines, which I also quoted above:

…he began to recognize an all too familiar expression upon the countenances of those with whom he intended intrigue. Just before carnal egress commenced, an expression of excited apprehension appeared.

Carnal…egress. I’ve looked at that phrase a dozen times and I have no idea what Berdoll is trying to say here. Does she know that egress means exit? Because if she does, what exactly is commencing? If “egress” is supposed to mean that Darcy is, you know, finishing, why the apprehension? Wouldn’t any questions be settled by that point? Or is she talking about them leaving whatever room they’re in to go to bed? Why is Darcy sex so complicated?

Additionally, “apprehension” means “anxiety or fear that something bad or unpleasant will happen” according to my OED, which basically cancels out how “excited” they might be. If women look apprehensive before sex with Darcy that might mean he has a reputation but it’s not a very good reputation. These lines are contradictory nonsense. Writers: don’t use words you don’t know. It’s ok, you can look it up!

The other error I want to talk about is also relatively minor, in that it does not have a huge impact on the plot going forward, but it points to an extremely important problem. I’m pretty sure at this point that Linda Berdoll didn’t actually read Pride and Prejudice.

Here are a few lines from Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, chapter five:

Wickham had considerable ego to fester. Upon the death of his father, Mr. Darcy’s steward, the elder Mr. Darcy became Wickham’s benefactor. The adolescent Wickham had come to live on the upper floors of Pemberley.

Here are a few lines on the same subject from Pride and Prejudice, chapter 35:

Mr. Wickham is the son of a very respectable man, who had for many years the management of all the Pemberley estates; and whose good conduct in the discharge of his trust naturally inclined my father to be of service to him; and on George Wickham, who was his god-son, his kindness was therefore liberally bestowed…My excellent father died about five years ago; and his attachment to Mr. Wickham was to the last so steady, that in his will he particularly recommended it to me to promote his advancement in the best manner that his profession might allow, and, if he took orders, desired that a valuable family living might be his as soon as it became vacant. There was also a legacy of one thousand pounds. His own father did not long survive mine.

So, Austen explicitly says that Wickham’s father died after Darcy’s father. She does not say whether Wickham lived with the Darcy family at Pemberley, though we do know he lived on the estate. Since his father was alive, they most likely lived together in a separate house somewhere on the grounds.

Why did Berdoll think old Mr. Wickham died early? I can guess. Here is an excerpt from Andrew Davies’ script for the Pride and Prejudice miniseries, which ran on the BBC in 1995 and starred Colin Firth:

After his father's early death, my father supported him at school and at Cambridge, and hoped he would make the church his profession…My own excellent father died five years ago.
His attachment to Mr Wickham was to the last so steady, that he desired that a valuable family living might be his as soon as it was vacant.

There you have it. This is not a sequel to the novel Pride and Prejudice; it is a sequel to the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Why Davies made this change I couldn’t tell you. It makes Mr. Darcy the elder into more of a surrogate father, rather than a detached patron; maybe this heightens Wickham’s later betrayal. But this is where it comes from, not Austen.

The last is most minor of all, but it bugs me as a poetry fan. Here is Darcy trying to find a poet to suit his newly romantic leanings:

To feel such fierce emotions and yet be unable to profess them adequately was ghastly. It occurred to him that he should plumb Netherfield’s library (the books were not Bingley’s, they came with the lease.)His poetic inclinations favored Pope, but he believed Blake might offer some inspiration.

Ok. I would actually expect Darcy to read and admire Alexander Pope. But Blake? You are talking about William Blake, right? I could see a Darcy who lived today reading Blake, sure. But in 1813 (or whenever), William Blake was still alive and had no reputation to speak of. A few other poets and artists knew who he was, but the odds of one of his self-published volumes sitting in the Netherfield library are low. The few people who did know him considered him dangerously radical and half-insane.

The first biography of Blake, published in 1863, was subtitled “Pictor Ignotus” for “unknown artist.” A few of his poems were in print before this (notably “The Tyger”) but most were obscure. Unless Darcy is a secret bohemian, I doubt he knew who William Blake was. It’s always possible, but it’s not probable.

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

Oh, this is tough. I’m finding that there are so many bad sentences to choose from in each chapter of this wreck that it really comes down to which one is offending me the most on the particular day. Another day, I’d make another pick. These lines, I think, perfectly encapsulate the vile and convoluted approach to human sexuality which is reflected in this section and in the novel as a whole:

For her demeanor and her circumstance proclaimed Elizabeth an innocent. She was chaste and it was his duty to protect her honor, not take privileges. But the volatile combination of their love, her innocence, and his lust was inciting his once sternly controlled mettle to unprecedented heights.

Look, let's ignore the frightening connotations of Elizabeth's "innocence" making Darcy more lustful. This makes no sense. You can’t incite someone’s mettle. Mettle literally means a person’s ability to cope with difficulties; if his mettle is reaching unprecedented heights that can only mean that he’s more capable of restraint than ever. Mettle is by its very nature controlled. Once again, Linda Berdoll had a thesaurus but no dictionary.

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

Ooooh, boy. This is probably my least favorite chapter in the book.

I’ve never really been on the Mr. Darcy love train, in the sense that I don’t find him particularly swoon-worthy. I’ll take the smart, friendly, hilarious geek Henry Tilney. I do find the character, as written, fascinating, and a lot of it has to do with his relative progressivism on gender. He was still a 19th (or late 18th) century dude, mind, but he’s also someone who thinks no accomplishment is more useful to a young woman than “extensive reading.” He’s a guy who tries to talk about books to a woman during a ball. He falls in love with Elizabeth’s fine eyes, but more importantly with how they render her face “uncommonly intelligent.”

None of this precludes a madonna/whore complex; lots of men use intelligence as a marker to separate good girls from bad ones. But remember; this guy also tried to convince Lydia to return home unmarried. He didn’t think sex would ruin her life. He thought marriage to Wickham would ruin her life.

Look at some of the ways that Real-Darcy is described by the narrator of Pride and Prejudice: “clever,” “reserved,” and “fastidious.” The man himself refers to Wickham’s habits as “vicious.”

It’s difficult, talking about the sex lives of 19th century people. There is a danger in projecting Victorian morality onto them, but there is also a danger of projecting our own. It’s also worth remembering that these are not real people; there is a limit to what we can definitely say about them in any direction. I do feel comfortable saying that someone in the 19th century who is described as “reserved” and “fastidious,” and who is so afraid of raising expectations which he cannot meet that he stops speaking to someone he’s attracted to, is probably not very sexually experienced. He thinks if he pays too much attention to Elizabeth she’ll expect a proposal, and he believes it wrong to lead her on. I don’t think he’d sleep with an unmarried woman.

What’s more offensive than this is how Pod-Darcy is shown to think about and treat the women he sleeps with, and how the narrator treats them in turn. Sex is entirely divorced from emotion for him, until he falls in love; the women he sleeps with are interchangeable and only exist to serve his needs. When they indicate any kind of sexual experience or expectations of their own he is offended. He will not involve himself with an inexperienced woman, as that would apparently be dishonorable, but once they are experienced any use of them is ok.

The narrator treats Darcy’s first experience as comical, but we should look at it objectively. The wealthy, privileged son of a great family sleeps with a servant. She falls in love with him. His father finds out. The son faces no punishment harder than a stern lecture. The girl loses her job and vanishes. The son feels guilty, but neither knows nor cares what happens to the girl and neither does anyone else. We are treated to humorous details on her past sexual experience, on her artlessness, on her stupidity, on how she isn’t even that good looking really. She’s an object.

Pod-Darcy treats every woman he sleeps with like an object, similarly, sparing no thought to their own desires or feelings; even their orgasms seem to just happen because he’s some kind of savant, not through any effort on his part to please them. He treats every woman like this until Elizabeth, and he doesn’t stop because he learns better, but because Elizabeth is special and worthy. What a prize.

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

Of note is poor Abigail the chambermaid who de-virginizes young Darcy. Abigail will actually appear again, and will be just as objectified as she is in this chapter. She is the first significant servant we meet, and she sets the pattern: she is used by the main characters, and then discarded. It gets treated as pitiable or tragic, which I guess is supposed to make up for it. She has no personality other than a general stupidity and “a weakness for male attention” and no agency.

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

Yes, actually. Poor Abigail ends up as being indirectly important to the ridiculous plot that’s coming up, as will Darcy’s favorite sex worker. Stay tuned!