On Female Virtue, With Domestic and Elegant Accomplishments

Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, chapter 7. So what happened?

After a chapter long exegesis on Darcy’s sex life, and a another chapter long partial biography of a character that the reader couldn’t possibly care about, we’re back on track with our increasingly sexually frustrated heroine. Elizabeth, after a torrid necking session with Darcy, has been abandoned by him with no explanation. After a...shall we say blurry number of days (let’s blame Elizabeth’s anxiety), she attends dinner at Netherfield with Jane and the Bingleys.

Miss Bingley is, for some reason, treating Elizabeth with a mixture of pity and contempt that seems ill-advised, never mind the fact that she has little reason for it. Mrs. Bennet on the other hand, showing an uncharacteristic level-headedness, isn’t worried in the slightest. Darcy wouldn’t break a promise, it’s only been a few days, and engaged is engaged.

Elizabeth is barely distracted from her own gloom enough to internally make fun of Miss Bingley, and is apparently about to throw herself into the fire, when a storm breaks out all of a sudden, meaning she and Jane will have to stay all night (why the carriage which had to have brought them both can’t take them home is not discussed. With a spectacular display of dramatic timing, the thunderstorm also brings Darcy back to Netherfield, soaking wet and broody as ever.

Darcy ignores Elizabeth until everyone else goes to bed, when he gives her a beautiful sapphire and pearl necklace and still no explanation. Later that night, he comes to her bedchamber and apologizes for leaving, offering only that his love for her is so profound and violent that he no longer trusted himself in her presence. More torrid necking ensues, as we can suppose it would, and our heroes are on the verge of Losing Their Virtue when Jane knocks on the bedroom door and won’t take silence for an answer. A sheepish Darcy leaves, and innocent Jane suspects nothing.

Inaccuracies: what was obviously wrong here?

This is a gross oversimplification, but when we think about the systems that govern our behavior, outside of very direct transactional situations where you only do something to immediately get something else, we think about three things: laws, morals, and manners. The last two can sometimes blur together, certainly, but they are distinct.

It’s important to remember that they’re distinct when you’re talking about Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. A great deal of Elizabeth’s moral development in the original novel comes from her realizing how much she had unconsciously conflated pleasing manners with moral purity. She was ready to attribute all manner of villainy to Darcy, who was really just an awkward and slightly snobbish nerd who occasionally put his foot in his mouth. Likewise, Elizabeth initially credited George Wickham with every virtue under the sun, only to realize later that she had done so with no evidence but his charming manners, handsome face, and his eagerness to reflect her own vanity back to her.

Much of Darcy’s development, however, comes at the issue from the opposite direction: he knew himself to be a good person, but he had to realize that he had given Elizabeth no reason to believe that of him. He had to learn that politeness to others, particularly to those outside his own circle, may not be high on the list of importance but it’s not nothing; that his blunt dismissal of Elizabeth’s attractiveness wasn’t the worst crime somebody ever committed but it was still unkind and beneath him. He ends the novel still awkward and uncomfortable around loud and boorish types, but he’s trying.

The Darcy we see in this chapter is not trying.

I’m not putting this in the character section, because it’s a tricky thing - it’s not that his behavior here is out of character for him (though it is), it’s that it’s out of character for anybody of the time. I don’t know Linda’s life - presumably she was attempting to write a character who tried to be both polite and good.

A polite man of the time would not have done this:

Another clatter of thunder culminated with the crash of the front door loud enough to dislodge the portico, and the party synchronously jolted in their chairs. The wind that rushed in blew out many candles from the vestibule to the dining-room, sending the servants bustling to resecure the light. But before they could, another horrific rattle of thunder erupted, this one punctuated by a show of lightning that revealed a spectre at the door of the dining room. Louisa Hurst shrieked.

But Elizabeth did not. Still, she was startled. For the convulsion of flickering light revealed the very face she saw every time she closed her eyes.

“Darcy!” Bingley declared.

That proclamation was met with a gradual relighting of the candles, which unveiled the condition in which Mr. Darcy had entered the house - soaking wet. He handed his hat to a servant, who then yanked and heaved mightily whilst endeavouring to relieve him of his saturated greatcoat.

So. Darcy has entered the house and walked straight into the dining room, unannounced and soaking wet.

Nuh uh. No way.

For all of the drama of the situation, complete with a convenient storm, there’s simply no way he’d just walk in like that. This wasn’t his house, he was a guest. You didn’t waltz into people’s dining rooms while they were eating - maybe if there was an emergency, something that couldn’t wait, but that isn’t the case here. Darcy of P&P is not an impetuous person - rather the opposite. He acts slowly, deliberately, and his foibles of etiquette tend to come from rigidity and aloofness, not from a lack of caution.

Here is what would have happened. A servant would have answered Darcy at the door (how else did he get in? Do you really think Caroline Bingley would leave the front door unlocked?) and the servant would have helped Darcy off with his hat and coat there. He’d probably go off to change while the servant announced him, maybe get a meal sent to his room, and join the family after dinner.

He wouldn’t have gone into the dining room himself, with his hat still on, tracking mud and water into the room where ladies were eating. I mean good lord. I don’t care how preoccupied by relighting candles the Netherfield servants (who had seen darkness before, this was before electricity, they would not react to this like it was a blackout) were, somebody would have had to answer the damn door.

Darcy’s behavior in this entire chapter is inexplicable, really. Even leaving aside his uncharacteristic and anachronistic nighttime shenanigans with Elizabeth, what on earth possessed him to travel all the way to Derbyshire to get a necklace? It was hundreds of miles, and it’s only been a week. He’d have had to go all the way there, pick up the necklace, and immediately go all the way back. It’s also the middle of winter by this point: Derbyshire could very well have been covered in snow, which would have made the journey even longer (and more dangerous). The roads weren’t paved! They weren’t being plowed!

Travel took a long time, and it was expensive: Elizabeth’s trip to Derbyshire with her aunt and uncle lasted for weeks, and not just because there’s so much to see in Derbyshire. An impetuous dash north during the winter, less than two weeks before his wedding, would have been almost absurdly stupid of Darcy. If he wanted to remove himself from temptation, why couldn’t he go to London - comparatively it was right next door, and there would have been plenty of necklaces there. Darcy of P&P is calm, methodical, observant, and most of all highly intelligent. This isn’t him, but it also isn’t any man of the time. He might as well have driven back to Netherfield on a motorcycle and given Elizabeth a certified conflict-free diamond ring.

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

When Darcy comes to Elizabeth’s room at Netherfield, in the middle of the night, in an uncharacteristic display of impulsiveness and poor judgement, this is Elizabeth’s reaction:

Without hesitation, she took a step back with the door, in mute acquiescence to his admittance.

This isn’t the worst line in the book, by far: it’s fine, it essentially conveys what it’s supposed to convey. The phrase “mute acquiescence” bothers me, however, for what it manages to convey about Pod-Elizabeth and her relationship with Pod-Darcy. She seems, interestingly, to be a little afraid of him.

“Acquiescence” implies reluctance; if Elizabeth is “acquiescing” to Darcy’s entrance to her bedchamber, that can only mean that she’d rather not admit him, but is doing so without protest. Coupled with her worry that he wouldn’t come back, and her worry that he was only there to take back the necklace he had given, this is troubling. This Elizabeth seems totally unsure of her soon-to-be-husband’s feelings for her, and unable to express that to him except in the most circumspect terms. Consider that Austen tells us that after the engagement, Elizabeth’s spirits were “soon rising to playfulness again,” and that she rarely hesitates to tease her husband before or after their marriage (much to Georgiana’s amazement.)

Most of the anxiety of the engagement, or their “season of courtship” as Austen puts it, comes from Darcy’s awkwardness around Elizabeth’s terrible family and neighbors:

Mrs. Philips's vulgarity was another, and perhaps a greater, tax on his forbearance; and though Mrs. Philips, as well as her sister, stood in too much awe of him to speak with the familiarity which Bingley's good humour encouraged, yet, whenever she did speak, she must be vulgar. Nor was her respect for him, though it made her more quiet, at all likely to make her more elegant. Elizabeth did all she could to shield him from the frequent notice of either, and was ever anxious to keep him to herself, and to those of her family with whom he might converse without mortification; and though the uncomfortable feelings arising from all this took from the season of courtship much of its pleasure, it added to the hope of the future; and she looked forward with delight to the time when they should be removed from society so little pleasing to either, to all the comfort and elegance of their family party at Pemberley.

This implies that Elizabeth’s feelings toward Darcy at this point look more like protectiveness than fearfulness. I don’t see her acquiescing to much.

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

As discussed above, neither Elizabeth nor Darcy are acting either like themselves, or like the sane and relatively proper late-Georgian English people of the upper class that we know them to be. However, the whole book is going to be full of Pod-Elizabeth and Pod-Darcy doing bizarre things - let’s take a look at Jane, and what we will soon see is Linda Berdoll’s basic misunderstanding of Jane.

She apparently thinks that Jane is stupid.

Consider: when Elizabeth and Darcy are alone in her bedroom, apparently about to Anticipate Their Vows, Jane knocks on the door, announcing that she cannot sleep and would like to talk to Elizabeth. When Elizabeth does not answer, this happens:

Jane repeated insistently, “Lizzy!”

They looked at each other, chests heaving. “If I do not answer, she will think me ill and awaken the house,” Elizabeth whispered.

There are a few reasons this doesn’t make sense. For one thing, how did Jane know which bedroom Elizabeth was in? They were led upstairs separately, and earlier in this very scene Elizabeth reflects that she doesn’t know where Jane is, and won’t risk knocking on random doors until she finds her.

More importantly: why would Jane assume that Elizabeth is ill if she doesn’t answer her door in the middle of the night? Wouldn’t the more reasonable assumption be that she’s, you know, asleep? Or even that Jane had the wrong room, given that she shouldn’t know which is Elizabeth’s anyway? (Come to think of it, how did Darcy know which room was Elizabeth’s?)

The only way this makes sense is if you assume that Jane isn’t terribly bright; an assumption which will prove correct over the course of the novel. Jane demonstrates this at the very end of this chapter, when she fails to interrogate Elizabeth on the presence of Darcy in her bedroom.

This isn’t Austen’s Jane, who was described in Pride and Prejudice as “firm where she felt herself to be right,” and who demanded an explanation from Elizabeth when she believed her to be marrying without affection. Jane ends P&P not fooled at all by Caroline Bingley; she is optimistic, but clear eyed and sensible. Linda Berdoll paints her, and will continue to paint her, as nothing but a well-intentioned idiot.

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

Netherfield appears to have an army of servants, who manage to be much occupied with lighting and relighting candles, but can’t seem to answer the door when Darcy comes back.

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

There isn’t much plot to speak of; Darcy and Elizabeth escape the night with virtue intact (or she does, anyway), and his decision to leave for a week for stupid reasons is never discussed again.