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Tumblr crosspost (22 August 2019)
A kindly anon asked,
Why do you like Fitzwilliam Darcy so much? ;)
I said:
Bless you, anon, for throwing a sledgehammer through the apathy.
I was just going to link to my Darcy stanning tag (#lady anne blogging), but I couldn’t resist the chance to say even more. HERE GOES.
Basically, there are brushstroke reasons and painting reasons that he is my eternal favourite. What I mean is this:
He has a ton of individual traits/actions/instances that I find either extremely relatable or extremely admirable. I admire him for trying to convince Lydia not to marry Wickham, say, while his defense that it’s hard for him to catch the tone of conversations is not necessarily admirable, but is 100% relatable. That’s also a case of the “painting” side, though.
By the painting side, I mean that I think as a whole that Darcy is a splendidly conceived and executed character in his entirety.
So, in the ‘tone of conversation’ instance, Darcy is trying to justify behaviour that is not really justifiable, while also revealing vulnerability. Elizabeth’s reaction is equally understandable but also inadequate in its own way (Darcy’s character moments always serve to illustrate Elizabeth’s character, too, which I think is one reason their dynamic is so successful).
The important thing is—okay, by the end of the novel, Darcy is actually trying to be agreeable with people he doesn’t even like. But Austen goes out of her way to highlight that he, um, kind of fails. With the people he doesn’t like, that is. Around them, he comes off as cold and dismissive (this gets overlooked a lot, but I think it’s important). The point is that he tries. And Elizabeth, after her own character growth, accepts his—very real!—discomfort and tries to shield him rather than urging him to just try harder, which retroactively makes the piano scene more complex thematically, and his character (and the Darcy/Elizabeth dynamic) with it.
Also, Austen’s insistence on how Darcy-at-Longbourn is, despite his efforts, more like early Darcy than Pemberley Darcy complicates the ~~~transformation~~~ to Pemberley Darcy, which is also set up in the Rosings section with things like Charlotte’s realization that Darcy must be generally different than she and Elizabeth have known him, which is reinforced by Mrs Reynolds’s testimony, which itself gets complicated later on, too. Everything about him is more complicated than it seems at first.
So, ultimately, he emerges as both a very clear figure and a highly ambiguous one in that virtually everything he says or does can be quite reasonably read a number of ways. Not just two! I have very decided ideas and interpretations, obviously, but I always find something new in him, and newly enjoy what I’ve already thought.
Tl;dr—the mix of outright heroism, personally relatable qualities, and a complex but tightly focused and interconnected characterization makes him endlessly compelling and lovable for me.
Why do you like Fitzwilliam Darcy so much? ;)
I said:
Bless you, anon, for throwing a sledgehammer through the apathy.
I was just going to link to my Darcy stanning tag (#lady anne blogging), but I couldn’t resist the chance to say even more. HERE GOES.
Basically, there are brushstroke reasons and painting reasons that he is my eternal favourite. What I mean is this:
He has a ton of individual traits/actions/instances that I find either extremely relatable or extremely admirable. I admire him for trying to convince Lydia not to marry Wickham, say, while his defense that it’s hard for him to catch the tone of conversations is not necessarily admirable, but is 100% relatable. That’s also a case of the “painting” side, though.
By the painting side, I mean that I think as a whole that Darcy is a splendidly conceived and executed character in his entirety.
So, in the ‘tone of conversation’ instance, Darcy is trying to justify behaviour that is not really justifiable, while also revealing vulnerability. Elizabeth’s reaction is equally understandable but also inadequate in its own way (Darcy’s character moments always serve to illustrate Elizabeth’s character, too, which I think is one reason their dynamic is so successful).
The important thing is—okay, by the end of the novel, Darcy is actually trying to be agreeable with people he doesn’t even like. But Austen goes out of her way to highlight that he, um, kind of fails. With the people he doesn’t like, that is. Around them, he comes off as cold and dismissive (this gets overlooked a lot, but I think it’s important). The point is that he tries. And Elizabeth, after her own character growth, accepts his—very real!—discomfort and tries to shield him rather than urging him to just try harder, which retroactively makes the piano scene more complex thematically, and his character (and the Darcy/Elizabeth dynamic) with it.
Also, Austen’s insistence on how Darcy-at-Longbourn is, despite his efforts, more like early Darcy than Pemberley Darcy complicates the ~~~transformation~~~ to Pemberley Darcy, which is also set up in the Rosings section with things like Charlotte’s realization that Darcy must be generally different than she and Elizabeth have known him, which is reinforced by Mrs Reynolds’s testimony, which itself gets complicated later on, too. Everything about him is more complicated than it seems at first.
So, ultimately, he emerges as both a very clear figure and a highly ambiguous one in that virtually everything he says or does can be quite reasonably read a number of ways. Not just two! I have very decided ideas and interpretations, obviously, but I always find something new in him, and newly enjoy what I’ve already thought.
Tl;dr—the mix of outright heroism, personally relatable qualities, and a complex but tightly focused and interconnected characterization makes him endlessly compelling and lovable for me.