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Jun. 4th, 2020 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineI'll probably make a Tumblr post w/ the exact quote, but I've been thinking about P&P as usual and I really think nothing represents early Darcy's character more than the scene where he thinks he's paying too much attention to Elizabeth and she might reach Conclusions about it, and consequently goes out of his way to ignore her.
His thought process seems to be: of course she'd be enthusiastic if she knew he was interested bc lol who wouldn't, so it'd be shitty to let her imagine he's thinking of marriage when he (obviously!) can't marry her. Like ... "I am such a good catch that any woman would be eager to have me" and "she is too far beneath me to marry" and "leading women on is Wrong" all smoothly bleed into each other so that he can't even really disentangle them. And yet, of course, part of this is coming from high principle (wrt women specifically, in this case) and part of it from sheer snobbish arrogance, and these are really quite different things.
I do think part of his development is ... well, Austen imagined pride as always part of Darcy's character, and I def agree. He becomes less snobbish, in particular, as seen in his relationship w/ the Gardiners (it's a pity that it's so overlooked, bc I think that it, even more than his relationship with Elizabeth herself, is where we see the most change). But he's still a proud man in many ways, and I kind of think that some part of his character development is less abandoning pride than separating it out from principle, which he very explicitly does at the end.
His thought process seems to be: of course she'd be enthusiastic if she knew he was interested bc lol who wouldn't, so it'd be shitty to let her imagine he's thinking of marriage when he (obviously!) can't marry her. Like ... "I am such a good catch that any woman would be eager to have me" and "she is too far beneath me to marry" and "leading women on is Wrong" all smoothly bleed into each other so that he can't even really disentangle them. And yet, of course, part of this is coming from high principle (wrt women specifically, in this case) and part of it from sheer snobbish arrogance, and these are really quite different things.
I do think part of his development is ... well, Austen imagined pride as always part of Darcy's character, and I def agree. He becomes less snobbish, in particular, as seen in his relationship w/ the Gardiners (it's a pity that it's so overlooked, bc I think that it, even more than his relationship with Elizabeth herself, is where we see the most change). But he's still a proud man in many ways, and I kind of think that some part of his character development is less abandoning pride than separating it out from principle, which he very explicitly does at the end.
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on 2020-06-04 08:19 pm (UTC)*uncontrollable laughter*
Good note on separating pride from principle. Darcy might be (is?) the most principled leading male in all the books. I'd say Colonel Brandon is also driven by principle, as is Edward Ferrars.
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on 2020-06-04 08:56 pm (UTC)Yeah, I think so—or, at least, that he's the most deliberate about it. I think quite a few of the other ones follow good natures more than principle as such. And good nature is important (hence Mrs Reynolds's testimony), but ... not the same thing as developing and abiding by conscious principles.