Austen Wednesdays: Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy

I've decided to start out with Mr. Darcy--perhaps one of the best known Austen characters from Pride and Prejudice other than Elizabeth Bennet.


As you can see by the pictures, I am slightly biased as to which Pride and Prejudice movie versions I think are the best.

Mr. Darcy is a considerably wealthy man, with an income of at least £10,000 a year. He owns a large estate called Pemberley, where he also looks after his younger sister.

When you first meet him in Pride and Prejudice, he is portrayed as an almost cruel, snobbish person with a huge ego. However, by the end of the novel, Elizabeth sees his true colors when he demonstrates his love for her by acting in a very self-less way towards her family in a time of crisis.

Mr. Darcy is the very picture of perfection--in fact, I am quite sure he has never had or ever will have a real earthly equal.


From Chapter 11 of Pride and Prejudice:

"I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise."

"No," said Darcy, "I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost is lost forever."

"That is a failing indeed!" cried Elizabeth. "Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me."

"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil— a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome."

"And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody."

"And yours," he replied with a smile, "is willfully to misunderstand them."