[MaggieScratch]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Yeah, but we -- or at least I, since I picked the zombie option -- am not saying that the girls are gold diggers. Just that the story of Jane trying to get Blandy McBlanderson and Lizzie trying to get Prickface the Third to marry them is boring to me.

But they're NOT trying to get them to marry them. The reason Darcy discourages Bingley from marrying Jane (besides the vulgar family thing) is that he is not convinced that Jane feels the same way about Bingley that Bingley feels about Jane. Her demeanor is sweet and calm, and she doesn't show her feelings externally, and the culture demanded that she not talk much about her feelings except to very close friends and family.

And as I said, Lizzy actively discourages Darcy from hanging around her. He misinterprets her discouragement, but that's not her fault. And then he proposes and is instantly shot down. It's the modern equivalent of turning down a very easy job that pays a six-figure salary for which you aren't really qualified. It would be a surprising thing if someone turned it down. It's very surprising that Elizabeth Bennet turns down Darcy's proposal.

I especially hate it when Lizzie starts reprimanding herself for being so rude to Darcy and OMG I COULD HAVE HAD THIS PRETTY HOUSE AND THIS NICE MAN AND WHAT WAS I THINKING

Like anyone, she has a moment of thinking it would be pretty cool to be mistress of Pemberley--to live in a fabulous house in a gorgeous area and have the freedom of it all. But then she realizes that she would likely have to give up her more beloved relatives, and she is no longer upset about it. From the novel:

"And of this place," thought she, "I might have been mistress! With these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted! Instead of viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced in them as my own, and welcomed to them as visitors my uncle and aunt. -- But no," -- recollecting herself, -- "that could never be: my uncle and aunt would have been lost to me: I should not have been allowed to invite them." This was a lucky recollection -- it saved her from something like regret.

Of course Darcy allows her to invite the Gardiners to Pemberley--he comes to love them as much as she does. But Elizabeth is still adjusting her views at this point. In fact, his kind treatment of the Gardiners, in a very class-conscious time, is part of what helps her see his true quality of character.

The second half of the book involves her excoriating herself for precisely the wrong thing: i.e., for not realizing how obviously AWESOME Darcy is/was in the first half of the book.

No, she's excoriating herself for not thinking through the things that Wickham was telling her and allowing her prejudice against Darcy to help convince her that Wickham's falsehoods are true. She is distressed that she misjudged Darcy, because he is a man of good character and doesn't deserve to have been misjudged. Like I said, all the clues are there that Wickham is a lying git, and when Elizabeth reflects on the past, she sees that. She knows Darcy didn't deserve the way she treated him. She didn't have to like him, but she shouldn't have thought he was evil for keeping Wickham from earning a living. This is, I know, a higher sense of morality and honor than people hold themselves to in this degenerate age.

I'm not a big Darcy fan for the first half of the book, either. My private nickname for him is Snarky McJerkpants. He comes around, though. His behavior from the time he encounters her at Pemberley is designed to make her like him ("showing you, by every civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past"). She already knows she misjudged him, so she is willing to start over.

I don't find her to be a sympathetic character. I like Jane well enough, but she's so limp and simpering that I don't really care for her either. Rather than being shy (Jane) or catty (Lizzie), I'd prefer everyone were just candid.

Unfortunately the social mores of the time didn't really allow for that. The cultural perspectives help. As I said in my previous post, that's why we read great literature--to learn about other perspectives on the world. It also helps you to understand how fortunate we are in some ways to live when we live--though of course it's possible to overshare one's feelings!

"Mr. Darcy, I don't appreciate how rude you were to me just there. Please don't speak to me again unless you wish to make amends and start over."

How hard would that have been, really?

Which was pretty much what she said when she refused his proposal. Again, from the book:

"You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner. . . From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."

And then later we learn this was the BIG moment for him--the one that made him reassess and change his behavior. From the second, accepted proposal scene:

"The recollection of what I then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it, is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: "had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner." Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me. . ."

Totally my subjective opinion.

I honestly don't expect everyone to love Jane Austen's work. I like the results of the survey--most people are casual fans, which is probably as it should be. But it distressed me to see your expressed views as I felt they were a pretty serious misrepresentation of the plot. Perhaps you need to re-read the book--with more information, and having abandoned your prejudices; much like Elizabeth Bennet treated Mr. Darcy.