Being Jane Austen, Being Mr Darcy
So, a few weeks ago I began studying the Literature of the English Country House with FutureLearn, an affiliate of the Open University. This is a FREE eight week course, and so far the content quality has been sublime. We have been looking at various types of literature through the 18th and 19th centuries so far, and polite society and their country estates. This course has been so much more interesting than I first thought it would be! Not only has the historical contexts made these works more interesting than I ever gave them credit for in the past, we are also picking them apart in close readings, which is teaching me a great deal about style, tone and ideology in classic literature, It's even covered POV, and Free Indirect Discourse, by way of reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. And herein lies the nub of the title of this post: we were asked to rewrite a passage of P&P from Darcy's perspective in as close a style to Jane Austen as possible. I LOVED this challenge, though I doubted my ability to pull it off. Tell me what you think.
(The rewrite is the end of the scene where Darcy first comes to propose to Elizabeth and she refuses him. This is just after he has left her to return to his aunt's estate.)
Once returned in his aunt’s carriage, Darcy’s thoughts were unable to settle. That she of all ladies should refuse him! And to have laid in his charge – so unwittingly – the falsehood of Wickham’s predicament! Of course, it was not for him to decry her accusations in such regard, rest assured to the detriment of his dear sister, had he; yet, he could feel in his temperament all the derangements that would surely set him to pacing through the night. And indeed, once returned to Rosings, and having bade the party inside a fair and pleasant evening, having re-joined them for a suitable proportion of time as was necessitated by social grace and Darcy’s own somewhat shaken repository of pride, he took to his chambers. It would not do. Not at all! Surely she must know that her family could not possibly be a suitable match for Bingley? That he, Darcy, had adhered to all moral recompense? It confounded him that she should hold such little introspect unto her own family’s standing, that she should never – would never! – again entertain the chance of such an offer of security and elevated regard. Let her become an old maid, if she would have it so: her pride knew no bounds; her impropriety hastened such a fate.
With much hither and thither of reasoning which endured throughout the long night, finally the dawn came and Darcy was much resolved to take ink and paper in place of his breakfasting, and wrote a letter to Miss Bennet, which he would deliver and present to her himself, whether she acquiesced to reading it or not; and upon reading it, would declare the end of any and all affairs left unresolved between them, and he would never, lest happenstance bequeathed it so, lay eyes upon her bewitching face again.
