Like millions of females around the world, Pride and Prejudice's story line sucked me in. I mean, who wouldn't want some ubber rich man with a house like Pemberley to fall in love with them? And here is where my blog turns into a thought provoking, yet probably rage inducing one sided discussion.
Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors and I have all of her books, both on my Nook and in paperback. But something that took me a long time to discover (I can be a slow learner when I don't want to see something) was that Jane Austen has screwed both men and women over. Women are waiting for Mr. Darcy to come into their lives while men are trying to overcome the battle with Mr. Darcy's image for the attention of women.
As a woman, I won't lie, I have a romantic vision in my head of what my perfect husband should be and a lot of those characteristics include things that relate to Darcy (I personally prefer Matthew Macfadyen to Colin Firth but that's neither here nor there). Granted, I (nor any other woman, I would presume) don't want a man to tell me that he fell in love with me in spite of my family's fortunes but other than his snootiness, Mr. Darcy is kind of the perfect man. He falls in love with Lizzie despite all his insecurities about her and literally saves her family from that century's doom by paying for her sister's wedding to his arch nemesis.
That's definitely perfect man material... it also gives false hope to all women that every man they find will be just like the fictional character. So thank you Ms. Austen for giving modern writers the idea of creating unattainable men with Darcy and your other male leads... and thank you for giving us men like Wickham so we know who to avoid. Now if only we could figure out how to create our own Darcys in our own real life stories.
And for those that are looking for a modern adaption of Pride & Prejudice that stays new and fresh... I present the Lizzy Bennet Diaries:
Until next time,
Mel
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