This Thursday it will be a year since my beloved Mr. Fitzpatrick died. I am finding myself in much the same position Austen was when her family moved to Bath and her father died: just not in the mood to write. So, I give you instead Mr. Fitzpatrick’s favorite Austenacious post, originally published last May.
Pop quiz
You are in a car going @#&%$* mph on Interstate 5 towards Los Angeles. An officer pulls you over and asks, “What’s the reason for your speed today, miss?” What do you say?
Mrs. Bennet: Mr. Bingley is come! He is indeed! Officer, hurry up, can’t you?
Mr. Bingley: My ideas flow so rapidly that they make me drive very very fast.
Mr. Bennet: I thought I saw Mr. Collins in my rear-view mirror. And don’t call me “miss.”
Mr. Collins: Lady Catherine de Bourgh, my eminent patroness, most urgently desired me to find a wife, and I have heard there are many fine young ladies in Los Angeles.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh: Sir! How dare you question me! I shall make sure you NEVER find a wife!
Mr. Darcy: I saw Mr. Wickham tailgating a young lady, and was about to perform a citizen’s arrest. Or make him marry her, if necessary.
Mr. Wickham: I thought I saw Mr. Darcy in my rear-view mirror.
Lydia and Kitty Bennet: We were in search of officers! And it looks like we found one! 
Elizabeth Bennet: I do apologize, officer. My sisters just don’t stop making trouble. I have to run after them all the time.
Photo credit: ©2009 Heather Dever. All rights reserved.
Send us your questions! Mrs. Fitzpatrick knows a lot of stuff, useful and useless alike. “Ask Mrs. Fitzpatrick” will answer anything related to the world of the books, the books themselves, P.G. Wodehouse, math, or Star Trek. Jane Austen (deceased) will comment on your personal problems in “What Would Jane Do?” Write to us using the contact form on the About page. We’d love to hear from you!
Miss Susan D. asks: The Burning Question. Anyone who spent their formative years reading Georgette Heyer and rounding them off forever with Jane Austen understands that, the tyranny of patriarchy and primogeniture being what they are, it is the Male Heir who must inherit an entailed estate. Not only male himself, but male in his antecedents. Why then does the heir to Longbourn bear the name Collins? Clearly, he has some distaff in his Bennet family history, perhaps Mr. Bennet’s grandfather’s sister’s grandson. That being the case, why wouldn’t a son of one of the girls, a wee Wickham or a baby Bingley or darling Darcy, be prime heir material here? I’ve always wondered. Help me sleep at night, dear Mrs. Fitzpatrick.
Mrs. Fitzpatrick answers: Ooh, Miss Susan, that’s a tricky one! I used to feel superior to Mrs. Bennet when “Jane and Elizabeth attempted to explain to her the nature of an entail. They had often attempted it before, but it was a subject on which Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason . . .”, but having looked into the subject, I feel a new sympathy for her. Luckily, our friends on the Austen-L mailing list (hosted at The Republic of Pemberley) have delved into this question already. Briefly, you are right that if all the strict-male-line heirs have died out, precedence is given to the estate owner’s daughters—the Bennet sisters—rather than to the sons of his sisters, his cousins, or his aunts. (The sons of the Bennet girls aren’t relevant, though I must say my blood runs cold at the thought of a wee Wickham!) Therefore, Mr. Collins is not Mr. Bennet’s grandfather’s sister’s grandson.
So, the Austen-L’s conclude, either one of Mr. Bennet’s male ancestors or one of Mr. Collins’s male ancestors must have changed his name on receiving an inheritance. This was not so uncommon; it happened three times in Jane Austen’s immediate family. The very emphasis on “passing on the name” that entails emphasize meant that people would cheat by adopting a boy and having him change his name. Like Frank Churchill in Emma, whose father was Mr. Weston but who was adopted by the Churchills and became their heir. This leads me to wonder whether Frank would also inherit Mr. Weston’s property if the second Mrs. Weston had a son. Is Frank legally a Weston and a Churchill? Hmm . . .
Actually, I would guess that Jane Austen, having this option open to her, preferred not to have two characters named Mr. Bennet. So there you have it. Sleep well, Miss Susan!
P.S. If you are bursting to learn more about entails (which are pretty much defunct now, by the way), Wikipedia has some good general info, and so does Pemberley.
It’s rainy and muddy in Austenland right now, and the good people there were thinking of passing the time with a little amateur dramatics when, lo and behold, a wormhole opened up and a copy of the Harry Potter series dropped back in time and into our heroes and heroines laps! While Fanny Price looked on in horror, a fantasy casting frenzy commenced.
Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley: All the heroines wanted to be one of these two. Hermione has the best brains and get the most to do, while Ginny is, of course, the love interest, and feisty in her own right. Emma tried to claim Hermione by pointing out that she read the most, but Lizzie pointed out that making lists of books is not the same as reading them! Also, who sticks up for herself and her friends most in a tight spot? All right, Lizzie, fine, you can be Hermione. Anne Elliot gently reminded the others that Ginny was also a put-upon member of a large family, but Catherine Morland pointed out that she was the only one who played a sport, baseball, so she should be Ginny. . .
Harry Potter: Most of the men made a claim to this, but the ladies agreed that none suited so well as Captain Wentworth. He was dashing, he was a common (not too bright) man who did things, won hearts, stirred up controversy . . .
Ron Weasley: Mr. Darcy disdained being Capt. Wentworth’s sidekick, even for Lizzie’s sake, but Mr. Bingley said he didn’t mind if he did.
Lord Voldemort: Of course, Darcy was attracted by the role. But everyone agreed quietly than it really belonged to his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. And she agreed that it was fitting she should play a noble role.
Professor Albus Dumbledore: Mr. Knightley or Mr. Bennet, for sure, the from-the-side-watching know-it-alls.
Professor Severus Snape: Lizzie laughed, and said surely this role belonged to Mr. Darcy!
Draco Malfoy: Henry Crawford, to be sure. Draco doesn’t get much action, poor boy, but Crawford could identify with his halfhearted redemption.
Professor Gilderoy Lockhart: For sheer daffiness, vanity, and ego, everyone agreed, Sir Walter Elliot should have the honor here. (Mr. Collins would have done, had he been handsome.)
At this point, the ladies’ scuffles over who was to be Ginny Weasley became really quite alarming. Mary Crawford was heard to say that Ginny had always had plenty of boyfriends to choose from, and that therefore she should be Ginny. Then Lydia Bennet proclaimed loudly that she had more, and should be. Mr. Bennet went into one of his rages, and took his whole family back to Longbourn, leaving the others to practice riding their broomsticks in the drawing room and casting spells at the card table.
. . .
Obviously, I have merely scratched the surface here! Readers, what do you think? What obvious character connections have I missed?
Photo credit: Magic wand image ©amanky. Used under Creative Commons licensing.
We need more parties, don’t we? Well, I know I do, especially Jane Austen parties! Other people have ventured opinions on this topic. 99% of them involve a) tea, b) watching movies, or c) both. I’m in favor of all three of these activities (well, duh), but I do think we could broaden our horizons here, venture across the ha-ha, as it were.
Basic steps: This write-up has some good ideas, including period card games, period snacks, and trivia. Be warned that you are venturing into weirder territory here than you know, as Miss Osborne’s cooking experiments have shown us. Stick to syllabub, is my advice. As far as card games go, I love them, but Miss Austen did not, or at any rate none of her heroines did. So if you play them, stick to the more “comfortable, noisy” games, like Speculation, and avoid Whist as all costs. Whist (the precursor of Bridge) is bo-ring, both in Mansfield Park and in my experience. Still, you get good discussions around the card table, and good insights into people’s characters, the Crawfords’ in particular.
Crafty steps: While “painting tables, covering screens, and netting purses” may draw derision from Mr. Darcy, I am all in favor of “cutting up silk and gold paper” as the girls do in Persuasion, and crafts in general. Here’s some Regency party craft ideas.
Ballsy steps: Lots of places have Regency balls, where you can be spurned by Mr. Darcy and overhear Mr. Elton insulting your best friend, and have good times generally. You can also do this at home, even if you have to dance down the hall to lively tunes from your MP3 player. (It’s better than Mary Bennet on the piano.) Make sure to have white soup, negus, and indiscreet conversations, and, ladies, I happen to know that many gentlemen find Regency/square dancing less intimidating than ballroom. Show them diagrams! Let them figure it out!
RPG steps: It’s funny how you never hear “role-playing” and “Jane Austen” in the same sentence, especially when you consider all that fanfic out there. So, if you are really feeling adventurous, I suggest designing some sort of Austen role-playing activity. You could, you know, assign the different parts from a book beforehand, get everyone together, and let them have at it. Sounds sort of like Lost in Austen, doesn’t it? Or, since it’s almost Halloween, why not do a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies flash mob? Everyone decide beforehand whether you’ll be a zombie, a Bennet sister, or an innocent bystander; show up someplace and have it out! Regency zombie battles on the National Mall! I see this happening, people! Serious Austen party-ers will do this in full costume, of course. But watch where you put that sword. You could put someone’s eye out with that thing.
Olympic steps: OK, OK, it’s true that zombies aren’t genuine Austen. But it’s also true that whenever you get together, you are probably having a party pretty close to one Jane Austen wrote! Oh, the food, drink, dancing, and clothes might be different, but I bet the social dynamics are not far off. I know that’s not what you want to hear, though, so I suggest the Jane Austen Olympics! Events can include: the 100-meter Dash Across the Lawn to Find Mr. Bennet, the All-Terrain Walk to Netherfield (points deducted per inch of dirty hem), the Louisa Musgrove Stair-Jumping Contest, the Pairs’ Rainy Hillside Rescue Dance, Fencing Wits, and Conversational Gymnastics (Lizzie’s an odds-on favorite there, clearly), and . . . .
But you see! The possibilities are endless! Now get your corsets on, go out there, and PARTY!!!
Photo credits: ©juzka81. Used through Creative Commons licensing.
Just when I thought Miss Ball had reached the limits of mash-ups, the brilliant Mr. Luxton put the opening of Pride and Prejudice through an online pirate translator, thus exploring strange new worlds where writers need never go, because they’ve been replaced by Perl scripts. Well, he is a programmer. (And he’s probably about to tell me they aren’t Perl scripts, but never mind.) Behold the future!
IT be a truth universally acknowledged, that a single scallywag in possession o’ a good loot must be in wants o’ a beauty.
However wee known th’ feelin’s or views o’ such a scallywag may be on his first boardin’ a neighbourhood, this truth be so well fixed in th’ minds o’ th’ surroundin’ families, that he be considered as th’ rightful property o’ some one or other o’ thar daughters.
“Me dear Cap’n Bennet,” said his beauty t’ ‘im one day, “’ave ye heard that Netherfield Park be let at last?”
Cap’n Bennet replied that he had nah.
“But ’tis,” returned she; “fer Wench Long has jus’ been here, ‘n she told me all about it.”
Cap’n Bennet made no answer.
“Do nah ye wants t’ know who has taken it?” cried his beauty impatiently.
“Ye wants t’ tell me, ‘n I ‘ave no objection t’ hearin’ it.”
This was invitation enough.
“Why, me dear, ye must know, Wench Long says that Netherfield be taken by a young scallywag o’ large loot from th’ north o’ England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise ‘n four t’ see th’ ship, ‘n was so much delighted wit’ it that he agreed wit’ Cap’n Morris immediately; that he be t’ loot possession afore Michaelmas, ‘n some o’ his servants are t’ be in th’ ship by th’ end o’ next week.”
“Wha’ be his name?”
“Bingley.”
“Be he married or single?”
“Oh! single, me dear, t’ be sure! A single scallywag o’ large booty; four or five thousand a year. Wha’ a fine thin’ fer our poppets!”
With all the different translation software out there, I feel sure we could sell new versions of poor Jane’s work in no time flat! How about a Pig Latin translation?
Itway isway away uthtray universallyway acknowledgedway atthay away inglesay anmay inway ossessionpay ofway away oodgay ortunefay ustmay ebay inway antway ofway away ifeway.
Or Swedish Chef?
It is a troot uneeferselly ecknooledged thet a seengle-a mun in pussesseeun ooff a guud furtoone-a moost be-a in vunt ooff a veeffe.
Or, just for the nice lady in Airplane! who speaks Jive:
It be a trud universally acknowledged dat some sin’le joker in possession uh a baaaad fo’tune gots’ta be in wants’ uh a mama.
There now, children, you can have all the fun you want, and let mama get back to her book. Bring us back a souvenir from the Piratical Jane theme park, and say thank you to the gentleman. He makes your life better in ways you never even dream of. Trust me on this.
Photo credit: Pirate cookie photo ©Sweet! Cupcakes and Treats (Just Cupcakes!). Used under Creative Commons licensing.
Pop quiz
You are in a car going @#&%$* mph on Interstate 5 towards Los Angeles. An officer pulls you over and asks, “What’s the reason for your speed today, miss?” What do you say?
Mrs. Bennet: Mr. Bingley is come! He is indeed! Officer, hurry up, can’t you?
Mr. Bingley: My ideas flow so rapidly that they make me drive very very fast.
Mr. Bennet: I thought I saw Mr. Collins in my rear-view mirror. And don’t call me “miss.”
Mr. Collins: Lady Catherine de Bourgh, my eminent patroness, most urgently desired me to find a wife, and I have heard there are many fine young ladies in Los Angeles.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh: Sir! How dare you question me! I shall make sure you NEVER find a wife!
Mr. Darcy: I saw Mr. Wickham tailgating a young lady, and was about to make a citizen’s arrest. Or make him marry her, if necessary.
Mr. Wickham: I thought I saw Mr. Darcy in my rear-view mirror.
Lydia and Kitty Bennet: We were in search of officers! And it looks like we found one!
Elizabeth Bennet: I do apologize, officer. My sisters just don’t stop making trouble. I have to run after them all the time.
Photo credit: ©2009 Heather Dever. All rights reserved.
I love E.M. Forster almost as much as I love Jane Austen, and how pleasant it is to discover that he understood the Austenite condition so well himself. He wouldn’t blame us for playing our Austenacious games, or girls (or boys) from being silly about Mr. Darcy, though who knows what he would say about the current spewing of adaptations. But his article shocked me. Listen to what he says about Chapter 2. Here’s the passage in my edition.
“Kitty has no discretion in her coughs,” said her father. “She times them ill.”
“I do not cough for my own amusement,” replied Kitty fretfully. “When is your next ball to be, Lizzy?”
BUT, Forster says that R.W. Chapman thought that last line didn’t belong to Kitty, since she was going to the ball, and would know when it would be. In the original edition it was on the next line and was said by Mr. Bennet. The printers forgot to indent it, and future editions ran the two paragraphs together. Chapman found other, similar errors.
Everyone in the outside world can say or do what they please to Miss Austen’s books, but inside them, I thought I was safe! I thought I knew what she was trying to tell me. But no, even after R.W. Chapman found these printer’s errors, in 1923, they have not been fixed! I am truly shocked by this. It seems like such a little thing, but who knows what other errors may be lurking? Possibly the scholars who write papers on single phrases used in books, but, like Forster, I believed Austen, and never questioned her.
I first read Pride and Prejudice when I was in seventh grade, and I accepted it as holy gospel. “This is how real people think and act,” I thought. “They are full of irony, they laugh whenever possible, they are thoughtful (except when they’re not).” I didn’t even particularly realize the book was funny until Mr. Fitzpatrick read it a few years ago! He thought it was hilarious, and was disturbed when a guy friend saw the Keira Knightley version and didn’t realize it was supposed to be funny. Talking about Pride and Prejudice with Mr. Fitzpatrick certainly helped me think about it in a new way. And now his mother has read it—I’m really interested to see how her perceptions will have differed from mine. No novel is the same to any two people, is it?
At the same time, it’s always odd when you hear or remember something differently from someone else—Liveblogging Emma highlighted that for me, as Miss Ball and I disagreed on words and actions several times. (Of course, I was always right. 
) Even the 1980 BBC version, which was very faithful, strangely switches around who said what, at times. And it makes one mistake that annoys me all out of proportion. When Lizzy is looking at Mr. Darcy’s portrait at Pemberley, “she thought of his regard . . . ; she remembered its warmth, and softened its impropriety of expression.” In the BBC version, she thinks “How stern you look in your portrait! But I remember your warmth, and would soften that look.” Not at all the same thing!
This is a long, rambling kind of post. I guess the point is that I think of Pride and Prejudice (and all Jane Austen’s other books) as real things, not just as somebody’s words. And that, as much as possible, I understand them. Other people may understand them differently, but they are still ours. To suddenly realize, even slightly, that they’re not, and I don’t, is as disturbing as realizing after 20 minutes that my husband and I have been talking about completely different things, and didn’t even know it.
Or am I just being paranoid?
Happy Thanksgiving, readers! Have some pie, on us!
Now that that’s over with, let’s be serious. The holidays are coming, and you know what that means: joy, wonder, and sparkly lights? No. (Well, yes, but…no.) Think shopping. Think six a.m. crowds. Think finding the perfect gifts for your loved ones, unless you’d rather bless them with a mounted faux fish that sings “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” every hour on the hour. Fun for the whole family!
We at Austenacious are here to help, whether you’re making up your own wish list or shopping for the Austenite in your life. We’ve scoured Etsy—land of the vintage, the handmade, and the vintage handmade—for the coolest, prettiest, funniest Janely goods out there, and we think you’ll like what we found.
Happy shopping!
Do Not Faint Jane Austen Moleskine journal, $16 at yardia
Paper and pen! How quaint! Give the writer in your life a bit of Janely advice and a cool place to record Important Thoughts. This medium-sized Moleskine has 96 pages (80 plain, 16 detachable); the cover features an original illustration of a Regency-era dress and a quotation from Jane’s early novel Love and Freindship (sic). Jane would have loved it; we certainly do.
Wallet made from print of a P&P first edition, $19 at bookity
Calm down: It’s not a real page. (We checked.) But it is a reproduction of the title page from a first edition of Pride and Prejudice, printed on 100% cotton, lined with striped pink fabric, and made into a wallet/card-holder, and it’s also a pretty awesome gift for your favorite P&P fan, especially if he or she tends towards disorganization or likes giving heart attacks to fellow book-lovers. Not that we know anybody who needs this. Ahem.
P&P Christmas ornaments, $7 at Brookish
To be honest, practically everything from Brookish would be a great gift for the Austen-fan set, but we think these Christmas ornaments filled with nearly two sliced-up pages from Pride and Prejudice (again, copies—we hope) are especially elegant. Did we say Christmas ornaments? Nothing here is red or green: keep them out all year long for a shot of literary decor whenever you need it.
Mr. Darcy proposal dish towel, $10 at Brookish
Need a little romance in your life? What about your kitchen? This dish towel screen-printed with Mr. Darcy’s proposal (in pretty handwriting, no less) to Elizabeth Bennet is just the thing to put you in the mood…what for, we don’t really want to know. Just promise us you won’t swoon with anything hot in your hand, okay? Safety first.
Eight letterpress cards with Jane quotations, $16.95 (or $4 each) at letterarypress
Words escaping you? Really need to get your point across, but not looking forward to catalyzing epic drama over the holidays? Maybe Jane can help. Say what you really mean with these eight beautiful and beautifully snarky Jane-quotation greeting cards by letterarypress–after all, Jane says it best, and she’s not around to get in trouble!
Regency couple suitcase, $52 at BrightWall Studios
Carry your baggage—emotional and otherwise—in style with this vintage suitcase hand-illustrated with the silhouettes of a Regency couple. Lined in red, with amenities of the luggage of yesteryear (movable compartments!), the suitcase measures 18″ x 21″ x 8.5″—perfect weekend size—and trust us, you’ll never lose your stuff on the airport baggage carousel again!
Jane Austen finger puppet greeting cards, $3.25 at DearDeerDesigns
Looking for a gift that doesn’t require extra postage? This gift is the card: a double-sided Jane Austen finger puppet greeting card! Make a cut-out or leave her whole; if you think a paper finger puppet isn’t hours of entertainment for the likes of Jane’s fans, well, we must have just met. Nice to meet you.
You Have Delighted Us Long Enough switchplate, $10 at alamodestuff
For the reluctant, impatient, or charmingly sarcastic host in your life, Mr. Bennet comes through…as always. Guests staying too long at the piano? Guests staying too long, period? This switchplate comes in a variety of styles (to accomodate all your lighting-control needs) and is certain to make your friends laugh…as the door shuts behind them. See? Form and function: together at last.
Now, get out there, people! Shop! Find cool handmade stuff for the people you love!
Oh, and one more thing:
Happy holidays.
Dear Jane,
One of the consultants my company works with is super hot, and all of my colleagues know I think so. I don’t want to date him and have no plans to pursue him; I just like looking at him. However, my colleagues continue to imply that all I really want is a “private meeting” with this guy. How can I get them to see that I’m not the office slut?
Sincerely,
I Don’t Even Want to Do It on my Desk
My dear madam,
There is nothing wrong with liking to look at a well-set-up man, especially one who dresses the part. Does this gentleman wear a blue coat? Or a great coat (those do enhance the breadth of the shoulders, you know)? Why some among us—I’m looking at you, Sir Walter, put the mirror down!—think that looks are simply everything. Does this gentleman parade the halls of your workplace in a well-fitting suit? Does he talk condescendingly of his fondness for cottages in the country? These are good signs that he is a mere popinjay, and can be ignored out of hand, even if he is cute.
Of course, your question did not concern the eligibility of the gentleman; in fact you expressed desire for other people to stop speculating on his eligibility and character. Miss Austen apologizes (and turns a blind eye on your more explicit references, even if as much of that does go on in the country as in the town!). I doubt very much that your coworkers really do think you are the office slut, if this is all they have attacked you with. But the rampant desire to speculate about any possible relationship for any young lady has not changed in 1,000 years or more, and is not likely too, either. This gentleman is provoking exactly the reaction in your neighborhood that Mr. Bingley did when he turned up (It is a truth universally acknowledged, etc, etc). You recall how much Miss Bennet enjoyed being teased about him and how tactless, nay, oblivious, most of her relations were in this regard. It is indeed a friend of great delicacy and discernment who can repress his or her natural instincts and treat your feelings with respect. Cherish these people. Regarding the others, I advise philosophy: they will never change. Though a biting remark is tempting it does tend to, uh, come back and bite you. You might also attempt to divert their interest into other channels. Miss Austen leaves it to you as to how scrupulous or honest you wish to be in this endeavor.
For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
Mrs. Fitzpatrick
pp Jane Austen, signed in her absence
Photo credit:
Mrs. Fitzpatrick knows a lot of stuff, useful and useless alike, and Miss Ball and Miss Osborne are fond of asking for her scholarly opinion on all sorts of things. Now you can too, using the contact form on the About page. Send us your questions! Ask Mrs. Fitzpatrick will answer anything related to the world of the books, the books themselves, P.G. Wodehouse, math, or Star Trek. Jane Austen (deceased) will comment on your personal problems in What Would Jane Do? We’d love to hear from you!
Miss Osborne: Miss Ball’s recent Jane Austen Fight Club post got me thinking about duels in the Jane Austen world. Duels were going on during that time period (the Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton duel was in the early 1800s), so why didn’t Mr. Darcy call out Wickham for a duel? Clearly, Darcy had the right. Were most duels just between equals? Or are there other reasons why dueling would not be an appropriate response to Wickham’s treachery? (It’s not like Darcy had to worry about looking like a dork—á la Mark Darcy versus Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones’s Diary—when all he has to do is walk a few paces and pull a trigger.)
Mrs. Fitzpatrick: Ah, dueling. I was once hailed by a passing stranger as “the swordsman’s girlfriend,” so I’m well-fitted to answer this. And the swordsman himself dumped five books on the history of dueling in my lap the instant I mentioned this query. The romance of the sword lives to this day, even when the sword is a gun (if you follow).
By the time Jane Austen was writing, dueling in Europe was an upper-class game of machismo on its way out—it was a game only among equals, though, yes, and taken seriously as a show of honor among them, though ridiculed in the press. In America, actually, dueling was much more serious (we had the Old West to prepare for, remember), and people died a lot more, like poor Hamilton. As Alexis de Tocqueville put it in 1831, “In Europe one hardly ever fights a duel except in order to be able to say that one has done so. . . In America one only fights to kill. . .”
In Sense and Sensibility, Colonel Brandon fights just such a European duel with Willoughby over his seducing Miss Williams (Col. Brandon’s not-daughter). “‘I could meet him in no other way. . . We returned unwounded, and the meeting, therefore, never got abroad.’ Elinor sighed over the fancied necessity of this; but to a man and a soldier she presumed not to censure it.” Some people have seen this duel as the crux of the plot, and it is part of the 18th century side of the novel, along with the seduction itself, Marianne’s dramatic illness, and Willoughby’s drunken declaration of love.
In Pride and Prejudice, remember, there is a question of somebody fighting Wickham, but it isn’t Mr. Darcy—it’s the ironical Mr. Bennet, framed nicely by his adoring wife: “And now here’s Mr. Bennet gone away, and I know he will fight Wickham, wherever he meets him, and then he will be killed, and what is to become of us all?” Nine pages later, “Sure he will not leave London before he has found them. Who is to fight Wickham, and make him marry her, if he comes away?”
Mrs. Bennet’s always so silly that I don’t think we’re supposed to take either proposition seriously. Pride and Prejudice has much less of 18th century flavor than Sense and Sensibility. Yet I really can’t tell whether Mr. Bennet himself would have wanted to duel Wickham or not, though I’m inclined to think not. He was too sensible, and the whole idea was to hush the thing up, anyway.
And this, I think is our answer to why Mr. Darcy doesn’t challenge Wickham over the honor of Georgiana. He did have the right, and he was of the class (and, I imagine, the temperament) to be dueling, but, he tells Elizabeth, on discovering the proposed elopement “You may imagine what I felt and how I acted. Regard for my sister’s credit and feelings prevented any public exposure. . .” Unless this is a coded indication that they did fight (as the fanfic authors no doubt go off on), his love for his sister overcame his ideas of his station in that way, just as (guess what!) his love for Elizabeth later overcomes his ideas of his station in another way.
Plus, imagine the scandal if it all did come out—too shocking! Mr. Darcy never revealed anything to anyone if he could help it.
For more on dueling, see The Code of Honor, by John Lyde Wilson, 19th century governor of South Carolina and avid duelist.
