SquawkRadio

Everyone knows what American women want—thinner thighs, darker chocolate, and a dashing Englishman who looks more like Hugh Grant or Colin Firth than Prince Charles or Dame Edna. George Clooney might charm us with his bedroom eyes and easygoing manner, but deep in our hearts we yearn for a quintessential English gent who will declare both his scorn and his love for us in clipped, upper crust tones. He will mock, infuriate, and adore us—preferably from afar so we won’t be able to tell when his teeth start going bad as English teeth invariably do. (In a recent interview, Hugh Grant confessed that his were already starting to go.) To achieve the true pinnacle of desirability, this paragon of manhood must be always in our hearts, yet forever out of our reach. 

It’s precisely these qualities that make Jane Austen’s Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice the great-great-grandpappy of all the dark and brooding anti-heroes who would come after him. Whether embodied by Sir Laurence Olivier in 1940 or Colin Firth in the 1995 BBC production or Matthew McFadyen or Colin Firth again as attorney Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones’ Diary, Mr. Darcy is one of the most compelling romantic characters to ever grace the page, stage or the screen. 

Darcy is first introduced to us as the Simon Cowell of the Meryton assembly. There’s not even a sympathetic Paula Abdul to soften the blow or a 1-800 number to call in a protest when he passes ruthless judgment on Elizabeth Bennet, dismissing her as “tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” His collar is as stiff as his demeanor and his aristocratic nose is fixed firmly in the air, no doubt breathing deeply of the rarified stratosphere that can only be coveted by lesser mortals like Miss Bennet and her sisters. 

He is proud, arrogant, insufferable...and utterly irresistible. It’s no accident of Ms. Austen’s clever prose that we fall in love with him long before Elizabeth does. After all, who could resist a man who leaves this first impression?—"He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world and everybody hoped that he would never come there again.” He might drive a coach-and-four instead of straddling a Harley, but that doesn’t make him any less of a bad boy. His behavior is impeccable, but his temperament is deliciously deplorable. 

Darcy becomes even more intriguing when compared to his devoted friend, Mr. Bingley—"Bingley was sure of being liked wherever he appeared, Darcy was continually giving offence.” How is it that the amiable Bingley makes us yawn into our tea while Mr. Darcy, the most unlikely of heroes, still possesses the power to make us swoon nearly two hundred years after Jane Austen first created him? Are all women closet masochists or do we just love a rousing (or would that be arousing?) challenge?

From the time I was a very small child, I’ve been given to passionate crushes on the opposite sex. When I was six years old, I fell hard for Kurt Russell and his beguiling dimples in Disney’s The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. For five pivotal years of puberty, Donny Osmond’s blinding smile reigned supreme on the walls of my bedroom and in my heart. Darling Donny was my first muse, prompting me to pen Chapter One of a rollicking pirate novel in which Sir Donald Osmond abducted my intrepid heroine in a scene eerily similar to the kidnapping of the governor’s daughter in Pirates of the Caribbean. To increase my chances of becoming The Donald’s wife and bearing his many toothy children, I checked the Book of Mormon out of the local library and doubled my visits to the local orthodontist. I’m embarrassed to report that my ability to yearn wistfully for a total stranger resurfaced when I developed a medical condition commonly known in internet circles as RCO (Russell Crowe Obsession) and downloaded over 350 photos of the enigmatic actor in less than a month.

You might be asking yourself what Kurt’s dimples, Donny’s teeth, and Russell’s...well...everything...have in common with the formidable Mr. Darcy. Mr. Crowe certainly does have a reputation for blunt speaking and I have no doubt he’d be perfectly at home in a Regency drawing room delivering bon mots and cut directs with equal ruthlessness. (After all, this is a man bold enough to publicly criticize DeNiro for selling out!) However, it’s not his prickly Australian nature that makes him a worthy successor to Darcy’s mantle, but his chameleon-like ability to transform himself into every woman’s fantasy with each role he plays. Whether slaughtering Barbarian hordes in Gladiator, rescuing Meg Ryan’s hapless husband in Proof of Life, or bellowing out orders in Master and Commander, he successfully evokes empathy while still playing hard to get with our yearning hearts. 

We’ve always loved our stoic, enigmatic heroes. That’s why so many women have chosen Spock over Captain Kirk through the years.  Orlando Bloom’s recent portrayal of Legolas in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy provoked a similar reaction from a new generation of teenage girls. He probably had three lines in the entire trilogy (and most of those were spoken in Elvish), yet the female sighs every time he appeared on screen were audible throughout the theater. His eyes spoke volumes although his mouth rarely moved. 

In a similar fashion, it’s not what we know about Darcy that intrigues us from his very first appearance on the page, but what we don’t know. Jane Austen could have made us privy to every one of Darcy’s thoughts and motivations long before they are revealed to Elizabeth. But she wisely realized that a hero stripped of his inscrutable nature is also a hero stripped of appeal. 

From a very young age, we women need to have an object to personify our fantasies. Whether it’s that first rapturous taste of puppy love or a high school crush, the more unattainable and inaccessible that object, the more we are able to endow him with all of the qualities we think we admire. And by the time we’re done, he’s usually very well-endowed indeed. 

If we’re consistently held at arm’s length from the object of our desire, we can continue to view him through the tender glow of our rose-colored glasses. Our illusions will never be shattered by learning that he belches like Homer Simpson after downing a beer or that he always misses the hamper and leaves his dirty underwear lying on the bedroom floor. He can remain cloaked in a veil of mystery and by doing so, his perfection will never be impeached. He will always be an empty suit of clothes perfectly tailored to meet our needs—our soul mate without a soul.

In Mr. Darcy’s case, that suit of clothes is a pair of buff-colored trousers and an impeccably tailored Regency tail coat. From his first appearance in Meryton, we long to believe that his icy demeanor hides a warm and passionate heart, but Ms. Austen insists upon dashing our hopes at every turn and plot twist. Elizabeth herself pronounces him “very disagreeable” when discussing his character with the charming and amoral Mr. Wickham in Chapter 16 and Darcy condemns himself in her eyes as she recalls, “I do remember his boasting one day, at Netherfield, of the implacability of his resentments, of his having an unforgiving temper.”

If the eyes are truly the mirrors of the soul, even Darcy’s gaze is suspect. After her marriage to that obsequious toad, Reverend Collins, Elizabeth’s dear friend Charlotte notes that Mr. Darcy “certainly looked at her friend (Elizabeth) a great deal, but the expression of that look was disputable. It was an earnest, but steadfast gaze, but she often doubted whether there were much admiration in it, and sometimes it seemed nothing but absence of mind.” Mr. Darcy’s empty suit of clothes is now complimented by an empty gaze. But it’s precisely the vacancy of that gaze that allows us to color it with all of the ardor we imagine he is feeling for Elizabeth beneath his perfectly composed exterior. 

Ms. Austen and Mr. Darcy continue to tease us until Chapter 35 when Darcy’s impassioned letter to Elizabeth reveals his true motivations and a hint of his true character. Only then can we heave a collective sigh of relief as we learn that all of our hopes for him were not in vain.

The true beauty of Ms. Austen’s characterization is that Darcy is slowly revealed to be everything we dreamed he could be. His haughty expression is simply the mask he wears to shield his vulnerable heart. His intentions toward Elizabeth and her family may be somewhat misguided, but it is not malevolence that informs them, but loyalty to his dear friend Mr. Bingley. Even Elizabeth can’t dismiss the fine accounting of his character given by the housekeeper at Pemberly, when he is revealed to be “thoughtful, kind, good-natured, a loving brother, and generous to those less fortunate than he.” As she gapes at the housekeeper in disbelief, you can almost hear country singer Tim McGraw start to growl, “I may be a bad boy, but baby I’m a real good man.”

This fantasy is even more beguiling because in real life if we meet a guy at a party who seems like a jerk, he usually turns out to be...well...a jerk. Instead of apologizing for misjudging him as Elizabeth is eventually forced to do, we end up giving him a fake phone number or taking out a restraining order. By the time Elizabeth and Darcy have confessed their love for one another and earned their happy ending, we are confident that he is fully equipped to satisfy her every romantic fantasy just as he has satisfied ours. 

Our teen idols will grow up. Our high school crushes will marry the cheerleaders we hated and show up at our twentieth reunions with beer guts and balding heads. Our favorite actors will dump their young, pretty wives for younger, prettier wives and waste years spinning in the revolving door of rehab.  But with Mr. Darcy so perfectly preserved on the page, we’ll never have to worry that his dimples will turn into wrinkles, that he’ll become a game show host instead of a pirate, or that his picture will be plastered all over the tabloids after he bites his own bodyguard in a drunken brawl. (Australians do that, you know.)

Thinner thighs and darker chocolate may not always be within our grasp, but thanks to Jane Austen, a brooding Englishman with an inscrutable gaze and good teeth will always remain just at our fingertips. 

(Originally published in FLIRTING WITH PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: FRESH PERSPECTIVES ON THE ORIGINAL CHICK-LIT MASTERPIECE, Edited by Jennifer Crusie and still available from Ben Bella Books http://www.benbellabooks.com/smartpop.php)

You can visit Teresa’s website at http://www.teresamedeiros.com or Follow her on TWITTER at http://www.twitter.com/teresamedeiros