Mr. Darcy is almost a secondary character in the story that made him one of the most beloved heroes in all of Jane Austen’s novels. Although "Pride and Prejudice" utilizes the device of omniscient narrator, the reader spends most of the book inside the sparkling head of Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy’s ultimate destiny; it rarely gets inside of Darcy’s.
Novelist Amanda Grange has sought to remedy this situation by giving voice to the inner thoughts of this stiff but ultimately attractive character in her new book, Mr. Darcy’s Diary. Like Janet Aylmer’s Mr. Darcy’s Story, Mr. Darcy’s Diary stays very close to Austen’s source material and makes sense only as a companion to Pride and Prejudice (unlike Pamela Aidan’s Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman books, which are filled with so many new scenarios that the books are quite able to stand on their own).
While Grange’s book is absolutely delightful on many levels, there is one slight problem and that is Grange’s choice of utilizing a diary as the book’s format. It is often easy to forget that the book is supposed to be a diary, especially when it records long conversations and scenes in toto. But one is quite jarringly reminded of the book’s diary structure in the instances where it records Darcy’s inner feelings. The diary of a wealthy Regency gentlemen – especially one so properly inhibited as Darcy – would have possibly contained laconic entries regarding tenants, horses and social engagements. Even though Darcy was undergoing an emotional roller coaster ride in efforts to stifle his growing attraction to Elizabeth, it strains the limits of literary credulity to imagine him gushing his private feelings into a diary like a 12 year-old girl as he often does in Grange’s book:
"I thought I saw an expression of admiration on Elizabeth’s face as she looked at Wickham. Surely she cannot prefer him to me! What am I saying? . . . I cannot believe I am comparing myself to George Wickham! I must be mad."
Darcy was scarcely allowing these thoughts to pass through his brain; one cannot imagine him giving them permanent voice on the pages of a diary.
But structural problems aside, Grange’s book contains some absolute gems, mostly in regards to dialogue and scenes only implied by Austen but given full voice here. Many of these interchanges also reveal Grange’s acute sense of comic timing, especially during a conversation she creates between Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine (which reveals the foundation of their relationship to perfection) and one between an air-headed heiress and Darcy, who, on the rebound from Elizabeth’s initial refusal, is seeking new social opportunities.
Although Janet Aylmer’s book and Grange’s both follow a similar line, Grange’s book is by far the superior novel. Because Janet Aylmer sticks so closely to the original story, her readers reap slimmer rewards than do those of the more adventurous Grange. For instance, Aylmer describes Darcy’s meeting with the fallen couple, Lydia and Wickham, thus:
"Their conversation informed Darcy that marriage had never been his design. Wickhamn told him that he was obliged to leave the regiment, on account of pressing debts of honour but, despite Miss Bennet’s youth, he had no scruples about laying all the ill-consequences of her flight on her own folly."
There is nothing in the above two sentences which is not fully explained at the end of Austen’s novel. Aylmer has just repositioned the scene – as narrative -- to make it coincide with the sequence of events.
Grange, on the other hand, takes the same interchange and makes it, well, an interchange, breathing life into it thus:
‘My dear Darcy,’ [Wickham] said, looking up at my entrance. ‘How good of you to find time to visit me . . . what brings you here?’
‘You know what brings me.’
‘I confess I am at a loss. You have decided to give me a living, perhaps, and have come to tell me the good news?’
His insolence angered me, but I kept my temper.
‘I have come to tell you what your own conscience should have told you, that you should never have abducted Miss Bennet.’
‘Miss Bennet?’ he asked, feigning astonishment. ‘But I have not seen Miss Bennet. I have been at Brighton, and she remained at Longbourn.’
‘Miss Lydia Bennet.’
‘Ah, Lydia. I did not abduct Lydia. She came with me of her own free will. I was leaving Brighton as my creditors were becoming rather vocal, and Lydia suggested she came with me. I tried to put her off. To be truthful, Darcy, she bores me. . .’
Mr. Darcy may have never kept a diary but the one Amanda Grange has imagined for him is wonderful fun and brings Elizabeth Bennet’s ultimate hero to life in new and entertaining ways.
No comments:
Post a Comment