The Darcy Myth

I just stepped out of a juniper bush.
     Let me paint you a picture, then spin you a yarn. At the moment, I’m sitting under the big, old ash tree in my yard, branches quite literally tangled in my hair, little bits of spiky evergreen and fluffy seeds all over my fleece. (I say my fleece, but it is actually my brother’s fleece jacket from middle school, which has, in this hectic October, become my capsule wardrobe.)
     About an hour ago, I received a text from my thirteen-year-old neighbor Julie. There was a cat, she said. At least, she thought it was a cat. It sounded hurt. She couldn’t see it. It was in a juniper bush outside her house.
     Now, let me be clear. I do not have free time right now. I’m not complaining; I’m just explaining. And it’s not like I buy into capitalist hustle culture or anything, I’m just having a busy fall. I have 501 unread emails. I have 361 unread texts. I am not a particularly important person, except to my children, who didn’t send me any of the emails, and I guess to my students, who did. I am not bragging, and am in fact embarrassed to tell you these things about myself. (Our iPhones, ourselves.) I just need to make very clear, for the thrust of my argument, that I needed to use this time while my husband took the kids to get their flu shots to work on writing this very book.
     But did I suggest Julie call the animal shelter, turn my phone on do not disturb, and get to work? No, I absolutely did not.
     She sent me a video. It was a video of a juniper bush just sitting there, being a juniper bush, except for one distinctive feature: a plaintive, mysterious cry.
     Now, am I the right person to go check out a cat mystery? Also no. I have no qualifications. I love cats but have never had a cat. I don’t really understand them. They seem to hate me? Nothing is off-limits to them? And yet they never want to snuggle? The point is,I have absolutely no idea how to even ascertain the lost-ness of a cat, let alone catch one and tend to its possible wounds.
     And yet, after a few texts back and forth, my intentions started to solidify, like butter and sugar beginning to caramelize.
     You see, I was once that teenage girl fully phenomenologically oriented toward the project of rescuing little creatures in distress. My kindergarten bestie and I frequently dedicated entire days to creating a bespoke storybook (words by me, pictures by her) in which we found and acquired companion animals of all kinds. In my time on this earth, I have found a lot of lost dogs—or, rather, they seemed to have found me. Temporary pets of my girlhood included a field mouse I caught inside the house, a horned lizard, and multiple salamanders. (I may have accidentally transported that mouse home from the barn.) You want turtle tales? I’ve got plenty. Did I somehow end up with a geriatric rabbit living in my dorm room in my freshman year of college? That one is a long story, and her name was Lola. Did I let my kids keep a hand-me-down hermit crab that was a decade old and the size of a slider? Yes, and I made him little organic salads.
     All of this is to say that the fantasy of rescuing a helpless animal and turning him or her into my magical little friend is deeply ingrained in my bones. And when that storyline was activated—even though I had work to do, and wasn’t the best person for the job—I came running.
     This is a book about Mr. Darcy. You’ll understand the connection in a minute.

I’m an English professor at a small university in Colorado and an expert on British literature. While I’ve never been a dedicated Jane Austen fan, or Janeite, per se (I’m more a Frankenstein and Dracula kind of girl), I teach a course on Jane Austen almost every year. And every year, I ruin Pride and Prejudice.
     When I say “ruin,” I don’t mean the way you might, say, ruin a silk blouse by chasing a cat into a juniper bush. I mean the way you might ruin the song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by telling someone that Bonnie Tyler originally meant it to be about vampires (this is true). I’ve now upended whatever uncomplicated associations you had with this song, and you’ll never be able to hear it without thinking of vampires again, but I’ve made it much more interesting. Anyway, English professors have lots of tools at our disposal for ruining your favorite books, and the way I prefer to ruin Pride and Prejudice is by pointing out how literature trains women to spend their time changing assholes into sensitive men instead of overthrowing the patriarchy.
     Now, don’t get me wrong: I love Pride and Prejudice! I love it on the page and I love it on film, and I maybe love it even more because I love ruining it so much. And as far as I can tell, my students like me even though I ruin it. They tell me I’m “relatable” and “super sweet and nerdy” (this was in an anonymous online review, and honestly, how very dare you). They also once said I was “the best birth control.” (That was when I was hugely, embarrassingly pregnant. Like, I texted a picture of myself to one of my best friends and instead of responding with “you’re glowing” or even “so excited,” she wrote back, “you look like a UFO.”) The birth control comment is not really related to my habit of ruining Pride and Prejudice, but I think it gives you a sense of what it’s like to study Jane Austen with me. That is, taking a class with me is all fun and games until you’re hugging your roommate in the English department lounge because you realized that you’ve been spending your time and energy and attention on taciturn or emotionally unavailable people, believing they are going to turn out to be slow-burn romantic heroes like Mr. Darcy—when really, they are often just assholes.
     So many of us are vulnerable to this fallacy. We think that if we’re sufficiently docile, patient, charming, useful, and/or conciliatory, we can melt the heart of any standoffish love interest, turning them into a devoted and attentive suitor. Why do we believe, against all evidence, that someone who’s constantly low-key negging us and only texts back after midnight is suddenly going to turn into Mr. Darcy?
     We think this because of fucking Darcy, that’s why! Literature is full of lies.
     I’m not trying to lay all of this on Jane Austen’s shoulders. The myth of the haughty crush turned romantic hero has been so influential that it’s still being repeated in current culture. Take Bridgerton, for instance, the recent Netflix series based on the Regency romance novels of Julia Quinn. I stayed up all night binging the first seasonof Bridgerton, don’t get me wrong, but it is super complicit in this bullshit. The heroine, Daphne Bridgerton, is being actively courted by an actual charming prince, but passes him over for a duke with serious daddy issues who can’t quite bring himself to express emotions or vulnerability for, oh, most of the show. I mean, the prince is right there. It’s not like pursuing a relationship with the prince would involve some radical reimagining of the social structure. It wouldn’t even involve Daphne standing up to her hypocritical, domineering older brother! (I love Anthony Bridgerton, by the way. I feel for him and I want to hug him and make him soup—because society has broken me.) Prince Friedrich is a literal prince. A prince who is attentive and confident, yet prioritizes his partner’s needs. Sure, he insists he simply must have the first dance, but he also makes sure to clarify before proposing that he’d be happy to settle near Daphne’s family! Friedrich is a prince in every sense. But . . . his mutton chops are kind of weird. He doesn’t make her feel that thing, you know, that weird, confused, longing, lustful ache that emotionally unavailable people learn how to conjure because they want to feel wanted but also need to know they’re safe from having to be in an actual relationship. You know, the thing she feels for the emotionally unavailable duke.
     Spoiler alert, but you know what happens next. The moody duke rejects Daphne. Then he hooks up with her. Then he rejects her again. Then there’s a duel and she saves him and he ignores her and tortures her and marries her and provides the sum total of her sexual education which involves a lot of deceit followed by a revenge rape.
     Daphne, the prince was right there, seriously! If you can’t see past his mutton chops, just ask if he’ll shave them—you know he would, for you. And then you’d see what those of us with Google already know, which is that a clean-shaven Freddie Stroma is hot, if you like classic beefcake. Plus, it would probably be a nice loving consensual sexual relationship from the start!
     But of course, animated as it is by what I’m calling the Darcy myth, Bridgerton shows us that Daphne was right all along. First, the viewer learns the duke’s tragic backstory—rejection by an abusive father—and thus sympathizes with his low-key cruel tendencies. Then Daphne discovers his secret, in the form of a literal packet of letters that his father never opened but kept for some reason, and shows him the light by expressing her love and understanding while looking gorgeous in the rain. Daphne gets her duke and her love story and her baby by following her heart, putting up with and even participating in abuse, and just kind of waiting it out. Her beauty, her sensitivity, her empathy, and her patience turn the beast back into the prince he was always meant to be.
     And as for the prince who was right there all along? Well, his love isn’t worth as much, because it doesn’t have to be earned.

Here’s where the cat comes in. Charging into that juniper bush, imagining myself as the beloved savior and forever companion of an animal I did not know and had no idea how to care for, I realized that I was essentially being puppeteered by the narratives I imprinted on as a child. The stories we’re brought up on are more than just stories. They become our personal mythologies. They burrow deep
in our marrow.
     The idea that I would someday rescue an adorable creature who would then become my pet came to me from the books I read, the films I watched in childhood. Thinking back, it’s hard to pinpoint a specific example. The works of James Herriot, maybe? All those horse girl and kid-and-dog books I devoured? Something about Disney princesses moving among the animals? It’s hard to say for sure.
     The Darcy myth is a story like this: a simple dynamic with huge emotional payoff that we internalize before we’ve even realized what’s happening. I’ll discuss Pride and Prejudice in more depth in the following chapters, but in a nutshell, Austen’s classic novel and the endless iterations of the slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers romance plot she perfected therein teach us a story. The story goes: There will be someone you just can’t stand. You will be warned that they are bad, and your initial impression will corroborate the rumors. This is the beginning of your great love.
     You’d think that once we grew up and became self-aware, the Darcy myth would loosen its hold on us. We’d take our romances as they came, and not relate to them within the framework of dominant cultural archetypes. But until we acknowledge the Darcy myth, we can’t divest from it. Until we understand how the Darcy myth has influenced our thoughts, feelings, and actions—until we’ve reconsidered these stories, and even shared them with one another to see how we’ve all been mind-fucked by the same myth—we can never truly be free.
     The work of this book is to look the Darcy myth straight in its smoldering eyes so that we can take what we need from it and leave the rest behind. Because sometimes we act based on our belief in a story, even though we think we know better.
     I reached out my hand and closed my fingers around the kitten’s tail. But much like Mr. Darcy always does, she slipped through my fingers.