[close] Mr. Darcy [close]

[close] Mr. Darcy is a wealthy gentleman with an income of at least £10,000 a year,[2] and the proprietor of Pemberley, a large estate in Derbyshire, England. Darcy slights Elizabeth Bennet at their first meeting, but then is attracted to her, and later begins to court her (in his own way) while struggling against his continued feelings of superiority. Ironically, when Darcy realizes his friend Bingley is seriously courting Elizabeth's elder sister Jane, he disapproves, and subtly persuades Bingley that Jane does not return his feelings. He later explains this seeming hypocrisy by asserting "I was kinder to [Mr.Bingley] than to myself". Oblivious to him, Darcy's interference in Bingley and Jane's budding relationship has caused Elizabeth to dislike him intensely.

It is when she defiantly rejects his proposal of marriage that Darcy is awakened; he is stunned, and shocked into a new reality of how his behaviour is perceived by others, particularly Elizabeth. Now he reconsiders all, and then commits to go out of his way to demonstrate his respect and devotion for her. He tempers his pride, re-evaluates his feelings on the relationship between Bingley and Jane, and acts to save Elizabeth's youngest sister Lydia from disgrace at the hands of his bitter enemy, George Wickham: after these two have run away together, Darcy convinces him to marry her. His rescue of Lydia from disgrace was not done to win Elizabeth but to ease her distress, because he attempts to keep her from knowing about it. He does it in spite of being required to deal not only with George Wickham, but with a former companion to his sister who betrayed her trust. The novel suggests that it may have cost him a year's income. (This contrasts sharply with a situation in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, where Mr. Crawford proposes to Fanny Price immediately after doing a favour for her that cost him very little.) Darcy's second proposal to Elizabeth, against the express wishes of his aunt, Lady Catherine, completes the novel's climax; she accepts him, much to the delight of her mother, and the novel concludes with her becoming Mrs. Darcy.

Darcy is depicted within the novel as a seemingly cold and aloof man with a large sense of personal pride that frequently expresses itself as arrogance. His apparently distant manner and contempt for those around him earns the disdain of both Elizabeth and many of the other characters over the course of the narrative, particularly in light of the claims of George Wickham, who insists that Darcy has wronged him in the past and who, because of his approachable and charming nature, is automatically given the benefit of the doubt over Darcy. It is eventually revealed, however, that these first impressions are erroneous, as Darcy's seemingly arrogant character masks a sincerely generous and upright nature, and that it was in fact he who was wronged by Wickham, whose own character is revealed to be untrustworthy and duplicitous. Even such matters as his interference in the relationship between Jane and Bingley are presented and re-interpreted as being motivated by genuine concern for the feelings of his friend rather than out of malicious intent. [close]