Mr. Darcy! Mr. Darcy!

Pride & Prejudice, the first classic I read on my own. Mr. Darcy. The first non-living entity I fell in love with. The absolute brilliance with which his character is portrayed by Jane Austen has you enchanted from the very beginning. Apart from the arrogance, and pride (which are justified, though maybe not entirely right)….wait. What the HELL am I saying?? Mr. Darcy wouldn’t be Mr. Darcy without the arrogance and pride now, would he??? Nope. I think I can say with total confidence, absolutely not! <recognized the line as Mark Darcy’s have we? Sorry. But he IS the perfect Darcy! And I AM talking about Colin Firth here.> I had the sudden urge this week to read the book yet another time. And I did. Took me about five bus rides of an hour each, and a late nighter – from 2200 hours to 0100 hours – to complete it, keeping my pace as slow as I could because I wanted to savor every word of it. My favorite book of all time.

THE man...

So I read the book, then I needed to see Darcy in action. So I watched Lawrence Olivier’s ‘movie’ version <which, please forgive me all the Olivier fans out there – he is a brilliant actor but the script was not right, is a disaster if you are a true Austen fan>, then a 1980 television series adaptation of the book, starring David Rintoul and saving the best for the last, the 1995 BBC version (someone I know recommended that I watch the Bollywood version Bride and Prejudice…GAAAH!! C’mon!! NOOOOOOOO – so I didn’t. Don’t worry.) So the BBC version…I watched it twice. Once on the tapes which my Dad had recorded for him when it originally aired in the U.K. thirteen years ago, and once the DVD that my uncle bought for me five years ago. I was in heaven. I couldn’t just stop there…so I ended up downloading Bridget Jones’ Diary and Bridget Jones’ Diary: The Edge of Reason over two nights, and watched it in the morning while I got ready for work and after I got back from work.  And read the books of the same name (they were written first) by Helen Fielding. Mr. Darcy.

I suppose the obsession I have is a shared one. Because anyone who reads classics obviously knows the character and the impact of Miss Austen’s characters can be felt even in current day novels, or screenplays. Oh! I almost forgot Becoming Jane!! Quite a nice movie. La! Right…so then I realize, while sifting through the internet, that there was a trilogy romance written by Pamela Aidan called Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman. Till now, I honestly had no clue of the existence of this book. Five years ago I made my aunt hunt down Pemberly Shades – the supposed sequel to P & P, and read it at the airport and on our way home and through the night the evening my aunt landed here. <It’s alright…good for a read> I couldn’t find the novels anywhere online though. The trilogy. It wasn’t even up for sale anywhere!! Saddening thought really. To pull myself out of this misery, I picked up Sense & Sensibility. Almost done with it now…but Mr. Darcy remains in my head. And Colin Firth more clearly, because he gave Mr. Darcy the face. The perfect upper class, stiff upper lip treatment. He is perfect!! The real Mr. Darcy. No one can match his take on the character…the portrayal is simply flawless. Mr Darcy from the book is the Mr. Darcy Colin Firth brought alive. Maybe it’s because of the script…it staying true to the story line as written by Miss Austen. Maybe it’s the actors’ understanding of the book and the script. I LOVE IT! The book, the character of Mr. Darcy, the televised version – which I am downloading though I already have the DVDs…the sequels and prequels and parallel stories concerning Mr. Darcy…

I’m going to drool some more…no apologies for this. Just waiting for Edward to come back, Elinor to accept him, Marianne and the Colonel’s announcement and I’ll be back to Mr. Darcy on the pages of my well worn copy of P & P.

P.S. I love the characters of Elizabeth, Jane, Bingley, Georgiana, the Gardiners, and the antics of Mr. Collins, but this post was meant to concentrate on Mr. Darcy because he is food for the imagination which cannot be provided by the others to me . Tschüss!

You might notice that I have given the links to several pages here…well, hyper-linked words and phrases more like it… I love this book, absolutely and fervently have since the age of ten. I hold it very dear and near to me, so it’s a matter of extreme fondness that has made me go the extra mile and link ‘em to Wikipedia.