Fitzwilliam Darcy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article or section describes a work of fiction in a primarily in-universe style and may need cleanup. Please help rewrite this article according to the guidelines on writing about fiction, or discuss the issue on the talk page. |
| Full Name: | Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy |
|---|---|
| Gender: | Male |
| Height: | Tall |
| Age: | 28 |
| Occupation: | Gentleman |
| Income: | £10,000/year (£580,000+/year in 2005) |
| Carriage(s) Owned: | Curricle at Pemberley |
| Primary Residence: | Pemberley House, in Derbyshire |
| Family | |
| Romantic Interest(s): | Elizabeth Bennet |
| Parents: | Mr Darcy and Lady Anne Darcy (formerly Anne Fitzwilliam) |
| Sibling(s): | Georgiana Darcy |
| Film Adaptations | |
| Portrayed By: | 1952 TV adaptation: Andrew Osborn 1940 Movie: Lawrence Olivier 1952 TV serial: Peter Cushing 1958 TV serial: Alan Badel 1967 TV serial: Lewis Fiander 1980 TV serial: David Rintoul 1995 TV serial: Colin Firth 2005 Movie: Matthew MacFadyen |
Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy is one of two protagonists in Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. He is an archetype of the aloof romantic hero.
In the novel, Darcy is a wealthy gentleman and the owner of Pemberley, a large estate in Derbyshire, England and who, due to his upper-class upbringing and the influence of his aristocrat aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, begins the novel with an inflated personal pride. This characteristic causes him to dismiss Elizabeth Bennet, the novel's protagonist, as low-born and plain. When his friend, Mr Bingley, is courting Elizabeth's older sister, Jane, he convinces Mr Bingley that Jane does not care about him. However, Mr Darcy eventually becomes attracted to Elizabeth, and courts her clumsily while struggling against his continuing feelings of superiority. When she turns down his first proposal of marriage, however, he goes out of his way to demonstrate his devotion by tempering his pride and saving Elizabeth's youngest sister Lydia from disgrace. Darcy's second proposal to Elizabeth, against the express wishes of 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.
Belonging as he does to the landed class, and with an income which today would be that of a millionaire at least, Darcy is Jane Austen's most splendid hero. Pride and Prejudice qualifies as the Austen-novel with the most pronounced Cinderella-motif. Frequently in her books, the gentry are snobbish, silly and unworthy of the great estates they manage; Darcy, however, is described as the perfect landlord, a sensible and honourable manager of an estate which is the single most important focus of his part of Derbyshire. He has a great responsibility to keep the estate running - and the locals who depend on it for a livelihood are lucky to have such a good master. The smear on Darcy's character made by Mr Wickham's misrepresentations is exactly what the emerging middle class (to which Austen belonged) would think abhorrent. The rich are free to do as they please, but the middle class heroines of Jane Austen's novels always reserve the right to judge them by their own standards. Often the very fact that a man belongs to the upper classes can make him fall short of these moral standards - as is the case for Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park, life in the upper classes tends to corrupt morals and social sensitivity. Mr Darcy has a strong moral fibre and a natural if occasionally somewhat embarrassed kindness.
[edit] Noted actors who have portrayed Mr. Darcy
- Sir Laurence Olivier portrayed Darcy in the classic 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice.
- Colin Firth portrayed Darcy in the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. Firth's portrayal of Darcy inspired Helen Fielding to create the character Mark Darcy in her novels Bridget Jones' Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Firth then played Mark Darcy in the films based on Fielding's novels.
- Martin Henderson portrayed Will Darcy in the 2005 film Bride and Prejudice, a Bollywood adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
- Matthew Macfadyen portrayed Darcy in the 2005 film Pride and Prejudice.
[edit] Trivia
- Mr Darcy recently topped a survey in the United Kingdom of fictional characters with whom most women would like to go on a date, beating such creations as James Bond and Superman (BBC News).
- Both Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth were, according to Philip Jose Farmer, recipients of the radiation that resulted from the meteorite that struck Wold Newton in Yorkshire in the 1790s. This allowed them to be the ancestors of many more famous literary characters, with genetic links to the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan.
