The Darcy Connection (30 page)

The Darcy Connection
By Elizabeth Aston

INTRODUCTION

In
The Darcy Connection,
we revisit
Pride and Prejudice
's Mr. Collins–now a bishop–and his wife, Charlotte, whose two daughters have reached marriageable age. The elder, another Charlotte, is extraordinarily beautiful. Since the Collins inheritance from Longbourn is threatened, the family decides that Charlotte should make a brilliant marriage. With her Darcy connections, she can make the most of a London season and find herself a rich and powerful husband.

Their second daughter, Eliza, is not nearly so beautiful but has charm and a lively intelligence. Too like her godmother, Mrs. Darcy, is Mr. Collins's verdict. He is vexed with what he sees as willfulness, much as he did with Elizabeth Bennet.

Both sisters go to London, where Charlotte's beauty wins her numerous promising suitors, despite her lack of fortune or grand connections other than her Darcy cousins and her wealthy godmother, Lady Grandpoint. But Eliza's witty ways and inclination to interfere in what she considers an unsuitable marriage for her sister infuriate both her family and the suitor–until she herself meets her match and makes a better marriage than her parents could have dreamt of.

1. What is Eliza Collins's first impression of Bartholomew Bruton? What is Bruton's first impression of Eliza? How do their initial “prejudices” turn to affection? Why do you think Bruton realizes his love for Eliza long before she can admit her feelings to herself?

2. Charlotte is like a “marble statue”, yet she reveals her passionate side when she falls for George Warren. What do you think of Charlotte's character? Is she a good match for Montblaine, the Marble Marquis? Why does Eliza object to the match between Charlotte and Montblaine?

3. What is the difference between Eliza and Anthony's secret engagement, deemed a “boy-and-girl attachment”, and Eliza's feelings for Bruton? Do you believe that Eliza could fall in and out of love so quickly?

4. Eliza's anonymous sketches of clerical life and London society are a big hit in the Leeds
Gazette
and
London Magazine
. Why is it so risky for Eliza to write these satires? Do you think it is worth the risk? Do you suppose that after her marriage to Bruton, she could possibly reveal herself as the author of the sketches? Why or why not?

5.
The Darcy Connection
features at least two formidable villains: the slick clergyman Mr. Pyke and the dark and dangerous George Warren. Discuss what makes them the villains in the story. Which character do you find more villainous, and why?

6. Eliza escapes Mr. Pyke's blackmail by asking him what is inside the black box he keeps at Bruton's bank. What do you suppose the mysterious black box contains?

7. In the end, how does the “Darcy connection” influence Eliza's social standing? How does it affect her love life? Do you think that such a connection could make or break a marriage in our century? If so, how?

8. Eliza teases her friend Maria for her “melodramatic way of speaking, culled from intensive reading of popular novels whose heroines were greatly admired by Maria”. Do you think readers are more or less influenced by novels today than they were in the era in which
The Darcy Connection
is set? Do you believe there is a great difference “between the marbled covers of a novel” and “real life,” as Eliza asserts? Explain your answer.

9. The word
provincial
appears frequently in the novel, from Mr. Bruton's thoughts on Eliza to Eliza's change of heart about marrying a squire. Do you think Bruton meant the term
provincial
as an insult? Eliza tells Bruton at the end, “Who would have thought you'd end up marrying a mere provincial!”. Is Eliza still a provincial? Why or why not?

10. If you have read Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice
, which of Aston's original characters remind you of the characters Austen created two hundred years ago? Which character from
Pride and Prejudice
were you most pleased to revisit in
The Darcy Connection
?

11. How does
The Darcy Connection
compare to other books by Elizabeth Aston?

1. Eliza writes her satires anonymously, and her publishers know her as “Mrs. Palmer.” If you were to write under a pen name, what would it be? Write down your imaginary pseudonym, and have your meeting's host pick each name out of a hat. Can your book club guess whose pen name is whose?

2. Bring a map of England to your book club meeting. Find all the places that Eliza visits on the map: Ripon, Derbyshire, London, and Dover. Also locate on a detailed map of London the areas mentioned in the book: Spitalfields, the Strand, and Covent Garden.

3. Research the history of Spitalfields, the market neighborhood where Eliza and Annie encounter merchants, pickpockets, and Bartholomew Bruton. Compare the novel's description of Spitalfields to what today's visitors see, hear, and buy. You can find pictures and shop descriptions at www.visitspitalfields.com.

Q: It is apparent that a great deal of research goes into your novels. What is your favorite source of information on the look, feel, and manners of nineteenth-century England?

A: I like to immerse myself in the literature of the period–novels, essays, letters, memoirs, poetry, even. I also like looking at paintings and art of the time and, of course, clothes and architecture and interiors.

Q: The dialogue in
The Darcy Connection
is sparkling and faithful to its historical setting. How do you re-create the speech patterns of this period? Do you ever find yourself speaking like a Darcy-era character when you're working on a novel?

A: The speech patterns come from reading the literature of the time. They aren't necessarily the same as those a contemporary novelist of that period would use–rather like writing dialects or foreign accents, it's more a matter of suggestion than word-for-word reconstruction.

Q: Comic moments abound in
The Darcy Connection,
from Maria Diggory's wild exaggerations to Charlotte and Eliza's hiding behind the same bush in Montblaine's garden. How do you balance comedy and romance?

A: I enjoy writing comedy, and because my novels are intended to entertain, I want the readers to laugh. And romance without comedy can be very turgid!

Q: “I wish I had been born a man,” Eliza says in
The Darcy Connection. What are the challenges and rewards of writing
about female heroines of the nineteenth century?

A: This is a real problem. It is virtually impossible to look out at the world through the eyes of a nineteenth-century heroine when writing in the twenty-first century. Women's rights, feminism, and the freedom of modern women, at least in Western democracies, to have an education and a career and to make their own decisions about their lives throw up the stark contrast to how it felt to be a woman in the very patriarchal society of early-nineteenth-century England. So one has to throw away the freedom of movement, the right to education, the cell phone and the car, and imagine oneself into a far narrower world, physically at least, but also emotionally and mentally.

Q: What is one of your favorite places to visit to get inspired to write a Darcy novel?

A: Bath is always a good place to go to remind myself of how Regency England looked. I used to live there and know it well, and it's a city that brings the whole period vividly to life.

Q: When did you first read
Pride and Prejudice
? What was your initial impression of the book? Has it grown in your esteem with further readings?

A: I read
Pride and Prejudice
when I was thirteen, having resisted it until then out of temper that I had been named after a woman in a novel! The more I read it, and I couldn't count the number of times I have read it, the more I am awed by how profound and brilliant a novel it is. I consider it one of the greatest works of world literature.

Q: How would you describe your writing process? Has your level of research and preparation changed as you write more books?

A: I like to plunge into a book, with the main characters and an outline plot in mind, and work very fast and furiously on the first draft. I've done so much research for these books that I feel quite at ease with some aspects, although I always need to do more for each individual book. Then, after the first stage, I research all the points that I then know I need to find out about.

Q: In the novel, Eliza Collins recalls that a governess taught her “that manners smoothed away all difficulties, that knowing how
to behave in any situation was essential”. How do you navigate manners and morals in your novels? What do you think about these social rules or norms?

A: Manners and morals are two of the hardest things to get right. In some ways I'm lucky, because my parents' lives still had some of the mores of English society of the kind I write about, so I grew up with that. And the much more defined moral structure of that time makes life far easier for a writer than does contemporary, postmodern, nonjudgmental, do-what-you-like society: for example, no divorce, good manners, and consideration for others rather than the much more self-centered attitudes of modern times, a sense of duty, and above all, a complete and absolute sense of “This is right and this is wrong”–at least for one's heroines.

Q: How do you compare your situation as a twenty-first-century novelist with that of a Regency novelist like Jane Austen? What do you see as the greatest challenge female writers faced in the era that you portray in your novels?

A: To be taken seriously as a writer was the hardest thing for a woman novelist of that time. The attitude of society, and of men who were the publishers and the critics and the opinion formers, was so often lofty and patronising. We modern writers have it easy in comparison, although of course there is still a tendency for men to be considered more “important” and significant as writers.

Q: Your fans must be happy to catch up with the Darcy daughters in
The Darcy Connection,
especially Camilla Wytton. Can your readers also expect to revisit Eliza and Bruton in your future work?

A: I hope so! I like to keep up with whatever my characters are up to.