The approaching death of Mr. Bennet threatens to leave his five young daughters at the mercy of the vengeful Mr. Thaddeus Collins. But Mr. Bennet plays one final desperate card before he passes, calling on his distant relatives—the Darcys—to provide his children with a home.Removing themselves to Pemberley after their father’s death, the girls are protected by the estate’s current master, Mr. … master, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, who looks after them as conscientiously as he does his own sister.
When chance takes the Bennets and their Darcy relations to the estate leased by Mr. Bingley, little do they know that their father’s thwarting of Mr. Collins has only fanned the flames of his envy and hatred. He is determined to secure a Bennet daughter as a wife for his son, and he will stop at nothing to accomplish his goal.
Elizabeth has become consumed by love for Mr. Darcy, but since he remains oblivious to her feelings, Elizabeth’s desperation forces her to consider going into service as a governess, if only to obtain some distance from the object of her affection. But Mr. Collins has no intention of letting Elizabeth escape his grasp so easily, and everything finally comes to a head when he meets with her in an explosive showdown.
more
“Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that can change your life forever.” Keri Russell
Our life journey is made up of steps, events and decisions that can have a profound effect on the outcome of our lives. If you alter your route at any point in the journey, the end destination changes… for good or bad. Thus, we have the life journey of the Bennet sisters. Their mother was dead, their father was dying and he was desperately trying to make placement arrangements for their future. On the one hand, they would be divided up between their uncles Philips [in Meryton] and Gardiner [in London]. On the other hand, Mr. Bennet had reached out to a wealthy distant relation in the north. His reasoning was to keep the girls together and that the relation in the north was better able to do that. That relation responded that he would take the girls.
In order to read this clean story, we have to know going in that, as a variation, it does not follow canon and that we can expect OOC [out of character] behavior. With the demise of Mrs. Bennet, nearly a decade before, Jane became the mistress of Longbourn and a mother figure to her younger sisters. Her calm and gentle demeanor did a lot toward the forming of their personalities and the development of their comportment. Elizabeth, reared and educated as the son he never had, helped Bennet run the estate and, with the help of her younger sisters, saw to the care of the tenants.
When Mr. Darcy, of Pemberley, Derbyshire, arrived at Longbourn, he found it in chaos. Mr. Bennet had died and the heir, Mr. Collins, a rude and ignorant man, was already ensconced at Longbourn, making outrageous demands, and insisting that the eldest Bennet daughter marry his son. Let’s just say that Mr. Collins was not happy to see Mr. Darcy, Mr. Gardiner and Major Fitzwilliam enter the parlor. It did not go well.
After the funeral, and with the law on his side, Darcy assumed the guardianship of the five daughters [ranging in age from 19 to 12] of his cousin Bennet. They then took the arduous journey to the north and to Pemberley, where the girls would stay and observe their mourning period.
This story was about choices, decisions, and how life can change circumstances in a moment. The Bennet girls, as we knew them from canon, no longer existed. Their basic personalities were intact, but due to the rules and expectations of a higher society, the younger girls were not out in society, they had a governess, attended studies, access to masters [art, music], went to school, and were able to become all that they could under the guardianship of their cousin Darcy. As time went on, affection developed between characters that resulted in marriages based on love and not convenience. Those were so cute.
Villains: Yeah, there were plenty:
“Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.” Jane Austen
Lady Catherine had to come and declare that the shades of Pemberley were thus polluted. Yeah, yeah, go back to you den she-dragon… and don’t come back. What happened to Anne was sad, but interesting.
“I like to think that my arrogance, impetuosity, impatience, selfishness and greed are the qualities that make me the lovable chap I am.” Richard Hammond
George Wickham paid his visit to Ramsgate and what next occurred happened so quickly… that I don’t think he was even aware, how it all came about. Lawd, I love our dear Colone… oops, Major Fitzwilliam. That scene was priceless.
“Selfishness, narcissism, being uncomfortable in your own skin, not feeling connected to the world around you, feeling dislocated from family and youth, having a strange relationship with your childhood – all those things feel really true to me.” Jason Reitman
Caroline Bingley… Lawd, you self-centered, narcissistic, social climber… clueless does not even come close as to her behavior. She was completely out of control, demanding to have her way, overbearing, controlling, tried to subvert Jane’s authority in her own house, demeaning to any but those in the highest social circle, disdainful of the neighbors and denizens of Meryton and manipulative of her brother and sister. Oh, I could go on, but have run out of adjectives to describe the most outrageous behavior. I wonder what happened to her?
“The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.” Marcus Tullius Cicero
Collins senior: OMG! Collins senior was just an ignorant bully. He completely dominated his poor son to the point the reader felt sorry for him. He terrorized the tenants and servants, demanding his way or the highway. He ran off most of the tenants and dominated the others. He was then angry because there wasn’t much income and damned the deceased on Bennet and Darcy, declaring they had cheated him of what he was due.
Note: he said that a lot. However, I wasn’t really clear in just what way they had cheated him. Perhaps, he was just angry at life and needed to blame someone other than himself. Lawd, he was evil. He drank to excel and surrounded himself with thugs and cronies from his former days. He disdained gentlemen and thought them useless and weak. His aggrandizement was beyond being reasonable and people just shook their heads when he spoke or when he attempted to enter society [behind his back of course].
“Now a slave is not ‘held’ by any legal contract, obligation, duty, or authority, which the laws will enforce. He is ‘held’ only by brute force. One person beats another until the latter will obey him, work for him, if he required it, or do nothing if he require it.” Lysander Spooner
Collins younger: poor man. Somewhere within him was a heart and a soul that could have been nurtured into a half-way decent man. I kept hoping senior would die and younger could become the man he always wanted to be and perhaps Charlotte could be a part of that transformation. He knew what was needed and strove for it, but was beaten down at every turn with demeaning and degrading language that was horrible. The brute force his father used to control any and all situations, that showed him in a lesser light, was degrading and dehumanizing. If the author wanted the reader to have some sympathy for the younger, it was successful.
We get our characters back to Meryton when Charles lets Netherfield. We then have our dear Bennet girls being reunited with friends and former neighbors. It was clear that everyone loved the girls and were so happy to see them visit the neighborhood. All except Mr. Collins senior. He showed up and showed out demanding the hand of the elder Bennet girl. He was outraged at discovering she was married to Bingley and then demanded the second eldest girl. He was determined to have a Bennet girl marry his son. This was painful as Elizabeth had to deal with the attentions of the son and with her own feelings for someone else.
The climax was a total surprise and I’ve not seen it used before. I was horrified and shocked beyond belief. I am sorry it had to happen that way. IMHO [in my honest opinion], I felt the loss was too much. However, authors have total control over the universe they create. I wanted to scream at Elizabeth… don’t do it. This is that part in the movie theater where people yell at the stupid female on the screen, because they know she is about to make a big mistake that will not go well for her.
The HEA was hard won but was fun to watch. The expressions of love, exchanged looks, emotions, thoughts, gestures and actions were so cute. I loved this Darcy… although he couldn’t see what was right in front of him until it hit him in the head. There were several HEAs featured and I loved the pairings. Yeah, it was good.