An Assembly Such As This (A Novel Of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman #1), by Pamela Aidan

This book (and its two sequels, reviews forthcoming) are an interesting exercise in fanfiction, and that is understanding Pride & Prejudice from the point of view of Darcy.  One of the more notable aspects of Austen’s fiction is that she is rather opaque about the internal thought processes of her heroes and their actions.  While she subjects the life and thinking of her female protagonists to minute scrutiny, she doesn’t show a single scene where there isn’t a woman present.  For the most part, I admire Austen’s restraint, as she did not presume to know what men were thinking and thought that if she tried to discuss what men did by themselves that it would not come off well because of her particular perspective and lack of insight into men.  Most contemporary writers, male or female, do not know that particular restraint, and it is one of the reasons why I think Austen’s novels have aged so well.  This sort of novel is not likely to age as well because it shows a woman who is attempting to convey a convincing attitude about Darcy as a man, from the point of view of a 21st century woman.

That’s not to say that it isn’t an enjoyable novel, though, because it is.  Coming in at around 250 pages, this book covers the part of Pride & Prejudice from the arrival of Bingley and his party into Hertfordshire until the sudden departure from Netherfield, told from Darcy’s perspective.  We see his initial snobbery towards the people of the area, his friendships with some unknown but respectable Squire Justin and we see the way that he views the Bennets are mere mercenary girls out to snag rich husbands because of the behavior of the mother, and we see the initial misjudgment of Darcy and Elizabeth towards each other, as Elizabeth is friendly in a naturally witty way and Darcy finds himself rather enchanted by her somewhat unrefined but genteel ways.  Throughout the novel as well there are a lot of interactions between Darcy and his manservants where he shows himself to be a person of decency if a fair amount of gruffness, and also read some more letters that were not seen in the original.  All in all, this book certainly makes for a plausible telling of Darcy’s side of the story, something many readers would want to know.

And that, in the end, is what this book shines as, a sparkling novel written by a female from a male perspective that seeks to understand him on his own terms but which is bound by the events of Pride & Prejudice but with some liberty to add other details, like Darcy’s enjoyment of books about military history despite not being a soldier himself.  That this novel succeeds so well suggests that Jane Austen was aiming at a fairly narrow target when it came to discussing Darcy, making him a person who is proud about his social status but at the same time not an ungenerous person to others, and one who struggles with the expectations of his class and somewhat contradictory attitudes concerning religion, where it was then seen (as it is now seen) as being somewhat déclassé to take religion too seriously, which presents this series of novels, I think, with a great deal of their tension, in that they show Darcy as a man somewhat at odds with himself in a way that can lead to inconsistencies but also, ultimately to a great deal of moral growth as well, which is something worth celebrating.