My short and sweet reaction: American bookstore ninja/Darcy fangirl runs into Mr. Darcy on his turf in modern times. Hi-jinks ensue.

It’s incredible how Jane Austen has impacted literature and how often writers have retold and redone her storylines. I’m not a hopelessly obsessive fangirl, but I recognize her significance to literature and women’s studies. You’d be a fool not to acknowledge at least that.

In “Me and Mr. Darcy,” the protagonist Emily is so obsessed with Jane Austen that she goes on a book tour with many old ladies, retracing the steps of Austen’s life and career in and around Bath, England.

She’s so deep in her obsession with everything Jane that towards the end, she sees that her trip parallels “Pride & Prejudice” itself. So there’s a Jane, a Mr. Darcy, Georgiana, and a Mr. Wickham, but not in the way that you might think.

There’s even a subplot where she hallucinates meeting Mr. Darcy several times throughout the book! Let’s think about the implications of that subplot.

We ALL want a Mr. Darcy for ourselves, but he would never fit in with the modern world. In his day, women were only wives and mothers, nothing more.

Emily’s perfect vision of her own Darcy is pretty much put to bed when she realizes this. Sure, we want that handsome, rich, polite man that does not exist in our time – if it ever did – but would we want to leave behind our modern lives for the life of Elizabeth Bennett?

Women were either made servants or married off. Very rarely were they able to be anything more. I’d much rather read about life in Regency England than live in it.

However, Emily understands that you can’t miss what you’ve never had.

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