Or Why the Amneisa Trope Would Never Work for Mr. Darcy
George Allen, 1894
I’ve come across a few fan fiction stories where Mr. Darcy has amnesia and is working as a farm hand or something else lower class. I am not going to throw shade at these stories, because fan fiction is all about putting your little guys in situations, but I would like to consider if this is at all medically or historically possible as a plotline.
As a person with a background in neuroscience, I cannot personally tolerate amnesia in stories. It’s just not real. You cannot hit someone on the head and erase their entire life! In one of the most severe cases on record the patient lost about 10 years of memories, but he also lost the ability to form new memories for the rest of his life. Commonly, people lose around 2 years from head trauma and those memories are usually gone forever (you can’t just hit them again to give them flashbacks). To wipe out every memory, even a person’s name, the injury would probably do so much damage they wouldn’t be capable of walking or talking anymore.
However, the amnesia trope won’t die because of my dislike, so instead let’s consider if it would be possible, on any level, for Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley to get hit on the head and be mistaken for a farm hand.
No. No, it wouldn’t.
First, clothes. In Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, despite her tramping through a bog, the people who found Jane knew her clothes were upper/middle class before she woke up. She was a poor governess. If Darcy is wearing anything, he’s gentry or merchant class on sight. They did this on purpose, in some eras the lower classes were even banned by law from wearing certain colours and styles.
Jane Eyre, Illustrated Modern Library, 1944, illustration by Edward A. Wilson.
Let’s say he’s naked. People today kind of just look like people, especially office workers, but in the past, no. Lower class men in this era would wear their profession on their skin. Fishermen and farm workers would be tanned and calloused; carpenters would have lost bits of finger; and blacksmiths would have burn scars and developed muscles. Do you know that winemaking can stain your hands purple for weeks? Darcy’s muscles would be in all the wrong places to be a farmer and all the right ones to ride a horse for hunting. His status might as well be written on his body. And his hands! You can tell if a person works with their hands. His constatly gloved hands would have skin like a baby.
Winemaking stains
Aside from profession, Darcy would look soft to lower class people, but at the same time well fed. The working classes were struggling with food insecurity during this era, or you know, forever. Even if he’s thin, he’s not the sort of gaunt that can hardly eat back his calories on a daily wage. The upper classes also were on average taller than the lower because they weren’t stunted in childhood by a lack of nutrition. We know Darcy is tall even for the gentry, he would stand out.
Then he wakes up, now I am not sure if they trained provincial accents out of kids in this era, but have you heard Mr. Darcy talk? Jane Austen doesn’t have many servants with long speeches, but sound like Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy they do not! He has perfect grammar, four syllable words, and a huge vocabulary! He would be known as a clergyman, lawyer, merchant, gentry, or even an aristocrat the second he speaks. Compare him to to the ignorant Anne Steele in Sense & Sensbility, people would know!
‘Labour’, Engraving by J. Cousen after J. Linnell
So what then? These are poor people, they aren’t dumb. They would advertise that they have found a rich injured person and hope for a reward. Darcy would be fairly well known by face, he spends time in London after all, and they have artists, newspapers, and printing presses. He also would be known to be missing: he has a family and he writes to his sister on a regular basis.
I give it a month tops before he’s safely back home.
Are there any tropes that annoy you? I know some people love a good amnesia story, but I can only handle it if the story is fantasy.
More:
Austen Quotes and the Problem with Wit
Imagining Jane Austen’s Heroines (with period portraits)
Could Mr. Bennet have Saved Enough for Decent Fortunes on his Income?
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