Uncovering Similarities under Differences
There are times when we get lost in the differences between Darcy and Elizabeth. One is filled with pride in his position, which informs his prejudices, while the other suffers from injured pride after a single insult uttered by another person. She sets her face against the author of her discomfort, but, in the process, becomes susceptible to the serpentine whispering of a third party.
One pride is that of the speaker; the other is that of the listener. Ultimately, we come to realize how ill-informed and fragile pride can be. Is it any wonder that the Greeks used pride as the motivation in so many of their classic tragedies?
Pride—and the struggle to overcome the barriers it throws up—is the top layer in the book. If a reader takes no other lesson from Pride and Prejudice, it is that First Impressions are not always the best basis upon which to base a final sketch. If I were to be the forgiving sort, I would suggest that whatever one sees or hears at the very beginning is nothing more than the first draft of the sketch.
Is there more to Austen without becoming entirely academic? During the 250th anniversary year of her birth, can we delve deeper for an even more rewarding experience?
Last year, as I was writing In Westminster’s Halls, I found what I believe Austen has been pointing me toward all along—that these two people were not only equals in their gentility but also in their inner awareness. I cued that with their antipathy toward their abhorrence to the slave trade, which both had inherited from their sires.
Within that, I pointed my readers to other, more traditional framings that Austen used to ask her readers quietly, Are they really that different? Get past the question of wealth and the station it confers. In what ways are they equals?
Both were easily angered, although they tended to regulate themselves through either stoic suppression or vigorous exercise. Both tended to judge quickly: Darcy through preconceived notions that prevented him from weighing an individual’s behavior, and Elizabeth, using youthful naivete, to indict and convict without knowing any context that might further explain. Both thirsted for love but had never found an equal match.
Elizabeth and Darcy were portrayed as being from such thoroughly different planets that, to Austen’s first readers, there was no reasonable way this country mouse and city cat could ever be seen as coming together. This was the plot twist that Austen had set up her readers to encounter. And if they walked away from their reading of P&P, this would have been a satisfying authorial outing. The pairing between a man with ten thousand a year and a woman who had nothing but a penurious fifty was as foreign to them as the Regent offering Princess Caroline to one of Napoleon’s brothers to end the War over the altar.
Remind me to tell you sometime about the 1859 dynastic marriage between the young and incredibly popular Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy and Prince Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte…something about a letter she wrote to her father vowing to do her duty. The ink had run in so many places that it was nearly unreadable. HMMMM.
Looking deeper, though we see that what made Darcy and Elizabeth an ideal couple was that one’s sockets accepted the other’s knobs and vice versa. Despite surface differences, they were ultimately complementary once they overcame mutual misunderstandings.
Consider this: would it have been remotely possible for either of the other two marriageable females (we can all agree that Jane was destined for Bingley), Caroline Bingley and Charlotte Lucas, to have fit with Darcy?
Inconceivable!
Caroline was driven by avarice, seeking money for the power it would bring her in society. She was Austen’s cautionary tale about women of the ton and was used to develop the nuances in Elizabeth’s character that cried out her uniqueness. Charlotte was Austen’s commentary on a woman’s usual lot: being forced to sacrifice dreams of affection for the safety of a man’s last name and prospects.
ODC balances one another. However, as I alluded to a moment ago, they were far more alike than either realized. In many ways, their lives had shaped them to be the other’s ideal.
Darcy was an intelligent boy and young man, wounded by the early loss of a mother’s love and then the distance of a grieving father. He needed an earnest, if somewhat teasing, love to heal the wounds in his heart.
Elizabeth had, perforce, been required to grow up as a free-range child. Yes, we get the inference that Mr. Bennet liked her best, but was that more that he took her presence on sufferance where his other daughters were judged to be more bothers than they were worth? Bennet was never a true father, and Mrs. Bennet was frequently prostrated by fear.
Both Darcy and Elizabeth are orphans in different ways. They needed each other much like two pieces in a puzzle must be joined to complete the picture.
And, dear friends, finding that second—or third—layer is what makes reading Austen so much fun. I always strive to emulate her writing style in my own work.
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I am releasing a short story on April 15th.
Inspired by Jane Austen’s birth—and death—day, The Last Gift considers what happens if July 18, 1817 was only the beginning for Jane Austen. After the Lady meets her characters in the Universe she created, what would make her existence not only tolerable but also transcendental?
The Last Gift rises from the idea that death is that veil through which all must pass. Beyond the gossamer curtain, the Heaven into which Austen arrives is one of her invention. However, that may not be the gift for, if Austen built her heavenly abode, what of all the other realms composed by those with less goodness in their hearts into which they are condemned to spend eternity?
The wonder is that The Old One allows Austen to learn what she must to bring her final happiness in The Last Gift—a short story of about 4,700 words.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Gift-Austenesque-Short-Story-ebook/dp/B0F2SKS1SV
Available in e-book only, I hope you will find this an interesting excursion into the Austenesque world.
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I am zeroing in on the third act of Ghost Flight: A World War II Pride and Prejudice Variation and have searched for ways to make the coming together of a young man and woman in wartime realistic without resorting to clichéd sentimentality. This excerpt resonates with my sense that the two must open their souls within the truncated timeline imposed by war. This scene occurs about six weeks after Elizabeth feels the sting of Darcy’s insult.
This excerpt from “Ghost Flight” is © 2025 by Donald P. Jacobson. Reproduction is prohibited. Published in the United States of America.
Chapter Nineteen
La Ferme
Dinner had been incongruously domestic: two spies sharing a meal in a farm’s kitchen amidst a war zone. The hearty cassoulet steamed at the table’s center. A crusty loaf filled the room with yeast’s heady aroma while grape-leaf-wrapped cheese oozed on its oil bed.
This was a timeless hearthside scene, lit by tallow candles, within an ancient castle’s repurposed stones.
Darcy poured the wine, its rough tang a perfect complement to the stew’s fatty salt pork. He looked at his dinner partner. Elizabeth—now that he had remembered her, she could be nothing else—had warmed to him over the past month. Shortly after Richard departed to bring Eileen to the Deauville train, Elizabeth had seemingly discovered ways to avoid his presence entirely or, at most, communicate through notes. Meetings were few and usually involved Maxim playing a sort of chaperone.
The thaw between them had begun as March aged. ’Twas small things that he noticed. Her look of surprise when he admitted to her his leg was healing more slowly than he liked—a reality that also worked with the Germans to explain his continued presence above Lisieux. As a result, she would have to be his stand-in as London’s official recipient of airdrops. That was one of Buckmaster’s rules. If an SOE circuit leader could not receive sensitive supplies, another—usually the radio operator—would have to go in his stead. His trust in her to recruit safe houses for her radio earned him more than one smile.
Elizabeth—Madeline—ultimately was the one who suggested they pose as lovers. The advantage was that once their ‘relationship’ became common knowledge, nobody would question Mademoiselle Lopinat’s visits to La Ferme. Of course, if the Nazis arrested her, this would lead them directly to Fitzgerald’s doorstep.
Although he was no naïf, Darcy found it unsettling to discover her nightgown and underwear in a corner of his wardrobe, left there to establish the fiction as fact. Thankfully, he smiled to himself, this deep in the war, he did not have to fight drying stockings.
Tonight, as with others a few times a week, her bicycle was propped against the wall, awaiting her return trip to her room in Saint-Desir, down the hill from the farm. German soldiers patrolling the area had become familiar with Mademoiselle Lopinat. Seeing her pedaling down the Chemin alongside Le Cirieux’s streambed, trying to beat the curfew, was a familiar and accepted sight.
Whistles and catcalls showed appreciation for her legs and seat as she flashed by.
Madame LaMotte, her landlady, rented her a room for a song. Her presence added a veneer of respectability atop the house’s other, more lucrative activity, which might be argued as a short-term lease. The good lady could afford it because she also ran one of Lisieux’s brothels, a haven for soldiers and townsmen alike; the commune was too small to support a Wehrmacht government house. The madame ensured that all the working girls were clean, and regular checks by a Wehrmacht doctor ensured that these French would not be the source of German wounds.
A truce of sorts had been declared between the French and Germans in Madame’s Maison du Plaisir. The girls served each group equally, although they frequently heard tidbits from their customers across the Rhine, mostly lonely conscripts seeking female companionship to make their lives a little less unbearable. Shortly before sunrise, such information was passed on to the lodger over a nightcap petit déjeuner.
That and other table talk occupied the pair as they ate their cassoulet, bread, and cheese. Two glasses of wine did not dull either’s senses, but it did loosen their tongues. No ears could overhear, so they spoke in English.
“You are a remarkable cook,” Darcy enthused, “Turning a skinny bird, some salt meat, sausage, and beans into a feast worthy of a Michelin-starred Languedoc bistro is no small feat. You reveal yet another talent. I salute you!”
She raised her glass in return. “French paysans have been turning short commons and their larder’s leavings into passable meals for centuries. My mother discovered this dish and others when Papa would drag home Professors Bloch or Braudel. Of all the surprises, these great intellectuals, refined in thought, were egalitarian eaters.
“They would find themselves out to sea if dragged into the Georges Cinq’s dining room…” She giggled at a memory, “…after all, how could they possibly sweep the table clear of plate and flatware to use the cloth as a gigantic sheet of paper? The chef would chase them from the hotel, cleaver in hand like one of Mr. Disney’s shorts.
“Once was enough for Mama, particularly after they covered her best damask with musings about how the rise and fall in the price of bread across the Middle Ages into the Modern Era led to revolution or stability. From then on, she would stand at our front door, arms crossed, like Cincinnatus at the Bridge, if Papa brought home his colleagues or students. Our dining table was never anything but bare wood after that first time.
“The older men like Monsieur Bloch were no problem. They were established and remembered their hungry days on the Western Front. They took time away from the archives for regular meals. But the youngsters often lost themselves in some pile of musty documents, forgot to eat, and devoured everything my mother prepared as if they had a tapeworm!”
After joining in her laughter, he approached the subject warming his heart since early afternoon. “Our meals together give me a taste of home. Hearing a voice inflected with Hertfordshire’s rolling ‘r’ calms me and gives me hope that we are closing in on the final act.
“I have even taken to leaving my sidearm hidden in the sideboard.”
Darcy turned serious. “I will admit that these past several weeks have served as an eye-opener.” He tapped his good eye and smiled wryly. “Perhaps too many hours in the cockpit left me cynical about raw recruits. By the time we got into August during the Battle, the average lifespan of a replacement pilot was three missions. Too many took a Burton on their first.
“The problem was that a novice wingman could kill you as well as himself.”
He raised his hand as she flashed him a dangerous look. “Please understand, that was then. We are sitting in the now. My opinion has materially changed. I did the unfortunate human thing of taking my experience from the past and using it to predict the future.
“So full of myself, even after injuries that limited my duties, I classified you as an infant like one of those boys fresh out of flight training, even though I am as new to this life as you. We are all children in this game, with a select few who have faced the Devil and lived to return home.
“Those we turn into instructors, too valuable to send back to the field. Men like Preacher and Denden, and women like Diane and Hélène, are treasures. We’ve saved them against the day when we return to the Continent.
“However, Elizabeth, they are four, and we need hundreds, each one ready to take their turn standing on the razor’s edge.” Her gasp brought him to a halt.
She was wide-eyed. “Elizabeth? You called me Elizabeth!”
He bit his lip. “I did. It was an unconscious slip. It is your name…back home…is it not?”
“You haven’t ‘slipped’ to anyone else, I pray? And how did you know my name? Did the colonel, Preacher, tell you? My God: I thought he was tied up with the Official Secrets Act’s crimson ribbons just like me,” she ground out.
Not trying to be smart, he replied, “You told me.”
“Told You? What?” Elizabeth fell silent as she mulled this turn of events. Her eyes drifted shut, and she walked across the broad plain behind her eyelids. Words and pictures flooded the dome above. A radio’s transmission invaded, crackling in her ears. The grainy news photo gained an eyepatch, but the sound told all.
“You are Ghost One!” Even now, she could not say his name; while she had the privilege of knowing he was Wing Commander Fitzwilliam Darcy, he was unaware she was a Bennet. Her knowledge, though, could get them both killed while tipping the Germans to the sophisticated plot. However, the bell could not be unrung. She would either have to avoid capture or, in extremis, use her L pill. Radio operators could be replaced. Deep cover agents could not.
Shock was her first reaction. “But you died!”
Then, SOE pragmatism took hold. “Of course not,” she scoffed. “I imagine Colonel Barraclough, our mutual friend, arranged that!”
“But these,” she nodded at his eye and looked down toward where his leg was hidden under the table, “you received in the crash?”
Sadness bejeweled her lashes as the understanding of his loss replaced hers, one which she had been unaware of for half a year. Her hand crept to his, not out of pity but rather as something ineffable but glorious suffused her and filled her heart, now empty of the dour emotion that had been walled off since that night. The magnetism she had felt in October over the ether pulled at her, making this dinner setting increasingly intimate…and uncomfortable in a blissful manner.
How singular! I, too, have mourned, although I knew not for what until ’twas laid before me like the cassoulet!
This new emotion was a timid fawn pushing its nose from its mama’s thicket for the first time. Elizabeth searched to avoid taking a step that would expose her heart. Her natural curiosity and compassion came to the fore, lighting a safe path. “How is your co-pilot?”
Darcy carefully replied. “The Squadron Leader survived although he is short in the stem. Dakotas are brutal on left legs, it seems.”
Elizabeth looked down at the table where his hand rested beneath hers. She started to pull it back, but his other hand gently pinned it in place.
“Don’t, please don’t, Elizabeth.”
His soft plea froze her in place. He continued, “Your voice in my ears was the only reason I could bring Bingley and myself home, if somewhat short of the base. When you spoke, I felt no pain. The controls, sluggish as they were, responded to my every touch. The sky opened before me, and as it rose behind the plane, the sun shone onto that field, telling me my safe harbor was there amidst all the hedges and walls.
“You, too, were my safe harbor, Elizabeth.”
Then, he seemed to withdraw. His face settled into masklike planes. A shutter dimmed his eye. He sighed. “But then…” He made to pull away.
Elizabeth flipped her hand over so that she clasped his palm. The other she laid atop, creating a delicate sandwich. “But, then…? That sounds wistful to me, my dear Ghost.”
The shield slipped. Pain etched his features. Then the barrier locked in place again, and his voice became resolute. “This moment in the confines of a French farmhouse is not the world. The spun sugar will crack and crumble when either of us steps through the doorway. Reality will turn its glare on us and cast each…every…flaw into harsh relief.
“Such verity will burn away dawn’s rosy hue and leave us the sadder for it.”
Darcy’s stoic features belied the tone of his grief. This was not a man who held himself to be better than her. In truth, he made every noise of a soul who could not believe he ought to be sharing a meal with her, that she was only at the table out of mercy, giving a broken man a crust from the feast that was her.
Elizabeth’s father frequently cautioned her against jumping to conclusions, but this had been no leap. Throughout the past six weeks, she had come to see the contours of the man with whom she shared the trenches.
She had come to know him, and that he had been promoted to Wing Commander spoke to his nature—a man who took his every responsibility seriously.
But there was a fillip to this Darcy. She remembered part of his VC citation. He had not only done everything he could to bring his aircraft back to Earth and give his copilot the greatest chance at survival, but he also pitched the plane to port, his side, to spare his comrades some of the impact’s brute force. He took more responsibility on his shoulders, effectively giving Squadron Leader Bingley more than a fifty-fifty chance while subtracting what he could from his own odds.
Just as he would sacrifice his well-being, he would not burden others with his welfare. His withdrawing into himself was his defense against encouraging her heart for he would not condemn her to care for someone less than perfect, a pitiless duty.
He would save her even if she did not wish for salvation.
And that cast his conversation with Preacher all those weeks ago in a new light.
On cue, the rumble of a truck brought a forced brightness to her dinner companion’s exclamation.
“That will be Maxim and his boys. Get your kit, and I will wish you good luck in tonight’s endeavors. I will do the wash-up. Madame Brouillard would have my guts for garters if I left a pile of dirties in the sink.”
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