pride and prejudice
Trigger warning for: Wickham
Things you notice for the first time on the umptieth read through: the chronology is so exact you could set your watch by it.
Darcy wrote his letter to Elizabeth on Friday, April 10, 1812. In it, he says:
About a year ago, she was taken from school, and an establishment formed for her in London; and last summer she went with the lady who presided over it, to Ramsgate; and thither also went Mr. Wickham, undoubtedly by design…
So Wickham’s attempted rape of Georgiana took place after April 1811 but before, say, September of that year.
Bingley took possession of Netherfield “before Michaelmas”; ie, the quarter-day on which houses were traditionally let: September 29.
This explains something that had always puzzled me: why did Bingley and Darcy come to Hertfordshire anyway? Bingley was clutching at straws, hoping a change of scene might help. Help whom? Darcy, who was blaming himself for his sister’s near-catastrophe.
Proud? Prejudiced? Sure, but Darcy’s early scenes resonate even more if you read him as clinically depressed (my diagnosis) or suffering from PTSD (per Liz.)
Pobrecito. No sooner is he finding Elizabeth’s face rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression in her dark eyes, than (on Tuesday, November 20) he runs into her in the street in Meryton – being introduced to that rapey douchebag Wickham. Fun times, fun times.
