Flipping Characters Not Houses
Taking Away the Building to see the Foundations
Welcome to the first Austenesque Thoughts of 2024! If you are new to this forum, I use this space to explore Austenesque fiction. Mostly, these come in the form of personal musings, exploring why my stories develop the way they do and how the world of Austenesque Fiction has evolved from the early days of fan fiction to the modern style of writing variations and sequels that use where Austen ended as a starting point.
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Classic Canon has Darcy’s head so high in the clouds of his status that he barely condescends to see those clustered around his feet. Canon also has Elizabeth reacting with impertinence and asperity against the man’s arrogant nature and arrogance. That dynamic tension has been present for 200 years.
When I ventured to write my first novel which was Elizabeth/Darcy-centric, I resolved to create a work that would offer readers a fresh approach to the quandary that is the Eternal Binary. I am convinced that one of the reasons that I avoided ODC novels (despite Lory Lilian and Joana Starnes urging me to do otherwise) was that I was unwilling to compose another story that relied on plot devices used a dozen times over in Fan Fiction. I mean, how many times can Elizabeth become ill at Pemberley, trip over a root and twist her ankle at Pemberley, or get amnesia at Pemberley?
As I was writing The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier’s Portion, something clicked. It may have been that I was writing a redeemed Lydia Wickham who acted contrary to her nature that was memorialized in a thousand variations pushed out since 2010. She was so much more interesting than the 15-year-old “lively” girl who would remain unchanged even as she aged. That sense of our core characters acting differently, assuming new guises, sent a glimmer into the darker corners of my mind where it muttered through the end of the Lydia book and in the composition of my North and South story, Cinders and Smoke (see Volume Two of the 2023 Remastered edition of Henry Fitzwilliam’s War. Also, it is included in the “Falling for Mr. Thornton” anthology).
At some point after the publication of Volume Seven of the Bennet Wardrobe—The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier’s Portion—I turned to the idea that was to become In Plain Sight. Making the Lydia alterations my starting point, I asked myself ‘What must Darcy do to lose his pride and begin to appreciate the people around him if Elizabeth’s Hunsford rejection was not the cause?’
After considerable mulling, my search for a satisfying plot path hit a brick wall. I could not see a way that Fitzwilliam Darcy, master of Pemberley, could set aside his pride and become a fully dimensional person. And, there it was—right in the center of my problem. He could not as long as he was master of Pemberley. That man could only respond to the Hunsford disaster: the denial of his most cherished wish. I needed to have him become another, an inversion of the character with whom we are so familiar in order to allow him to grow in the manner I would like to write.
Now, I am not a particularly religious man. Even though my books are replete with Christian and Eastern mystic references, these are artifacts of a Swedish Lutheran childhood. That said, our Nineteenth Century characters are people of faith and not Nietzsche’s children, and, thus, allusions to religion and faith are relevant.
As I began to look at inverting Darcy, I was reminded of the story of the Prodigal Son. By the time of George Darcy’s death, Fitzwilliam Darcy had risen to the top of the heap. He was in possession of his birthright at the age of twenty-three. How could this man learn what he needed to learn in order to become worthy of Elizabeth’s love? If Darcy was at the pinnacle, who would be at the absolute (white man’s) social nadir? Like the biblical young man, he would have to lose it all, to be stripped down to his barest essentials.
He would be convicted and relegated to toil, hidden in plain sight, from all of those who would have condescended to know him before.
Once I hit upon that solution, much more moved into position. Now that Darcy was invisible to everybody except the men to whom he was chained, how could he interact with Elizabeth? That forced me to consider the person of Miss Elizabeth Rose Bennet. As a gentleman’s daughter, what did she know and who did she see? Canonical readers and fans of Austenesque works tend to pigeonhole Elizabeth as somewhat saintly and most certain without fault—except for her nasty proclivity to mimic a certain Derbyshire gent by jumping to conclusions.
Yet, would not the daughter of Longbourn be equally susceptible to classism? While she is not of the first circles, are we to assume that those attitudes of superiority did not percolate downward toward the sparrows from the eagles? This gave me a mobilizer for Elizabeth and Smith’s relationship. She was in her own, as well as society’s eyes, so far above the convict as the master of Pemberley was above the second daughter of a modest country gentleman in the original.
Now, Elizabeth had to learn that labels do not make the man. Does Collins become an exemplar of saintly rectitude simply because he is ordained? Much as Lydia discovered that the color of the uniform does not define the valor of the man wearing it, so too will Lizzy Bennet find that checkered shirts and canvas pantaloons do not determine the inner qualities of the person before her.
In Plain Sight is, I believe, an honest work. It offers up our hero and heroine in a new light. It moves them through an unfamiliar word growing from the whole cloth of the great work. The novel tells the love story in a way that will be seen as unusual and stepping beyond the norm.
Please enjoy this excerpt from deep in the book which reveals the depths of change wrought in both (although mostly Smith) characters.
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The 2023 Remastered Edition of In Plain Sight is available worldwide on all Amazon platforms in e-book, KindleUnlimited, paperback, and Audible (performed by the incomparable Amanda Berry).
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This excerpt from the 2023 Remastered Edition of In Plain Sight, A Pride and Prejudice Variation is ©2024 by Donald P. Jacobson. Reproduction is prohibited. Published in the United States of America.
Chapter Thirty-four
The gig rattled to a stop next to a cut in the boundary hedgerow. The three women heard tools crunching through the rocky soil and men joking with one another to make the work lighter. Lizzy’s heart caught on the edge of a beat when Smith’s rich baritone wove in and out of the conversational tumult.
She had missed that voice and the man behind it.
Now, there’s an admission I would neither have been willing nor able to make six months ago. Imagine me, a senior daughter from one of Meryton’s leading houses, professing an attraction for a criminal! But even the Burford Highwaymen—three brothers—had a mother who probably wept when they met their end.
But there is a nobility about Mr. Smith that leaves me wondering whether he is the same man he was when sentenced to hard labor.
Walking over to the clutch of women standing on the other side of the gap, Mary nodded to the ladies and greeted each by name. As the curate’s wife, Mrs. Benton stood slightly elevated in status from the others in the group. Annie and Lizzy, as servants, stood on the periphery, acknowledged but generally ignored as neither had people in the community. Even in the relatively compact society of the Hedgebrook parish, thin layers of social strata existed. The wives and daughters of tenant farmers occupied a slightly higher level than those who had elected to leave the farm behind and enter service.
At Wilson’s whistle, the ladies hefted their baskets and flooded onto the worksite—each tracking down her man. Lizzy and Annie took theirs to a sunny spot in the lee of the hawthorn wall. Handing cloth-wrapped parcels to two unattached adolescents, both of whom were second sons delegated by their fathers to fulfill their farms’ labor levy, the two young women watched as Smith and Wilson loped up toward them. The two men bent slightly at the waist and carried their shovels parallel to the ground. They held the shafts at the midpoint like foot soldiers lugging their muskets as they charged across the Iberian countryside.
The women watched in admiration as the men approached. Annie nudged Lizzy in the ribs and whispered, “Not bad, hmm?”
Lizzy gently cuffed the under-housekeeper’s arm. “Stop it. You are a married woman. I shall grant you that Henry has changed prodigiously and for the better since he came north. Beyond that, I shall not go.”
“You have nothing to say about Mr. Smith?” quizzed Annie. “He cuts a powerful figure. I would wager he would warm your thin southern blood.”
Lizzy did not deign to reply, but her blush told her friend that she had heard and understood the innuendo.
Annie corralled her husband and guided him to a secluded spot where they settled on the turfy verge.
Smith accepted a parcel from Lizzy and collected a tall stoneware jug of ale.
Then he looked at the diminutive maid—his Elizabeth—and offered a quiet suggestion that his heart had screamed. Her acceptance gave him room for hope.
***
Smith juggled their lunches, the pot of ale, and Elizabeth’s arm all at the same time as the couple picked their way beneath the trees and through the thickets surrounding a creek. Twigs caught the folds of their clothing as they passed. Lizzy clasped a bundled lambswool throw Smith had collected from Mary’s gig. As she held William’s arm, she felt corded muscles shift as his body moved along the uneven trail. His head constantly scanned the rutted path that cut through the hillside. Dirty patches of snow pockmarked the slope; a late-spring melt sent muddy rivulets downhill toward the larger stream.
A few dozen steps along the creek bed led Will and Lizzy to a glen where the brook swirled into a pool trapped in a natural bowl before tumbling through a cut in the age-blackened granite. Overhanging evergreens dipped their tips in the crystal-clear liquid, accentuating the primeval scene. The rest of the world was banished. All that remained was the gurgling of the water, the gushing of the small cataract on the far side, and the sound of each other’s breathing.
The level space high on the bank above the eddying water invited the pair to repose and enjoy their picnic. Elizabeth released Smith’s arm and spread the blanket atop the mossy undergrowth, burying soft tufts and spiky gorse beneath the throw’s weave. She gracefully lowered herself onto her haunches and tucked her gown around her legs, situating herself demurely. Smith chose the Indian fakir pose with legs akimbo. Words were foregone as two work-sharpened appetites demanded immediate attention.
To help wash down a mouthful of bread and cheese, Lizzy tipped back and drank her fill of the nut-brown ale from the wide-mouthed container. As she lowered her head, she saw Smith staring at her.
She lowered the jug. “What?”
William said nothing. Instead, he reached across with the red-checked serviette that had held his lunch, finished now, and carefully wiped off the foamy mustache that had accumulated on her upper lip. His finger’s gentle pressure was felt but, cloth-cloaked, left untouched her naked face, much to Elizabeth’s disappointment. Yet even that near contact unsettled her in that deep recess of her abdomen.
An embarrassed laugh preceded her riposte. “You presume to put me out of employment by acting as the lady’s maid.”
A deep baritone chuckle rumbled up from Smith’s middle. His reply brought the claret to Elizabeth’s cheeks. “All I did was remove what had not been as God intended. I could not hope to improve upon perfection, madam.”
Lizzy rolled her eyes and jousted back. “Oh, but you are a practiced flatterer, are you not, Mr. Smith? I could well imagine your haunting some drawing room in Grosvenor Square. There you would turn the heads of impressionable young ladies with your sweet-sounding words.”
The invisible fiber running from behind her breastbone into the chalice of her hips twanged in disconsolate discord when she saw his face fall at her pert speech. Lizzy leaned across the space that separated them and spoke gently. “What is it, Mr. Smith? Why have you suddenly gone into a brown study?”
Smith stirred and clambered to his feet, raking his hands through his long hair and pulling it away from his face. He paced back and forth before turning to her. “Miss Elizabeth, please know I reserve my pretty words only for you. The idea that you could even consider my throwing blandishments at another woman—because I could not truly mean them—is repugnant.”
Lizzy quailed before his intensity.
He held up both hands and quickly moved on. “No, please, I do not mean to criticize you. You naturally seek to tease those who engage your attention. I have seen you with Mrs. Wilson and your sister—”
“And, I have watched you with Mr. Wilson. You are far more comfortable with persons with whom you are acquainted,” Lizzy interrupted.
He pushed on. “You have sketched my character with a skilled hand, Miss Elizabeth.
“In my life before, I was often considered prideful. My behavior led others to believe I saw myself as far above the company I found myself in. In reality, I was withdrawn—my more charitable critics would have said shy—to the point of unsociability.
“There came the point when society determined I was a crown roast on the marriage mart’s meat counter. I used my mask as a shield against importuning women. I am not proud to say it, and I would hope you could find humor in a man behaving ridiculously, but my glare could have stopped a clock on the far side of a drawing room.
“The grasping, unscrupulous nature of the ton poisoned my spirit and exacerbated the worst aspects of my character. As a child, my parents taught me what was right, but I was uneducated in how to correct my temper. I was given good principles but left to follow them with pride and conceit. I cataloged every offense and ignored all evidence of goodness.
“I was judge, jury, and executioner. I found every person who crossed my path wanting.
“At one time, ladies great and small would have fallen all over each other to lead me to the parson’s trap. They did not want me for who I was but rather for what I represented and could bring them. Their fluttering attention left me cold.
“I no longer have that problem. Its absence and the gift of time—yes, it does seem queer that I could call being sentenced to toil far from all I loved a reward, but it is—in a world where my lineage is meaningless has led me to the inescapable truth.
“My heart is now prepared to accept love. Where before it was dried ground upon which the blood and tears of poets’ contemplations sizzled and burned away, now I cannot imagine a life without the most glorious of emotions.”
Elizabeth was mesmerized. She could not tear her eyes from that face so high above her: its clefts, crevices, and planes burned into her memory.
In a move that shouted youthful joy, Smith strode past her and hopped atop a stump as if he were a Member of Parliament on the hustings. He threw his arms out from his sides and tipped his head back to gaze up through an opening between the treetops.
He loosed a single, long baritone note to the heavens. Lizzy could never quite recall its exact timbre. To her, ’twas as if Maestro Mozart had awarded him the singular sound of male joy, something heard only by the object of his affections. The rich sound bounced around their refuge and flowed over her, lifting her on its crescendo.
Will looked down at this young woman, his cherished treasure, her hopeful brown eyes staring up at him. The air crackled around her. His sight dimmed until nothing remained but her haloed being. Then it all exploded, filling him to overflowing with coruscating energy. The French called what he felt in that instant, that which had jolted him every day for months, une coup de foudre.[i]
Without pride but instead displaying complete vulnerability, William continued his monolog in a voice saturated with wonder. “You must forgive my frankness, Miss Elizabeth. I am like a blind man granted his sight through a touch of healing waters. All I once believed is now withered and blown away like dust before a storm rolling in from the Peak.
“’Tis impossible to hold me back. I cannot repress my feelings!”
He whirled and stumbled off his pedestal. He dropped to his knees next to Lizzy. “I cannot rightfully discuss my feelings. The state has yet a great hold over me. It is not fair to you, Miss Elizabeth…”
“Lizzy: just plain ‘Lizzy’ will do, Mr. Smith. You forget that I am a disgraced woman, reduced to working as a parlor maid on the other side of the country, far from my home,” she faintly intoned.
Smith’s face softened, and he splayed his fingers on his thighs, displaying scarred knuckles. This unaffected movement was a counterpoint to how Elizabeth had hidden her stained hands beneath the folds of her skirt.
Words of regret came next. “Your reputation has been tarnished because you chose to do your Christian duty by me. If I could erase the moment your path and mine intersected in that sump to spare you that pernicious libel, I would. Honestly, mayhap it would have been better if I had never survived my baptism in the Mimram.”
Elizabeth’s hand flew out of its own accord and caressed his cheek. She urgently replied, “No…never…Mr. Smith. I would not wish my standing left unsullied at the cost of another’s life. You, sir, survived for a reason.”
Smith nodded. “I have been coming to that conclusion these past several months. My conviction is that the universe, in its eternal game of chance, decided to bring the two of us together. I pray that you will not think me impertinent.
“I wish I could lay my life before you like an open book. But I cannot.
“Here is my confession…but there is not much to it.”
“My name is not Smith. However, I cannot tell you more. I am bound by law and honor not to speak my true name until I pay my obligation to society,” he quietly said.
Elizabeth rocked back on her heels. Her conclusions about Smith’s history were confirmed in a few sentences.
[i] Something unexpected like love at first sight.
This is such a wonderful story & I love the new covers you have done for the books
I am sure I will. I love when you authors change up the personalities of characters or add new ones. It gives our favorite works some new life.