Darcy's Struggle

by Kelly Dean Jolley

Brilliant, sensitive, and private, Fitzwilliam Darcy finds himself at the Meryton Assembly, consciously troubled by recent events in Ramsgate and unconsciously troubled by himself. He insults Elizabeth Bennet, at whom he has only glanced. It is not until she appears at Netherfield—full of life, skirted in mud, and eager to attend to her sick sister—that Darcy truly looks at her. When he does, he knows she is the woman he has been searching for, the elusive her of his heart. He falls for her completely…despite her apparent unsuitability to be the Mistress of Pemberley and his half-hearted efforts to convince himself he can live without her.

Shortly before Elizabeth leaves Netherfield, Darcy apologizes for what he said at the Assembly. Will that apology and the depth of his sudden but durable feelings give him hope with Elizabeth? Might George Wickham’s arrival frustrate his hopes, especially after Darcy blunders into a marriage proposal to Elizabeth? Romantic, reflective, and ironic, this is a story told from Darcy’s point of view, a story of the struggle from intellect to heart—a deliberate character study and a delicate love story.


©2024 Kelly Dean Jolley (P)2024 Kelly Dean Jolley

Kindle Edition

Published December 16, 2025

About the author

Kelly Dean Jolley is Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. He is author of The Concept 'Horse' Paradox and Wittgensteinian Conceptual Investigations and the editor of (and contributor to) Ludwig Wittgenstein: Key Concepts. He has also published on Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Frege, Emerson, Thoreau, and Mzerleau-Ponty, and on problems in philosophical theology and aesthetics.