Lit Reader’s Reviews > Her Grace Revisited: A Pride & Prejudice Vagary > Status Update
Lit Reader
is 40% done
Another pet peeve of mine is when these “historical” variations impose American Middle Class values on supposed Regency characters; for example, when an elderly couple decides to move to The Dower House and leave the main house/manor/estate free for the “young geeneration” to reign over, LOL!
No way in H*ll would a Mr. Darcy or other master “retire” into a dower house & check out! Just NO!
— Jun 28, 2025 07:07PM
No way in H*ll would a Mr. Darcy or other master “retire” into a dower house & check out! Just NO!
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Lit Reader
is 98% done
As we already knew, this author did poor research on nobility titles, usage, styles, or inheritance — she seems to belive that ascendance into an hereditary title works just the same as the investiture of honours (Knighthood, for ex), problem is THEY DON’T!
Also, widowed Duchess loses all courtesy titles if she remarries, she would not be Dowager unless (unmarried), her son married and got himself a new Duchess
— Jul 01, 2025 07:43AM
Also, widowed Duchess loses all courtesy titles if she remarries, she would not be Dowager unless (unmarried), her son married and got himself a new Duchess
Lit Reader
is 90% done
Widowed Duchess Lizzy hires bachelor Darcy Jr (his father still lives and he is not Master of Pemberly) as male nanny for her children, and/or a live-in position as steward’s substitute and companion — totally mindblowing how anyone could think this makes sense !
— Jun 30, 2025 08:41PM
Lit Reader
is 65% done
This story is a festival of Equality !!! A Duke employs a random chambermaid and upgrades her as young lady’s companion, then goes on to dower her with a small fortune, and ends up sponsoring her wedding to a parson, and finally welcomes her as a family friend for weekly invitations into his home… super believable (not)!
This is just one example of how badly this story fails to congeal
— Jun 29, 2025 09:00PM
This is just one example of how badly this story fails to congeal
Lit Reader
is 52% done
Poor use of styles of address is a cheap mistake, it shows the author is writing details above their comfort zone >> Lady [fist name] means she is the daughter of a Duke/Marquess/Earl. The wife of a Duke should be styled Lady + Title, Lady Hertfordshire, for example
— Jun 29, 2025 10:28AM
Lit Reader
is 50% done
It’s always so cringe for me to read stories where authors unleash their own misogyny and sadism on their characters. We have read countless stories where Caroline or Lady Catherine are severely punished, humiliated, phsysically restrained or even harmed (to the chilling glee of the writer!)
This story brings something new = punishment & humiliation for young Darcy, sentencing him to humbling manual work…
— Jun 29, 2025 08:41AM
This story brings something new = punishment & humiliation for young Darcy, sentencing him to humbling manual work…
Lit Reader
is 5% done
This carcrash was too much for me to pass up!
Having read the previous/original installment, my curiosity was piqued
— Jun 28, 2025 09:07AM
Having read the previous/original installment, my curiosity was piqued
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J.C.
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Jun 29, 2025 09:38AM
You're exactly right. I don't buy into this idea either.
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@J.C. this trope is so pervasive that I have come across convoluted and totally FAKE tropes where actual Peers of the Realm somehow manage to renounce their titles so their middle-aged children can “inherit” the substantive titles and wealth, while the actual elderly Peer checks out into “retirement” — it’s absolutely bonkers… but somehow it makes sense in the minds of these [American, Middle Class] authors, because a Class System is too “unnatural” for them to understand
I’m American, and I think you’re probably right. Also, retirement is a modern idea.
@J.C. I am seeing a very consistent pattern of modern authors making a forced emphasis on Darcy’s WORK ethics — from me tioning his studio, his paperwork, his office as an imaginary “locus”… when the keypoint of gentlemen (by definition) is that they didn’t “work” at all !The modern sensibility requires Darcy to be useful, powerful through work, but that was not real for rich Regency gentry, and certainly not real for Darcy, who could take months on end to visit his friend Bingley and abandon Pemberley altogether from Michaelmas to Christmas without blinking!
@lit - that's such an interesting point! I hadn't thought about it as much as you have, and I think you make an excellent point. We get so caught up in how we see the world now that it's easy to forget how different things would have been two hundred years ago.
@J.C. I happen to think the fantasy of Darcy & Lizzy having “his & hers” desks comes from the film Young Victoria — but Queen Vic was actually a working woman (a Head of State with a diplomatic job, with a husband keen to validate his own role), unlike Lizzy as Mrs. Darcy, who very certainly wouldn’t be overseeing planting or sheep raising!Going back to the issue of “working Darcy”, to me, it’s an echo of the CEO tropes that are a staple of the Romance genre, readers want a “powerful” hero who doesn’t only spend money, and since the notion of the “good master” that Mrs. Reynolds shared is alien to modern readers, authors need to translate that into a “corporate” framework…
