Lit Reader’s Reviews > Near Pemberley: A Journey of Two Unsettled Hearts: A Pride and Prejudice variation novel > Status Update

This sounds awful. It makes him just like Wickham.

I was thinking of reading this soon, so I'm anxious to get your thoughts about the book before I commit.

The first chapters were promising as a courtship tale. But soon enough Lydia’s situation exploded in the worst way through excessive missed opportunities & miscommunications.

The whole set-up of Lydia’s discovery is deeply unsettling and unredeemable for me. Turns out Lydia was not actually prost*tuted (but almost… TO DARCY !!!!!)

Darcy attending a brothel and being willing to partake with the YOUNGEST girl he could spot crosses a line, in my view, and no manner of repetition about how decent & honorable Darcy is can get through after that. I would tell Elizabeth to RUN as far as she can, in real life, instead of rooting for them.

"I was lonely." It made me feel sick.

@Magdalena YES, that whole situation was so random and so unsavoury, yuck !

I find it puzzling that since it could very easily be reframed and told in a different manner, this was a purposeful choice by the author to depic a casually depraved Darcy who dettaches one part of his life (attending brothels and asking for young girls to be brought to him) from what we are told is his otherwise “decent”, dutiful, honorable persona [ eye roll ]

Lit wrote: "@Magdalena YES, that whole situation was so random and so unsavoury, yuck !

I find it puzzling that since it could very easily be reframed and told in a different manner, this was a purposeful cho..."

You make an excellent point that this was a CHOICE made by the author, and it could have been done in a more acceptable manner. Today, you can't write about Darcy visiting brothels looking for "young" girls in a nonchalant manner, as if he's visiting Gunther's looking for parmesan flavor. Yikes.

I can accept stories where Darcy went to such a place once and was disgusted and alarmed (or something like that) by the experience. To write him as a man who went to brothels (or had a mistress) is to make him nothing more than a wealthy version of Wickham. It's despicable.

I won't be reading this. In the past, I've tried to support this author because of how she was unfairly treated for writing a Jane/Darcy pairing. I liked that story. I don't think English is her first language, and so her writing was a bit rough. Her more recent stories showed some improvement. She also practically spams a couple of the Facebook groups with daily posts about one or another of her books, which is so tiresome.

I would expect at least some kind of epihany from Darcy how wrong it is to "endulge in such amusements". But he didn't even show any particular remorse.

Indulge, sorry.

@Magdalena I make so many typos it’s not even funny :) specially when angry typing, hahaha.

There was no epiphany for Darcy, or not even a commitment about NOT indulging in the future (argh !)

@J.C. To me, the worst part was how the whole situation developed so callously and casually, Darcy went there because his cousin invited him and he felt like going. He watched the girls there (there was some disgust about their clothes and face paint), and when he saw Lydia (before he recognized her), his reaction was (paraphrasing) “Yes, that one! The youngest looking one, the one looking out of place and afraid, send that one to me asap!” (Barf)

The author could have hinted that D recognized Lydia and wanted to talk to her, that he felt some pressure to appear to meet a girl but he didn’t intend to consummate — I have read many situations framed like this, careful excuses to explain WHY Austen’s most uptight/upright hero is found in a brothel. But this author made it part of Darcy’s character that he finds nothing wrong or troubling about gentlemen visiting and “indulging” there.