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penwallaBeing Mrs. Darcy by Lucy Marin is a published Pride & Prejudice AU fanfiction featuring a rocky marriage of convenience between Elizabeth and Darcy. As far as novels of this kind go, it has a typical premise: Elizabeth and her family are at Ramsgate during Georgiana’s elopement, and by chance Elizabeth is able to prevent it from occurring. Unfortunately this comes at the cost of her own reputation, and now that she has been tied to Mr. Darcy by sordid gossip, they have no choice but to salvage their reputations by marrying.
It’s not a particularly original novel, and I think its portrayal of Georgiana as a spoiled, arrogant, and hateful young woman is unpleasant. But it is one of my favorite novels of all time, and certainly my favorite P&P variation. If I had to sell it to you, I would tell you this: Being Mrs. Darcy has the best romance novel grovel of all time. Because this Darcy doesn’t just apologize, and he’s not just guilty of being prideful.
Being Mrs. Darcy is about an emotionally abusive man realizing that he is an abuser and changing his ways.
In a way, I think this is a premise as fantastic as if he were a dragon shifter or had been isekai’d in from another dimension. But that’s what makes it good. When this Darcy has his long night of the soul, when he spends a whole night and day flagellating himself for mistreating his wife and for all his character flaws, when he dramatically decides to change his ways and then, for the rest of the book, actually does...it is a catharsis that few other books have achieved. When my dad died and I couldn’t cry, this is the book I reread—and it reliably does make me cry every time.
But this book has one major flaw, one that finally became apparent to me during my last reread.
Darcy and Elizabeth need to have bad sex.
Let’s go back a bit. This Darcy treats Elizabeth very badly. He is neglectful of all her emotional needs, and resents having to clothe and house and feed her. He can’t accept that he’s been forced to marry a woman he barely knows, and he can’t forgive Elizabeth for being so far beneath him. Frankly I’ve always read this as Darcy transferring all the resentment he should have for his sister onto Elizabeth; as I said earlier, the Georgiana Darcy of this book is very unsympathetic, and Darcy is wholly fooled by her sweet demeanor for the first half of it.
Darcy isolates Elizabeth from her family, allows his own family to repeatedly disrespect her, and in general makes it clear that she is unworthy of being his wife. And Elizabeth takes this to heart. Throughout the first half of the book, the isolation and emotional abuse make her extremely reluctant to trust anyone in her new life. She is convinced that everyone looks on her as Darcy does: only to find fault. She is terrified that everyone secretly hates her.
So what does any of this have to do with bad sex? Well, while Darcy is still being a terrible husband, he does come around to the idea that Elizabeth is pretty. So he kisses her, and they end up regularly having sex. But this is where the book, in my mind, makes a mistake.
See, throughout the first half of the book, even though Elizabeth is dissatisfied with every other aspect of her marriage, she repeatedly says that she enjoys the sex, that she finds Darcy's physical affection comforting. When they have their first real argument, the one that makes Darcy reassess all his bad behavior, she specifically tells that she "is glad [he] has found one use for her", implying that she's unhappy with their sex life and that she only accommodates him because she has to. But she immediately tells the readers that no, she didn't mean that, the sex was the one part she enjoyed.
Now, I get that the author probably didn't want to write the hero of this romance novel as raping his wife. I get that having good sex no matter how improbable is a romance novel staple. But in this book, it just doesn't make sense.
Darcy’s contempt for Elizabeth is palpable at every other moment of their marriage—we’re supposed to believe it just disappears during sex? We’re supposed to believe that the same Elizabeth who spends every conversation holding her breath and holding her tongue finds sex with Darcy enjoyable? Like, come on.
Pretty much every element of the way the sex scenes in this book are handled works against it. They're not very explicit, and all the details we do get--they're fucking in the dark and Darcy always leaves afterward--are traditionally the trappings of sex that is bad, which makes it all the more unbelievable when Elizabeth tells the reader that this is an element of her marriage that she enjoys. We don’t get a detailed scene where we discover Darcy’s pride won’t let him leave his wife unsatisfied. And Elizabeth is a virgin, so there’s no point of comparison and no hint that she’s a woman with, for example, a high libido who just enjoys the act.
Either they need to be having terrible sex where Darcy resents her the entire time and she's laying there thinking of England, or they need to not fuck.
I think this ties into a broader genre convention in romance novels, where sexual tension is treated as mandatory, even when the leads are at odds and it doesn’t make sense. It feels like the authors of some novels believe that if the leads aren’t immediately physically attracted to each other, the readers won’t believe in their romance.
For example, both Fourth Wing and Silver Elite have nominal enemies-to-lovers romances where the author is constantly reminding us how attracted the female main character is to the male lead, even when it literally doesn't make sense. Obviously Silver Elite is an egregious example of this, where the lead will not shut up about how hot the her fascist overlord is even though he is literally participating in a genocide against her kind. But I think that if your romance leads are in opposition to each other, it doesn't always make sense for them to be attracted to each other, and the romance is going to be more compelling if, instead of using "we're so horny for each other" as a shorthand for their romantic compatibility, you spend that page time on having the leads overcome whatever opposition they have to each other so they can convincingly fall in love.
In Being Mrs. Darcy, Darcy doesn’t just apologize. He has to spend the rest of the book making it up to Elizabeth, and she is rightfully depicted as being afraid to let her guard down even when she recognizes his efforts. He has to keep proving himself over and over again. That’s what makes the romance convincing, and it would be convincing even if they never had sex on page again.
In conclusion: I love Being Mrs. Darcy. After Darcy realizes he is The Worst, he and Elizabeth aren’t intimate until they reconcile, because Darcy is afraid of coercing her into sex. I think that’s the right move—but I think it’d be even better if the author hadn’t tried to convince us that these two could ever have good sex under the circumstances. Because I’m just not convinced they could.
It’s not a particularly original novel, and I think its portrayal of Georgiana as a spoiled, arrogant, and hateful young woman is unpleasant. But it is one of my favorite novels of all time, and certainly my favorite P&P variation. If I had to sell it to you, I would tell you this: Being Mrs. Darcy has the best romance novel grovel of all time. Because this Darcy doesn’t just apologize, and he’s not just guilty of being prideful.
Being Mrs. Darcy is about an emotionally abusive man realizing that he is an abuser and changing his ways.
In a way, I think this is a premise as fantastic as if he were a dragon shifter or had been isekai’d in from another dimension. But that’s what makes it good. When this Darcy has his long night of the soul, when he spends a whole night and day flagellating himself for mistreating his wife and for all his character flaws, when he dramatically decides to change his ways and then, for the rest of the book, actually does...it is a catharsis that few other books have achieved. When my dad died and I couldn’t cry, this is the book I reread—and it reliably does make me cry every time.
But this book has one major flaw, one that finally became apparent to me during my last reread.
Darcy and Elizabeth need to have bad sex.
Let’s go back a bit. This Darcy treats Elizabeth very badly. He is neglectful of all her emotional needs, and resents having to clothe and house and feed her. He can’t accept that he’s been forced to marry a woman he barely knows, and he can’t forgive Elizabeth for being so far beneath him. Frankly I’ve always read this as Darcy transferring all the resentment he should have for his sister onto Elizabeth; as I said earlier, the Georgiana Darcy of this book is very unsympathetic, and Darcy is wholly fooled by her sweet demeanor for the first half of it.
Darcy isolates Elizabeth from her family, allows his own family to repeatedly disrespect her, and in general makes it clear that she is unworthy of being his wife. And Elizabeth takes this to heart. Throughout the first half of the book, the isolation and emotional abuse make her extremely reluctant to trust anyone in her new life. She is convinced that everyone looks on her as Darcy does: only to find fault. She is terrified that everyone secretly hates her.
So what does any of this have to do with bad sex? Well, while Darcy is still being a terrible husband, he does come around to the idea that Elizabeth is pretty. So he kisses her, and they end up regularly having sex. But this is where the book, in my mind, makes a mistake.
See, throughout the first half of the book, even though Elizabeth is dissatisfied with every other aspect of her marriage, she repeatedly says that she enjoys the sex, that she finds Darcy's physical affection comforting. When they have their first real argument, the one that makes Darcy reassess all his bad behavior, she specifically tells that she "is glad [he] has found one use for her", implying that she's unhappy with their sex life and that she only accommodates him because she has to. But she immediately tells the readers that no, she didn't mean that, the sex was the one part she enjoyed.
Now, I get that the author probably didn't want to write the hero of this romance novel as raping his wife. I get that having good sex no matter how improbable is a romance novel staple. But in this book, it just doesn't make sense.
Darcy’s contempt for Elizabeth is palpable at every other moment of their marriage—we’re supposed to believe it just disappears during sex? We’re supposed to believe that the same Elizabeth who spends every conversation holding her breath and holding her tongue finds sex with Darcy enjoyable? Like, come on.
Pretty much every element of the way the sex scenes in this book are handled works against it. They're not very explicit, and all the details we do get--they're fucking in the dark and Darcy always leaves afterward--are traditionally the trappings of sex that is bad, which makes it all the more unbelievable when Elizabeth tells the reader that this is an element of her marriage that she enjoys. We don’t get a detailed scene where we discover Darcy’s pride won’t let him leave his wife unsatisfied. And Elizabeth is a virgin, so there’s no point of comparison and no hint that she’s a woman with, for example, a high libido who just enjoys the act.
Either they need to be having terrible sex where Darcy resents her the entire time and she's laying there thinking of England, or they need to not fuck.
I think this ties into a broader genre convention in romance novels, where sexual tension is treated as mandatory, even when the leads are at odds and it doesn’t make sense. It feels like the authors of some novels believe that if the leads aren’t immediately physically attracted to each other, the readers won’t believe in their romance.
For example, both Fourth Wing and Silver Elite have nominal enemies-to-lovers romances where the author is constantly reminding us how attracted the female main character is to the male lead, even when it literally doesn't make sense. Obviously Silver Elite is an egregious example of this, where the lead will not shut up about how hot the her fascist overlord is even though he is literally participating in a genocide against her kind. But I think that if your romance leads are in opposition to each other, it doesn't always make sense for them to be attracted to each other, and the romance is going to be more compelling if, instead of using "we're so horny for each other" as a shorthand for their romantic compatibility, you spend that page time on having the leads overcome whatever opposition they have to each other so they can convincingly fall in love.
In Being Mrs. Darcy, Darcy doesn’t just apologize. He has to spend the rest of the book making it up to Elizabeth, and she is rightfully depicted as being afraid to let her guard down even when she recognizes his efforts. He has to keep proving himself over and over again. That’s what makes the romance convincing, and it would be convincing even if they never had sex on page again.
In conclusion: I love Being Mrs. Darcy. After Darcy realizes he is The Worst, he and Elizabeth aren’t intimate until they reconcile, because Darcy is afraid of coercing her into sex. I think that’s the right move—but I think it’d be even better if the author hadn’t tried to convince us that these two could ever have good sex under the circumstances. Because I’m just not convinced they could.
