Why is Mr Darcy so attractive? And I’m not just talking about Colin Firth in a wet shirt. I mean, what is it about him (Darcy) that is so compelling? And why do vampires have the same magnetic allure? I’ve been giving this some thought (mainly this morning at around 2am – which is always a good time for thinking about sexy, aloof heroes).
I have come to the conclusion that it is two things:
The first is that Darcy doesn’t want to want Elizabeth – but can’t resist her. Even against his better judgement – (gasps of disbelief that statement engendered in our household when Colin first uttered those words, I’m sure, were echoed by women far and wide. But by golly Elizabeth gave it back to him didn’t she?).
What red blooded woman can resist the allure of a man who is hard to catch? And vampires are virtually always portrayed as naturally aloof (I mean, how sexy is a friendly, good natured vampire?) .
The second is that almost all vampires and Mr Darcy (particularly the way he is portrayed by both Colin Firth and Matthew McFayden) are sensual.
Hello! How often do you get excited by anyone else in a wet shirt who isn’t tanned and muscular? And between you and me – when McFayden’s Darcy flexes his hand after touching Elizabeth – well! Don’t women (and men) wish someone was that sensitive to just the touch of their skin?
What has this all lead to? Well, not surprisingly I’ve come across a number of books about Mr Darcy as a vampire – double sensual with chocolate and cream and a cherry on top!
Sensuality is the unsung hero of romance and I believe it ties in firmly to the first time we meet that person that makes our skin tingle, breath catch, our bodies ache… before we’ve shagged them silly – that period where everything is brimming with sensual, erotic possibility?
I’ve often thought that the best love scenes I’ve read aren’t just about the down and dirty straight up stuff (though that’s all good), but also about the more subtle nuances of a kiss at the corner of the mouth or fingertips (or teeth?) brushing against a neck.
If only it wasn’t so hard to put all those feelings into words that don’t sound trite or silly… But captures that wonderful intensity of erotic and love struck emotion for ever.
I hope vampires are capable of it…
” He mounted her, parting her legs, giving the white inner flesh of her thighs a soft, deep pinch, and, clasping her right breast in his left hand, he thrust his sex into her.
He was holding her up as he did this, to gather her mouth to him, and as her broke through her innocence, he opened her mouth with his tongue and piched her breast sharply.
He sucked on her lips, he drew the life out of her into himself, and feeling his seed explode within her, heard her cry out.
And then her blue eyes opened.
‘Beauty!’ he wispered to her. ”
Page 3, Anne Rice, ( originally writing as A. N. Roquelaure), The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.
That is how Sleeping beauty really got woken up. Mother goose will never be the same.
Another 2 books after that. Evolves to a good read. Filthy. But good. 🙂
I read Stoker when younger and more innocent, obviously pre Roquelaure. You have opened my eyes and I shall be pulling it off the shelf again if I can remember which shelf it’s on. I enjoyed the retelling in The Historian, yet to finish it but was enjoying it before I had to take it back to the Library (In WA). See it isan A&G top 100 must read so easily available.
I think TL is the literary equivalent of Neighbours and the writing is so unchallenging that I found myself capable of reading the entire thing in less than 1 hour, the biggest of them included.
A book is best liked by myself if I have to grab the dictionary a few times and can savour the verse. I think it fits perfectly into the ‘capable of being glossed over’ category you accurately describe. Lichtenstein for sure.
A true description of sensuality has to have metre. Thats what reflects the reality we all crave from within the fantasy. The words alone cannot describe the fact that his heart was beating faster. The temper of the words, the length of prose, it has to activate the olfactory, speed up our own heart beat, elicit that which is felt, be truely psychosomatic. We have to truly empathise with the character for that to happen though.
Ask one of these young nerf hearders what iambic pentameter is and they could say a middle eastern noodle dish.
Thats what makes Darcy so appealling, whether in the book or one the screen, it was the dance. When Darcy and Elizabeth started dancing, whether they wanted to or not, they never stopped. Metre, Rhythm, key changes. Thats why they are the ultimate enduring couple. They are the ninth symphony. Jane and Bingley. Stop start stop start. A romance for sure but not gracious.
The droll reproductists that call themselves novelists now day, formulate a structure, page length, and then link idea to idea with disjointed morphology trying to please there market with each word. Beat and Beat alone.
A true symphony lingers in the air even after the music has stopped. Sensuality is not an end, but the beginning.
Darcy was not flexing his hand because it tingled, but because it would not stop tingling.
Sexy!
As an Austen fan and Pariah within the Male species, I am churning, part in anticpation and part because it seems so dirty and unseemly, but I am about to read pride and predjudice again. This time with the Zombies. Darcy will be flexing his hand wondering if he has the Zombie infection. Kitty is already scratching.
Delicious!
hmmm. When originally reading Bram Stoker and watching the various incarnations across the years, I would concur that there is the enduring sensual side “Crossing oceans of time to find you” and such, to go hand in hand with the I am about to consume you, the gustatory not pseudo sexual twilightesque, vampiric archetype. Though interestingly enough, in most previous incarnations the vampire rarely ever got the job done so to speak. Rice’s vampires were incapable of it, though highly sensual beings. She made up for that with exploration into their pre vampire lives… and then they got it on. OHHH and she really made up for it with the Beauty series. Mother Goose will never be the same! A great example of the segway from the sensual to the sexual to the down right filthy.
The Sookie Stackhouse series embraces the antipodal, with the intensely almost masochistic sensuality to the bruising physical sexuality, which is probably why it has been embraced in the modern voyeuristic society. The old school vampire no longer holds the same sway. We have transcended the Vampire as a horror artifice to a mainstream risque pseudo sexual being. However this is still only a recent phenomenon.
Even for its success the Twilight series I think is a poor example of a Vampire. It is almost accidental. It Degrassi Junior high and some of them just happen to be Vampires. It has taken teen angst and dipped it in vampire juice, the way that the Davinci code took four very dodgy anti papal “history books” and dipped them in paranoia, and sugar coated it in awful writing. ” The great man looked at the red cup.” Whattha! A fine example of best seller versus best writer. I’ll take watching Buffy over reading either of them again, though they have made pretty movies.
I think the appeal of Mr Darcy is intergenerational. Though this generation he has to be just as rich, just as sensual, but also well hung and willing to show it. In other words, very similar to some of the male antagonists of Anne Rice’s Beauty series.
Tell the story from one of their Archetype, and make him a Vampire.. Literary gold!!
I would agree – I thought there was a niche left by the finish of Buffy that needed to be filled. Which is what lead me to paranormal fiction in the first place. But I wanted something that people who’d grown up watching Buffy could relate to as, by now, older people.
Dracula was considered very risque at the time it was published. There can be a lot of subtle sexual nuance drawn from it if you care to look – at one point Renfield says:
‘I shall be patient, Master. It is coming – coming – coming!’
And in response Dr Seward writes, ‘So I took the hint, and came too.’ (Dracula p.86)
Hmmm.
I’ve never been a fan of Ann Rice’s books, I find them too depressing and dark – the complete antithesis of the revoltingly sugary Twilight series.
I’ll admit to never having come across her ‘Beauty’ series – do tell.
I never read Dan Brown – the movies were easily digestible but hardly thought provoking.
I don’t think the vampire in popular fiction has lost his teeth, so to speak. Rather, gothic fiction as a whole has got a postmodernist slant that must of course include lots of sex. And there is always the ‘penetrative’ nature of the vampire’s bite. I cannot explain the popularity therefore of Twilight – especially amidst 30 somethings where everything is glossed over so fast it’s like passing through a tiny European country – blink and you miss it.