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taradactyls · 1 month ago

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So I could be totally wrong but, I believe it was sort of expected that men/gentlemen lose their virginity before marriage in regency times. But I also there’s some fandom ‘debate’ about whether or not Mr Darcy would’ve had sex before getting married. So I was just curious about what your canon for Mr Darcy in T3W is. Is he a virgin or not?

I knew someone would ask me this eventually, haha. I've actually had really long conversations with my beta reader about this trying to figure it out. It sounds like this might all be stuff that you’ve already seen discussed in the fandom, but I’ve never thought about it deeply before and so these are new thoughts to me.

I keep going over the historical real-world likelihood, the authorial intent, and the text itself but I’m still not 100%. I’ll explain my thinking and what I find most likely, but here’s your warning that it’s not a clear cut yes/no.

Because on one hand, at that time period it was most common for men in his position to have seen sex workers or have casual encounters/mistresses with women from their estates. Though I do absolutely believe not all men did that, no matter how much wealth and power they had. To go back some centuries, William the Conqueror seemed to be famously celibate (no hints of male lovers either according to the biography I read) until his marriage, and there's no evidence of affairs after it either. The best guesses as to why are that it was due to his religious devotion and the problems that had arisen from himself being a bastard and not wanting to recreate that situation. Concerns over religion and illegitimate children would certainly still have been applicable in the regency to men who thought that way. And in modern times I've seen sex workers say that when an 18/21yo is booked in by his family/friends to 'become a man' often they end up just talking and agree to lie about the encounter. After all, it’s not like every man wants casual sex, even if they aren’t demisexual or something in that vein. But, statistically speaking, the precedent of regency gentlemen would make Darcy not a virgin.

On the other hand, just how aware was Jane Austen, the very religious daughter of a country rector, of the commonness of this? There’s a huge difference between knowing affairs and sex workers existed (and no one who had seen a Georgian newspaper could be blind to this) and realising that the majority of wealthy men saw sex workers at some point even if they condemned the more public and profligate affairs. The literature for young ladies at the time paints extramarital sex - including the lust of men outside of marriage - as pretty universally bad and dangerous. This message is seen from 'Pamela' and other gothic fiction to non-fiction conduct books which Jane Austen would have encountered. Here's something I found in 'Letters to a Young Lady' by the reverend John Bennett which I found particularly interesting as it's in direct conversation with other opinions of the era:

"A reformed rake makes the best husband." Does he? It would be very extraordinary, if he should. Besides, are you very certain, that you have power to reform him? It is a matter, that requires some deliberation. This reformation, if it is to be accomplished, must take place before marriage. Then if ever, is the period of your power. But how will you be assured that he is reformed? If he appears so, is he not insidiously concealing his vices, to gain your affections? And when he knows, they are secured, may he not, gradually, throw off the mask, and be dissipated, as before? Profligacy of this kind is seldom eradicated. It resembles some cutaneous disorders, which appear to be healed, and yet are, continually, making themselves visible by fresh eruptions. A man, who has carried on a criminal intercourse with immoral women is not to be trusted, His opinion of all females is an insult to their delicacy. His attachment is to sex alone, under particular modifications.

The definition of a rake is more than a man who has seen a sex worker once, it's about appearance and general conduct too, but again, would that distinction be made to young ladies? Because they seem to simply be continuously taught 'lust when unmarried is bad and beware men who you know engage in extramarital sex.' As a side note, Jane Austen certainly knew at least something about the mechanics of sex: her letters and literature she read alludes to it, and she grew up around farm animals in the countryside which is an education in itself.

We can also see from this exert that the school of thought seems to be 'reformed rake' vs 'never a rake' in contention for the title of best husband, there's no debate over whether a current rake is unsuitable for a young lady. And, from Willoughby to Wickham to Crawford, I think we have a very clear idea of Jane Austen's ideas of how likely it is notably promiscuous men can reform. This does not preclude the possibility that her disparaging commentary around their lust is based more on over-indulgence or the class of women they seduce, but it's undoubtedly a condemnation of such men directly in line with the first part of what John Bennett says so it's no stretch to believe she saw merit in the follow-on conclusions of the second part as well. Whether she would view it with enough merit to consider celibacy the only respectable option for unmarried men is a bit unclearer.

I did consider that perhaps Jane Austen consciously treated this as a grey area where she couldn’t possibly know what young men did (the same reasoning is why we never see the men in the dining room after the ladies retire, etc) and so didn't hold an opinion on men's extramarital encounters with sex workers/lower-class women at all, but I think there actually are enough hints in her works that this isn’t the case. Though, unsurprisingly, given the delicacy of the subject, there’s no direct mention of sex workers or gentlemen having casual lovers from among the lower-classes in her texts.

That also prevents us from definitively knowing whether she thought extramarital sex was so common, and as unremarkable, as most gentlemen treated it. But we do see from her commentary around the consequences of Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford's elopement that she had criticism of the double standards men and women were held to when violating sexual virtue. Another indication that she perhaps expected good men to be capable of waiting until marriage in the way that she very clearly believed women should. At the very least, a man who often indulges in extramarital sex does not seem to be one who would be considered highly by Jane Austen.

She makes a point of saying, in regards to not liking his wife, that Mr Bennet “was not of a disposition to seek comfort for the disappointment which his own imprudence had brought on, in any of those pleasures which too often console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice.” This must include affairs, though cheating on a wife cannot be a 1:1 equivalent of single young men sleeping around before marriage. However, the latter is generally critically accepted to be one of the flaws that Darcy lays at Wickham’s door along with gambling when talking about their youth and his “vicious propensities" and "want of principle." Though this could be argued that it’s more the extent or publicity of it (but remembering that it couldn't be anything uncommon enough that it couldn't be hidden from Darcy Sr. or explained away) rather than the act itself, or maybe seductions instead of paying women offering those services. I also believe Persuasion mentioning Sunday travelling as proof of thoughtless/immoral activity supports the idea that Jane Austen might have been religious enough that she would never create a hero who had extramarital sex.

So, taken all together this would make Darcy potentially a virgin, or, since I couldn't find absolute evidence of her opinions, leave enough room that he isn’t but extramarital sex isn’t a regular (or perhaps recent) thing and he would never have had anything so established as a mistress.

I’ve also been wondering, if Darcy isn’t a virgin, who would he have slept with? I’ve been musing on arguments for and against each option for weeks at this point. No romantasy has ever made me think about a fictional man's sexual habits so much as the question of Darcy's sexual history. What is my life.

Sex workers are an obvious answer, and the visits wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows. Discretion was part of their job, it was a clean transaction with no further responsibilities towards them, and effective (and reusable, ew) condoms existed at this time so there was little risk of children and no ability to exactly determine the paternity even if there was an accident. It was a fairly ‘responsible’ choice if one wanted no strings attached. In opposition to this, syphilis was rampant at the time, and had been known to spread sexually for centuries. Sex workers were at greater risk of it than anyone else and so the more sensible and risk-averse someone is (and I think Mr Darcy would be careful) the less likely they would be to visit sex workers. Contracting something that was known as potentially deadly and capable of making a future wife infertile if it spread to her could make any intelligent and cautious man think twice.

Servants and tenants of the estate are another simple and common answer. Less risk of stds, it can be based on actual attraction more than money (though money might still change hands), and is a bit more intimate. But Wickham’s called wicked for something very similar, when he dallies (whether he only got to serious flirting, kissing, or sleeping with them I don’t think we can conclusively say) with the common women of Meryton: “his intrigues, all honoured with the title of seduction, had been extended into every tradesman's family.” And it isn't as though Wickham had any personal duty towards those people beyond the claims of basic dignity. Darcy, who is shown to have such respect and understanding for his responsibilities towards the people of his estate and duties of a landlord, would keenly feel if any of his actions were leading his servants/tenants astray and down immoral paths. Servants, especially, were considered directly under the protection of the family whose house they worked in. I think it's undoubtable that Mrs Reynolds (whose was responsible for the wellbeing - both physically and spiritually - of the female servants) would not think so well of Mr Darcy if he had experimented with maids in his youth. It would reflect badly on her if a family entrusted their daughter to her care and she 'lost her virtue' under her watch. Daughters/widows of others living on the estate not under the roof of Pemberley House are a little more likely, but still, if he did have an affair with any of them I can only think it possible when he was much younger and did not feel his duties quite so strongly. Of course lots of real men didn't care about any of this, but Darcy is so far from being depicted as careless about his duties that the narrative makes a point of how exceptional his quality of care was. Frankly, it's undeniable that none of Jane Austen's heroes were flippant about their responsibilities towards those under their protection. I cannot serious entertain an interpretation that makes Darcy not, at his current age, at least, cognizant of the contemporary problems inherent in sleeping with servants or others on his estate.

A servant in a friend’s house would remove some of that personal responsibility, but transfer it to instead be leading his friend’s servants astray and in a manner which he is less able to know about if a child did result. That latter remains a problem even if we move the setting to his college, so not particularly likely for his character as we know it… though it wouldn’t be unusual for someone to be more unthinking and reckless in their teenage years than they are at twenty-eight so I don’t think having sex then can be ruled out. Kissing I can much more easily believe, especially when at Oxford or Cambridge, but every scenario of sleeping with a lower-class woman has some compelling arguments against it especially the closer we get to the time of the novel.

Men did of course also have affairs with women of ranks similar to their own, though given Jane Austen’s well-known feelings towards men who ‘ruined’ the virtue of young ladies we can safely say that Darcy never slept with an unwed middle- or upper-class woman. Any decent man would have married them out of duty if it got so far; but if he was the sort to let it get so far, I think it impossible Jane Austen would consider him respectable. Widows are a possibility, but again, the respectable thing to do would be to marry them. Perhaps a poorer merchant’s widow would be low enough that marriage is off the table but high enough that the ‘leading astray’ aspect loses its master-servant responsibilities (though the male-female ‘protect the gentler sex’ aspect remains) but his social circle didn’t facilitate meeting many ladies like that. Plus, an affair with a woman in society would remove many layers of privacy and anonymity that sex-workers and lower-class lovers provided by simply being unremarkable to the world at large. It carries a far greater risk of scandal and a heavier sense of immorality in the terms of respecting a woman’s purity which classism prevented from applying so heavily to lower-class women.

I think it’s important to note here that something that removes the need to think about duties of landlords towards the lower-classes or gentlemen towards gentlewomen is having affairs with other men of a similar rank. But, aside from the risk of scandal and what could be called the irresponsibility of engaging in illegal acts, it’s almost certain that Jane Austen would never have supported this. For a devout author in this era the way I’m calculating likelihoods makes it not even a possibility. But if you want to write a different fanfiction (and perhaps something like a break-up could explain why Darcy doesn’t seem to have any closer friend than someone whom he must have only met two or so years ago despite being in society for years before that) it does have that advantage over affairs with women of equal- and lower-classes. I support alternate interpretations entirely – it just isn’t how I’m deciding things in this instance.

I keep coming back to the conclusion that, at the very least, Darcy hasn’t had sex recently and it was never a common occurrence. It wouldn’t surprise me if Jane Austen felt he hadn’t done it ever. Kissing, as we can see from all the parlour games at the time, wasn’t viewed as harshly, so I think he’s likely made out with someone before. But in almost every situation it does seem that the responsible and religious thing to do (which Jane Austen values so highly) is for it to never have progressed to sex. I also don’t think it conflicts with his canon characterisation to say that he wouldn’t regard sexual experience as a crucial element of his life thus far, and his personality isn’t driven to pursue pleasure for himself, so it’s entirely possible that he would never go out of his way to seek it. So, I’m inclined to think that the authorial and textual evidence is in favour of Darcy being a virgin even if the real-world contemporary standard is the opposite. (Though both leave enough room for exceptions that I’m not going to argue with anyone who feels differently; and even if you agree with all my points, you might simply weight authorial intent/textual evidence/contemporary likelihoods differently than I do and come to a different conclusion).

Remember that even if Darcy is a virgin this wouldn’t necessarily equate to lack of knowledge, only experience. There were plenty of books and artwork focused on sex, and Darcy, studious man that he is, would no doubt pay attention to what knowledge his friends/male relatives shared. Though some of it (Looking especially at you, 'Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure') should NEVER be an example of appropriate practice for taking a woman's virginity. Darcy would almost certainly have been taught directly or learnt through exposure to other men talking to make sex good for a woman – it was a commonly held misconception (since Elizabethan England, I believe) that women had to orgasm to conceive. It would be in his interests as an empathetic husband, and head of a family, to know how to please his wife.

Basically, I’m convinced Darcy isn’t very experienced, if at all, and will be learning with Elizabeth. But he does have a lot of theoretical knowledge which he’s paid careful attention to and is eager to apply.

#sorry for how my writing jumps around from quoting sources to vaguely asserting things from the books I only write proper essays when forced #if anyone has evidence that Austen thought a sexually experienced husband was better/men needed sex/it's a crucial education for men/etc #PLEASE send it my way I'm so curious about this topic now #this is by no means an 'I trawled through every piece of evidence' post just stuff I know from studying the era and Austen and her work #so more info/evidence is always appreciated #I had sort of assumed the answer was 'not a virgin' when I first considered this months ago btw but the more I thought about it #the less I was able to find out when/where/who he would've slept with without running into some authorial/textual complication #so suddenly 'maybe a virgin' becomes increasingly likely #But the same logic would surely apply to ALL Austen's heroes... and Knightley is 38 which feels unrealistic #(though Emma doesn't have as much commentary on sex and was written when Austen was older so maybe she wasn't so idealistic about men then)#but authors do write unrealistic elements and it's entirely possible that *this* was something Austen thought a perfect guy would(n't) do #and if you've read my finances breakdowns you know I follow the text and authorial voice over real-world logic because it IS still fiction #no matter how deftly Austen set it in the real world and made realistic characters #pride and prejudice #jane austen #fitzwilliam darcy #mr darcy #discourse #austen opinions #mine #asks #fic:t3w #I'm going to need a tag for 'beneath the surface' but 'bts' is already a pretty popular abbreviation haha #just 'fic: beneath' maybe?? idk

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waitineedaname · 11 days ago

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I've finally done what I inevitably do for nearly every fandom i get into: I've made a deranged spreadsheet tracking some linguistic element in a piece of media! this time it's tracking the usage of swears in Scum Villain. if you're curious, here's the full spreadsheet, but I'll write up my findings here

some notes on my methods!

I differentiated between internal and external use. external use is pretty straight forward, that's just dialogue said out loud. for internal use, that's when it's used in the narration. obviously, this is skewed towards Shen Qingqiu as our primary POV character, but occasionally the narration dips its toes into other characters' perspectives, so I kept that in mind and assigned the usage to whoever seemed most relevant in that snippet of narration. also, in the case of the transmigrators, I also counted speech directed at the System as internal because they're less likely to self-censor when talking to the System because no one else can hear them

this was done by searching for specific words and their variants in online copies of the official English translations of all four books. there are a bajillion different swears in the English language, but I tried to focus on the most common/most likely to be used. also, since I was searching for the words manually, there are going to be some that are missed because they're written out abnormally, like lengthening the word for emphasis (eg. fuuuuuuuuuck) or censoring it (eg. b- [BLEEP]). side note, i don't know why the hell SQQ ever censors anything since he seems pretty comfortable thinking some pretty foul things without censoring them, but whatever.

now for the results! data breakdown under the cut

in total, of the swears I searched for, there's 286 swears across all four books. book two is the most vulgar, with 82 swears, and book three is the least, with only 52. book two also has the most variety (14 different words) and book three has the least variety (only 10 different words)

perhaps unsurprisingly, out of these 286 swears, SQQ's internal narration is responsible for 200 of them. his most used swear is "fuck" which appears 106 times in total and 86 times from SQQ (internal) specifically

following SQQ (internal) in the rankings is Shang Qinghua (internal) at 30 in total. his most used swear is "fucking." after that is SQH's external dialogue (14 swears, most used is "fuck") and then SQQ's external dialogue (11 swears, tied between "fuck" and "fucking"). considering how much he swears in his head, I think SQQ is exhibiting a surprising amount of restraint when it comes to swearing out loud!

aside from the transmigrators, the most vulgar side character is, surprisingly, Shen Jiu! he gets two internal uses of "fuck" and two external swears ("shitty" and "damn"). these are all from when he was younger, so perhaps this is a habit he broke when he got older and had to present a particular image as peak lord

the only other side characters who swear are Sha Hualing (internal), Bingge (internal), Linguang-Jun (external), Qiu Jianluo (external), and Ming Fan. all of them only swear once except Ming Fan, who gets two (one internal and one external)

of the 18 swear words I tracked, SQQ used all of them except one. the only person to say "bitch" is Ming Fan, out loud. #MingFanMisogynyMoments

SQQ does, however, have a monopoly on motherfuck/motherfucker/motherfucking, goddammit, dumbass, dick, and pussy. damn dude, you kiss your disciple with that mouth?

pre-transmigration, Shen Yuan swore three times in one forum post, those being "fucking," "damn," and "ass."

most usages of "ass" are for emphatic purposes, like "Relax, my ass!" Both SQQ and SQH really enjoy this construction lol

despite volume two being the most vulgar, it has the least variety of speakers! SQQ is responsible for all but two of those swears, the other two belonging to Sha Hualing and Ming Fan. volume four has the most variety, likely because it just involves a wide variety of characters

and that's my data roundup! go forth and use this as a resource when choosing how to insert swearing into your SVSSS dialogue <3

#svsss #my meta #linguistics blogging #this was really fun to do!#sqq swears SO MUCH. MY GOD DUDE.#but it's almost entirely in his head!#he generally shows restraint out loud #most of the times he swears out loud it's either to sqh or because he's shocked somehow #binghe NEVER swears (out loud at least) so I love thinking about his shock when shizun suddenly reveals his foul mouth #sqh has much less restraint lol he swears a lot out loud in comparison to how much screentime he gets #based on this it seems like people in this setting swear a lot less than modern people #usually when non-transmigrators swear it's not painting them in a good light #like. just look at that list of side characters.#we've got sj (foul personality + bad circumstances. stops once he's an adult)#shl and mf (swearing in their heads when under duress)#bingge (an asshole. and out of his depth)#lgj and qjl (both The Worst™)#and then mf's use of bitch is when little palace mistress slaps ning yingying so tbh i think that's justified #anyway. i find this kind of data really interesting for characterization purposes! i hope you guys do too!#it's likely a lot of characters swear more in their heads but we don't know because we don't get their pov #but i still don't think they come anywhere close to the transmigrators lol #anyway i need to go to the lab now and do more professional linguistic work lol

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