#the fitzwilliam connection is a signifier of darcy's position but not the substance of it

[anghraine]

I’ve grumped about it before, but:

I was reading some articles about the significance of the Fitzwilliam references in P&P, which I’ve always found fascinating, but they all assume that Darcy’s family pride comes from the Fitzwilliams. Most scholars do. Most fans do. But this is never stated or even really implied in the novel. 

The Fitzwilliam connection is important, absolutely. But there is literally no point at which anyone attributes his pride solely to his relationship to the Fitzwilliams.

Before anyone knows anything about his connections, Charlotte says:

One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud.

Elizabeth, who later explicitly says she knows nothing of his connections, originally thinks:

She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of admiration to so great a man; and yet that he should look at her because he disliked her was still more strange. She could only imagine, however, at last, that she drew his notice because there was a something about her more wrong and reprehensible, according to his ideas of right, than in any other person present.

Mr Gardiner, although familiar with the Fitzwilliam connection by then, echoes her characterization of Darcy’s position in its own right:

“But perhaps he may be a little whimsical in his civilities,” replied her uncle. “Your great men often are.”  

Wickham says:

It has often led him to be liberal and generous,—to give his money freely, to display hospitality, to assist his tenants, and relieve the poor. Family pride, and filial pride, for he is very proud of what his father was, have done this. Not to appear to disgrace his family, to degenerate from the popular qualities, or lose the influence of the Pemberley House, is a powerful motive.

Even Lady Catherine, though predictably prioritizing the Fitzwilliams, persistently treats Darcy’s status as linked to both the Fitzwilliams and Darcys, not her side alone. For instance, when she’s congratulating herself on providing the appropriate retinue for Georgiana, she says:

Miss Darcy, the daughter of Mr Darcy, of Pemberley, and Lady Anne, could not have appeared with propriety in a different manner.

Consummate snob that she is, she sums up the respective roles of the families as:

My daughter and my nephew are formed for each other. They are descended, on the maternal side, from the same noble line; and, on the father’s, from respectable, honourable, and ancient—though untitled—families. Their fortune on both sides is splendid. They are destined for each other by the voice of every member of their respective houses.

i.e., the history and wealth of the de Bourghs and Darcys would be even better if they were titled, but that history and wealth still goes a long way. She doesn’t talk about them as country squires only raised to importance by intermarriage with the Fitzwilliams, but as great families—though inferior to hers—with similar resources and interests. 

As a sidenote, she also complains that a marriage to Elizabeth would be to someone “of inferior birth, of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to the family!” The last is interesting, because “allied” could mean different things. The most obvious would be that she’s not related to the Fitzwilliams, by blood or (currently) marriage, since “alliance” is a frequent shorthand for “marriage.” 

And that’s possible, given that Darcy and Anne’s familial relationship is a plus in Fitzwilliam terms. But it could also more vaguely mean something like “associated,” personally or politically. That is, it could mean that it’s particularly offensive that Darcy and Anne’s marriage would be impeded by someone whose family has no association with the Fitzwilliam-de Bourgh-Darcys as well as being much lower-status. (If the families share anything like their RL counterparts’ predilections, it would be true.)

Anyway. Going back to the “great man” description that Elizabeth and Mr Gardiner use: that was a fairly widespread way of referring to the upper class of influential, high-status men, as “great lady” was for women (Lady Catherine is repeatedly described this way). It bypassed quibbles around titles and precedence and other signifiers to get straight at what ultimately defined that class: inheritable power and property. Elizabeth doesn’t need to know that Darcy’s uncle is an earl to realize that he belongs to that class. The fact that he has inherited a “very large property” bringing in ten thousand a-year from a long line of previous heirs makes it apparent.

The number is significant. According to G. E. Mingay's English Landed Society in the Eighteenth Century, the propertied classes in the eighteenth century could be essentially divided between great landowners and lesser landowners. In the 1790s, when P&P was written, lesser landowners had incomes ranging from about five hundred to five thousand a-year, depending on their stature (gentlemen without qualifiers: about £500-1000 p/a; squires: £1,000-3,000 p/a; wealthy gentry: £3,000-5,000 p/a). Great landowners formed an aristocracy of families with a) around 10,000 acres of land or more, b) a manor-house, c) a house in town, and d) incomes usually ranging between £5,000 and £50,000 p/a. The average income for that group was £10,000 p/a.

This is Darcy, point-for-point. In eighteenth-century terms, Darcy isn’t a genteel squire who just happens to have a really big income. He’s a great man with the “splendid” fortune you could expect of one. We hear about the house in town. We hear about Pemberley as a “mansion,” old enough that its period is a matter of debate between the Gardiners. We hear that Pemberley comprises multiple estates, with a ten-mile round park that would correspond to well over 10,000 acres. Obviously we hear about that “clear” £10,000 p/a. Austen is careful to lay all of it out.

And none of that has anything to do with the Fitzwilliams.

The sole attribution of Darcy’s elevated position to the Fitzwilliams tends to also undercut one of the most important moments in the book, when Elizabeth tells Lady Catherine that she is Darcy’s equal.

To be clear, her position is far from egalitarian; she’s not his equal because of a common humanity or whatnot, but because of her own birth as a lady. But this is the same woman who thought Darcy so much a great man that she couldn’t even imagine him being interested in her. Her ultimate insistence that any gentleman’s daughter is a social equal to any gentleman is not an objective sociological fact, but a drastic change from her earlier position—when she did not know he was the nephew and grandson of earls.

That’s also around the time that Elizabeth turns out to have felt “offended by the neglect” of Darcy. She couldn’t imagine him being interested in her, but she sure wanted him to be.

And I think that’s important to this later scene. Because the first one is ... uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable enough at the time, but would be a hell of a lot more when they’re on the point of marriage.

The reversal is particularly important, IMO, because Elizabeth is so eager for a different sort of society than she’s experienced at Longbourn. But Austen is careful to frame it in terms of quality of life, in terms of marrying away rather than up. She really, really does not want Elizabeth looking—or worse, feeling—like a social-climber.

And we don’t want it either. Sure, Mr Bennet talks of her needing a husband she looks up to as a superior. But she doesn’t, personally or socially. She can’t, for a proper resolution. Darcy and Elizabeth’s relationship is about balance. The social gap worked as an obstacle to their marriage, but it can’t be a feature of their marriage.

And—okay, there’s a lot more going on, too. But I think Elizabeth’s reversal with regard to Darcy’s position in society is important. And reducing that position to the Fitzwilliam connection cuts out the reversal altogether.