Sexy Vampyres, Literary Fuccbois, and the Unbuilt Trope
A Not-Review of Rachel Feder's 'The Darcy Myth'
When a TikTok user asked me a little over a year ago what the opposite of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl would be, I responded with a video about the Depressed Goblin Nightmare Boy. The label is obviously reverse-engineered in response to the MPDG, but the archetype has actually been around a long time.
Among the more contemporary examples I discussed (including Edward Cullen, The Darkling from Shadow and Bone, and Cardan from The Cruel Prince), in a follow-up video I also talked about Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre. And there are a few other classic lit bois that fit, or are at least adjacent to, the idea in my interpretation—Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights and Valancourt from Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, for examples. The character I named as the blueprint for this archetype, even though there are a few earlier iterations, because he truly is to (straight) women (and perhaps other people who are attracted to men) what the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is to (straight) men, was Mr. Darcy.
The Depressed Goblin Nightmare Boy is usually mysterious, or at least a bit standoffish. This could be because he just doesn’t know how to interact with people, or because he genuinely doesn’t like other people. He probably has a sad history, though likely also a privileged background, and he doesn’t know how to smile. There’s usually a fair bit of self-loathing going on, as well, that can paradoxically verge on self-importance.
You won’t often find DGNBs who are the main character of the story, because they usually have at least a touch of the villainous—if they’re not the straight-up villain—or at least to some degree antagonistic toward the protagonist. If, as so many are, they are the love interest in an enemies-to-lovers romance, they will turn out to be on the same “side” as the main character in the end, but there will be some point in the story when you think they’re not. Or they could really be the villain, but the protagonist (and reader/viewer) wants to kiss them at some point, but in my experience at least that’s not as common as the former.
Isn’t That Just a Byronic Hero?
Now you might be thinking, “So Rhonda, what you’re saying is that a Depressed Goblin Nightmare Boy is just a Byronic Hero.” False. Mr. Darcy is not a Byronic Hero. Granted, purely aesthetically, the DGNB often has a lot in common with the Byronic Hero, and there are many characters who could fit into both archetypes—Mr. Rochester, for example.
But there are a couple fundamental differences between a Depressed Goblin Nightmare Boy and a classic Byronic Hero. The first and most obvious is that while DGNBs are often the hero in the romance novel sense of the word, i.e. the male love interest, they are not the hero in the story sense of the word, i.e. the protagonist. A Byronic Hero isn’t necessarily always the protagonist, either, but they can be and often are.
And in what I think is the more relevant and juicy difference for the discussion I want to have today, the DGNB and the Byronic Hero engage with the world in often very different ways. The Byronic Hero is ultimately selfish; any efforts to help others are for the purpose of his own agenda or prerogative, or to validate his sense of self-worth. When paired with the often overlapping archetypes of anti-hero or tragic hero, this selfishness plays into the Byronic Hero’s tragic flaw that causes his downfall.
The Depressed Goblin Nightmare Boy, however, while he often begins the story with a functional selfishness, this manifests mostly as insecurity and self-loathing. The tragedy in his past has made him wary of getting close to other people for fear of endangering THEM rather than any fear for himself, despite his deeply harbored loneliness. And by the end of the story, unless it's one of the few cases where he’s the villain, he’ll have somewhat overcome this selfishness and learned to be considerate of others and let people in.
The classic Byronic Hero is overtly seductive and darkly charming, even charismatic, which makes him dangerous, while the Depressed Goblin Nightmare Boy’s attempts at flirtation, if he can even muster the confidence to flirt, are supremely awkward. The Byronic Hero is the life of the party, or at least gladly participating in the party’s merriment, while the Depressed Goblin Nightmare Boy is the guy standing in the far corner of the party observing with mild distaste and wishing he were at home. Think of Mr. Darcy at every social gathering he’s dragged to in the first volume of Pride and Prejudice.
And like I mentioned, there can be overlap. Beyond the aesthetic similarities, some characters can embody traits of both archetypes, depending on the setting and/or the stage of their character development.
But while I’ve been calling Mr. Darcy the blueprint, it would actually be more accurate to say that he is the Unbuilt Trope for the Depressed Goblin Nightmare Boy. The Unbuilt Trope is a phenomenon that happens often with works that have had profound influence on subsequent media, such as that of Pride and Prejudice. Later works that are inspired by the influencer work attempt (and sometimes succeed) to build upon the aspects of the original that make it so iconic. But what often happens is that the archetype or story trope that was pioneered by the original morphs into something that still appears similar on the surface, but has taken on and even codified traits that the original does not have. TV Tropes explains:
The trope could have taken on its current form for many reasons: the imitators could have been part of the Misaimed Fandom of the work they drew inspiration from; they may have consciously decided that the original was unsatisfying and thus needed to be Lighter and Softer or Darker and Edgier; later appearances of the trope may have decayed (or been Flanderized) compared to the original, defining appearance; they may simply have decided to take what they wanted from the story, and calling the original their inspiration caused people to assume the original was similar plotwise.
Examples of the Unbuilt Trope can be seen in books and other media about sexy fairies, sexy elves, and sexy vampires.
Is This a Toxic Romance?
Mr. Darcy is, in the words of Elizabeth Bennet, who was only sort of joking, “of an unsocial, taciturn disposition.” He’s rude and snobby and doesn’t like being around other people unless he knows them well. A recent traumatic event, for which he partly blames himself, has made him even more reticent and reluctant to form genuine connections with people. But when a certain young lady with fine eyes who is the sunshine to his grumpy gets under his skin, his carefully constructed defenses begin to crumble. After fighting his attraction for a long time, he finally tells her, but she rejects him, pointing out, among other things, his rude behavior and pridefulness. He takes this to heart, and rather than continuing to pursue Elizabeth, he respects her boundaries and goes off to do some soul-searching and change his behavior.
In Austen fandom, we often come across the discussion of social commentary vs. romance. I think Pride and Prejudice out of all her works best exemplifies the falseness of that dichotomy, because the success of this romance, or in other words, the reader buying into and believing in the romance, is crucial to the messaging of the social commentary. Elizabeth rejects Darcy’s first proposal, defying the patriarchal strictures of her society and riskily placing her own sense of self-worth above her financial security. And even more subversively, while never fully relinquishing the privilege afforded to him by patriarchy, Mr. Darcy acknowledges his problematic behavior and works to both rectify the harm he caused and to mitigate the oppressive circumstances the Bennet women are experiencing.
Elizabeth sees these efforts, and more than that, sees the side of Darcy that they reveal—that he was always kind and morally good deep down, but had misdirected pride and social awkwardness that manifested as rudeness—and falls in love. She chooses to marry him not because he is a rich man who will act as her buffer against the harsh realities of life for women under patriarchy. She chooses to marry him because she loves him, the person, not what he represents. For Elizabeth Bennet, falling in love is an act of rebellion.
And this is the first vital truth of Pride and Prejudice that The Darcy Myth: Jane Austen, Literary Heartthrobs, and the Monsters They Taught Us to Love by Rachel Feder fails to consider. The second, tangentially related point it ignores is that Darcy is the Unbuilt Trope of the Literary Heartthrobs of the book’s subtitle, and the monstrousness that many Darcy-inspired characters possess didn’t come from Darcy himself. The third and most salient point I would bring up to rebuff the very premise of Feder’s book is that Elizabeth does not, and does not even attempt to, CHANGE Mr. Darcy. She tells him what he’s doing wrong, but then he changes his outlook and behavior on his own.
What Even is This Book?
I’m not going to make any assumptions about what Feder’s initial intentions were in writing The Darcy Myth; if they were simply to anger or baffle Austen fans, she succeeded. After all, she does say in the introduction that she likes to “ruin” Pride and Prejudice for people (she didn’t ruin it for me). But I think there’s a really strong and interesting book somewhere in these pages, with provocative and legitimate points, if it weren’t for the central argument being fundamentally flawed.
I’m also not going to get super into detail about my beefs with The Darcy Myth. This is a not-review, and most of my thoughts have already been phrased more eloquently in this Washington Post piece and this Reddit thread. (If you want to read nuanced takes on Jane Austen [outside of my stuff, of course], the r/janeausten community on Reddit is a better place to go than The Darcy Myth.) This section of the WaPo review, regarding Darcy’s “monstrosity” being evidenced by his paying Wickham to marry Lydia, thereby trapping Lydia in a likely unhappy marriage, hits the nail on the head:
This is an ungenerous reading of the text and of Darcy’s actions. At the time “Pride and Prejudice” is set, the course of a woman’s life depended on whom she married. The Bennet sisters had no safety net; their father’s estate would pass to their closest male relative, leaving them with nothing after his death. Once Lydia ran off with Wickham and earned a scandalous reputation, her chance to find another husband — and, in turn, economic stability — nearly evaporated. The marriage Darcy arranges is Lydia’s best hope, providing her at least some protection.
But what I am going to do is speculate that the main reason this book is called The Darcy Myth rather than The Rochester Myth or The Ruthven Myth or The [Insert Literary Fuccboi Here] Myth is because more people know who Mr. Darcy is than any of those characters. And since, as I’ve rather exhaustively demonstrated, the archetype Mr. Darcy pioneered shares some aesthetic similarity with those more toxic characters if you squint a little (and don’t pay attention when you’re reading Pride and Prejudice), it’s maybe not that much of a stretch to lump them all together for marketing purposes. I have a degree in marketing, so I can see the logic there.
And you know what? It kind of worked, because I bought the book.