Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Are You Sure?, Page 11
By Suha · Published
Log in to see this page
Page 11 of Are You Sure? is for signed-in readers. Logging in brings you straight back here — and an account is free if you do not have one.
Transcript
Panel 1. Mr. Bennet leans forward in the armchair, forearms on his knees, the ironic distance dropping off him. Panel 2. Close on his face, the tired amusement gone serious, mouth flat. MR. BENNET: You will have a fine house. Finer than Jane's. Panel 3. He looks straight up at his daughter, quiet. MR. BENNET: Will any of it make you happy? Panel 4. Lizzie's face, caught completely off guard by him. Panel 5. A two-shot in warm lamplight, her father softer than she has ever seen him. MR. BENNET: I know you, Lizzie. MR. BENNET: You could not respect a man you look down on.
Image description
Five panels in the living room. Mr. Bennet drops his irony, tells Lizzie she will have a fine house, asks whether any of it will make her happy, and says he knows she could not respect a man she looks down on.
About this chapter
Lizzie comes home from the leafy lane engaged to the one man nobody in that house would believe she could want, and discovers the hardest part is not saying yes: it is being believed. Jane laughs, certain it is a joke, until the whole reordered story comes out in the dark of their bedroom, and asks the one question Lizzie has never let herself answer out loud. The next morning Darcy is at the front door in his charcoal overcoat asking, of all people, for her father. Behind a closed living-room door two men have a conversation Lizzie is not in, while her mother speculates about lawsuits and Mary offers wisdom nobody requested. Then it is her turn, and Mr. Bennet, dry and unbothered for twenty-two chapters, is not dry at all: he wants to know whether his sharpest daughter has sold herself to a rich man she cannot respect. So Lizzie tells him everything, including the part that was never hers to tell, and says the words she has never once said about anybody. Her father takes off his glasses. Downstairs, Mrs. Bennet goes silent for three unprecedented seconds before the house detonates, and the chapter closes where it opened: the same porch steps at golden hour, except she is not walking up them alone.