I was once fortunate enough to have stumbled upon the last copy of Pride and Prejudice at the bookstore in the bus terminal in Kwangju, South Korea (and in English, no less!). After punishing myself for never having read this piece of classic literature (I WAS an English major, you know) I discovered one immutable truth. That the most notable thing about the book was Mr. Darcy and his deep affection for the book's heroine, Elizabeth Bennett. I was deeply touched by his most endearing qualities, the romanticism, the love thinly veiled as hate, the pride within his station, the fiction of it all. Alas! I was struck with an epiphany. Must I wait for my Mr. Darcy? Readers of this marvelous work of literature have focused their attentions solely on his actions, and rightly so. Society has taught us that in order for a relationship to work well, one must wait for the other to make a move. This ideal has always tipped the scales in favor of those of the male persuasion to do all the pursuing. If only men still walked around and clubbed women over the head. That would save them the pain of rejection and us the trouble of rejecting. But after a closer examination I discovered that the most notable thing about this story is not Mr. Darcy's strong attraction to our dear Lizzie. It is the fact that she was so unyielding in her desire to just be herself. It was this fact that made her indeed as real a person as anyone can ever claim to be. She worked hard at maintaining who SHE was, and at times doing so only attempting to repel Mr. Darcy even further from her. Ironically, it was this that intrigued him the most. The lesson we girls can learn from this story is that we must not merely sit around waiting for Mr. Darcy to come and call on us at our places of residence. Instead, we should work on discovering who we are as individuals, never trying to be who and what we're not, perfecting it all the while so when Mr. Darcy does come along we will undoubtedly bewitch him body and soul.
