Laura’s post on men in BBC adaptations crystallized for me something that has flitted about in the back of my mind for a while now: there is no female character that men as a community are aware of and find as appealing as Mr. Darcy. This is true for most of Jane Austen’s male characters, but Mr. Darcy seems to occupy the top spot. Try as I might, I can’t think of a female character every man is likely to be aware of, much less find romantically appealing; in fact, I can’t think of any female characters universally appealing to men purely on the basis of mere physical or sexual attractiveness. I suspect this might explain the general bafflement that men often feel when women talk about how more men should be like Mr. Darcy or how many times they’ve seen the miniseries. That characters like Darcy exist, we understand. What we don’t understand is why he is what he is to women.
I have no explanation for this, and it bugs me. Darcy and all he represents are quite culturally powerful, and, being the sort of hack sociologist that I am, I wonder what the absence of a male equivalent means. I don’t think this absence is necessarily a problem, but it occasionally does give the nagging impression that in practice men simply end up attracted to women who settle for them instead of the kind of men they really want. That’s certainly the most pessimal interpretation, and I don’t think that’s how it really works. I know, too, that by some definitions there is no gap: goddess of the hearth, girl next door, and, in Japan’s case the yamato nadeshiko have all been put forward as stereotypical constructions of the ideal woman by somebody. I don’t think these are the same kind of thing, for all of these have been A) largely discredited, and B) mostly existed as “ideals” in the sense of “idealized concepts” rather than actual prototypes for femininity. Mr. Darcy and the other Austen heroes haven’t experienced a similar fall from grace, as far as I can tell.
One possible explanation: men have traditionally written and published more than women have (and have been allowed to), so they write more from a male perspective and consequently haven’t developed any female characters as universally appealing. One possible objection to this explanation: if men have dominated literature and publishing for so long, how come they haven’t made more progress creating an ideal female character? Like I said, I have no solution that really works, but I’m pretty sure I’ve found an interesting problem.
I don’t normally ask for comments, but I’d really appreciate any thoughts people have on this. What should we make of the Darcy gap?
