The Darcy Myth Jane Austen, Literary Heartthrobs, and the Monsters They Taught Us to Love

What if we've been reading Jane Austen and romantic classics all wrong? A funny, brainy, eye-opening take on how our contemporary love stories are actually pretty terrifying.

Covering cultural touchstones ranging from Twilight to Taylor Swift and from Lord Byron to The Bachelor, The Darcy Myth is a book for anyone who loves thinking deeply about literature and culture—whether they love Jane Austen or not.

You already know Mr. Darcy—at least you think you do! The brooding, rude, standoffish romantic hero of Pride and Prejudice, Darcy initially insults and ignores the witty heroine, but eventually succumbs to her charms. It’s a classic enemies-to-lovers plot, and one that has profoundly influenced our cultural ideas about courtship. But what if this classic isn’t just a grand romance, but a horror novel about how scary love and marriage can be for women?

In The Darcy Myth, literature scholar Rachel Feder unpacks Austen’s Gothic influences and how they’ve led us to a romantic ideal that’s halfway to being a monster story. Why is our culture so obsessed with cruel, indifferent romantic heroes (and sometimes heroines)? How much of that is Darcy’s fault? And, now that we know, what do we do about it?

Rachel Feder is an associate professor of English and literary arts at the University of Denver, where she regularly ruins Pride and Prejudice for her students (but in a fun way!). Her work on the Gothic and nineteenth-century British literature includes the book Harvester of Hearts: Motherhood Under the Sign of Frankenstein and the Norton Library Edition of Dracula, which she edited. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely.