Today's Society Longs For More Mr. Darcys

I love Pride and Prejudice and I know many other women who agree with my sentiment. I love the way the men treat the women. Men in Jane Austen's world refer to the women as Miss or Mrs. Men would bow upon entering or leaving a woman's presence and in return the ladies would curtsy. The way they flirted was subtle and might be as simple as the brush of hands. There was a clear distinction between "good" women and women who were, well, less dignified, to put it kindly. The way couples courted was taken seriously so as to protect the woman's fragile heart. Men would have to ask a woman's father's permission in order to even court her. Men faced personal and social consequences if they mislead a woman, which at times even included the man having to move away. Taking a man's name was a sign of his total and complete commitment to a woman. Respectable men would not dare think to kiss a woman until he knew he was going to marry her, including having received her fathers blessing. I love the last scene of the movie when Elizabeth asked Mr. Darcy what he will call her once they are married and he answers her by saying "Mrs. Darcy" over and over again while gently kissing her face.

So why have women so dearly loved this book for almost 200 years now? I think it is because we all long to go back to those days. Women long to be treated with the respect and honor the men in Austin's novel are treated with. Today women are called all sorts of degrading names and not only do men not bow to us but often time don't even open a door for us to go through. Today dating is very casual and men have lost a sense of the delicate nature of the female heart. Men will even lie to a woman to lead her heart in order to obtain from her something men of that time would have known no good girl would even consider. Women today don't seek their father's permission to date. Often times this is because many women do not have a trusting relationship with their father. And most frustrating of all to me is that we live in a time where women after getting married use the dreaded hyphen because they do not want to give up their last name.

Now, this blog in not meant to berate men. I fully blame feminism for men's behavior but women, if we want our Mr. Darcy, and if we want to go back to a day where we were treated with the dignity God designed for us it is up to us to change things. We need to start acting like woman of that time. We need to wear dresses, let men pick up heavy boxes, refuse to kiss on a first or even third date, and allow men the pleasure of chasing after us trying to prove that they are worthy of giving us their name. Fulton Sheen got it right when he said the following, "To a great extent the level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women."