JASACT

Following our successful May meeting when we discussed Austen’s worst villain, we decided to look at her heroes in July. The topic was framed as “Who is the best hero in Austen’s novels, and why? (In other words, choose your favourite hero and present your case.)” So, in fact, we did not try for an “objective” analysis but for each person to name their favourite. The degree to which that involved which one got our hearts pumping – at least the females among us – we didn’t explore, but some of our romantic preferences were exposed nonetheless.

For comparison purposes, one asked AI (Google Gemini) what it “thought”. Its answers were interesting*, so we’ll start with those:

1. Fitzwilliam Darcy (Pride & Prejudice)
2. Captain Frederick Wentworth (Persuasion)
3. Mr George Knightley (Emma)
4. Henry Tilney (Northanger Abbey)

This member also shared the Thornfield blog’s “definitive list” (as shared on Reddit):

1. Frederick Wentworth
2. Henry Tilney
3. Colonel Christopher Brandon
4. Fitzwilliam Darcy
5. Edward Ferrars
6. Edmund Bertram

Both these lists raised various eyebrows amongst our members present, particularly concerning Tilney, Ferrars and Bertram, but given the eye of the beholder and all that, we moved on.

From the seven present at our meeting, plus three non-attendees who emailed their choices, we had:

1. Fitzwilliam Darcy (3 votes)
2. George Knightley (2 votes)
3. Colonel Brandon (2 votes)
4. Captain Harville, Sir John Middleton and Elinor Dashwood (1 vote each).

(We are not sure what our Elinor Dashwood member will do for our “heroine” meeting later in the year!)

What is a hero?

Not everyone discussed definitions specifically, though what we meant did come up in most presentations, one way or another. A couple looked at the definition in terms of “literary hero”, which encompasses the idea of a main character who experiences growth. One added the notion of “romantic literary hero” which she suggested means someone most likely in their twenties, dashing and debonair, but who also has to change to get their woman. Another turned to Wiktionary which she said provided changing meanings over time, from ideas about physical bravery and legendary or noble acts in the Middle Ages, through ideas about virtue around the 18th century, to modern definitions encompassing traits like selflessness and moral integrity. She based her choice (Colonel Brandon) on these most recent traits.

Another (who chose Darcy) quoted lines from Bonnie Tyler’s song, “Holding out for a hero”:

He’s gotta be strong and he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight

We also discussed the idea of “favourites” not “best”, which added a personal dimension to our choices and resulted in some interesting discussions and revelations! Wickham and Willoughby, anyone? Our lips are sealed.

So, our choices …

Three members chose Darcy, albeit with reservations said one. One shared, as she had before, an image of Darcy as he most likely looked – shorter and more muscular – not as he appears in modern films.

Those who chose Darcy did so for the obvious reasons. He’s the ultimate hero, he has it all – is wealthy, handsome, learns he was wrong, and rescues the Bennet family though he doesn’t have to.

However, all agreed he’s not perfect. As one said, he was a “jerk” at times, with his extreme introversion making him rude. This member quoted from an article by Sebastian Faulks (see Sources) who describes him as “an awful man”. He’s been “too much deferred to” but we are encouraged to believe that “because he has a clear view of society, is generous with his fortune and has a kind heart despite his unfortunate manner, he needs only to fall in love with a woman who treats him not with deference but as an equal” to be fine. However, says Faulks, he is “unforgivably cruel” to Elizabeth about her “unfortunate connections”, “yet we are asked to accept that Darcy’s deep ignorance of how to behave can be ‘fixed’ by a witty girl”.

Essentially, Faulks thinks Darcy has clinical depression, “the victim of morbid melancholy”. Even after he is engaged to Elizabeth he talks of past faults – “painful recollections will intrude”. Faulks suggests Darcy does not tell Elizabeth about Bingley being in town when Jane is, because he can’t lose Bingley, which would happen if Bingley made an inferior marriage. Then Faulks turns to Elizabeth, and wonders about her love for Darcy. How can anyone love a man who believes her family is “repugnant” and “objectionable”? He wonders whether Elizabeth thinks she can ‘mother him or “cure” him of his melancholy’ and suggests it was “the miraculous intervention” of Lady Catherine which drove Elizabeth to him.

Faulks argues that “the idea of Darcy as a romantic gallant is a delusion of the reader not an intention of the writer”. He doesn’t see a romantic story but one reflecting Austen’s times:

instead of having a lively mistress, providing vitality as though on prescription, he has lumbered himself for ever with the whole Bennet ménage. That seems a fair reflection of the way such things were in Jane Austen’s world. Motives are mixed; everything is more compromised than it seems at first. Marriage was a messy business in 1813.

Another member who chose Darcy, because he’s good and kind, also recognised that he’s not perfect. He’s awkward and uncomfortable. She quoted a Margaret Wilson who suggests that he lacks passion. This drew a shocked response from the first Darcy-ite, who quoted, “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you” etc.

This member also referred to Sarah Ailwood’s article in Sensibilities, in which she quoted Mary Russell who said in 1814 that Darcy should have married Jane!

‘…it is possible not to feel in every line of Pride and Prejudice, in every word of ‘Elizabeth’, the entire want of taste which could produce so pert, so worldly a heroine as the beloved of such a man as Darcy. Wickham is equally bad. Oh! they were just fit for each other, and I cannot forgive that delightful Darcy for parting them. Darcy should have married Jane. He is of all admirable characters the best designed and the best sustained.’ 

Ailwood, continued our member, considers that Darcy reflects the changing idea of masculinity, which occurred through the 18th and 19th centuries, due, at least in part, to the publication of ‘conduct literature’ especially Fordyce’s Elegant Extracts; or useful and entertaining passages in prose selected for the improvement of Scholars at Classical and Other Schools in the Art of Speaking, in Reading, Thinking, Composing; and in the Conduct of Life.

This member agreed that he’s depressed. He didn’t have anything in his life to move him forward. By the end, he’s not perfect, but he has grown, and has more resilience.

Our final Darcy-ite quoted Christopher Brooke. He says Austen reveals more of Darcy than she does of her other heroes, and that he is literature’s first outstanding male portrait. Darcy recognises Elizabeth’s values and mind but the way he has been raised makes it hard for him to accept her. The sensible Gardiners provide a conduit. In the second part of the novel the two characters come closer together, with her conduct being closer to the breeding he expects. Interestingly, said this member, aristocrats could be vulgar and rude. Just look at Lady Catherine’s behaviour and treatment of others. Nonetheless, Darcy does present an 18th century idea of what a gentleman could be. And, Elizabeth and Darcy bring out the best in each other.

Then this member got waylaid by thinking about Cohn Firth, who captures Darcy’s vulnerability. He had the right alchemy, making him the right actor in the right role.

Two members chose Mr Knightley, because, said one, he’s the foundation of the community. He’s sensible, cheerful, one of the only people to recognise faults in Emma. Moreover, Emma, not to mention the whole community, respects him. This member believes that men of sense do not want silly wives. Mr Knightley sees good in Emma.

The other member noted that George Knightley is not dashing or debonair, but chose him because he is loyal, patient, “a sensible man”, and kind to others. He respects other humans, seeing beyond the superficial (including class) when he helps or supports Robert Martin, Miss Bates, Harriet Smith. And, he agrees to move into his father-in-law’s house at the end, for Emma’s sake.

But, psychologist Michele Larrow argues that he does have to learn to accept Emma as an equal. So, in fact, like a “traditional literary hero” he does need to grow. Larrow tests him against Adam Smith’s ideas about amiability and “benevolent sympathy”, which means being able to imagine another person’s feelings. At the start, Knightley lectures Emma, constantly plays the age card, and doesn’t listen to her ideas (including over the Robert Martin proposal, and particularly their discussion about Frank Churchill’s duty). By the second half of the novel, he starts to understand her pain.

Larrow argues that in the proposal scene Emma shows her maturity by inviting him to share whatever he wishes, even if it’s her greatest fear, that he will marry Harriet. Mr Knightley declares his love to Emma “in a tone of . . . sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness”. He recognises that she has borne his lecturing and criticism with grace. He understands something of her painful feelings.

Of all the “hero” choices this one caused the greatest discussion, with some members bothered about the age-difference and that he had dangled Emma on his knee when she was a child. Others saw Regency times as different, and so it did not bother them. The naysayers didn’t like his lecturing, found him too pompous, and therefore definitely NOT a hero.

Another two members chose Colonel Brandon, one doing so on the basis of that third definition of hero which encompasses selflessness and moral integrity. She enumerated his virtues including looking after both Elizas (without bragging), the duel to defend the younger Eliza’s honour, his kindness to Edward Ferrars, his love for Marianne. He’s strong, she said.

An absent member wrote that she chose him because he was “heroic in a rather traditional sense”. He tried to elope with his cousin whom he loved to save her from having to marry against her will. He searched for her as soon as he returned to England and looked after her until her untimely death, then took on responsibility for her daughter, without judgement.

Sir John Middleton was another member’s choice for his chivalry, moral integrity, dependability, and generosity. Not only did he offer the Dashwoods “a small house on very easy terms”, but he repaired it, welcomed them and looked after them when they arrive. He showed care for their comfort, looked after their mail, invited them to his house and brought them into the community. And he introduced Colonel Brandon to Marianne. She admitted that she might have been influenced by having a wealthy member in her extended family who has done nothing to help another struggling member!

No one chose Captain Wentworth, despite the expectation of an absent member. Another absent member wondered how anyone could choose someone “who bragged about making money fast on a ‘lovely cruise off the Western Islands’, whilst omitting to mention the probable deaths of both his crew and enemy. Who held a bitter grudge for eight years against the woman he loved and warmly likened women, Freudian slip, to hazelnuts?” Further, she said, when Louisa “falls off some stairs this ‘hero’ goes to pieces, leaving Anne Elliot to rise to the occasion until Captain Harville ‘brought senses and nerves that could be instantly useful; and a look between him and his wife decided what was to be done.’  ‘He was to be obeyed; they were all beneath his roof. Assistance, cordials, restoratives…..were supplied to all who needed them.’ So, referencing Alistair Duckworth, she chose Captain Harville.

He’s a tall dark man with a sensible, benevolent countenance, a little lame since a severe wound two years before and his taste, health and fortune had directed him to an inexpensive residence by the sea with rooms so small as none but those who invite from the heart could think of accommodating so many. His manners, she wrote, may not have been equal to Wentworth’s but he was a perfect gentleman, unaffected, warm and obliging. He’s hospitable to an uncommon degree and regards his wife and children “the treasures of his existence”. He’s not known for grand acts of bravery, but faces a world without prospects with resilience and fortitude. He has the inner resources to enable him to create a happy home, and finds constant employment:

He drew, he varnished, he carpentered,, he glued; he made toys for the children, he fashioned new netting-needles and pins with improvements; and if every thing else was done, sat down to his large fishing-net at one corner of the room. 

Our member argued that of all the responses to adversity in the novel, his is closest to Anne’s and to Jane Austen’s heart!

And, one member went gender-neutral and chose Elinor Dashwood, arguing that her quiet strength navigates the precarity of life for her family after her father’s death. She amply demonstrates her ability to stay calm when the awful Lucy Steele reveals her engagement to Edward Ferrars, knowing that his love for Elinor has been a subject of banter in the Middleton household. Her care for Marianne when the latter’s world falls apart after Willoughby’s defection and her life is in danger, and Elinor has to deal with both Colonel Brandon and Willoughby, is a model of emotional fortitude.

Journalist Shukla wrote in 2025 that:

Austen’s female protagonists endure because they are thinkers. They observe the world critically, even when they must navigate it carefully. Elizabeth Bennet’s wit, Anne Elliot’s quiet endurance and Elinor Dashwood’s emotional discipline are not passive virtues. They are survival strategies.

Austen understood that “intelligence does not always lead to agency”. Her heroines “often know more than they are permitted to act upon”. Shukla makes the point that

This tension between awareness and constraint remains painfully familiar. Austen did not need the language of feminism to write feminist fiction.

That seems a good point to end this post about heroes on, don’t you think?

Sources

Sarah Ailwood, “Such a man as Darcy: Masculinity in transition in Pride and Prejudice, Sensibilities CHECK 2004
Christopher Brooke, Jane Austen: Illusion and reality, 1999
Alistair M. Duckworth, The improvement of the estate, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994
Sebastian Faulks, “He is such as awful man: Why readers are wrong about Mr Darcy“, BBC.com, 9 September 2025
Michele Larrow, “Could he even have seen into her heart”: Mr. Knightley’s development of sympathy“, Persuasions Online 37 (1), Winter 2016
Girish Shukla, “Jane Austen at 250: Why her novels still understand human nature better than most modern fiction“, Times Now News, 16 December 2025

* Just like us humans however, AI can change its mind if you ask the question a different time, or in a slightly different way.

For our May meeting, we set ourselves the challenge of choosing the character we think is the worst villain in Austen’s novels, and of course, we all looked at the question from different angles.

Just for comparison purposes, one asked AI (Google Gemini) what it thought. Its answers were interesting*, so we’ll start with those:

1. Mrs Norris (Mansfield Park)
2. Lady Susan Vernon (Lady Susan)
3. George Wickham (Pride & Prejudice)
4. William Walter Elliot (Persuasion)
5. Fanny Dashwood (Sense & Sensibility)

Only one of the members present chose one of AI’s choices, but for very particular reasons that had less to do with what this character did than with what Jane Austen thought. This member suggested there were different ways of looking at the question:

1. Is it the person we most dislike?
2. Is it the person we think does the most damage – actually or potentially?
3. Is it the person to whom Jane gives the greatest come-uppance?

For this member, the third option was the deciding factor. She likes Austen and likes her judgement of people, so she was interested in which character ends up in the worst position at the end of an Austen novel. Her answer? Mrs Norris. Willoughby, Wickham, and Crawford all live with regret, but have reasonable lives (albeit Wickham’s is, admittedly, a hand-to-mouth struggle). Willoughby is let off particularly lightly, achieving a degree of “domestic felicity”! William Elliot probably lives with regret too, but does inherit Kellynch Hall. Northanger Abbey’s villains do not cause too much trouble, as Austen herself suggests. And Churchill, well, as one member said, he’s not so much a villain as a prat! Mrs Norris, on the other hand, is thoroughly ousted by Austen – out of the country even – to look after her sinning niece. It’s not a happy end, Austen tells us, for either of them:

“shut up together with little society, on one side no affection, on the other no judgment, it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became their mutual punishment”.

Only one villain was chosen by two members – the egregious Henry Crawford. Indeed one member, in researching this topic, came to change her mind completely about Crawford. In times past, she thought Fanny could redeem him. However, both members were excoriating about Crawford’s failings – and about his sister’s role as co-consiprator. Interestingly, he’s “black and plain”, unlike the Ws, and warns himself at the beginning to “let them [the Bertrams] avoid Henry” – but to no avail. Our members outlined Crawford’s behaviour, describing him as the quintessential predatory male (albeit he faces strong competition from Willoughby and Wickham). He is divisive and disruptive from the moment he appears. He encourages Maria to prefer him, he calculatedly goes after Fanny, wanting to “make a hole in her heart”, and he blames Maria in the end for his misfortune. But, in the double-standard of the time, he gets off in a way that Maria Bertram – who is exiled with Mrs Norris – does not. Indeed, he is not even left saddled like Wickham and Willoughby, and appears to be redeemable?

The three other members present chose more surprising villains, which engendered a little more discussion than the aforementioned three.

One member referenced Richard Jenkyns who labelled Mr Woodhouse as the worst villain in Emma. That surprised us, but we listened. An important criterion for Jenkyns concerns the control Mr Woodhouse has over Emma’s life. Jenkyns suggests, said our member, that Emma is the happiest territory for those who want to see Jane Austen as a Tory philosopher promoting an ideal version of paternalism hierarchy, ruralism and social order. But, says Jenkyns, Mr Woodhouse is a selfish idle parasite, resulting in the spiritual welfare of the place being in the hands of a mean-spirited creep. He sees Emma and Mansfield Park as a pair. Although different in tone and plot, they are written close together and make a pair of studies of imprisonment and eventual liberation.

Jenkyns elaborates on Emma’s imprisonment throughout the book, which we have discussed before. She’s never been to the sea, to London, or even Box Hill. She has no friends, and so on. In fact, our recent discussion of Emma prompted us to devote a meeting to female isolation – we didn’t use the word imprisonment – in Austen’s novels. Jenkyns argues that while Mr Woodhouse is one of Austen’s finest comic creations, her cleverness lies in making him also a monster. He almost rivals Mrs Norris as an enemy of life and of other people’s enjoyment. His rank and wealth enable him to “command” his circle, to make the world revolve around him and his wants and needs. All this has been underestimated, because Austen couches her criticism in descriptions like “gentle selfishness” and “mild inexorability”.

The question is, is he too passive to be an active force of malignancy? Why is he so beloved? Austen’s brilliance, argues Jenkyns, lies in her ability to show the interplay of his conscious and subconscious motives, and that his passivity is aggressive and rapacious. Austen makes him, at once, “such a menace and such a dear”!

As some members did, another member shared her criterion for her choice, which is that, for her, Austen’s most villainous people are the men who, in pursuit of wealth, try to force or pressure wealthy heiresses to marry them, or conversely, if the women are not wealthy, end the relationship, perhaps after seducing them, rather than marrying them. She shared some examples: Mr Wickham, who tries to persuade Georgiana Darcy, a wealthy heiress, to marry him, and later runs away with Lydia Bennett, with no intention of marrying her as she has no inheritance; Willoughby, who drops Marianne after his inheritance is cut off by his wealthy aunt and marries a wealthy heiress instead (although it is not suggested that she was pressured or forced into the marriage); and Henry Crawford, who seduces Maria Rushworth, a married woman (although a willing participant in the seduction) and then ends the relationship rather than wait for her in inevitable divorce. These sorts of behaviours can leave the women (and their families) in a very difficult position, unless they are fortunate enough to be ‘rescued’ by someone like Darcy.

She then said that the worst ‘villain’ of this kind is one who does not receive much attention, although the story influences the plot. The villain is Colonel Brandon’s father in Sense and Sensibility. In Volume 3, Chapter IX, Colonel Brandon tells Elinor the sad story of his cousin Eliza Brandon, whom he loved but who was married “against her inclination” to Colonel Brandon’s brother, under the guidance of her uncle and guardian, Colonel Brandon’s father:

‘Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and her guardian. My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her …. We were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland …I was banished to the house of a relation far distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement, till my father’s point was gained.’

The marriage was unhappy, and they divorced. By the time Colonel Brandon returned from his regiment in the East Indies and managed to track her down to a spunging house, she was in the last stages of consumption. All he could do was look after her until her last moments, and take on guardianship of her only child. Brandon relates how he had looked after this child since then, but not quite successfully, because she met up with Willoughby, who seduced her: ‘He left her, promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.’ This as we know, results in a duel between Brandon and Willoughby. Brandon tells Elinor that as soon as Eliza recovered from her lying-in, he removed her and the child to the country, and ‘there she remains.’ So, said our member, Colonel Brandon’s father’s cruel (villainous!) behaviour had multigenerational ramifications.

While some of our choices were more controversial than others, the final one probably won the prize for the most controversial, Mrs Smith in Persuasion. Our member’s argument was primarily political. She looked at the slave trade, and thought about the way she felt Austen normalised income from slave trade, such as that of Mrs Elton’s family and Sir Thomas Bertram. (She also wondered about where the wealth of some other characters comes from.) Our member’s main concern was the way Mrs Smith wanted to enlist Anne’s help in retrieving her money from her West Indies property, via her marriage to Mr Elliot. However, others present did not agree that Mrs Smith actively encouraged Anne to marry Mr Elliot. We saw it more that she thought she’d take the opportunity to obtain help when she thought the marriage was happening, but withdrew her request as soon as she discovered this marriage was not inevitable as she’d been given to believe. As an aside, our member noted that Austen’s family had connections on both sides of the slavery debate.

Our remote member wrote in that John Thorpe was her “most loathed villain”.

It was such an interesting discussion that we decided to turn our thoughts to heroes in a future meeting.

Source:

Richard Jenkyns, A fine brush on ivory: An appreciation of Jane Austen, OUP, 2004

* Just like us humans however, AI can change its mind if you ask the question a different time, or in a slightly different way.