Darcy’s Struggle by Kelly Dean Jolley – Interview, Excerpt & Giveaway

Good Afternoon everyone,

Today I’m very happy to open the blog tour for Kelly Dean Jolley’s latest book, Darcy’s Struggle. This book will be released on the 15th of June, but you can pre-order your copy today to make sure you have it on your Kindle next Saturday 🙂

This is a P&P Variation in which Mr. Darcy apologizes to Elizabeth much sooner than in canon and I personally love the fact that this story is told from his point of view! Also, I absolutely love the cover!!! Isn’t it beautiful? I love the drawings, the framing, the different fonts, the blue on the background…well, I love pretty much everything in it 🙂 It is simply beautiful and perfect!

I hope you all enjoy our interview with Mr. Darcy, the excerpt and that you join me in wishing Kelly the best of luck with this new release.

Thank you so much for visiting Kelly, it was a pleasure having you here.

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Interview with Darcy’s Struggle’s Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy on That’s Capital! (WMRY)

[Theme Music, That’s Capital!]]  

Will Lucas [Radio Personality]:  Cap-i-tal!  Cap-i-tal!  It’s that time again, time for Meryton’s favorite radio show, That’s Capital!, and I am your host, Big Will Lucas!  That’s right, one of those Lucases, who’ve lived in Meryton for…ever. Our show is featured on WMRY, and recorded in the local studio, and can be heard here, as well as on any podcast provider you favor. 

Today, we’ve fired up our version of the Wayback Machine, and put it in reverse.  Instead of going back in time ourselves, we’ve brought Meryton’s most famous visitor forward in time. That’s right!  Today in the studio I’m joined by none other than Fitzwilliam Darcy!  

We’ll be talking to him about his birth and education, about his famous Derbyshire estate, Permberley, and about his thoughts on Meryton — you guessed it! —  about his love life!  I know everyone is curious about — 

Darcy (interrupting cooly):  I do not recall agreeing to — 

Will Lucas (interrupting loudly):  We’ll be back after these messages from some of our local shopkeepers.  

[Thirty-second commercial for Wickham’s Chicken Takeaway. “If you don’t want to cook, just say ‘Cluck it!’”]

***

[Theme Music…That’s Capital! resumes]

Will Lucas:  So, Darcy, —  

Darcy:  Mister Darcy.

Will:  So, Mr. Darcy, I hope you’re as excited to be my guest as I am to have you. Cap-i-tal!

Darcy (after a long pause, dead air):  Excited?  Am I to understand that although I am speaking to you, many more people, people I do not know and to whom I have never been introduced, are listening to what I say?

Will: That’s right.

Darcy:  I told you that I do not perform to strangers.  

[Another awkward minute of dead air]

Will:  Well, why don’t we start at the beginning?  Not with your birth, but your arrival at Meryton. Did you immediately like our little country town? Love at first sight?

Darcy (hesitantly):  Er…at first sight?  No, It seemed much like other towns, like Lambton, for instance, the little town near Pemberley.  But to be honest, I arrived at Meryton…with much on my mind, and I was not as…attentive as perhaps I should have been. I sometimes fight to see beyond my eyes.

Will:  That’s a fine phrase.

Darcy:  The original can be found in John Donne, although he of course says it better.  It is in his essay, The True Character of a Dunce. (Darcy chuckles) During my early days in Meryton I behaved in a stupid manner.  That was particularly true at the Assembly I attended soon after arriving.  I was not in the appropriate frame of mind for merry-making, and I ended up…misspeaking.  

“You see, normally I speak only intentionally, deliberately, or on purpose, preferably all three at once — [Darcy laughs quietly, fondly] as if I were striving to strike off a proverb, something memorable, something worthy of, say, Samuel Johnson [Darcy laughs quietly again] — but that night I let myself speak without thinking, much to my regret.

Will:  Right, right.  We all know about it. We know all about it.  One of the most celebrated insults in history.  Although you did sort of strike off a proverb — a proverbial insult!

Darcy (sounding humiliated):  Um, yes.  But it was an accidental proverb. The young woman about whom I spoke has a gift for insults of far greater accuracy and ease than I do.  She delivers punishment surely.  Her quickness escapes me.  I wear a suit of brick and mortar and a matching hat, and lumber about, an awful object.     

Will: You are tall and broad. I wasn’t sure we’d fit you comfortably into the studio.  — So, your Adventures in Meryton started…inauspiciously?”

Darcy:  That’s one way to express it. There are others, even less flattering.

Will:  And it was at the Assembly that you first saw her, the young woman you mentioned, Miss Elizabeth Bennet?

Darcy:  It was then that my eyes were first turned in her direction, although I did not, as I said before, manage to see beyond them.  I spoke intending only to repulse my friend, Charles Bingley, who is forever trying to make me more social, but I succeeded in repulsing Miss Elizabeth.  

Will:  You do not perform to strangers!

Darcy:  I rarely say what I do not mean.

Will (archly): Rarely.  Except —

Darcy (annoyed): Yes, yes, we’ve established that. I have been forced to relive those words so many times that I sometimes believe I have spoken no others. May we please move on?”

Will (laughing):  Even in Meryton, words have consequences, Mr. Darcy.  But, since we’re talking of words, why don’t you tell us a little about your education?

Darcy:  My education?  The education that mattered was at Cambridge.  I was lucky to have wonderful tutors there, and to spend my time studying Greek and Latin, classical literature, poetry and philosophy. It was there I learned to read, not in the sense that I did as a boy, recognizing letters and words, but to read as an adult human being, to read to understand myself and life, my life.  Samuel Johnson’s idea that reading should be turned to use has always impressed me, even if I have not always succeeded at it. I know all too well it is easy to memorize precepts that one does not keep, or keep correctly.

Will: So. Tell us about Pemberley.  It’s got quite the reputation, a capital place!

Darcy:  Yes, it is very beautiful.  I am proud of it, proud to belong to it, first of all, and proud that it belongs to me.

Will:  And?

Darcy:  And what?  It is very beautiful.

Will:  Did anyone ever tell you that you do not have the personality for radio?

Darcy:  No, I never knew of radio before today.  But I suspect Caroline Bingley would like it.  Talk shows! (contemptuously)…   

Will:  Are you willing to tell us about Elizabeth Bennet?

Darcy:  Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

Will: Tell us about her…

Darcy (silent for a long moment): No.

Will:  No?

Darcy:  No.  A man who feels less might say more…

[high-pitched sound interrupts, the alert for The Emergency Broadcast System}

Weatherman (clipped automatic voice):  This is a WMRY severe storm warning for Meryton and surrounding areas…Expect a succession of rain over the next week.  Flash flooding is a possibility, as are mudslides…Expect local roads to become impassable…

[A thunderclap, a buzzing — and WMRY goes off the air]

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Darcy had entered the Meryton Assembly with Bingley, Miss Bingley, Mr. and Mrs. Hurst (Bingley and Miss Bingley’s brother-in-law and sister), and he was already thoroughly sick of balls. He had been one of the most eligible bachelors in London for almost ten years. He would not deny that at the beginning of that time, especially the first few weeks of the first year, the attention had been heady, intoxicating. The beauties of London were arrayed before him, paraded before him—all intent on attracting and pleasing him.  

He had believed he could overcome his native shyness, his reticence. For the space of two balls, he managed well enough. But then it all became too much. He had never excelled at polite conversation. At first it had not mattered; such was the eagerness of the women who conversed with him, danced with him, who were willing to overlook his long silences, his awkward entrances to and exits from talk. He was handsome, rich, and he could dance; his silence was—for almost all the women he interacted with—completely forgivable. They were not interested in what he had to say, anyway, were not dissuaded by his poverty of words. They were interested in what he had to give: his riches, his ten thousand a year. (It was more now. London gossip was notoriously behindhand, and Darcy exerted himself to keep his private affairs private.) 

Those first few dancing weeks quickly disenchanted him. He kept participating because it was expected of him, and because he was (painfully) alive to expectation, social duty—and because, he supposed, he had never entirely despaired, never entirely yielded hope that he might meet her, whoever she was, the woman.

Never entirely. 

But he had been close to despair, close to hopelessness. He met so many women, liked so few, and none romantically. Their minds were invariably as corseted as their persons. Trimmed to please—specifically, to please him. He had started to believe that Pemberley itself was destined to be his only lifetime companion. At some point, even his sister Georgiana would wed and leave him, and then Darcy would have only his extensive grounds for companionship.

He loved Pemberley dearly—but not like that.

As he walked into the Meryton Assembly with the rest of his party, he suffered a fresh upwelling of the pointlessness of it all. The empty ceremony, the weary rotations of the same. What was lonelier than this forced politeness, this idle chatter?

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Brilliant, sensitive, and private, Fitzwilliam Darcy finds himself at the Meryton Assembly, consciously troubled by recent events in Ramsgate and unconsciously troubled by himself.  He insults Elizabeth Bennet, at whom he has only glanced. 

It is not until she appears at Netherfield—full of life, skirted in mud, and eager to attend to her sick sister—that Darcy truly looks at her. When he does, he knows she is the woman he has been searching for, the elusive her of his heart. He falls for her completely…despite her apparent unsuitability to be the Mistress of Pemberley and his half-hearted efforts to convince himself he can live without her.

Shortly before Elizabeth leaves Netherfield, Darcy apologizes for what he said at the Assembly. Will that apology and the depth of his sudden but durable feelings give him hope with Elizabeth? Might George Wickham’s arrival frustrate his hopes, especially after Darcy blunders into a marriage proposal to Elizabeth? 

Romantic, reflective, and ironic, this is a story told from Darcy’s point of view, a story of the struggle from intellect to heart—a deliberate character study and a delicate love story.    

You can find Darcy’s Struggle at:

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

and on Kindle Unlimited

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Kelly Dean Jolley, a professor at Auburn University, has penned several novels. His first, Big Swamp, is a detective novel, which he followed with a Christmas mystery, The Vanishing Woman. He also composed a book of poetry, Stony Lonesome.

Using the pseudonym Newton Priors, he released three additional novels: Balter (A Retelling of Pride and Prejudice), Tides of Bath (A Retelling of Persuasion), and a Western, Heaven and Hell: A Romance. 

Professor Jolley has made contributions to many academic publications as well. He is the author of The Concept ‘Horse’ Paradox and Wittgensteinian Conceptual Investigations, the editor of Wittgenstein: Key Concepts, and has published over forty academic articles. He is a past Alumni Professor and currently the Goodwin-Philpott Endowed Chair in Religion and Professor of Philosophy.  

You can contact Kelly through the following media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kellydeanjolley

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jollekd/

Blog: kellydeanjolleyauthor.com

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The blog tour has just started, so please do not forget to visit the other blogs for more information on Darcy’s Struggle

June 12 From Pemberley to Milton

June 13 My Vices and Weaknesses

June 14 Austenesque Reviews

June 17 My Jane Austen Book Club

June 18 So little time…

June 20 Interests of a Jane Austen Girl

June 21 Delighted Reader Book Reviews

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Meryton Press is offering one ebook copy of Darcy’s Struggle to readers commenting on this blog post, so let us know your opinion of this excerpt and apply to the giveaway. The giveaway is international and open until the 21rst of June.

Good luck everyone!

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