Duty and Desire Duty and Desire Duty and Desire is a 2004 historical Romance novel by Pamela Aidan. The second in the "Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman" trilogy, the novel examines Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" from the perspective of Fitzwilliam Darcy, the central male character of that novel. In relation to "Pride and Prejudice", on which the novel is based, "Duty and Desire" takes place between Darcy's initial leaving of Hertfordshire and his reappearance in "Pride"'s narrative at Rosings Park. Following on from the events of "An Assembly Such as This", the novel opens with Fitzwilliam Darcy preparing for the Christmas season with his
Mr. Darcy into the vogue and the character of Mr. Darcy exemplifies the trend. Nicolson described the differences between Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy as follows: "Mr. Bingley is a[n] 18th century man: handsome, young, agreeable, delightful, fond of dancing, gentlemanlike, pleasant, easy, unaffected and not entirely in control of his own destiny. Darcy is fine, tall, handsome, noble, proud, forbidding, disagreeable and subject to no control but his own...Darcy is a 19th-century man, manliness itself, uncompromising, dark and sexy. And it is Darcy, of course, whom the novel ends up loving". The character of Mr. Darcy very much reflects the changing