The Hertfordshire countryside in the late 1830s, as imagined by the sparkling mind of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, was not a place of muddy hems and quiet parsonages. It was a confection of lace, velvet, and perfectly coiffed ringlets, where the sun always seemed to slant through drawing-room windows at a flattering angle. And into this gilded world, the greatest catastrophe imaginable had arrived, rumbling up the lane in a chariot of polished mahogany and four perfectly matched grays: Mr. Charles Bingley.
At Longbourn, the estate of the absurdly genteel but perpetually frantic Mr. Bennet, the news detonated like a volley of French firecrackers. Mrs. Bennet, a lady whose nerves were her most prized and exercised possession, swooned onto a settee with a theatrical cry of "Netherfield Park is let at last!" pride and prejudice 1940
That illusion shattered when he chose that very evening to offer a disastrous, almost insulting proposal. "In vain have I struggled," he declared, standing rigid as a soldier. "You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you… despite my better judgment." The Hertfordshire countryside in the late 1830s, as
Fitzwilliam Darcy, owner of Pemberley and an income of ten thousand a year, stood like a statue carved from Arctic marble. He was tall, dark, and scowled as if the entire assembly had been arranged to personally annoy him. When Bingley suggested he ask Elizabeth Bennet to dance, Darcy offered the immortal pronouncement with a glacial tilt of his head: "She is tolerable, I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me ." Charles Bingley