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This is my take on one of the most implausibly contrived Pride and Prejudice vagaries I have ever had the misfortune of reading. It is called Water and Salt.
I have been trying to articulate why this story bothers me so profoundly, because my objection isn't simply that it is dark, unconventional, or morally uncomfortable. Fanfiction can take Pride and Prejudice in almost any direction. My difficulty is that the story requires so many extraordinary departures from Austen's characters, Regency society, legal realities, and moral framework that, taken together, I no longer recognize it as a convincing Pride and Prejudice variation. More importantly, the plot increasingly feels as though circumstances are being manufactured specifically to force Elizabeth into a marriage with Edward. The characters don't seem to be making organic choices within a believable world; rather, the world keeps producing whatever complication is necessary to move Elizabeth toward the predetermined ending.
1. The story begins a year after Hunsford
A year after Darcy's disastrous proposal gives him time to reflect, and there is nothing inherently implausible about an alternate story beginning there. The Darcy who emerges from that year matters enormously. Austen's Darcy has certainly been arrogant and prejudiced. He has interfered in Jane and Bingley's relationship, behaved condescendingly toward Elizabeth, and made a spectacularly bad proposal. But Hunsford is the beginning of his moral transformation. Elizabeth's rejection and his subsequent letter force him to confront his own behavior. A year later, an alternate Darcy can certainly still be flawed, angry, proud, or wounded. What is much harder to accept is a Darcy who has become a man who deliberately exploits a woman's family's financial desperation for sexual access to her. That is not merely “Darcy behaving badly.” It requires a fundamentally different moral character.
2. Darcy buys the Bennets' debt and makes Elizabeth his mistress
There are two separate problems here: the financial mechanics and the characterization.
Darcy could conceivably acquire a debt owed by Mr. Bennet. A wealthy gentleman could purchase a debt or otherwise acquire a financial claim. But only the debt belongs to the debtor; it does not grant the debtor any claim upon Elizabeth's body. The arrangement therefore isn't simply an unusual Regency marriage bargain. It is essentially a transaction in which Darcy uses financial leverage to obtain sexual access to Elizabeth. That is a very different thing. And Mr. Bennet's agreement is equally difficult for me to accept. Mr. Bennet is irresponsible. He has failed to provide adequately for his daughters despite knowing that Longbourn is entailed. Austen certainly does not portray him as an exemplary father. But he is not portrayed as a father who would knowingly barter his daughter for financial relief. That requires an extraordinary reconstruction of Mr. Bennet. More importantly, Elizabeth herself is profoundly wrong for this premise. She rejects Mr. Collins despite her precarious future. She rejects Darcy's first proposal despite his wealth and position. She is willing to accept uncertainty rather than marry a man she does not respect. Elizabeth's independence is not a decorative character trait. It is fundamental to the novel.
3. Darcy gets Elizabeth pregnant while engaged to a more socially acceptable titled woman
An alternate Darcy can certainly have a sexual relationship with Elizabeth. But having him impregnate her while maintaining an engagement to another woman because that woman is more acceptable to society creates a Darcy whose priorities are almost the inverse of Austen's. The problem isn't merely that he has committed sexual misconduct. It is that Elizabeth bears virtually all of the social consequences while Darcy's life proceeds toward the socially advantageous marriage. That is profoundly unequal. Austen is very interested in the unequal consequences of sexual behavior for men and women. Lydia's situation makes that clear. But Austen also gives Darcy an eventual moral trajectory toward responsibility. He doesn't ultimately think that his social position is more important than Elizabeth. He learns that his social position does not entitle him to Elizabeth. That is why this Darcy is so difficult to reconcile with Austen's Darcy.
4. Colonel Fitzwilliam secretly manufactures a Spanish marriage to a dead soldier
This is where the story becomes contrived. Colonel Fitzwilliam secretly arranging a marriage for Elizabeth to a man who is already dead is not simply an act of assistance. It requires an elaborate fabrication involving foreign ceremony that never happened, a military chaplain with spotty memory, authentic documentation with witnesses who may or may not exist, and fraudulent records. The even bigger problem is that Elizabeth never went to Spain. That means the supposed marriage isn't merely questionable. It is factually incompatible with Elizabeth's whereabouts. If independent witnesses can establish that Elizabeth was in London on the supposed wedding date, then a marriage document does not solve the problem. A genuine-looking certificate can establish that someone recorded a marriage. Or as the author wrote, it has the "the appearance of legality". It does not establish that Elizabeth Bennet was actually the woman who participated in it. That distinction becomes extremely important later.
5. Fitzwilliam gives Elizabeth the “marriage packet” and tells her to claim a widow's pension
The first question is why Fitzwilliam would undertake such an elaborate scheme at all to "help' his cousin and Elizabeth. If his purpose is to protect Elizabeth, Darcy, and their unborn child, there are many conceivable ways of helping. Instead, he ships her off to Land's End, arranges an entirely fictitious marital history, gives her documentation supporting it, and directs her to claim money from the government as a widow. Elizabeth knows the marriage never occurred and she is knowingly participating in a false representation. I don't think the story can simply treat this as an innocent escape hatch. If the authorities later discover the truth, Elizabeth could potentially face consequences for knowingly accepting money under a false claim, even if Fitzwilliam was the architect of the scheme. The distinction between Elizabeth's conduct and Fitzwilliam's is important, but neither disappears.
6. Elizabeth moves to Cornwall as Mrs. Welles
The social consequences of this move are being understated. A woman who suddenly appears in a new, insular community claiming to be the widow of a dead officer would have a history.
- Where did she marry?
- Who knew her husband?
- Where did he die?
The more elaborate the fictitious identity becomes, the more opportunities there are for someone to ask questions. The story seems to treat the marriage document packet as though it creates a complete social identity. It doesn't. A Regency identity was constructed through people as much as paper.
Elizabeth’s life in Cornwall seems bereft of allies and friendships. She has one friend (Mrs. Penrose), she is a volunteer teacher at the parsonage, she fucks the resident of said parsonage. Her life in Foway appears to be extremely small and parochial (pun intended), but against all reason, it is where she wants to hang her bonnet at the end of the day.
7. Elizabeth never left London despite the supposed Spanish marriage
This is actually the strongest evidence against the entire plot—and it makes the fabricated marriage much more precarious. If the story establishes that Elizabeth was demonstrably in London when the marriage supposedly occurred, a third party could easily provide proof. The author said as much in her story (...the friend of a friend of friend of a servant who is known to...) The more independent evidence there is, the more difficult it becomes to sustain the marriage. When (not if) the marriage is subsequently challenged - and there are people who will want to prevent her marriage to Edward - Elizabeth's whereabouts become a central factual issue.
8. Edward, the handsome third son of a duke, offers to marry Elizabeth and adopt her unborn child
This is where the story starts feeling particularly engineered. Edward, straight out of central casting, is apparently:
- handsome
- aristocratic
- a clergyman
- the third son of a duke
- sympathetic to Elizabeth
- aware of her fraudulent marriage
- willing to adopt her child
- and eventually extraordinarily wealthy
That is already an almost impossibly convenient romantic hero. But the more important question is: Why does Edward want Elizabeth? If he knows that her marriage is fraudulent, knows she is pregnant by Darcy, knows she is living under a false identity, and knows the entire story surrounding her pension, he is entering an extraordinarily complicated situation. His offer to marry her and adopt the child may be compassionate, but if the story intends for him to be a morally admirable alternative to Darcy, it needs to confront the fact that he is knowingly stepping into a web of deception.
9. Edward knows the marriage is fraudulent
This makes his later conduct much more problematic. If Edward knows Elizabeth is not actually Mrs. Welles, then he knows that “Elizabeth Welles” is a fictitious marital identity. He therefore cannot plausibly behave as though the identity is simply true because there happens to be documentation. He knows better. That becomes especially important when he later obtains the special license.
10. Edward suddenly inherits a huge maternal fortune and can discharge Longbourn's debt
This is one of the clearest examples of what feels like plot machinery. The Bennets need money and Darcy buys the debt in exchange for Elizabeth. Elizabeth wants a new protector after Darcy marries. Edward needs the financial power to become that protector. Therefore, Edward suddenly inherits a huge fortune.
Of course, wealthy younger sons existed, and inheritances happened. None of this is individually impossible. But the cumulative structure is conspicuous: Every time the story requires Edward to become more powerful, circumstances conveniently provide him with the necessary resources. He begins as a third son. Then he becomes wealthy enough to compete financially with Darcy. While this is not impossible, it simply feels utterly convenient. And there is a deeper problem: If Edward can now discharge Longbourn's debt, why does Elizabeth need to become his mistress (because that was what she was, essentially)? The original justification for the sexual arrangement has disappeared. The cop-out that "Elizabeth missed the warmth of a relationship" seems extraordinarily trite and further denigrates Elizabeth's character. The author’s explanation implies that Edward is simply a booty call. Or at least, it started that way.
11. Darcy marries the heiress and spends six months on a continental honeymoon
A wealthy man marrying an heiress and taking an extended continental honeymoon is entirely apropos for the period. (What happened to a shorter trip to the Lake District?) But narratively it serves an extremely obvious function: Darcy is removed physically from the story for six months.
That gives Elizabeth and Edward time to develop their relationship and gives Edward time to become wealthy and sexually involved with Elizabeth. It therefore feels less like a naturally occurring event and more like the author moving Darcy off the board. And there is an additional irony: Darcy has supposedly spent the story exploiting Elizabeth because of his desire for her, yet he then conveniently goes on a continental honeymoon for half a year after he marries someone else. This makes Darcy's relationship with Elizabeth feel less like the complicated Darcy/Elizabeth dynamic of Austen and more like a mechanism for getting Elizabeth pregnant so that another man can eventually marry her.
12. Elizabeth offers herself as Edward's mistress to pay Longbourn's debt
This is where I find the story's treatment of Elizabeth particularly troubling. Darcy originally made Elizabeth his mistress because he controlled the Bennets' debt. Now Edward inherits money and Elizabeth makes essentially the same bargain with him. The supposed romantic alternative to Darcy becomes a different wealthy man who controls the debt, to whom Elizabeth offers sexual access in exchange for financial rescue. The men have changed but the underlying power structure hasn't. That is hardly a liberation for Elizabeth. And Edward's response makes the situation even stranger: If she becomes pregnant, she will need to marry him. This makes marriage contingent upon pregnancy. In other words, Elizabeth must first become sexually involved with him, become pregnant, and then their arrangement will convert into marriage. That is not particularly romantic. It is another transactional arrangement built around Elizabeth's reproductive status.
13. Darcy returns and discharges the debt
This is perhaps the point at which the entire Edward plot becomes unnecessary. Darcy returns and pays off the debt, Edward no longer needs to pay it, Elizabeth no longer needs to be Edward's mistress to save Longbourn, and the original financial justification for her relationship with Edward disappears. Yet she is already pregnant by Edward. That means the story has created an elaborate financial crisis, introduced Edward as the solution, then removed the financial crisis after the sexual relationship has already occurred. Again, the mechanics feel designed to get Elizabeth pregnant by Edward rather than arising naturally from the characters' decisions.
14. Elizabeth is now two or three months pregnant by Edward
At this point, the author has essentially engineered a second pregnancy to replace the first.
- First Elizabeth is pregnant by Darcy
- That pregnancy creates the fictitious Spanish marriage
- Then Edward becomes involved with Elizabeth
- She becomes pregnant again
Now the first pregnancy and its associated fabricated marriage become largely irrelevant to the desired romantic outcome except insofar as they provide Elizabeth with a dramatic backstory. This is another reason the story feels constructed rather than organic. The pregnancies function almost like plot devices that move Elizabeth from one man to another. That has enormous social and moral consequences and are never merely convenient mechanisms for rearranging romantic pairings.
15. Edward obtains a special license to marry Elizabeth under the fictitious name “Elizabeth Welles”
Edward knows the Spanish marriage never happened. He knows Elizabeth is not actually Mrs. Welles yet he nevertheless obtains a special license using that false married identity. That is not simply romantic persistence. He is deliberately carrying a known falsehood into the ecclesiastical marriage process. And because he is himself an Anglican clergyman who understands the Church's marriage law, his knowledge matters. The special license does not magically transform a false identity into a true one. The supposed Spanish marriage never occurred, and Elizabeth is not actually a widow. Edward therefore knows that “Elizabeth Welles” is a fiction. He may sincerely believe that he is doing something compassionate by providing her with a legitimate future, but his compassion does not make the false identity true.
This is especially problematic because he isn't merely receiving documents from someone else passively. He actively obtains the special license which makes him an active participant in perpetuating the fiction. And there is a crucial distinction about the second marriage: the Spanish marriage never actually occurred and Elizabeth has never been genuinely married to Captain Welles. A second marriage may be acceptable simply because the documents claim she was a widow, but that doesn't make everything about the proposed second marriage legitimate. The question becomes whether Edward knowingly supplied or relied upon false information concerning Elizabeth's identity and marital status in obtaining the ecclesiastical authorization. That is a very different issue from whether Elizabeth was actually married to Welles. And because Edward knows the truth, he cannot plausibly claim that he was simply deceived by an apparently authentic certificate.
(Additionally, Jane Austen's father was a clergyman and she would have been particularly informed on the nuances of Anglican Canon Laws. Edward’s duplicity in procuring a special license is particularly insulting to the great woman who created these characters.)
Most importantly - why does everyone keep choosing deception in this story?
The cumulative pattern is what bothers me most.
- Darcy: uses money to obtain Elizabeth.
- Fitzwilliam: uses a fabricated marriage to rescue Elizabeth.
- Elizabeth: knowingly lives under a fictitious identity.
- Edward: knows the identity is fictitious but continues the fiction.
- The Church: becomes part of a process involving that false identity.
And every new deception is presented as necessary because the previous deception created an impossible situation, thereby creating a self-perpetuating cycle. Austen's novels are certainly full of misunderstandings and concealments. But there is an enormous difference between people misunderstanding one another and people deliberately constructing false legal identities and then building new deceptions on top of them. The latter is much closer to a historical melodrama or legal thriller than to Austen. Most importantly, Elizabeth's agency has almost disappeared. This may be the deepest reason I find the story so contrary to Pride and Prejudice.
Look at what happens to Elizabeth:
- Darcy decides what she must do and Mr. Bennet agrees
- Fitzwilliam creates a marriage for her and gives her a new identity
- Elizabeth moves to Bumfuck, Cornwall under that identity
- A previously unknown Edward offers to rescue her but is too poor to fight the power of Darcy’s wealth
- Edward becomes wealthy
- Elizabeth becomes Edward's mistress (I do consider 9 to 10 encounters as tantamount to becoming a mistress) but only after Edward extracts her acquiescence to get married if she got pregnant; while she claims that "this is her choice, freely given", is it really a choice given that the dating pool in Cornwall is not exactly deep nor diverse and Edward was the only fish in it
- Darcy discharges the debt
- Edward obtains the special license under the false identity
Everyone is making decisions about Elizabeth's life. But where is Elizabeth Bennet?
Austen's Elizabeth is one of the most intellectually and morally independent women in nineteenth-century fiction. She can be wrong and prejudiced. She can make a lot of error in judgment. But she thinks, she judges, she refuses, she speaks. And she chooses. She rejects Mr. Collins when accepting him would provide enormous practical security. She rejects Darcy when marrying him would solve virtually every financial problem in her family. She doesn't allow economic necessity to dictate whom she will marry. That is why the proposition that Elizabeth repeatedly exchanges sexual access for financial security feels so fundamentally wrong to me. It doesn't merely put Austen's Elizabeth into difficult circumstances. It changes what makes her Elizabeth.
Darcy's character has been changed just as profoundly. Austen's Darcy begins with an inflated sense of his own importance. His transformation is essentially a lesson in learning that his wealth, rank and judgment do not give him ownership of another person's choices. The first proposal fails because he presents his love almost as something Elizabeth ought to accept despite the obstacles. The second proposal succeeds because Darcy has changed: He offers but does not demand, and Elizabeth chooses him freely. That is the heart of their romance. In the author's story, however, Darcy's wealth becomes the instrument by which he controls Elizabeth sexually, which reverses the moral trajectory of Pride and Prejudice. Darcy is not learning that Elizabeth's consent matters. He is learning how to exercise financial power over her. That is not Austen's Darcy.
The introduction of Edward does not really solve that problem. This is another reason I find the intended Edward/Elizabeth romance unsatisfying and almost insulting. If Edward's answer to Darcy's exploitation is to engage in a sexual relationship with a vulnerable woman who may eventually be forced to marry him (despite her previous refusals), then the fundamental problem has not disappeared. Elizabeth is still being passed from one powerful man to another: Darcy owns the debt, Edward inherits the fortune, Darcy discharges the debt, Edward obtains the special license. Men continue to possess the financial and institutional power and only Elizabeth continues to live within the consequences.
The fact that Edward is kinder than Darcy doesn't automatically make the underlying structure romantic. There is also a remarkable lack of consequences. This is perhaps the greatest historical problem.
A plot involving:
- a fraudulent foreign marriage
- a fictitious dead husband
- a manipulated military chaplain with questionable records
- false marriage documents of a woman who demonstrably never attended the supposed wedding
- a clergyman suitor who knows the marriage is fictitious but is only too eager to violate Commandments Six and Ten
- a special license obtained under a false married name
- and multiple people knowingly maintaining the deception
would not simply disappear into the background. It would generate questions on its validity. The story seems to want all the advantages of a complicated legal fiction without allowing the complications that such a fiction would inevitably create.
Ultimately, this doesn't feel like an alternate Pride and Prejudice to me.
That is the conclusion I keep coming back to. A Pride and Prejudice variation can change almost anything, as several tropes have shown. (Just check the JAFF Index.)
- Darcy can meet Elizabeth earlier
- Elizabeth can be wealthy
- Elizabeth can be widowed
- Darcy can be poor
- They can marry other people first
- They can meet years later
- There can be misunderstandings, tragedies, scandals, reversals, and second chances
But something of Austen's underlying moral architecture has to remain. Austen's great romance is not about one wealthy man rescuing a financially vulnerable woman. It is about two people learning to see each other accurately and becoming worthy of freely choosing one another.
The story described here replaces that central tenet with a chain of transactions:
debt → mistress → pregnancy → fraudulent marriage → fictitious widowhood → pension → new protector → second sexual transaction → second pregnancy → marriage under a false identity.
That is an entirely different moral and narrative structure. While the vagaries of Regency England could render the story’s individual components plausible, the holistic thesis that all of these things would happen to these particular characters produces an unbelievable Austenian story. The story feels extraordinarily far from Austen because its central mechanism is not misunderstanding followed by recognition. It is deception followed by another deception intended to repair the consequences of the first deception. Its central romantic mechanism is not freely chosen love. It is economic dependency followed by sexual bargaining. And its heroine is not ultimately being allowed to exercise the extraordinary independence that defines Elizabeth Bennet. That is why I find the premise so difficult to accept—not because it is too dark, but because the darkness is built by dismantling the very qualities that make Darcy and Elizabeth the characters they are.
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The author's extensive explanation doesn't resolve the underlying problems. She devoted approximately 3,000 words to chapter 31 followed by over 1,000 words in response to readers' comments and questions. (Yes, I put them through word count). I appreciate her effort to explain her intentions and the reasoning behind the plot. However, each reactive explanation actually highlights one of my difficulties with the story: There is a distinction between explaining why something happened and making it believable that it would happen.
A sufficiently detailed explanation can make almost any fictional sequence technically possible. But if the reader requires several thousand words of additional exposition to understand why the characters would behave a certain way, that doesn't necessarily make the underlying premise convincing. In Austen, characters generally don't require extensive explanatory machinery for their motivations.
- We understand why Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth.
- We understand why Charlotte accepts him.
- We understand why Lydia runs away with Wickham.
- We understand why Darcy interferes in Jane and Bingley's relationship.
- And, most importantly, we understand why Elizabeth refuses both Mr. Collins and Darcy's first proposal.
Their actions arise naturally from who they are, their circumstances, and the social world in which they live. In the author's story, by contrast, each extraordinary development seems to require another explanation:
- Why would Elizabeth offer herself to be Edward's mistress and when he refused, seduced him almost randomly?
- Why would Darcy conveniently return and discharge the debt after Edward and Elizabeth have already become sexually involved?
- Why would Elizabeth choose to stay in Foway, where she’s still an outsider and the natives are only too happy to gossip about her? Not when she has plenty of Darcy Fuck money to live anywhere.
- And finally, why would Edward, knowing that Elizabeth is not actually Mrs. Welles, obtain a special ecclesiastical license under that fictitious name?
The fact that each question can be given an answer does not necessarily make the sequence convincing. Indeed, this is where I think the author's responses become significant. The story appears to require explanation after explanation to preserve the predetermined outcome. That is very different from characterization. A character can have a complicated motivation. A historical situation can require context. But when almost every major plot development needs an extensive justification, I cogitate that the author has been asking the reader to accept the plot first and then supplying reasons why the characters have to behave as the plot requires. For me, that reverses the normal relationship between character and story.
In a convincing Pride and Prejudice variation, I should be able to think that - given what I know of Elizabeth, Darcy, their circumstances, and their society - I would understand why something happened. Here, too often, my reaction is that I understand why the author needs something to happen, but I don't believe these characters would have arrived here. More explanation cannot turn an un-Austenian Darcy into Austen's Darcy, especially with regard to Elizabeth. Any justification as to why Elizabeth submits to each successive arrangement doesn't resolve the fact that the Elizabeth being described has very little of the defining independence and moral agency that make Austen's Elizabeth distinctive. The problem is cumulative and when all of these events are stacked together, characterization matters. The story requires an extraordinary number of highly specific coincidences and deliberate deceptions, all of which ultimately point toward one ending:
Elizabeth will marry Edward.
If you disagree with that ending, you can go hang because the author will simply tell you to fuck off.