#meanwhile i notp both elizabeth/wickham and elizabeth/fitzwilliam but i love elizabeth getting to be attracted to them too

[anghraine]

I have a long P&P post somewhere about Darcy's and Elizabeth's responses to each other's physical appearances/physical responses to each other's presence.

In the book, Darcy's response to Elizabeth's appearance is pretty straightforward (he doesn't find her attractive and then he does, for various reasons that only partly relate to her actual appearance). But Austen is pretty cagey about Elizabeth's awareness of Darcy's appearance until she blushingly agrees before their meeting at Pemberley that she knows him and he is "very handsome."

Shortly thereafter, she thinks to herself that his sister isn't as handsome as he is (despite pretty much everyone else, including Wickham, describing Georgiana as attractive and Elizabeth's own good impression of her). Her responses to him in this last third of the novel repeatedly have a physical component like blushing, her eyes shining, etc.

The thing that's interesting—beyond my general enthusiasm about my ship, lol—is that Elizabeth seems to already consider him good-looking before encountering him at Pemberley. But the earlier references to his appearance tend be displaced onto other characters (like Bingley) or dialed down into implication (as with the introduction of Colonel Fitzwilliam, which does not quite say that Fitzwilliam's combination of plain looks and good manners is the exact opposite of Darcy, but pretty obviously implies it).

So Austen avoids linking the descriptions of Darcy's appearance to Elizabeth until Darcy has become essentially "safe" as a love interest and emerged as the final one. I think this is most likely a) because she's dodging cultural baggage/censure since Elizabeth loathes Darcy through the first half of the book, or b) an indication that in-story, Elizabeth only finds him attractive once she doesn't think he's a bad person.

B does make a certain amount of sense, given that her parents' marriage ensures that she knows exactly where attraction without actual liking or respect leads. Her attraction to Wickham is based in both his general handsomeness and the "appearance of goodness" he trades in (it is this that Darcy lacks), not a draw towards "bad boys." She doesn't know he's a bad person at the time and the knowledge of his character pretty clearly kills any lingering attraction.

Relatedly, I got some responses of various kinds to my original post that could basically be paraphrased as: I like to think that Elizabeth is conscious of Darcy's personal beauty because she has eyes, but she does not feel any attraction to him until she respects and likes him as a person.

Like I said, it's not at all difficult to make that kind of interpretation fit with her history or characterization. But, personally speaking, it just ... does not work for me.

I think partly that's because I'm allergic to it for female characters in general. I am very accustomed to the narrative that attraction for women is defined and constrained by personal attachment. Men care about looks, women care about personality, and—yeah, no, I can't even pretend this is something other than reactionary gender essentialist, usually heteronormative garbage.

It's true for some individuals and that's one thing. But as a general narrative, I hate it with all my soul. And I don't think it's well suited to Austen in general, given that it's hardly uncommon for female characters in Austen to make poor decisions out of attraction to some good-looking disaster area of a human being.

It's not that egregious for Elizabeth specifically. But I don't like it, and I don't think it's the only way to read her.

I think it's equally possible that Elizabeth feels so offended by Darcy's perceived neglect and reacts disproportionately not because she secretly likes him or whatever, but because (consciously or otherwise) she's physically attracted to him. His intelligence and force of personality make it difficult to laugh herself out of it, which amplifies all her reactions to him, and is something she either buries or finds deeply annoying because she dislikes him.

It could also be part of the reason she's so eager to believe Wickham and overlooks the sea of red flags—but part of the reason is that she's attracted to Wickham, too! Yeah, there's the angelic appearance of goodness, and that definitely affects her, but so does the fact that he's just very pretty. And Colonel Fitzwilliam may not be handsome like Darcy and Wickham, but you know, 18 CHA goes a long way, too. She's also attracted to him.

Tl;dr my preferred headcanon is that Elizabeth is seriously attracted to three different men simultaneously and I love that for her.