Wickhams and Darcys: Day Six, and 12,023 words

I hope you enjoy this smouldering image of George Wickham as much as I do. Of all of the men who have played Wickham, I find him the handsomest.

Today was a pretty good writing day. A lot of words came quickly because I am at the exciting part of the story where a lot of new characters are coming into play and the conflict is building. I wrote about the George Cauldronbaum/William Wandstein conflict, which is basically exactly what you would expect it to be.

He spoke of his attachment to William’s sister, Willow Wandstein, who he had met when they were students at Avalon University, off the coast of England . George had been a scholarship student, one of the few Wizard caste students admitted on a needs basis. Willow and George had fallen in love, and planned to get married when they returned to Canada after graduation. When William found out about their plans, he did everything in his power to put a stop to it. He spoke to the University and they revoked his scholarship, putting an end to his studies only months before graduation. He convinced his parents to threaten to disinherit Willow if she went through with it. They could not bear to see her take on the lower Wizard status. Girls in Merlin and Mystic classes in particular were subject to this kind of snobbery, since if they married into the Wizard caste they and their heirs would be downgraded forever.

He had wanted to be with her, not her money, but it seemed as if she cared more about her inheritance than George. She broke things off with him and he was forced to leave for, without his university diploma that he had worked so hard for. He was now a lowly instructor at Merlin Academy, when he had been hoping to run for Wizarding Parliament in England.

In the end, George explained, Willow just wasn’t the person that he had thought that she was. This made the loss easier to take, but it would be difficult to think of a harder way to learn that the caste system amongst wizards, no matter how much people claimed that they were becoming more open and progressive, was still incredibly real.

Eliza looked at William through the windows, incensed now that she knew what he had done. He was, of course, standing around by himself and not making any effort to be friendly with anybody.

Booze has been replaced by boos. And the poll numbers have hit William hard. He'd gone from drunk with power to punch drunk.

Then Nora had a lengthy thought about her own novel, and her own experiences, before she is introduced to her own Wickham.

I'm not exactly sure how it is going to play out for Nora, but I can promise that it is not going to be the same as it is in Pride and Prejudice. I look forward to shaking things up!

Of course, she had known her fair share of Wickhams in her life. Men who could tell a very sympathetic story where everything bad that ever happens to them is someone else’s fault. All of their ex-girlfriends were crazy, they would say, which was why none of their relationships had worked out. The fact that they were horrible boyfriends in the past was never a part of their storytelling frame. The professor had it in for them, which was why they had gotten a bad grade in that class. Their lack of studying was, of course, not mentioned. Their boss hated them, which was why they weren’t promoted. Their lack of respect for female bosses and texting at work was definitely not the reason.

The Wickhams of the world are easy to spot if you have an eye for them. They’re charming and funny and they will tell you everything that you want to hear. They make you feel special. They let you in on their sad life story that has led to whatever unfortunate circumstance they find themselves in, and they are very quick to blame everyone but themselves for it. The story makes sense if you don’t focus too much on the details. They’re around when they want to be, and missing when they don’t.

Nora used to find the Wickham type to be very appealing. Toronto had a lot of them.

She looked at her computer screen, wondering whether it was overly naïve of her Eliza to believe a clearly one-sided story that was told by someone she knew so little. The whole point of this, of course, was that Elizabeth was exhibiting the prejudice of the title of the novel. She was prejudiced against Mr. Darcy because of his previous poor behaviour, leading her to overlook numerous clues that George Wickham was not who he appeared to be and that his story about Mr. Darcy may have not been the whole truth. It was important to her character arc that some parts of this remain; she needed to learn from her own faults to fully fall in love with someone who she spurned, in part, because of her pride. No character should be perfect, and this was Elizabeth’s flaw. And to be honest, readers like to watch their heroine fall for a bad boy, for him to completely unmasked for who he is, and suffer.

Nora definitely wasn’t looking for the initial thrill of someone like Wickham. She was old enough to know better. But she also wasn’t looking for a Darcy, either. When she was younger, and more naïve, she thought that men were mostly Wickhams and Darcies. Cauldronbaums and Wandsteins. Rakes and heroes.

The more she saw of the world, the more she knew that there weren’t really two types of people at all. No one is a stock character. Most of the people she knew had both of those traits: selfishness and selflessness, libertine and gentleman, charming and withdrawn. It was a lot to expect of someone that they encompass all of the positive traits of Fitzwilliam Darcy. Nora didn’t think that such people existed.

On the other hand, Nora had come across too many Mr. Collinses in her time: men who were unaccomplished, insensible, and completely unaware of both of those facts. Not to mention the propensity of such men to not take “no” for an answer. She had come across so many of these men that she had not included a Mr. Collins character in Pride and Prejuwitch. As Angela, a university friend of hers had put it, “Pride and Prejudice has entirely too much Mr. Collins.”
***
As she was looking blankly out the window, she started to have an odd feeling that she was being watched. In the corner of her eye, she noticed a man who moving between glancing at his Macbook, and glancing at her. He was wearing large glasses, a red plaid button-up shirt, black jeans, and tennis shoes. He had short black hair that was parted to the side.

She thought that she had seen this person before, but she could not place him. They both kept exchanging looks with each other and their laptops until he closed his computer and came over.

“Do you by any chance have brian j. Pickles as a book agent?” this man asked her, who had the most charming blue eyes she had ever come across.