Supporting Characters

Sixteen, accomplished, and shy to the point of retreat, Georgiana is the keeper of Pemberley’s quietest rooms. Her reserve hides a generous heart and a sharp mind, known fully only to her brother. She has known disappointment young — the Ramsgate affair with Wickham left her wiser and warier. But in Passion and Persistence, as Darcy stakes everything on a love the world calls hopeless, Georgiana finds her own courage kindled by his example. The girl who hid behind her music begins to step forward — to befriend Elizabeth, to believe in second chances, and to discover that persistence runs in the family.

Open-hearted and effortlessly likeable, Bingley is the friend whose easy charm stands in constant contrast to Darcy’s reserve. In this variation, he does something extraordinary for friendship’s sake: he yields Netherfield to Darcy, placing his own estate at his friend’s service so that Elizabeth might be won. It is an act of generosity that reveals the measure of the man — loyal, uncalculating, and true.

The second son of the Earl of Matlock and a colonel in the army, Richard Fitzwilliam is Darcy’s cousin and co-guardian of Georgiana. Charming without being shallow, sociable without being careless, he moves through drawing rooms with an ease his solemn cousin has never mastered. He shares guardianship of Georgiana with Darcy — a trust that binds them closer than blood alone. When Darcy resolves to win Elizabeth Bennet against all sense and society, Richard is among the first to know and the first to stand by him, offering counsel, candour, and the occasional well-aimed jest that only a true friend can deliver.

The head of the Matlock family and Darcy’s uncle, Lord Fitzwilliam is a man of quiet authority whose word carries weight in county and country alike. He is the patriarch who stepped into the breach after the death of Darcy’s mother, and the household where Darcy spent his boyhood holidays. His influence, though wielded lightly, shapes the world in which Darcy’s persistence is either forgiven or forbidden.

Formidable, discerning, and composed, Lady Matlock is the woman whose judgement Darcy and Phillip seek above all others. She receives the two men like errant schoolboys — dishevelled, eager, half-desperate for approval — and her verdict, when it comes, carries the weight of the family she commands. She has opinions about who is worthy of a Darcy, and she is not shy of expressing them. In Passion and Persistence, she represents the worldly, aristocratic forces any prospective bride of Darcy must face.

The master of Longbourn and his famously nervous wife. Mr Bennet retreats into his library and his dry wit, observing the chaos of his household with amusement and too little intervention. Mrs Bennet, by contrast, throws herself into it — her chief concern the marrying off of five daughters, her chief method the declaration of it at volume. Together they are the unlikely foundation upon which Elizabeth’s independence was built.

Mistress of Rosings Park and one of literature’s most imperious figures, Lady Catherine has never once been contradicted and cannot conceive of a world in which she might be. She has long planned for Darcy to marry her daughter, Anne. In Passion and Persistence, Darcy’s very public, very persistent refusal to abandon Elizabeth Bennet brings her wrath down upon him in magnificent and, as ever, entirely ineffectual force.