Paging Emma Tennant, Ms. Tennant, please pick up the white courtesy phone
Why do modern women still fall in love with Mr. Darcy? The Guardian has an article today asking that very question, and warning women that marriage to a moody git might not be all it’s cracked up to be:
Here is the rub - Austen leaves us to assume that her heroine’s marriages are happy despite portraying very few idyllic marriages in the rest of her texts. Also, Austen’s deification as a novelist is such that one hardly dares to point out that when it comes to marriage and what goes on behind the bedroom door, she herself had no first-hand experience. But as modern women with our wealth of relationship experience and all the benefits brought about by feminism, we should know better. The fact is that dark, smouldering, moody, charismatic, arrogant Darcy types, whom we hate at first sight and then later find ourselves falling in love with, often - particularly after we have married them - turn out to be rigid, dominating and controlling.
Ah, but you see, Mr. Darcy is married to Elizabeth Bennet, whose goal in life is to laugh at Mr. Darcy and teach him to like it. That makes all the difference. 
ETA: Heather writes to remind us of this article in the Washington Post, which provides a different perspective. We posted the article when it came out, but unfortunately it got lost amidst the Keira sightings. 
