Favorite Jane Austen Scene by Joana Starnes

My Favorite Jane Austen Scene by Joana Starnes

This year marks an extraordinary milestone: 250 years since the birth of Jane Austen. A quarter of a millennium on, her world remains as vivid, witty, and emotionally precise as ever. Austen’s brilliance—her keen insight, indelible characters, and elegant storytelling—still captivates readers generation after generation.

Yet her influence stretches far beyond her iconic six novels. She has sparked a constellation of adaptations, modern retellings, and creative tributes that span books, films, stage works, and even pilgrimages through the English countryside. Her legacy isn’t simply preserved—it continues to evolve, adapt, and thrive.

So, what is it about Austen that still holds us firmly in her orbit? To explore that question, I’ve invited some of my favorite Austen writers, readers, and scholars to share the moments in her work that continue to sparkle, surprise, and stay with them. On this day of Jane Austen's 250th birthday, my dear friend, bestselling Austenesque author Joana Starnes, shares her favorite scene. —Christina Boyd

By Joana Starnes

Over the years, as I kept returning to Jane Austen’s novels and rediscovering them at different stages in my life, there were many scenes that tugged at my heart strings, but my all-time favourite is the Hunsford proposal. It’s the first scene where Darcy’s feelings come fully and tempestuously into the open, as do Elizabeth’s, and their interactions are marked by raw emotion, instead of suppressed wishes on one side and dislike masked by civility on the other.

As Pride and Prejudice is written mainly from Elizabeth’s perspective, we are already aware of her feelings. As for Darcy’s, throughout the first half of the novel we are given all manner of clues. I especially love how the gentleman doth protest too much in Chapter 6:

"… no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness." —Chapter 6, Pride and Prejudice

Illustration by C E Brock for Pride and Prejudice - 1895. 'You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.'

Then there is his bold statement at Sir William’s soirée:

"I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow." —Chapter 6, Pride and Prejudice

 … and all the exchanges during Jane’s illness, culminating with the charged conversation when ‘He began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.’

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Darcy’s interest in her has become an ever-growing attraction, but until the Hunsford proposal, there is nothing quite as forceful and straight from the heart as this:

"In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you." —Chapter 34, Pride and Prejudice

Isn’t it amazing, Jane Austen’s mastery, to encapsulate the entire range of Darcy’s feelings in twenty-nine words: his passion and vain struggle to suppress it, and also his selfish disdain for the feelings of others ("You must allow me…"). I only wish she had written the first proposal in full! I often wonder why she did not. At first, I thought it might have been because she wrote First Impressions, the precursor of Pride and Prejudice, at an early age, when perhaps she could not quite bring herself to put a gentleman’s passionate declaration into words. On the other hand, the final version of the novel was published just two to three years before Persuasion was written, and as we know full well, in Persuasion she has no reservation about penning a gentleman’s passionate feelings:

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. […]" —Chapter 23, Persuasion

Perhaps it’s yet another proof of her genius that, by the age of ‘one and twenty’ she already understood and was ready to harness the power of her readers’ imagination, so instead of spelling out the awful comments a prideful Darcy might have made, she simply gave us a few hints and allowed us to imagine the worst.

As we read on, the scene becomes even more stormy, and all the more moving because of the effort they are making to keep themselves in check and speak with the requisite civility. One of my personal favorites is Darcy’s barely controlled concern and jealousy bursting out here:

"You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns," said Darcy in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened color. —Chapter 34, Pride and Prejudice

And then the climax, when the floodgates break, and his private thoughts come into the open, and Elizabeth responds in kind. For the first time, they tell each other precisely what they think and feel. In my opinion, this scene is a liberation, a cathartic release of pent-up emotions that clears the air and ultimately changes the outcome of the story. (Of course, it can only be regarded as such because we already know what comes next. I do wish I could remember what I thought of it when I read it the first time!)

ABOUT JOANA STARNES

Joana Starnes lives in the south of England with her family. She has swapped several hats over the years – physician, lecturer, clinical data analyst – but feels most comfortable in a bonnet. She has been living in Georgian England for decades in her imagination and plans to continue in that vein till she lays hands on a time machine. She loves to look for glimpses of Pemberley and Jane Austen’s world, and to write about Regency England and Mr Darcy falling in love with Elizabeth Bennet over and over and over again.

She is the author of twelve Austen-inspired novels and a contributor to the Quill Ink Anthologies. You can connect with Joana via her website and social media, Austen Variations, and Amazon Author Page.