So, a romantic hero is the main male character in a novel, which is concerned with expressing his feelings and emotions and is someone who may be brave and good. He will be admired because of his good qualities or because of his skill and he will appeal to a lot of people.
There are three main characters that could potentially be called the romantic hero in Jane Austen’s novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’. One of them is a Mr Bingley. Mr Bingley is a man with a large fortune ‘A single man of a large fortune’ and he is also generous and good looking ‘Mr Bingley was good looking’. He is an agreeable and jolly man ‘He was lively and unreserved’, but he is also relaxed ‘Bingley was sure of being liked wherever he appeared’. He is very popular and polite ‘I have never met so many pleasing girls in my life’, and is good company, very sociable and enjoys dancing ‘He was lively and unreserved and danced every dance’
Mr Bingley’s attributes are very similar to Wickham’s. Mr Wickham is an officer who is handsome ‘Wickham was the happy man towards whom almost every female eye was turned’, had good manners and has a good mien ‘His appearance was greatly in his favour: a fine countenance’. He is also very confident ‘appearing highly pleased with all that he had seen’ and relaxed ‘Mr Wickham was therefore at leisure’.
As with Mr Bingley, Mr Darcy is very rich ‘within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year.’ and handsome ‘Mr Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features’. But unlike Mr Bingley and Mr Wickham he was very disagreeable ‘Having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance’ very rude ‘Till his manners gave a disgust’ and very proud ‘For he was discovered to be proud’. He is not very sociable ‘Declined being introduced to any other lady’ and is not fond of dancing ‘Mr Darcy danced only once with Mrs Hurst and once with Miss Bingley’
In the second half of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ we see a contrast of Mr Wickham and Mr Darcy’s characters. Before we saw Mr Darcy as the haughty, proud, disagreeable man, but as he sees more on Elizabeth Bennet he begins to fall in love with her ‘You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you’. He becomes nicer to the Bennet family by saving their status when Lydia runs away with Mr Wickham.
Mr Wickham deceives us in the first half of the novel as being charming; very gentlemen like and honest. But in Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth we discover that he is a liar, a gambler, a money hunter, and very manipulative ‘His behaviour to myself has been scandalous’.
So in Jane Austen’s novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’ the romantic hero is Mr Darcy, although initially you may be forgiven for thinking that it is Wickham. Mr Bingley is an important male character but, in retrospect, you will find that he does not fit the dictionary definitions as well as Darcy
