It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single girl in possession of her right mind must be in want of Mr. Darcy. Including you, we can assume, or you wouldn’t have bothered to pick up this book. Whether you’re single, dating, or otherwise, you’re in good company, sister! Prepare yourself for an all-out Darcy Fest within these pages. (Careful though: this is a spoiler, so you’d better know Pride and Prejudice from start to finish first.)

Clearly, we’re not the only girls to fall in love with Mr. Darcy in the two hundred years since Jane Austen immortalized his fine figure in her beloved novel. His romance with Elizabeth Bennet, given flesh and blood in recent films and spin-offs of Pride and Prejudice, has drafted thousands of admirers into the ranks of genuine Janeites and card-carrying Austenians. Keira Knightley proves that Jane Austen won’t be going away anytime soon. And we can’t forget the "a-Firthianados," who have become fervent fans over the years thanks to the eloquent eyes and wet shirt of Colin Firth. Mmm.

In fact, now that you mention it, the ten-year anniversary of the BBC/A&E television series obligates us to a celebratory marathon of all six episodes, don’t you think? It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it. And for good measure, we might as well watch all the major films made of Austen’s characters in the last decade: Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam in Emma, for example; Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, and Hugh Grant in Sense and Sensibility; and even teen queen Alicia Silverstone as a postmodern Emma in Clueless. Some Janeites have argued eloquently for You’ve Got Mail as yet another take on Pride and Prejudice. And why not?

Here we probably should give a nod to Bridget Jones, whose popularity can’t be overstated but whose similarities to Elizabeth Bennet remain tenuous at best. As loveable as Bridget is to those of us who share her tendency to say all the wrong things at all the wrong times, we can’t help thinking poor Mr. Darcy somehow ended up with Lydia at the conclusion of that story. (And, we suppose, if that Mr. Darcy chose such a match with his "eyes open," then he probably deserves her!)

No, it’s Jane Austen’s own Mr. Darcy we return to time and time again. That’s because our dear, darling Fitzwilliam embodies everything we romantics desire in the guy of our dreams: passion, integrity, honesty, intelligence, loving affection, and a willingness to accept us for who we really are, crazy family notwithstanding. Oh, and we can’t forget the "something pleasing about the mouth" when he speaks. Hmm, yes. And how nice he looks in that formal dinner jacket . . .

Okay, so we’re hopeless romantics when it comes to Darcy. We’ll track him down in whatever form we can find him, all the while envisioning our own Mr. Darcy making his appearance in the ballroom of our lives. Whether we’re dating or single, we have an ideal relationship in mind that looks something like our hero and Elizabeth Bennet gazing at each other across a crowded drawing room at Pemberley, eyes locked in mutual acknowledgment: You were made for me.

Sigh.

Yet for all his excellent exterior qualities, it’s Darcy’s inner character we admire most, or we’d be just as quick to snatch up books titled Dating Mr. Wickham. No, we want the good heart, not just the good looks. We want a guy with whom we can build the kind of romantic friendship that will outlast everything life throws our way.

Some of us are perhaps currently dating, which means we’re assessing the Darcy Potential (DP) of our romantic attachments. This is a good thing. If we’re not dating, we’re perhaps despairing at the apparent lack of DP in the guys we know. Body piercings aside, how could any of them possibly live up to such a noble and—yes, let’s be honest—yummy standard? One of the goals of this book is to help us assess the DP of the twenty-first-century guys in our lives, especially when it comes to their other relationships. More on that later.

Having said all that, as much as we swoon over Darcy, it’s Elizabeth Bennet we really admire. Jane Austen herself once called her "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." We want to be like Lizzy. We long to have the strength of character and depth of self-knowledge that allow us to turn down the offers and innuendos of an undeserving culture, that allows us to refuse even the dishy, the dashing, the delicious Mr. Darcys when they fail to grasp our true worth (at first, anyway). Because if we can be like Lizzy, we hope to overcome those lurking insecurities that make us question our own judgment in all matters relational and stop chasing empty dreams. Right?

Well, sort of. We easily lose sight of the key quality that makes Elizabeth Bennet so compelling:

She messes up.

Yep, even our dear Lizzy makes mistakes in judgment. In fact, the moment she recognizes her own willful prejudice against Darcy is when the entire story takes its ultimate romantic turn. That’s when she finally faces what she’s been ignoring. The rest is literary history.

At the risk of sounding like Mary Bennet, we must admit there’s a lot to learn from the development of Lizzy’s character. We can’t help but be amazed at the acuteness of Jane Austen’s discernment regarding the nuances of relationships, particularly in the arena of romance. Nothing escapes her eye. Every frailty of the human heart, every absurdity, is placed under a microscope for our inspection. Before we know it, we find our own motives and longings given the same kind of scrutiny. If we’re honest with ourselves, we soon discover that we're prone to failure not only in judgment of our own hearts, but we often vastly misunderstand the people around us.

Eventually we come to realize that Jane Austen’s remedy for our inherent lack of self-knowledge is to take time for reflection. We need to get alone by ourselves and put some serious effort into honest self-evaluation. We must take ourselves to task for "what we have done and what we have left undone," as the old prayer of confession states. And this is the case not only in our romantic relationships, but in all our relationships: with family, with friends, and with God.

At some point or another, we all face the difficult task of looking inside ourselves. Do we have what it takes to live like Lizzy in the twenty-first century, in spite of our own loony family and friends? Dating Mr. Darcy is designed in part to help us consider our own EP, our Elizabeth Potential. It’s our guide to the kind of sensible romance that Lizzy herself would approve.

But in this quest we must not be impatient with ourselves, or with the possible (and impossible) Darcys in our lives. As Jane Austen lovingly wrote to her niece in 1817:

Sigh again.

Perhaps someday Jane’s words of wisdom will be only too true in our own lives. Meanwhile, we have some important—and fun!—work to do.