Pride and Prejudice is the finest love story of the era---perhaps of any era---and it continues to exert an enormous hold on the popular imagination, for to "fall in love" today still means in many ways to fall in love like Elizabeth and Darcy. Yet their story is very different from what we might expect. Austen does not describe them as caught up in heated embraces or secretive trysts in the manner of so many romances both before hers and since. Instead, she conveys their passion for each other in fleeting moments that fall well within the confines of correctness but that carry a sexual charge that is all the more potent for being intermittent and so understated. Like Darcy and Elizabeth themselves, Austen makes us wait, interpret, agonise, and wonder. Nonetheless, their sexual attraction to each other is clear when they stare across the room, or touch hands, or dance, or even verbally spar, and eventually it proves overwhelming, both to them and to us.
The Regency Years: During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern, Robert Morrison