Pride and Prejudice - in the view of 2026 society is Mr. Wickham simply a predator?

Not her fingers - just her tongue, and that does some really heavy lifting.

I do wonder if Newcastle had its reputation as a party city in the early 19th century, which is why JA sent them there.

I suspect Darcy made sure that they stayed in the NE so that they were a long way from the rest of the family & its social circle.

Lydia would have written lots of letters home showing off about the elegant buildings & the newfangled steam locomotives trying to persuade her mother & Kitty to visit. I can imagine her making sure she had prime seats on the famous Stockton to Darlington opening train.

I can’t imagine Whickham abstaining from anything (if he was capable of self-denial he wouldn’t have saddled himself with Lydia) so I suspect that their children were placed with various relatives like Fanny Price & the Bertrams.

I don’t often imagine what happens to characters after a book ends, but it is so easy with Lydia. She would have been making her presence felt at any exciting event, & then made sure that everyone knew that she had a front row seat.

Isn't the point that she lifts too many fingers, and ineptly? She's not got any choice other than to try her hardest to marry them off, even if she didn't really want to it would've made no material difference. But her husband is fucking useless and she's socially out of her depth.

Agree re the 1995 adaptation. Ben Whitrows performance was brilliant in itself, but I think he actually played the role too sympathetically and it doesn't match the text in that way.

Did they rewrite the novel’s plot so that he didn’t seduce Brandon’s ward and abandon her when pregnant?

Mrs Bennet is a very silly woman, she is right to want her daughters married, but even a stopped clock is right once a day as they say, and though she wants them married, she doesn't lift a finger to ensure that they marry well. Imo it's a point of pride to have her dds married, and a competition with Mrs Long and her nieces. She talks of a gentleman who seemed interested in Jane when she was just 16, and her disappointment when it came to nothing, and in general she seems content with officers with a few thousand a year. She seems quite happy to force Lizzy to marry a man she knows she could only ever despite. Most mothers want to see their dc happy, and Austen herself believed that marrying without at least some affection was unwise. Mr Bennet is a rubbish father, but I think the actor who played him in 1995 was so good in the role and so affectionate with Lizzy that we tend to forgive the character's shortcomings.

I saw an interview on TikTok where the actor who plays Willoughby in the new adaptation of Sense & Sensibility denies that Willoughby displays any red flag behaviour. He's very protective of him apparently 🤔😂

I notice the TV adaptations never go with a 15-16 year old or anywhere close, which probably speaks to how difficult audiences would find that story today. Julia Sawalha was brilliant, but she was 27, and however often they say she's 15 it does change the dynamic if she looks the same as the oldest sisters. And in the 05 version, Jena Malone was 20. Interestingly both of them are older than the actresses playing Elizabeth in their version.

My Bennet is ineffective as a husband and father!

By the time I was 30, I fully saw the wisdom of Charlotte's marriage to Mr Collins. Better a million times to be a wife in control, at least, of your own domestic sphere, with the prospect children to bring up to be sensible companions, than an eternal spinster aunt - once her parents were dead, dependent on the goodwill of a brother or sister for a home, always last to be considered, having no money and no-one in your corner.

Mr Collins might have been an idiot but he was unlikely to drink or gamble away all their money, or beat her, or make an idiot of her by having obvious mistresses (she would probably have been OK with discreet mistresses to get him out of the house).

And he was the sort of man who'd make provision for his family in the event of his death, so if he died before her, she could have ended up quite happily independent in her old age.

Spot on. And while she works on pushing their prospects and sabotaging their chances at every turn, Mr B sees very clearly what she's doing and how harmful it is, but does next to nothing on his daughters' behalf. Indolent.

“Sadly now my children are grown up I can sort of see Lady Catherine De Burghs POV.”

Love this!

He views himself as vastly superior which is why he wouldn’t dance with Lizzy.

She is both highly motivated AND a very silly woman. She fails to understand how much her own behaviour puts her daughters' prospects at risk, whilst being driven simultaneously to try to push their prospects, as she, for entirely understandable reasons, feels she must.

So my take on it
As a very young woman (say 15-25) I identified with Eliza Bennet,
As a young professional and mother to toddlers (25-35) I developed understanding of the pragmatism of Charlotte Lucus
With teenage children (35-45) I could totally sympathise with Mrs Bennett
Sadly now my children are grown up I can sort of see Lady Catherine De Burghs POV.
The book is brilliantly written.

I love that quote. It encapsulates me falling in love with DH.

I don’t understand his ‘pride’ here. Shame?

I think what changed for Darcy between his first proposal and the meeting at Pemberley was that he'd had a bit of a lightbulb moment that, actually, his own family weren't completely faultless. Lady Catherine, for all her wealth, was rude and vulgar, and his own sister had conducted a clandestine courtship and nearly eloped with Wickham.

Also, at Pemberley, he'd had the opportunity of meeting the highly sensible and respectable Gardiners - when Lizzie expresses inner relief that Darcy is learning she has at least some non-embarrassing relatives.

He had loved Lizzie earlier despite all his instincts revolting against her 'connections' - what changed was that by Pemberley, the violence of that objection had considerably softened, so he was able to love her unreservedly.

I think Darcy was in love with Lizzy when he first proposed. He loves her "against his will, against his reason, and even against his character".

He thought against it because Elizabeth’s social standing and family connections were heavily inferior to his own.

'm not so sure. His proposal comes across as if he's doing her a massive favour despite himself and despite his reservations about her family. He gets massively miffed when she turns him down. It feels to me like being attracted despite himself.

OP, yes Wickham’s a predator
I wish I had been taught the social context for women in JA’s time properly, when I read P&P at school. Now I can see why Mrs Bennett was incredibly anxious all the time- so would I be, if my income and home depended on my husband staying alive.

It makes me wish JA had also been writing books after the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 and 1882 had happened, so that we could compare her themes in those changed times to P&P (and to the Dashwood’s situation).

”I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”

Darcy fell in love with Lizzie miles before she visited pemberley. He had already proposed to her by then! She fell in love with HIM on that visit.

Someone on a distant estate who's not too worried about morals. Of course, they could always keep that bit quiet.

I think that the 1995 version makes it obvious that Darcy falls in love with Lizzie finally when she visits Pemberley, and in the first flush of ardour he wants to help the woman he loves. It's an interesting question of what would he had done had he not fallen in love with Lizzie that day and just regarded her as a Longbourne acquaintance who improves with further meetings and who clearly has relatives that make her acceptable to him

Haven't read the book for a couple of years so have no idea if that's what JA implies about the timing.

It's possible she could have been married off to a tenant of Darcy's - someone similar in status to Robert Martin in Emma, whose family don't seem to have been concerned that Harriet Smith was the illegitimate daughter of a tradesman - although she'd be unlikely to find anyone with Robert Martin's good sense and intelligence.