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

They probably met in London society.

Yes, but the suggestion is that Bingley might have been Darcy's fag (a younger boy who ran errands, cleaned, cooked etc for a senior one). The relationship could be brutal and exploitative, but the fagmaster/senior boy was also responsible for the protection of his fag, so I suppose one could just about imagine a public-spirited Darcy protecting a much younger Bingley who was vulnerable because he came from new money...?

I mean, it's pretty unlikely, but so is the Darcy-Bingley friendship in general -- they're polar opposites as personalities, the age difference means they can't have met at university or been peers at school, plus Darcy is rather proud and unlikely to be much of an advocate for new money types, so in many ways it's unlikely they'd have frequented the same circles. But the fact remains that JA depicts them as close friends, regardless of the age, class and temperament gap!

I think B was 23 (said he moved to the area 2 years after his majority) and 5 years would be right - B 13 and D in his last year at school?

The Bingleys were nouveau-riche - their father's fortune had been acquired by trade, and Charles is the first of them to purchase an estate. The Darcys were old money, so it's possible Bingley looked up to Darcy for this reason - as a model of how a gentleman should behave - something he would have had to learn.

I knew that but the maths doesn’t fit. When Bingley was 7 Darcy would’ve been 13.

Back in those days (and up to the 1950s/60s) many boys were sent off to school at 7. Sometimes younger.

Yes, huge numbers of people died in infancy and early childhood. Making it to 1 was a milestone, as was seeing your 5th birthday. But if you made it to adulthood you were in with a good chance of seeing old age.

Yes, I've seen that suggested too -- it would make sense of Colonel Fitzwilliam agreeing with Lizzy's semi-sarcastic claim that Darcy 'takes a prodigious deal of care of' Bingley in areas where he needs it, and also fits with Darcy separating him from Jane and Bingley getting 'permission' from him to return to her. There's definitely a leader/follower thing going on.

Bingley is 22 and Darcy is 28 so they wouldn’t have met at school, as you start at 13 at schools like Eton and Harrow. I’m guessing Darcy would’ve gone to a top
public boarding school.

On the age gap between Darcy and Bingley I've always wondered if B was D's fag at school - would be about right.

Yes, it's one of the reasons Mrs B is so bitchy about Charlotte Lucas, who, being plain and almost aged out of the marriage market at 27, Mrs Bennet could be patronising about, long before she manages to bag Mr Collins.

Bluntly, she thought her girls ranked way above Charlotte Lucas in the matrimonial stakes, and is mortified when not only does CL bag the chap Mrs B had mentally dedicated as Lizzy's, but bags the chap who will inherit Longbourn when Mr Bennet dies, and who thus symbolises all of her worst fears about the future.

ETA Sorry, quoted wrong post. That should have been in response to @MrsDanversGlidesAgain 's post about Mrs Bennet as competitive mother competing against all the other county mothers with marriageable girls.

If you reached adulthood in 1800 England, you could typically expect to live into your mid-50s to late 60s, a stark contrast to the overall life expectancy at birth of about 35 to 40 years.

I never really considered that Wickham was exacting revenge on Darcy. Even Lizzy's family weren't aware of Darcys feelings for her, Charlotte suggested it, but couldn't quite make up her mind if he really had an inclination for her or not, even later on when she saw them together a lot. I think that Wickham (rightly) thought Darcy a snob, and unlikely to connect himself with the Bennets. We will never really know though, there are so many layers in Austen's writing, she was a genius!

Worth noting as well that people didn't live anywhere near as long in the 18th Century as they do today - the average life expectancy was only about 40. Of course it was probably higher than that for affluent people who made it beyond infancy, but it would still be nowhere near the present averages. So people would have been 'middle aged' much younger.

“I just can’t agree with the suggestions that W knew about E and D and therefore seduced the gushingly compliant L to put a spanner in D’s works, as it were.”

Same. I don’t think Wickham was even thinking about Darcy when he ran away with Lydia. It wasn’t about revenge. He was flattered by Lydia’s infatuation, and he was going to have some fun with her before dumping her in London.

I just can’t agree with the suggestions that W knew about E and D and therefore seduced the gushingly compliant L to put a spanner in D’s works, as it were.

And regarding E and W, she was (due to her damaged pride and resulting prejudice) an easy ear for W to spread his lies about D to. Had she not been such an eager ear, initially, I doubt he’d have had much interest in her otherwise, as her financial situation was almost certainly common knowledge in the town.

Those ages are in the book. Wickham is 26.

I think Darcy was 28 and Georgiana 15 but I'm not sure where I got those ages from!

Bingley is about 23 as it says he rents Netherfield not 2 years after coming of age.

Darcy is about 28 or slightly older - he says that at the end of the book when talking to Elizabeth & it fits with him being over 10 years older than Georgiana. Whickham must be a similar age.

What isn’t clear is how Bingley & Darcy met and became such good friends.

I think generally people had to be more mature for their ages then as they had much more responsibilty earlier (either through work or through housework (which would be very arduous)). One factor in Lydia’s immaturity is that she hasn’t been expected to do much around the house - unlike the Lucas girls (Mrs B sneers at Charlotte because she suspects she went home to look after the mince pies) or Jane (who looks after the Gardiner children). Whickham is equally idle as he flits between different jobs.

@SethAndReubenTooSendGaloshes . “That makes more sense than he just wanted some company on the journey.”

That was me that said that. I always thought Wickham welcomed her infatuation as a convenient and flattering distraction while he was fleeing his debts.

“Yes I see the Lydia affair as being a deliberate attack on Darcy”

I never saw it as an attack on Darcy. It’s interesting how we all interpret him differently!

Well, he only lives in ‘Cheapside’, lest we forget Miss Bingley’s comment!

Does the book say anything about the ages of the men?
I heard a TV documentary that pointed out how young all these characters were - early twenties for most of them, only just legal adults, rattling round the drawing room of Bingley's huge house pretending to be all grown up and mature. Hormones raging all over the place.

How much older than his sister could Darcy reasonably be? I gather he was a bit older than Bingley.
Wickham too would have been early twenties? In which case the age gap between him and Lydia was not in itself part of the scandal, but a normal age gap for the times?

“I thought the money point was about whether they had means to pursue him or pay him off?”

I always thought Lydia’s family (including the Gardeners) wouldn’t have enough money required to clear his debts and satisfy his mercenary nature! I could be wrong.

Mr. Gardiner's precise fortune is never stated.

in my reading of the novel, marrying off the girls is mostly driven by her pride and competitiveness, rather than a serious concern for their futures, and without due consideration for their feelings, or the suitability of the prospective husbands.

Put bluntly, the Bennet girls don't have the option of being that picky about feelings because their dowries are so small. As marital financial prospects, they don't have that much going for them. Under those circumstances, someone like Mr Collins is actually a good match; he's the heir to Longbourne, he has a wealthy patron and a decent parish with a decent house. OK, he's a pompous fool. So is Sir James Lucas, and he ended up with a title.

Mrs B is competitive because she's up against all the other mothers in the county doing the same as her, and probably a lot of then starting off with more advantages like bigger dowries and helpful supportive husbands.

There's just a lot of missing steps, ifs buts and maybes. And it's one thing Wickham maaaaaybe having become aware that Darcy was attracted to Lizzie, but having any intentions towards her? Not a woman from that background, with relations whose situation in life was so decidedly below his own!