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

[mids2019]

So Lydia is 15 years old and to my (admittedly non literary mind) groomed by Mr. Wickham into eloping. Reading the book now it seems full of victim blaming with Lydia being blamed as much as Whickam for the inappropriate relationship. Is this too simplistic?

I agree that she is devoted. But - she is young. So, at certain points when she wants to carry on like a young person, go to a party etc, he moans and groans all the way through. He nags a lot.

‘Meh!’

True, but I don’t think it’s intentional. He suffers from severe anxiety.

He is a "most affectionate, indulgent father”

My post was for @AlonsoMosley

This thread has made me realise that while the Dashwood, Bennet & Morland families aren’t perfect, they do sound happier & more supportive than the families in JA’s later 3 works.

Then again, the heroine’s family in Sanditon sounds nice whereas Lady Susan is an appalling mother, which destroys the youthful - mature work family pattern.

I don’t think Emma’s devotedness has anything to do with Mr Woodhouse’s selfishness, hypochondria and permanent state of anxiety! You’d have to speculate a backstory for it, but as Isabella, Emmas’s older sister, is also a raging hypochondriac, something to do with the early loss of his wife/her mother? And/or the permanent-presence of Perry the apothecary, who never contradicts any of Mr Woodhouse’s mad theories about draughty or cake, and is getting rich enough on attending him and everyone else in Highbury to buy a carriage?

I suppose the icky part of Emma and Knightley's love story is that he's known her since childhood. And been a close family friend in that time, not just some local landowner who her family has vaguely known. So even though Marianne and Brandon's age gap is bigger, at least he didn't know her when she was 7. I'm not a massive Colonel Brandon fan though. People swoon over Rickman's screen depiction of him, even though the real Brandon was more portly and far less dashing. I feel like he sees his chance and swoops in when Marianne is a bit broken.

He is a "most affectionate, indulgent father”

Yes, and Emma recognizes the freedom that she has with him. It does come at a cost though - is his indulgence and affection a little oppressive?

Ah now, indulge me if you will. No-one ever agrees with me so you don't have to but I have a cherished personal theory that Brandon, far from being a boring old dullard who cynically spots his opportunity for a young pretty wife, is in fact, by far, the most romantic, sentimental and emotionally unhinged of Austen's men. I think people are way too influenced by the on-screen portrayal of him which always makes him older and stiffer to emphasise the difference with Willoughby, and because in the novel we only see him through the eyes of Elinor and Marianne, who being teenagers of course think he's ancient (Elinor appreciates his sensible qualities but still definitely sees him as a fatherly figure). But take a step back from that and look at the facts of his life:

-Tries to elope while still a teenager with his father's ward (no other character in Austen aside from the villains would so much as contemplate an elopement)
-Remains violently in love through many years distance
-Tracks his lost love down and rescues her from a life of prostitution
-Openly raises her daughter as his own despite being the butt of vulgar speculation and jokes from his entire social circle
-Rudely gallops off to rescue said daughter without a word of explanation and leaving a party of guests in his dust.
-Fights a duel with Willoughby (a duel! It's hard to explain how wildly eccentric and scandalous this would have been to Austen's audience, Georgette Heyer would have you believe they were virtually an everyday occurrence but in reality ordinary people just didn't do that)
-Falls in love with Marianne at first sight purely because of the resemblance to his lost love.
-Loves music in a wildly sentimental fashion, not for any technical admiration reasons, purely because of feelings

Now I put it to you, can you imagine any of that from Darcey/Knightly/Ferrars/Bertram/Wentworth even (Wentworth probably the closest but there's no way he's fighting duels or eloping or falling madly in love with a 16 year who's shown him nothing intellectually but purely because she plays the piano like a lost love). No - because Austen puts all her maddest romantic stuff into Brandon who can take it as a character because we don't see of it first hand. He definitely didn't just want any old pretty teenage wife, Austen makes that clear through the words of Mrs Jennings who makes it clear she virtually threw her daughters (who are both young and beautiful and well educated but empty headed) and there was absolutely nothing doing. Brandon is the sort who would only ever marry for love...

I still as a modern reader find the age gap between him and Marianne a bit much, but in all other respects they're perfectly suited, their's will be a household where someone's always weeping over poetry or a sad air on the piano for sure!

Me too - I view Brandon as an opportunist with a hint of predation. Again, I see a selfishness in him. He looks at Marianne as his second chance. By that point Marianne has been broken by Willoughby, and terrified by the notion that she could have ended up broke, with child, and on her way to being dead. She is a very low point when Brandon steps in. I feel that JA gives her the short straw actually. Nevertheless, we see how she could grow into the marriage.
But! Brandon gets no brownie points from me.
So there!

Oh - interesting! I need to sit with that for a bit.

But all that makes him sound like a walking red flag! Like a middle-aged, flannel-waistcoated, Byronic former emo kid with poor impulse control, who keeps falling in love with the same 17-year old girl, regardless of his own age!

Oh no, I know. I quite agree in fact. I didn't say he was my favourite hero, or the one that I'd be happiest for my daughter to date (should she be an Austen heroine, which thankfully she isn't). Just that the people who don't like him because he's boring and stiff and cynical are completely wrong about why he's not the best. A flannel waistcoated emo of a walking red flag is more like it 😀

A yet further example of what an impulsive loon he is, if you needed one - the giving of Delaford living to Edward Ferrars. People sold these livings, for lots and lots of money, or if you were going to take a more moral line, you carefully selected a rector who was a good, respectable and well educated man who would do right by the people of your parish - selecting him was an important duty of the landowner. More cynically, your choice of rector (and his wife) is really important socially in a small place like Delaford, the rector might be the only other gentleman's family in the parish, and if the rectory is on or adjacent to your land you're going to be seeing a lot of them, so you'd forgive the landowner for choosing a friend or relative or at least someone they know they like a bit (if they're not just going to flog it to the highest bidder of course). What you don't do, if you have an ounce of sanity, is give it, for free, to a random young man who you've never met, you only know by a remote acquaintance, and literally the only thing you know about him is he's about to make an unequal marriage and his family disapprove and there's been a big drama. You know even less about his wife-to-be who may for all you know be a vulgar shrill hussy with even more vulgar relations who will make your life a misery 😉. And yet what must Brandon do the second he hears an emotional story about someone's family being mean because of an unsuitable marriage, that's right, intervene in a big dramatic way. Red flag!

I know, I know, Austen needed something to move the plot along and also a way to give E&M their happy ending living nearby(plus the scene with Mrs J mishearing is very funny) so maybe I'm making too much of it but it just seems so Brandon to me 😀

I commend you for your spirited defence of the portly country squire! He certainly had some big emotions lying beneath his waistcoat.

But if you were Marianne would you not at some point, maybe a couple of years into the marriage, when your yearning for Willoughby had subsided and your emotions were on a much more even keel, not think to yourself 'does my husband only fancy me because I remind him of his dead lost love Eliza?' and 'should I ask Elinor if this is a bit creepy?'. And she was still only a teen, so had many years ahead of her to ponder exactly why Brandon took such an obsessive shine to her.

Actually, he now reminds me of grief stricken Captain Benwick from Persuasion who spends his days staring out to sea reciting poetry thinking of his dead lost love, and then finds solace in the arms of the apparently inferior Louise Musgrove (who is admittedly very annoying with all that flirty jumping she does off the harbour steps). But it seems the head injury made her character more appealing, so that worked out well.

middle-aged, flannel-waistcoated, Byronic former emo kid with poor impulse control

😂😂

former emo kid with poor impulse control
With the beautiful voice of Alan Rickman - I’m in…

I always imagine Brandon waking up at 3 am years later and cringing with embarrassment at both doing his best to enable the Edward-Lucy Steele marriage financially and commissioning the woman who is secretly in love with Edward to make him the offer. 😱

See, I think of Benwick as being the classic gloomy ‘guy who treats any halfway sympathetic woman as a therapist’. I know Anne is actually grateful at first because she’s trying to avoid being in conversation with Wentworth, but she spends the entire Lyme trip being sought out by Benwick and having poetry recited at her.

If Anne had stayed on after Louisa’s fall, he’d probably have fallen in love with her, but as it is, she’s just a listening ear between Fanny Harville and Louisa.

I understand that the book portrays Wickham as a predator, but Mr. Darcy is at fault for not alerting people about him. The book also makes it very clear that it was irresponsible of the parents to let Lydia travel with her friend. Lizzie asks her father to stop the trip, but he couldn't be bothered.
Everyone failed Lydia, also by not educating her properly.

Really enjoying this thread. Thank you!

Where does it say Colonel Brandon is PORTLY!? I don't remember that at all.

I agree with @NoctuaAthene that he's probably the most romantic of her male characters. Played by lovely Alan Rickman in the 1995 film, (although yes he was a bit old for the role, but that voice!) and the lovely David Morrissey in the 2008 miniseries. Brandon was a lot more interesting than Edward F, and Willoughby is just a complete sleaze bag. Marianne is very lucky imo, although it's a pity the age gap is so big.

This thread is making my day. Thank you ! I so agree with whoever said if only we had good social history context when studying this at school.
wickham is absolutely predatory. He’s a rake. But I think Austen ‘s interest in the degree to which bad character (weak women, rakish men) comes from upbringing or nature is v gendered. I can’t actually think of any of her female characters who are naturally dreadful, whereas many of the men seem to have no excuse.

Yes and has also taken on a paternal status in many ways. The constant chastising. The book is lovely as it stands. My guess is he feels like Emma is essentially his back up and his Whatsapp chats would be full of lurid messages about her with his mates.

The icky one for me is the younger Elliot, in Persuasion my favourite JA. Perfect 1995 portrayal, just sublime. On the surface, younger Elliot a good match for Anne, but scratch underneath and the worst in every way.

Brandon might have done some exciting things, but he remains a very dull character in the book. Edward is also dull (possibly apart from an early chapter when he is chatting to the girls). One reason why the 1995 film works so well is it cast 2 extremely charismatic leading men to add interest to these roles.

The other men (even Edmund) aren’t dull as we hear them speak more & have more access to their thoughts. Conversation / dialogue is so important in JA’s characterisation.

Re Mr Knightley* - the age gap is uncomfortable to modern eyes, but I think it was just a fact of life then. If you live in a small village that will inevitably limit your choice of suitors. Emma’s only other real option was Mr Elton & this is why Frank Churchill was of such interest. It’s not as if Mr Knightley proposes as soon as she is 16.

*I originally typed “Mr K”, but then remembered to change it to prove that I am more genteel than Mrs Elton.