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?

No mention of portly! We’re just told he’s ’silent and grave’, ‘on the wrong side of five and thirty’, and ‘not handsome’, though his face is ‘sensible’. And there’s a reference later on to him wearing flannel waistcoats and having rheumatism.

I think that the casting of the male characters is in part why the Ang Lee/Emma Thompson S and S adaptation works. That adaptation makes Edward much more charming, funny and self-deprecating, Brandon smoulderingly sexy and Willoughby more than just a cad. We see why the sisters would fall in love with them. Whereas in the novel, Edward and Brandon are dull though estimable, and Willoughby is a creep.

@whatwouldlilacerullodo — that’s my real question about Lydia. How is it she seems to have missed out on key elements of the moral education her three oldest sisters have clearly had? Did Mrs Bennet just slacken off by the time she got to the two youngest?

I meant that Emma doesn’t see her father as selfish. She was always glad she and Isabella hadn’t been sent away after their mother’s death.

Emma understands her father and doesn’t resent him at all. She knows she needs to remain at Hartfield to care for him. She does it out of love and devotion.

Dr Perry was being a good friend (and a comfort) to Mr Woodhouse by validating his anxieties rather than contradicting him. But he would’ve made a lot of money from him.

He seems oppressive to us but not to Emma. She is so loving and patient with him.

"...a very short parley with her own heart produced the most solemn resolution of never quitting her father. She even wept over the idea of it, as a sin of thought."

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

It doesn’t!

"Colonel Brandon . . . was silent and grave. His appearance however was not unpleasing, in spite of his being in the opinion of Marianne and Margaret an absolute old bachelor, for he was on the wrong side of five and thirty; but though his face was not handsome, his countenance was sensible, and his address was particularly gentlemanlike."

@Turophiles “Did Mrs Bennet just slacken off by the time she got to the two youngest?”

Maybe she was “in the depths of despair” because they weren’t boys, so she just gave up!!