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?

Yes, I agree. I really like Marianne and the fire in her belly!

Your quote confirms he couldn't be bothered to... well, parent.

Agree. But I'm team Mrs Bennett. She at least was trying to guarantee their future.

As @kxeilsaid, no one was parenting them. The girls went after whatever interested them.

That’s not really my point, though, it’s more that it never appears to occur to Lydia at any point that putting herself into the power of a man and sleeping with him while unmarried is either wrong or catastrophically dangerous in the context of her time.

That’s less like not paying any attention at her French lessons/refusing to practice the piano, than it is not having noticed gravity! 😃

I mean, JA just has to do it for the plot, obviously. We can’t be too distracted by Lydia because her actions only matter plotwise insofar as they affect the marital prospects of Elizabeth and Jane. She’s a ‘flat’ character like Mr Collins, who doesn’t change. If JA gave us a terribly remorseful, crushed Lydia, we’d be thinking it was awful she had to marry a predatory cad and it would darken the happiness of Jane and Elizabeth’s endings.

“That’s not really my point, though, it’s more that it never appears to occur to Lydia at any point that putting herself into the power of a man and sleeping with him while unmarried is either wrong or catastrophically dangerous in the context of her time.”

Lydia was like this because her parents had failed her. Mrs Bennet indulged her and shared Lydia's superficial love for clothes, officers, and gossip, serving as a poor moral guide.

Mrs. Bennet also allowed Lydia to "come out" into public society and mingle with militia officers at an unusually young age (just 15).

Mr Bennet completely neglected the moral and intellectual training of his younger daughters, preferring to mock their silliness rather than correct it.

Lydia possessed high "animal spirits" and viewed life as a game, famously calling her elopement with George Wickham a "good joke" rather than recognising the social ruin it brought her family.

Because no one ever disciplined Lydia or taught her propriety, she genuinely did not care about societal rules or the feelings of others.

I actually think it is Miss Austen’s genius that she gives us insufferable, bumptious Lydia who is delighted with herself. I can’t think of any contemporary, or anyone for the next 100+ years, who would have avoided pointing the moral.