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?

What an interesting thread. The difference in life experience between the average British 15-year-old girl now and Lydia Bennett is very striking.

Basically she's been indulged all her life and allowed to do exactly what she wants.

So she does; except that in the case of eloping with Wickham that could have had catastrophic consequences for her and her family. But, someone rescues her (and I bet that's a pattern) so she never learns. More than not learning, she doesn't actually care.

At some point in her future, the Darcys and the Bingleys weren't going to tow her out of whatever mess she got herself into and let her sort it out for herself. I bet Darcy was more than capable of saying 'Nope, we're not lending her any more money. We're not housing her when the landlord chucks her out and she's off with another man. We're not housing her and the kids for months.' But people like Lydia will ALWAYS bounce back, so they never actually learn.

But she's responding to Lydia saying that 'Wickham is safe' (because Miss King with the inheritance around whom he was sniffing has gone to live with her uncle in Liverpool), and what Lizzy actually says is 'Mary King is safe -- safe from a connection imprudent as to fortune.' I think all Lydia means is that Lizzy hasn't lost him to someone else (because it's not so long since she had a marked preference for him, and he for her), and he's still free for them all to flirt with at balls.

Even though Lizzy now knows about Wickham's attempt to get Georgiana Darcy to elope with him, she's still just saying 'Well, it's best that Mary King didn't marry someone when they're ill-matched financially.'

I mean, it was considered pretty normal for men to think in terms of the finances of the women they are paying attention to.

Lizzy has just had nice Colonel Fitzwilliam, who is very taken with her, tell her quite directly that men of his rank of life (younger son of an earl) cannot marry where they like because they lack the money to marry purely for love. And he's no Wickham, he's presented as a man of good sense, good manners etc.

I mean, it was considered pretty normal for men to think in terms of the finances of the women they are paying attention to.

That was because on marriage to an heiress, all her money became the man's totally. Women did not keep their own money on marriage until the 1880s.

Husbands could spend, sell, or give away their wives' money and personal property at will, any property became the husband's property and a married woman had no legal existence separate from her husband.

Heiresses were very, very tempting to someone like Wickham.

But of an aside but can modern adaptions of JA like the film sense and sensibility pay justice to an era where there was ingrained misogyny and as discussed what we would now call predatory behaviour. I read there were normally large age gaps between men and women in this era but this seems to slip the minds of modern producers.

I don't think they can. Modern audiences would be horrified by an accurate portrayal of attitudes from JA's era. It would never get as far as the screen.

Downton Abbey got some stick because as some critics said, the Crawleys had the political and social attitudes of Lib Dems. A series that really showed the attitudes of the aristocracy from the 1900s - sexual, political social, familial - wouldn't have made it past the pilot episode.

I think they absolutely can - whether they do or not is another question. To be fair, a hard hitting examination of misogyny, grooming and sexual abuse is hardly an obvious commercial / popular success regardless of if it's a period drama or a modern urban story or high fantasy... There's a portion of the audience that really just want a beautiful bonnets and romance story - a bit of escapism, and who's to blame them.

That being said I do think a lot of those undertones and implications are there in modern JA adaptations - take the 2008 sense and sensibility TV adaptation (gosh nearly 10 years ago) - that made the very conscious decision to bring the off-screen seduction of a teenage girl by Willoughby the romantic anti-hero onto screen, where in the novel and previous adaptations it's only mentioned by the characters and not actually portrayed. They deliberately showed her as a young and innocent girl as well. Obviously it's only one scene and you could definitely overlook it, but iirc it's one of the very first scenes so definitely there. I haven't seen the new film yet so interesting to see how it's handled?

I think the 1995 made an attempt at explaining the ramifications of the Lydia/Wickham but IIRC it was mostly via Mr Collins telling Mr B to let Lydia never darken his doorstep again - which would have been a typical reaction of the time. But Mr C is established as a buffoon so most people wouldn't take notice of what he said.

Was it made clear in adaptations that Lydia is only 15? I think Lizzie might mention it to Lady Catherine but IIRC that isn't made explicit; and Julia Sawalha of course looks older than 15 anyway.

Yes, I get this! My point is Wickham is only a more dastardly, small-time version of what men of rank whom JA considers estimable characters do, without anyone condemning them for it.

If Colonel Fitzwilliam had, for instance, courted his own ward, Georgiana, with Darcy's consent, purely with an eye to her £30k fortune, Georgiana would almost certainly have meekly gone along with it because her brother's wish was her command. It would just have been a savvier way of approaching it via a different and more socially-acceptable kind of abuse of trust than the one Wickham tried and nearly succeeded in.

Even, to go back to Wickham in his 'fancying Lizzy' period, Mrs Gardener, who likes him, bluntly tells Lizzy she can't afford to become attached to Wickham because he's too poor to marry, and even after he pointedly turns his attentions to Mary King immediately after she inherited her £10k, Lizzy says 'handsome young men must have something to live on as well as the plain.'

If Wickham is a predator, he's just a more scoundrelly variety of a type of financial predation that was socially normal.

I think it is made clear - I mean aside from anything else it's clear Jane is 21 and Lizzie a little younger (as it's clear they're getting towards the older side to be getting married) so by extension their younger sisters are teenagers. Lady Catherine definitely comments negatively that 15 is too young to be 'out' i.e. appearing in society and available for marriage, especially with 4 older unmarried sisters, and Mrs Bennett in the 1995 adaptation gleefully screeches / brags about her being married at only 15 - all of this intended more as illustrating the vulgarity of the Bennetts and Mrs B especially than making an explicit point though. I think the 2008 adaptation did a better job as showing the younger Bennett girls as teenagers - the actress who played Lydia was IIRC 20, but she definitely played her as younger than Julia Swalhala did - lots of giggling and screeching and obsession with ribbons and fashion. Where they were a bit wrong IMO was showing some of the men as also very young - Matthew McFadyn and Tom Hollander were in their 40s as Darcy and Collins whereas Wickham and Bingley were all played by actors in their 20s when they should all have been about the same age and all quite a bit older than the women. I think showing the age gap between Wickham and Lydia clearly would have made the point a bit more...

In fact she was encouraged by her mother to pursue the relationship although Mrs Bennett wanted her to marry him not run off.

Maybe not a straight predator at that point but a fortune hunter.

Still a predator.

Same as Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility. Only there he is more specifically contrasted with Edward Ferrars on how young me facing poverty should behave

Both willoughby and Wickham are nasty predators

I think casting Lydia can be challenging, because she's always banging on about being the tallest of the sisters. I also think it's hard to convey exactly what her eloping with Wickham means socially. Not just in terms of her own individual 'ruin' and the family being 'disgraced', but its very real social implications for her sisters, who are facing not being able to marry at all, and the resulting life of poverty living on a tiny income with their mother after their father's death.

Jane and Lizzy's marriages are deeply unlikely, in a realistic world. It's comparatively unlikely Darcy would have got involved in trying to patch up the Lydia/Wickham marriage had he not felt personally involved because of Georgiana, and had he not literally been on the spot. having decided to renew his suit to Lizzy when Lizzy got the news -- if, for instance, he'd only found out via gossip much later on when it was too late to intervene, would he really have gone back to Longbourn to see Lizzy?

And I doubt Bingley would have gone back to Jane without Darcy's 'permission', especially if his sisters impressed upon him first that Jane was now unmarriageable because of Lydia, and that he risked making Miss Bingley unmarriageable if he connected her with the 'disgraced' Bennets.

And of course, if Lydia had not been married off to Wickham, she'd have had to be concealed somewhere 'respectable' by her family, at extra family expense.

Well I agree but also think it's a tiny bit more complicated than that. One of the things that makes JA so fascinating was that she was writing at a real time of transition to attitudes to marriage and love. The idea of love and romance and choice of partner on the grounds of 'love' was only just becoming an embedded idea, as opposed to marriage being a purely property and financial based transaction. So in the royal family and high levels of the aristocracy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries marriages were still largely arranged, but in the type of people JA was writing about, the educated middle classes and minor aristocracy, while of course money and class was a very important factor, both men and women were considered to legitimately have an element of choice in who they married (only within quite narrow constraints of course). The idea of choosing a husband for a daughter or ward and instructing her to marry him was considered very old fashioned by this point and everyone is still negotiating what that actually means as of course parents still have opinions (don't we always) and are working out the boundaries of what they can/can't acceptably force through.

So yes, if Col Fitzwilliam had wanted to marry Georgiana, that probably would have been considered within boundaries of him not being thought of negatively or as a fortune hunter (not a great match for Georgiana who would probably have reasonably behaved expected to marry someone with more money or a title or at least an elder son who would have inherited the estate, but acceptable). But I don't think it would have been that he approached Darcy, asked to marry her, Darcey agrees and that was it, his wish would have been Georgiana's command. It would have been more like they got to know one another, liked one another (or least she is persuaded to agree to a marriage), then permission would be sought from Darcy and everyone is happy.

I'm sure you're right that Georgiana with all her meekness and respect for Darcey would be more encouraged by at least tacit approval from her brother before allowing herself to like or fall in love with someone but at her class and status level it wouldn't be an arranged marriage as such. Hell, had she really wanted to marry someone like Wickham, virtually penniless and with only a small salary from a profession to rely on (but without all the lies and profligacy and other misdeeds), she probably could have got permission from Darcey to do so (after all he himself chooses a penniless girl from a vulgar family so hypocritical of him to have refused the same to his sister!), or she could have waited to be 21 and marry without permission (Georgiana as depicted probably would never have done something so bold but other girls did).

I find it really interesting as a study, this era where girls (and young men) had this new freedom and romance in their lives that previous generations didn't, to have at least some choice in spouse, and how all that plays out, some characters still basically just choose based purely on money or status or what their families want, whereas others are fully romantic and choose only based on love or attraction, and how that works out for them...

What a fantastic discussion! I wish I could add to it..as foolish as Lydia was, Wickham knew he wasn’t going to marry her (before Darcy intervened) and knew he was leading her to her ruin. And not just her but all the Bennett sisters. Definitely a predator

Lydia also has 4 older sisters so much like youngest children today, she would be “older” in her mind.

I’d love to see how it turned out in an imagined sequel. I’m sure Wickham would have no qualms about his young wife producing multiple babies without any thought of the future.

At 15 with a gaggle of oh so sensible sisters, getting off with a smart uniformed 'bad boy' would appeal to many of us I think. (sigh)

Off topic a bit but still JA and marriage: On age difference, I am very concerned about Colonel Brandon. Did he not distinguish himself in The War of American Independence.

Unless Wickham abstained from sex, the number of children Lydia bore was out of their control.

Colonel Brandon was described as being "the wrong side of 35".

The novel says, after they married, Wickham's affection for Lydia soon turned into indifference - whether they'd continue to have sex or whether he'd seek it elsewhere, I don't know.

That what I mean. I’m sure men must have abstained in earlier times (or gone elsewhere) to protect their wives health. Or possibly practiced old fashioned forms of birth control.

I think Austen's genius is in the fact that she isn't actually 'present' in her novels. The storylines all unfold through the minds and behaviours of the characters she so meticulously created, from people she observed.

I think that she was simply writing about what she noticed of human nature and behavior. Austen has left it up to us what we make of it.

That is her genius, and I'm sticking with that because she's my homegirl (I live very near her Chawton home).

It's a bit Charles and Diana, though, isn't it? Obviously Lizzy hadn't been 'dating' him as such as the concept didn't exist, but they were having confidential talks, and their preference for one another at balls and dinners was marked enough for Mrs Gardener to tell her to take care, because marrying him wasn't possible on financial grounds. And then, a few months later, he takes up with her younger sister when the Mary King relationship doesn't work out. (Presumably someone (her uncle in Liverpool?) thought she could do better than Wickham and got her out of the way?)

Lydia also describes herself as the tallest of the sisters, despite being the youngest.

I wrote a sequel and dispatched Wickham quite quickly!