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?

Great post!

In a way, I think women today are disempowered. They are treated as grasping or gold diggers if they pay attention to the wallet of the man as well as the character! They are also expected to be entirely self sufficient while of course providing any children that union may want.

And yet, money is important. Austin manages, in almost every relationship she paints, to reaffirm the notion that character and finance make a happy relationship. Too little of one, or too much of the other, are doomed. She is a good Aristotelian!

Separate bedrooms wasn't unusual as a de facto method of birth control, and easily imaginable particularly, if, as we're told, Wickham's sexual interest in Lydia faded fairly fast.

"I am not afraid; for though I am the youngest, I'm the tallest."

I read it differently from you. I think the book is pretty clear Mr Wickham is a predator and more to blame than Lydia (eg making it clear she thought they were getting married and it's him that only marries her once Darcey pays him) and the shock over his earlier grooming of Miss Darcey. Lydia's character is portrayed as 'silly' long before the elopement, and characters blame themselves for not protecting her more. Yes they are cross with her too, but the power dynamic is pretty clear.

In Mansfield Park, Jane Austen refers to the elopement of Yates and Julia as 'folly' not 'vice' - Lydia believed she was eloping with Wickham but seemed to lack any sense of urgency around the marriage actually taking place - I think her behaviour generally falls into the 'folly' category not the vice category, whereas Wickham has definite vice in mind.

Lydia seemed unconcerned with social consequences. She really was reckless!

But Austen's women, of the social class she writes about, have no choice but to be money conscious in relation to their suitors, because marriage was their only 'career'. They're not educated for anything that will bring in an income, and nothing is open to them in any case. Women today can and do earn our own money, and are educated to do so, so the wealth or income of a potential husband is far less important in the scheme of things.

Whereas Elinor in Sense and Sensibility has to take an interest in Edward's income from the Delaford living, and whether or not his mother will give him any money now that he's no longer marrying ghastly Lucy Steele, because she knows her £1000, invested at 5% annually, is all she will ever have.

What's going to be interesting about that marriage is that their means are going to be modest enough for Elinor to need to master the kinds of domestic skills that JA and her mother and sister needed to know at a time when, certainly in the countryside, virtually all food was produced and preserved at home, and a married woman of modest means would need to understand running a dairy (their cows are mentioned), cheesemaking, baking, brewing, poultry, growing foodstuffs in a kitchen garden, salting or brining meat etc, even if it was servants mostly doing the work. And there's no way Elinor would have been brought up to learn that stuff, unless she learnt it at Barton Cottage...?

This is fascinating, I didn't realise there was a very real risk of Lydia having to become a prostitute! Does anyone know of a good source of information on how the characters were regarded at the time? Like many I was sympathetic to amr Bennett when I first read it, but came to understand later how reckless he was at leaving his daughters in potential dire straights. I am also very happy that Mary got her redemption in the other Bennett sister.

I always thought that Mr and Mrs Bennet would have taken Lydia back if Mr Darcy hadn’t intervened. It would have destroyed her sisters’ marriage prospects and plunged the whole family into financial ruin.

My problem with The other Bennet sister is that Mary is nothing like the character Austen created. And she isn't really overlooked, yes she is aware that she is plainer than her sisters, but she fancies herself clever, and is opinionated, and she pushes herself forward at every opportunity, whether in conversation or at the pianofore. Kitty is more overlooked imo, being in Lydia's shadow.

Have you watched Bride and Prejudice? When I did, it made me think about this.
You can't take culture/time periods/societal norms out very easily.
Austen's contemporaries would have judged us quite harshly.
Some would say we're hypocritical now, as we would hold an older person, like Wickham, completely responsible for the elopement, yet when young teenagers are involved in crimes committed by adults, many people have very little sympathy.

I think that Yates and Julia's elopement being 'folly' rather than 'vice' is also because it's set in contrast with the much more serious issue of the married Maria Bertram's actual adultery with Mr Crawford.

Though, as Mary Crawford unwisely says, it's also folly in that they could have had a discreet affair under cover of Maria visiting her shady friends in Twickenham while Mr Rushworth was away -- actually 'quitting her husband's roof in company with Mr Crawford' is unnecessary scandal and self-exposure, and puts them into the power of one of her MIL's servants threatening exposure unless she's paid off.

(Can you imagine Mn MIL threads if the MILs also had servants taking sides against you? )

All true, but I still love the socially awkward triumph! A quick look on google shows that a few people have written Kitty Bennett books, so maybe someone has written the story you want too.

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.

The men of rank were regarded as bringing something to marriage - rank, social position and advancement and a often a title; that's why they didn't get condemned. Look at the American heiresses hunting for husbands in the 19c - they (or their parents) were very clear what the bargain was. I marry you (earl, duke, whoever) you use my money, you give me a position in English society and advantages that I probably wouldn't have had in America.

In a society where women were at a disadvantage in all ways that would be regarded as a fair trade, especially when the women considered the alternative. Look at Charlotte Lucas - she knows her husband is an idiot who shows her up every time when anyone of any influence comes within range, and she knows there are going to be aspects of marriage to him that will be distasteful; but they are still better than being an old maid. And she makes her arrangements accordingly. I would imagine millions of women did the same.

I imagine, had Lydia returned unmarried but having publicly 'lived with' Wickham, the expectation would have been that Lydia was treated similarly to Maria in Mansfield Park - i.e. shunted off somewhere to live in isolation. If her parents had taken her back, it would have risked the whole family being shunned - as in Mansfield Park, it would have been considered 'an insult to the neighbourhood' to expect them to acknowledge her.

The problem the Bennets might have faced would be funding this - they weren't anywhere near as rich as Sir Thomas. Such a stain on the family would have jeopardised the Bingley and Darcy marriages taking place - if they still happened, potentially they could have paid for it.

Such a life for someone like Lydia would have been a fate worse than death, I think, and it's very questionable whether she would have obediently stayed in seclusion. It's likely she would have sought out 'society' in some form or another, probably very dubious society, and she could have ended up as some kind of prostitute or 'kept woman, probably not even understanding fully what she was doing.

I don't think there's any chance at all they would have taken her back, if by that you mean living at Longbourn with them -- Mr Bennet doesn't even want to have the newly-wed Wickham and Lydia to visit, and that's after it's been patched up! He's certainly not going to risk the reputations of his other four daughters being further hurt by having their damaged-goods sister back living at home. (And there was always the risk she was pregnant, too...) I mean, I bet Mrs Bennet would have wanted to, but Mr B would have overruled her.

Sir Thomas in Mansfield Park tells Mrs Norris, who assumes that the presence of the unmarried Fanny is the reason he won't receive his adulterous daughter back home after it's clear the man she left her husband with won't marry her, that this is not the case, that even if he didn't have a young, unmarried woman living in his house to be 'endangered' by contact with Maria, he would still never have had her home:

he would never have offered so great an insult to the neighbourhood as to expect it to notice her. As a daughter, he hoped a penitent one, she should be protected by him, and secured in every comfort, and supported by every encouragement to do right, which their relative situations admitted; but farther than that he could not go. Maria had destroyed her own character, and he would not, by a vain attempt to restore what never could be restored, by affording his sanction to vice

In his case, money is no object, so a discreet establishment is formed for Maria in a different county, with her aunt Norris to live with her. I wonder what Mr Bennet would have done with Lydia in a similar situation -- some kind of discreet 'paying guest' situation with a family in a remote area?

Wouldn’t the scandal of Lydia have permanently disgraced the entire Bennet family? If so, it wouldn’t matter if Lydia lived at home as the whole family would be ostracised.

Do you think Darcy and Bingley would still have married Lizzy and Jane?

I rather hoped that they went abroad to one of the Spa towns and ran the Casino and prospered from roulette.

Yes I think the crucial differences there, as well as what you say about it being a contrast with Maria and Mr Crawford are (a) Julia and Yates do actually get married on their elopement, yes Lydia may have thought at first they were going to Scotland to get married but when they end up in London, unmarried and with no real intention or plan to marry (and it would have been almost impossible to marry in London secretly and without her father's permission), she doesn't seem unduly bothered and lives (by extension has sex with him apparently happily for some weeks (b) Yates may not be an ideal match for Julia but he is roughly her social equal, plus Julia will have some money so they have something to live on whereas Lydia and Wickham would be close to destitute since he's left his job in the militia. So I think sadly however much Wickham is more to blame, at the time Lydia's behaviour would have been thought of as vice too - that's why Elizabeth is so surprised and angry that both she and Mrs Bennett are so unrepentant, indeed triumphant when Lydia and Wickham come back to Longbourn. While the marriage might have done a lot to repair the damage, Elizabeth (and Mrs Gardiner) still expects Lydia to feel ashamed of what she's done which shows I think that they view it as a bit worse than silly or thoughtless behaviour...

It's likely she would have sought out 'society' in some form or another, probably very dubious society, and she could have ended up as some kind of prostitute or 'kept woman, probably not even understanding fully what she was doing.

She'd have found clients as long as she was young and attractive and jolly company - not top flight protectors, because frankly Lydia had neither class nor education to make her appealing to a man who wanted a bit more from a mistress than a bunk up. Once she stopped being young and attractive and a bit of arm candy there'd likely have been an inexorable slide down the social scale until she ended up somewhere like Whitechapel doing tuppenny uprights for dockers and labourers; unless of course she managed to get her family to take her back or to get herself married to a small businessman or merchant who was not too fussed about her background.

Wouldn’t the scandal of Lydia have permanently disgraced the entire Bennet family? If so, it wouldn’t matter if Lydia lived at home as the whole family would be ostracised.

Yes - the girls especially would have been deeply tainted by association because people would think that's what all the Bennet girls were like. That's why the Bertrams packed Maria off to obscurity - so people they knew didn't think they family condoned her behaviour.

If Lydia had come back from London ‘alone and with child…’

The characterisation of Mrs Bennett as silly - a older version of Kitty and Lydia - is wrong-footed. Mrs Bennett is the grounded parent. She knows that her daughters will live in penury unless they marry - see Miss Bates in 'Emma'. Mr Bennett is no use at all, mocking his wife and hiding away in his study. In 'P&P', we see Charlotte Lucas putting material comfort over romance, and taking care of her own future. Mr Collins attracts ridicule but he will inherit property and has a living.

It’s a while since I read P&P, but I don’t remember Jane Austen/the narrator being judgemental about Lydia. Certainly some of the characters were, but I felt that her foolishness and naivety were made very clear throughout. Lydia was like Mrs Bennet, without any of her mother’s redeeming qualities.

I think that JA was quite clear that Wickham seduced, ie groomed, Lydia, just as Willoughby tried to seduce Marianne in Sense & Sensibility.

In both books Austen was exploring the complex intersections of love, friendship, power, security, pragmatism and marriage.

Could Lydia have been packed off to India to find a husband over there? I find myself thinking of Vanity Fair now, which is set only a little bit later (although obviously written in 1847). Becky Sharp ended her days wandering around the continent, moving from one spa town to another. Becky, however, was an intelligent woman (albeit an immoral one) and Lydia was an amoral airhead. I can't see how she could have kept afloat on her own. She would undoubtedly have become a fallen woman.

(The other book I'm now thinking about is Quincunx, which is far more frank about this kind of thing than an English novel written in the 19th century could be.)