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?

India would have given her a chance to hide her past, and it attracted all sorts of people like her and Wickham who would be a regarded as a bit vulgar and declasse in Britain. Pre Indian Mutiny it was a good place for people to reinvent themselves - erring sons could be sent there to smarten up and straighten out.

Travelling to India would have been very expensive.

Where would the money come from for her passage to India?

Family, sisters and brothers in law probably delighted to get rid of her...:)

I first read Pride and Prejudice as a teenager and I did see Mrs Bennet as a silly woman. As I got older and reread the book, my opinion changed. She is highly motivated out of real fear of financial ruin.

The new film has butchered that story, by making it colonel Brandon's first love who Willoughby runs off with - the mother of the daughter who he ruins in the book, but the daughter doesn't exist in the film :/ In the new film she's alive and a sexy rich older woman or something.

I suppose I keep using Maria in Mansfield Park as a reference point. Yes, for Maria, adultery was a stain on the family but by sending her away, the other Bertrams seem to have preserved their own social status. However, it's not an exact comparison as their social status was much higher to begin with than the Bennets'.

I have been puzzling the question of whether Bingley and Darcy would still have married Jane and Lizzy. I think much of Darcy's intervention happened so that he would still be able to marry Lizzy, and where Darcy went, Bingley followed. If the intervention had been unsuccessful, Darcy would certainly have supported in 'tidying Lydia away' if that would have preservde the family's status sufficiently for them to marry.

But for a family without the baronetcy attached to the Bertrams, and without their wealth and degree of 'consequence' as it is so frequently described in Mansfield Park, Lydia having lived in sin, and possibly going on to further 'sin' had she not married Wickham, might have been a step too far even for Darcy's ardour.

It's possible she could have been married off to a tenant of Darcy's - someone similar in status to Robert Martin in Emma, whose family don't seem to have been concerned that Harriet Smith was the illegitimate daughter of a tradesman - although she'd be unlikely to find anyone with Robert Martin's good sense and intelligence.

I think that the 1995 version makes it obvious that Darcy falls in love with Lizzie finally when she visits Pemberley, and in the first flush of ardour he wants to help the woman he loves. It's an interesting question of what would he had done had he not fallen in love with Lizzie that day and just regarded her as a Longbourne acquaintance who improves with further meetings and who clearly has relatives that make her acceptable to him

Haven't read the book for a couple of years so have no idea if that's what JA implies about the timing.

Someone on a distant estate who's not too worried about morals. Of course, they could always keep that bit quiet.

Darcy fell in love with Lizzie miles before she visited pemberley. He had already proposed to her by then! She fell in love with HIM on that visit.

”I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”

OP, yes Wickham’s a predator
I wish I had been taught the social context for women in JA’s time properly, when I read P&P at school. Now I can see why Mrs Bennett was incredibly anxious all the time- so would I be, if my income and home depended on my husband staying alive.

It makes me wish JA had also been writing books after the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 and 1882 had happened, so that we could compare her themes in those changed times to P&P (and to the Dashwood’s situation).

'm not so sure. His proposal comes across as if he's doing her a massive favour despite himself and despite his reservations about her family. He gets massively miffed when she turns him down. It feels to me like being attracted despite himself.

I think Darcy was in love with Lizzy when he first proposed. He loves her "against his will, against his reason, and even against his character".

He thought against it because Elizabeth’s social standing and family connections were heavily inferior to his own.

I think what changed for Darcy between his first proposal and the meeting at Pemberley was that he'd had a bit of a lightbulb moment that, actually, his own family weren't completely faultless. Lady Catherine, for all her wealth, was rude and vulgar, and his own sister had conducted a clandestine courtship and nearly eloped with Wickham.

Also, at Pemberley, he'd had the opportunity of meeting the highly sensible and respectable Gardiners - when Lizzie expresses inner relief that Darcy is learning she has at least some non-embarrassing relatives.

He had loved Lizzie earlier despite all his instincts revolting against her 'connections' - what changed was that by Pemberley, the violence of that objection had considerably softened, so he was able to love her unreservedly.

I don’t understand his ‘pride’ here. Shame?

I love that quote. It encapsulates me falling in love with DH.

So my take on it
As a very young woman (say 15-25) I identified with Eliza Bennet,
As a young professional and mother to toddlers (25-35) I developed understanding of the pragmatism of Charlotte Lucus
With teenage children (35-45) I could totally sympathise with Mrs Bennett
Sadly now my children are grown up I can sort of see Lady Catherine De Burghs POV.
The book is brilliantly written.

She is both highly motivated AND a very silly woman. She fails to understand how much her own behaviour puts her daughters' prospects at risk, whilst being driven simultaneously to try to push their prospects, as she, for entirely understandable reasons, feels she must.

He views himself as vastly superior which is why he wouldn’t dance with Lizzy.

“Sadly now my children are grown up I can sort of see Lady Catherine De Burghs POV.”

Love this!

Spot on. And while she works on pushing their prospects and sabotaging their chances at every turn, Mr B sees very clearly what she's doing and how harmful it is, but does next to nothing on his daughters' behalf. Indolent.

By the time I was 30, I fully saw the wisdom of Charlotte's marriage to Mr Collins. Better a million times to be a wife in control, at least, of your own domestic sphere, with the prospect children to bring up to be sensible companions, than an eternal spinster aunt - once her parents were dead, dependent on the goodwill of a brother or sister for a home, always last to be considered, having no money and no-one in your corner.

Mr Collins might have been an idiot but he was unlikely to drink or gamble away all their money, or beat her, or make an idiot of her by having obvious mistresses (she would probably have been OK with discreet mistresses to get him out of the house).

And he was the sort of man who'd make provision for his family in the event of his death, so if he died before her, she could have ended up quite happily independent in her old age.

My Bennet is ineffective as a husband and father!