There’s a bit more to it- none of which undermines this point! I want that to be clear. Wickham is never treated as “punishment” for Lydia and the fact that many people are taken in by him is important- including another similarly aged character who nearly did what Lydia did, but we are only supposed to see her with sympathy.
But that isn’t the point I want to make. The point is that, in my opinion, there was another good outcome- and that was what Mr Darcy attempted, and that it was doomed before he even could try tells us more about the failure of the Bennet parents.
We are told explicitly- albeit briefly- in Mrs Gardiner’s letter that Mr Darcy tried to get Lydia to leave Wickham and go back to her family. Now, he would of course know that the outcome of that would be massive damage to the family- if, IF her running away with Wickham was public knowledge. But in such a situation the intelligent thing to do would be to avoid rumour spreading. Much harder if she’s left home- but she didn’t, nobody in Meryton would have questioned her absence, nor would it have been weird if she’d come back from seeing family in London. Hiding it would have been very possible- and in the eyes of Mr Darcy, a far better alternative than a young woman being stuck with Wickham.
What Mr Darcy doesn’t know- at the point that Lydia was refusing to go home- was that hiding it would be impossible by then. The Bennets have done as they always do- not handle parenting remotely well. It explicitly says that Mrs Bennet didn’t have the prudence to hold her tongue in front of the servants. I’m of the opinion that the natural expectation from readers of the time would be that the family tries to hide it and that it’s another failure on the part of Mr and Mrs Bennet that that was completely impossible.
Wickham’s behaviour was… you know. He was a 30-ish year old preying on 15/16 year olds. I’m not trying to diminish his actions- rather to paint the scale of how badly failed by her parents Lydia was, and this was just another example of that.
areudirty
dededos
baratheonpilled
dailybridgerton
janainaart
prguitarman
