Pride & Prejudice: why did Wickham go with Lydia?

[Declan]

I've just been reading Pride and Prejudice and I think the reason Wickham ran off with Lydia is out of revenge towards Lizzy.

Just before Wickham left with his regiment for Brighton, where Lydia was also invited to stay by a family nearby where she lived - just before they both left, there was a big dinner at Lizzy's in Longbourn.

This was just after Lizzy was made aware of Wickham's true nature from Darcy's letter. Wickham wasn't aware of Lizzy's knowledge. They were sitting together at the dinner table and Wickham discovered that Lizzy knew all about his deceit and that his manners were just a front.

Lizzy treated him sarcastically. A short while later, we find Wickham has taken Lydia to London from Brighton.

Another thing Darcy says about Wickham in his letter is that he's a vengeful person.

So, Lizzy's harsh words, and Darcy saying he's vengeful is enough to feel a hint that, if not for Lizzy's words to Wickham, Wickham would've had no feelings of vengeance; and, seeing as he was already on good terms with the Bennet family, having dinners there, he may well have left Lydia alone in Brighton.

Lizzy's playfully critical nature gets related in this way, I think, to Lydia's downfall.

[Gladys]

Is it possible that Wickham's revenge was also directed at Darcy, who eventually bribes him to marry Lydia? After all he knew Darcy very well, was on less than good terms, and had received a Darcy handout previously.

[Declan]

That's a good point. :-) I'd definitely prefer if going with Lydia was against Darcy, not Lizzy, as that just seems more natural.

But he doesn't know much about Lizzy and Darcy, as far as I can see, or does he from your own impression? If he doesn't know about Lizzy and Darcy, I'm not sure that he'd think Darcy would provide for him and Lydia.

As Darcy said himself to Lizzy at the end, his main reason for managing Wickham's and Lydia's affair was his love for Elizabeth. Did Wickham know of this closeness between Darcy and Lizzy?

The only place I think he could've found out was at the last dinner before he went to Brighton, where Lizzy, armed with her new knowledge about his character, with her shrewdness and wit got on the wrong side of him.

But I don't know if that's enough for Wickham to know that she and Darcy were close. Maybe Darcy would've helped Wickham in any love match.

In Mrs Gardiner's letter to Lizzy, where she explains that it was Darcy and not Mr Gardiner who provided for Wickham - Mrs Gardiner says Darcy said to her that the reason he's helping Wickham is because he, Darcy, felt responsible for Wickham misleading Lydia, as he didn't warn people about Wickham's character. He always kept his knowledge about the man covered up.

But Mrs Gardiner herself doesn't believe this reason, as she says in the letter.

Maybe it's left open and ambiguous. But there are two suggestive, though not conclusive, clues that he was revenging himself against Lizzy: Darcy, in his main letter to Lizzy, mentions he's vengeful, and Lizzy definitely offends him at the table - and you don't offend a vengeful man.

And Darcy had to seek Wickham out, in London; had to persuade the landlady who was hiding Wickham to let him see him.

If Wickham was doing it against Darcy, and thought Darcy would help, why be so difficult to find? Unless his act of revenge against Darcy was just blind and not a manipulative way of getting financial help? But surely Wickham wouldn't want financial help at the cost of being tied to a woman he doesn't want. Surely he'd prefer his roaming freedom impoverished as opposed to being maritally bound and with enough to live on?

I don't know. It's not meant to be analyzed this much, for sure. Maybe just a few hints surrounding Wickham for and against. The story's an exploration of Lizzy's character, not Wickham's!

[dfloyd]

read P. D. James' new mystery Death Comes to Pemberly. Not as good a mystery novel as some of James' other books, but James has captured the style of Jane Austen well enough to satisfy most Austen devotees. James doesn't answer all about Lydia's and Wickham's relationship, but she does explore it as well as Elizabeth's and Darcy's future life after their marriage.

[Declan]

Gladys, while you're commenting on this thread, you might see I've started another thread around Austen's Emma, which I'm just starting to read.

I see from a sub-forum on Austen that you didn't like that book.

I read it in my early twenties and didn't like it. I thought it was dull. Then I read it in my late twenties, and thought all the dulness altered to a riot of irreverence.

I'm reading it again now, after having just re-read Pride and Prejudice, and I'm hoping it'll be at least as good as the last time I read it.

I hope you consider giving it another shot, if it's timely for you.

I like Henry James as well. I haven't read the Golden Bowl, but I recently read Washington Square and the Turn of the Screw - for free on gutenberg.org - and I loved them, especially Washington Square. I only made it through two thirds of What Maisie Knew - she knew too much for me. He's a great writer, though. He's got some special craft going on there.

[kelby_lake]

I think that Wickham's running off with Lydia is primarily to bring shame on the Bennett family, thus ruining Elizabeth's chances of getting a good husband.

[Gladys]

I don't know. It's not meant to be analyzed this much, for sure.

I, for one, enjoy such analysis and yours seems plausible. But it's quite a while since I read Pride and Prejudice. I'll follow your new Emma thread with interest. I found the humour in Emma to be crass slapstick, whereas I felt Austen laughing subtly at me for most of her earlier, fresher novel.


I haven't read the Golden Bowl, but I recently read Washington Square and the Turn of the Screw - for free on gutenberg.org - and I loved them, especially Washington Square. I only made it through two thirds of What Maisie Knew - she knew too much for me.

Turn of the Screw - like The Other House and The Awkward Age - did disappoint me, but a dozen other Henry James novels have been wonderful. I've almost finished The Princess Casamassima and am enjoying it.

Washington Square is monumental although you'd never guess reading the novel sub-forum? A melodrama involving gold-digger Townsend encapsulated within the high drama of misunderstanding between father and daughter. The first page speaks tellingly of Dr. Sloper:



He was a thoroughly honest man - honest in a degree of which he had perhaps lacked the opportunity to give the complete measure...

What Maisie knew, the easiest and funniest of James' novels, begins with the divorce court assessment of mother Ida:



The father, who, though bespattered from head to foot, had made good his case, was, in pursuance of this triumph, appointed to keep her: it was not so much that the mother's character had been more absolutely damaged as that the brilliancy of a lady's complexion (and this lady's, in court, was immensely remarked) might be more regarded as showing the spots.

Our last view of Ida involves a James brilliancy. Until Maisie and Sir Claude depart for France, Ida may be said to have acted entirely without regard to anyone but herself. But before Mrs Wix crosses the Channel and Ida leaves for South Africa, Ida locates her sacked governess and gives her a ten pound note with an unexpected blessing. Speaking later of Ida's visit, Mrs Wix tells Maisie:



"She wants me to have YOU!" Mrs. Wix declared.

[Declan]

I thought the sentences in Maisie a lot harder to follow than in Washington Square. I think, if his storyline grabs you, it energizes the concentration to sort out all the sentences and do their beauty justice. So I guess it's just the story of Maisie didn't grab me.

I thought Washington Square, the father and daughter are two tremendous characters. I think the father really did underestimate the daughter. The extent to which such a good person was fooled in love is very sad reading. Wonderful.

James didn't write a preface to that novel. It was one of his works he was least satisfied with. The doctor has a wise sister in it - I forget her name - but she only plays a bit part. Maybe James felt annoyed with some loose ends with some of the characters. I don't know. I think it's a wonderful novel. Catherine's love story is profoundly interesting and moving and has important things to say to all unrequited loves the world over. Catherine is such an intense character.

[Declan]

I will look forward to reading his Princess Cas. novel. I thought the Turn of the Screw very gripping.

I don't agree with the whole debate about whether the ghosts were real. The most gripping moments in the story are due to the mind thinking, while reading, that there is a supernatural element to the story. And one can go along with that even if in real life one doesn't at all believe in the supernatural.

I think when it comes to accomplished, thoughtful writing, there is an intolerance for supernatural subjects. When the intellectual bar is raised high, it seems the consequence is that the subject must be scientific or natural. That the only way the supernatural can be allowed in an intellectually rich story is if it in some way stands for something else; is a metaphor of some sort.

I think this is laying down the law too prohibitively. The supernatural is a conceit that one can adopt in the playful reading of a novel. On opening the book, one just has to shed one's exacting real world beliefs.

We can think: IF there was the supernatural, this is how we MIGHT behave.

But the ghosts certainly exist in the story, for my money. I could not enjoy that story going along trying to figure things out to that great extent. A ghost is patently presented to my attention at pivotal scenes and it has a terrifying effect.

For me then to overturn all that and to start questioning is the author doing something altogether different. That is simply too much subtlety. I would be disappointed in James, not his story, if that's what he was up to. And I'd be surprised that the story was seamless and successful despite his attempt to convey some other message. I'd be amazed he didn't mess his story up, considering he had these other, supposedly symbolic, intentions.

I don't know how people enjoy the story not taking some of the main and most vivid, arresting moments at face value. To do otherwise, really, it seems to pointlessly complicate. It would take such an effort to figure out what's going on and even then, it would, at best, be a very dubious, subjective interpretation. It would be opening up the carcass of the novel and tearing it to shreds. Not the cleverest of readers are that much of a surgeon.

[Declan]

It is true and right that the supernatural doesn't have much of a place among finer writing. The more thoughtful writing, which reflects reality, does more or less exclude the supernatural, for just the same reason that science is made up of physics, chemistry, and biology, but not magic; and made up of psychology but not horoscopes.

But this doesn't mean the supernatural has no place. The fact that there's the occasional excellent story is proof that they have a small place, like Kubrick's The Shining. And what do people do, because it's a thoughtful film? They start questioning whether the hotel is really haunted or whether it's something more psychological.

They certainly don't wonder about that with the Stephen King novel of The Shining. It's all taken at face value because it's a page turner and is under the radar of the intelligentsia!

The ghosts in the Turn of the Screw, I don't mean to deny that they have an additional metaphorical value. I didn't mean they are to be taken at face value only. I meant, they are to be taken at face value firstly and naturally, not to be questioned, and then additional meanings that occur to the mind can be superadded.

I've certainly no problem with that. Good literature always invites those extra layers and I'm sure that was quite within the remit of James's business when he was at his desk. But that's not the same as questioning that the ghosts exist in the story.

[JBI]

He was looking for some quick and easy sex from a young and stupid girl. He didn't expect Darcy to have a personal interest (as nobody but Elizabeth seems to have known at this point publicly, to the point where Lady Catherine is furious to find out rumors later). He figured he could tarnish her reputation without doing any personal damage, but somehow Darcy had sway, both economically and probably personally, so much so that he ends up marrying her.

The idea of sleeping with a young flirt around town was not new, that is why it is such a big scene, because events like that, the youngest daughter with a poor prospect-less man, could destroy family reputation. Darcy doesn't intervene out of love for Whickam, after all, he does it for two things, one, to gain favor for Elizabeth, secondly, with the idea that such an event may tarnish the whole family reputation, and therefore make him unable under any circumstance to marry or even hold society with Elizabeth.

[kiki1982]

And you can be sure that the sway consisted of a substantial amount of money (not that it helped much).

That is the bog howler in the background: Darcy will not only have to live with Wickham as a so-called brother, but he has to bribe him in order to become that. Almost beg him to please not take his girl away :nopity: :lol:

I don't know whether he wanted to win Lizzie's favour that way, as he says so himself (her aunt Gardiner should not have told her), but then there was not really anyone who was able to pay such a presumably ghastly amount of money but Darcy.

[Declan]

I don't know what book you two were reading but your remarks don't use what's said in the book. You're just speaking sensationally. If you're not sincerely interested in the thread, no point in commenting.

[Declan]

'Quick and easy sex' and 'sleeping with' - I mean, it's obvious you don't like the book to be using terms like that in speaking of it: terms which the book makes no use of, which Austen doesn't use in any of her books.

Same for the other person's post, who went out of his or her way in another thread to say they would 'not' be reading the book under discussion for whatever reason. Clearly, both of you don't like the book. Find a book you do like and don't be misbehaving out of boredom on a nice thread.

I thought I had too much time on my hands. My God! Always people eager to spoil!

[LitNetIsGreat]

Darcy doesn't intervene out of love for Whickam, after all, he does it for two things, one, to gain favor for Elizabeth, secondly, with the idea that such an event may tarnish the whole family reputation, and therefore make him unable under any circumstance to marry or even hold society with Elizabeth.

Also out of guilt for not having publicly disgraced Wickham over the affair with his younger sister. This I feel is the primary reason for Darcy's intervention, after all he did this in secret and there was no way of his knowing that this intervention would get back to Elizabeth or the Bennets.


'Quick and easy sex' and 'sleeping with' - I mean, it's obvious you don't like the book to be using terms like that in speaking of it: terms which the book makes no use of, which Austen doesn't use in any of her books.

Same for the other person's post, who went out of his or her way in another thread to say they would 'not' be reading the book under discussion for whatever reason. Clearly, both of you don't like the book. Find a book you do like and don't be misbehaving out of boredom on a nice thread.

I thought I had too much time on my hands. My God! Always people eager to spoil!

Easy tiger. I think you'll find that you are wrong in your rash assessment of the above posters.

I don't think that Wickham ran off with Lydia in order to punish anybody at all. I think Wickham ran off with Lydia for a bit of fun and nothing more. Wickham wasn't bitter towards Elizabeth at all if you take into account their later meetings and he had no gripe against the Bennets..

[Declan]

Wickham running off for just a bit of fun had a big consequence for him in the story, so I think it's fair to speculate about his motive. The result of his action takes up a big part of the colouring in the whole ending, that to trace the action to its source is fair game.

The civil meeting at the end between Wickham and Lizzy, where Wickham was his usual charming self, that's a good point. But then I think how it was reported from other characters how he's a hail fellow well met with everyone, wherever he goes. He even manages a shameless face of civility to Darcy after what he did to his sister.

And Lizzy certainly didn't believe his civility in that last meeting, as she was running away from him in the scene. Wickham's civility just shows how well he wears his mask on all occasions.

I do think Darcy expressly saying, in his letter to Lizzy, that Wickham's a vengeful man, and Lizzy provoking him at the table before the elopmement with Lydia - these two things seemed to connect for me and shed light on part of Wickham's elopement rationale. But it's pure speculation and we all like to show off a new connection we think we've made. :-D

[kiki1982]

That element of guilt is probably somewhere there, yes. SPOILER (?) I have a funny feeling that when Lizzie receives Jane's letter about Lydia's elopement and Darcy is with her, he had wished to propose there and then again (Davies I think implied that with the sleepless night, the careful dressing and the white horse) and sees it shattered. SPOILER (?) OVER But he also sees her family unable to prevent this, because Wickham cannot marry without being able to keep a wife (and children). Darcy's concern for his sister's honour and the contemporary code of honour moved him not to make it public. As that would have soiled his sister's reputation, his and his cousin's into the bargain, but also would have been an act quite 'low'. You didn't tell nasty stories about someone, even if they were true. Weirdly and sadly, it was a thing that was not done.
At the time he exposed Wickham to Lizzie in his letter to her after his first refused proposal, I suppose he thought long and hard about that. That could save his name (and get her to change her opinion of him :D), but at the same time it was something dishonourable to do and could have made her think that he was getting one back on Wickham. Lizzie does not tell her father at the point where everyone is pressing him to let Lydia go to Brighton, partly because she was sworn to secrecy due to Darcy's concerns for his sister's reputation, but also because she does not wish to be called a nasty gossip. This problem of 'unseen vices' and 'mistaken impressions' also crops up in S&S, Persuasion, Mansfield Park (to a certain extent) and to a lesser extent Northanger Abbey. Emma is more innocent and subtle in that respect, although it is a bigger element in that one.

But really, Darcy could not leave the Bennets and Gardiners to sort it out as he was ultimately to blame. They could not have known and he is the only one who can find them and compell him to do something. Maybe not only with his money, but also probably because he had an emotional tie with him which the Bennets did not have.

I think we all agree we have read P&P and all the rest of it (for me in particular apart from Lady Susan). That reminds me that I should still write a review of Mansfied Park.

[Declan]

I don't agree. You're bringing in ideas that haven't occurred in the book; unknowable points.

[LitNetIsGreat]

But it's pure speculation and we all like to show off a new connection we think we've made. :-D

Oh there is nothing wrong with that at all, it's just that on this occasion I don't think you are on the mark. I think it is also important to see Wickham's role as not much more than a plot devise within the novel too.

[kiki1982]

I think, as you are dealing with irony and satire, it is vital to think that little bit further.

If Austen talks ironically (and that has been generally acknowledged) then you are inevitably dealing with a truth she doesn't say.

I don't think the working and first title of P&P was First Impressions for no reason whatsoever.

[Gladys]

I thought the sentences in Maisie a lot harder to follow than in Washington Square.

In terms of style, Henry James becomes more convoluted as he ages. Washington Square of 1880 is stylistically easy. What Maisie Knew of 1897 sees the world through the eyes of a young girl, and is consequently an easier read than The Awkward Age that follows (with its nightmarish expression) or the rather difficult great novels beginning in 1902 with the plot-driven drama "The Wings of the Dove". I liked the puzzle involved in translating the vision of a resilient and optimistic young Maisie to a harsh adult reality. Ida, Beale Farange and Mrs Beale speak to a staggering moral wasteland beyond any exposed in the Oscar Wilde trial a couple of years earlier; and kind Sir Claude is a moral butterfly.


I thought Washington Square, the father and daughter are two tremendous characters. I think the father really did underestimate the daughter. The extent to which such a good person was fooled in love is very sad reading. Wonderful...

The doctor has a wise sister in it - I forget her name - but she only plays a bit part.

Rather, I think the daughter really did underestimate the father. And that's the nub of the book! Caught seriously off guard, Dr. Sloper lets slip one ironic dig at Catherine. Their relationship begins to unravel as Catherine continues to put one and one together to make three. Tragic beyond tears. For the last twenty years of the book, Morris Townsend is as nothing to Catherine but everything to Austen Sloper.



This striking argument gave the Doctor a sudden sense of having underestimated his daughter; it seemed even more than worthy of a young woman who had revealed the quality of unaggressive obstinacy. But it displeased him--displeased him deeply, and he signified as much. "That idea is in very bad taste," he said. "Did you get it from Mr. Townsend?"

The wise sister is Mrs Almond who tells us that Dr. Sloper always means well, but that Catherine is much deeper than he thinks. Like father, like daughter!


I thought the Turn of the Screw very gripping...I don't agree with the whole debate about whether the ghosts were real...But the ghosts certainly exist in the story, for my money...

I don't know how people enjoy the story not taking some of the main and most vivid, arresting moments at face value. To do otherwise, really, it seems to pointlessly complicate.

I agree unreservedly. The supernatural works fine. But the story as a whole seems more than a little shallow alongside most of James' other novels. In a 1898 letter to H. G. Wells concerning the novella, Henry James wrote: But the thing is essentially a pot-boiler & a jeu d’esprit.


I think it is also important to see Wickham's role as not much more than a plot devise within the novel too.

Wickham ultimately makes for marvellous irony as Mr Bennet describes him as the favourite among his three sons-in-law.

[Declan]

I didn't think Catherine underestimated her father in any part of the story. I thought she had him to a tee and there were no surprises for her, apart from disappointment, which isn't true surprise. I think she understood everything about her father and there was a big part of her that her father didn't get. Or did get, partially, inappreciatively, but refused to treat with respect.

I think the standard sentence found in Washington Sq - and even in a lot of Turn of the Screw - is no less complicated than that in Maisie. I'm aware of the development of his prose.

[Gladys]

I didn't think Catherine underestimated her father in any part of the story. I thought she had him to a tee and there were no surprises for her, apart from disappointment, which isn't true surprise. I think she understood everything about her father and there was a big part of her that her father didn't get.

Washington Square provides copious evidence that Catherine misconstrues her father again and again. I believe my several posts in the following thread illustrate well some of her misunderstandings. But the matter, like this superb novel, is profound.


http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39270

As you may see, I analyse the novel with an enthusiasm no less than your own for Jane Austen. :smile5:

[Declan]

I'd happily start a next thread, after reading Emma, on Washington Square and re-read it myself. Not to come round to agreement with you, which I know I could never arrive at; but just to defend my own reaction more clearly, and at no cost to a proper appreciation of what James is doing.

You say it's not about unrequited love. The story, to me, is nothing without that, and it's that love in her breast which enables her to leave her father behind and how he miscontrues everything. I don't think she was implacable towards her father after that phrase which struck you and which you re-read.

Is that the phrase he says to her on their last night in Liverpool? For my money, she accepted his limitations. I wouldn't be comfortable calling her her father's daughter.

But I hope you agree to a re-reading and we can both thrash out our views stage-by-stage? I think that's a lot better. When people know exactly why they disagree, the difference is a lot easier to acknowledge with mutual respect.

[mona amon]

I've just been reading Pride and Prejudice and I think the reason Wickham ran off with Lydia is out of revenge towards Lizzy.

Just before Wickham left with his regiment for Brighton, where Lydia was also invited to stay by a family nearby where she lived - just before they both left, there was a big dinner at Lizzy's in Longbourn.

This was just after Lizzy was made aware of Wickham's true nature from Darcy's letter. Wickham wasn't aware of Lizzy's knowledge. They were sitting together at the dinner table and Wickham discovered that Lizzy knew all about his deceit and that his manners were just a front.

Lizzy treated him sarcastically. A short while later, we find Wickham has taken Lydia to London from Brighton.

Another thing Darcy says about Wickham in his letter is that he's a vengeful person.

So, Lizzy's harsh words, and Darcy saying he's vengeful is enough to feel a hint that, if not for Lizzy's words to Wickham, Wickham would've had no feelings of vengeance; and, seeing as he was already on good terms with the Bennet family, having dinners there, he may well have left Lydia alone in Brighton.

Lizzy's playfully critical nature gets related in this way, I think, to Lydia's downfall.

Well, Wickham never shows any passionate interest in Lizzy, and doesn't seem too upset when she hints that she doesn't quite believe the things he told her about Darcy.


She saw that he wanted to engage her on the old subject of his grievances, and she was in no humour to indulge him. The rest of the evening passed with the appearance, on his side, of usual cheerfulness, but with no farther attempt to distinguish Elizabeth; and they parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again.

Wickham may have vengeful feelings towards Darcy, but he's not the type to marry a penniless girl and mess up his prospects just to take revenge on Lizzy for a little bit of sarcasm.

JBI has the obvious answer. The only reason he eloped with Lydia was to have sex with her. He'd have no doubt ditched her after a while. Lydia was saved only because of Darcy's intervention.

The 'seduced' girls in some of Jane Austen's other novels (Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park) are not so lucky. They end up having a baby, abandoned, ruined etc.

[Declan]

There were other parts in that episode between Wickham and Lizzy that show Wickham was offended, and even in that passage you quoted: that to me is not as neutral as you're maintaining.

Wickham shows a smooth exterior at all times. That is shown throughout the book, and commented on, including in Darcy's Lizzy letter, to be the chief characteristic of his villainy.

I don't say he went with Lydia - he didn't seduce her; Lydia was very game as well, as it shows at some point or other - I don't say he went with Lydia to marry her. But just to ruin a girl in the unscrupulous manner that characterized his behaviour toward Darcy's sister, and to do it to get at Lizzy...

Darcy's Lizzy letter makes a separate, small, but vivid point about how he is a vengeful man and that he's to be watched. That very individual, apparently anomalous, comment in Darcy's letter could've been completely left out and the letter would be the same for all other purposes of the story. Austen is too professional to make a forceful yet arbitrary point.

An obvious point that he wanted to have sex, you say. I will refrain from commenting directly on that, aside from suspecting you are baiting, which is what can happen in threads when the people getting stuck in actually don't like the author, as one can see by the way they talk about him/her. There's nothing in the novel or Austen's sensibility to make talk like that about her books have any meaning. It makes one think that the person commenting has either missed the point or actually not enjoyed the book and not really having a liking for Austen.

Sensational comments on an Austen novel shows neither sense nor sensibility. It looks prurient, as if her subtle intellect is not rough enough for the reader's libido. I'm sure this comment will be mauled with a veneer of civility.

[kiki1982]

The 'arbitrary' comment you are referring to there, must be


[...], but I cannot help suppose that the hope of revenging himself on me was a strong inducement. His revenge would have been complete indeed.

I don't see what is arbitrary about that. Not in Regency terms, certainly not. Darcy might be proud, but he is principled and liberal. IF he was easily outraged, he would have given up Lizzy after his first proposal she rejected as he was not only flatly refused, but slighted into the bargain.

And look what he says before about Wickham:


The vicious propensities - the want of principle, which he was careful to guard from the knowledge of his best friend, could not escape the observation of a young man nearly the same age with himself, and who had opportunities of seeing him in unguarded moments, which Mr Darcy['s father] could not have.

This was at Cambridge and at school. I suspect more at Cambridge. This at least implies behaviour slightly off the mark. Typically much gambling (dangerous habit) - gambing was a normal thing to do but within the boudaries of normality - and too much drinking. If it implies sex or not is difficult to say. However, a man had to be able to control himself. Otherwise he was deemed a man not to associate with, certainly for Darcys.

Then he says,


I thought too ill of him to invite him to Pemberley, or admit his society in town.

and


his life was a life of idleness and dissipation.

Just after the Cambridge thing above, Wickham asks Darcy, after his father has died, for money (3,000 pounds) because he wants to study the law and not become the incumbent of Pemberley (i.e. the living on the estate). In three years, he has apparently squandered the 3,000 pounds plus his inheritance of 1,000 pounds, so 4,000 pounds in total. Almost Mr Bingley's yearly income and twice as much as Mr Bennet's yearly income (!). To put this in perspective, the Dashwood family in their cottage in Sense and Sensibility lives on some 200 pounds a year, which is very very limited, admittedly, but they can live, with some entertainment and a free house from Mrs Darshwood's cousin. Edward Ferrars in the same book is going to attempt living on an income of 300 pounds, which is tight, but deemed sufficient.

After these three years, Wickham asks Darcy once more to hand him the living at Pemberley, which Darcy then refuses as he has not proved the most prudent young man.

So then Wickham decides he wants to marry Darcy's sister (and her 30,000 pounds, worth one million approximately in today's money). There cannot have been much attachment in the case as he hadn't seen her for years according to Darcy's facts, so how come? Apart from of course the money and Darcy's refusal of the Pemberley living.

The words Darcy uses are definitely a way of saying that Wickham's behaviour was embarrassing. It is even so bad that Darcy does not wish to acquaint himself with Wickham in public. In regards to Mr Hurst, former elder Miss Bingley's husband, always being drunk and being a gambler, it must have been worse than him and he is already bad, falling asleep in the sofa.

Wickham was clearly off the rails.

Squandering money and being idle was a seriously bad thing to do. It meant as a member of a protestant society you were unproductive (shame on you!). You ruined your reputation, you could not keep a wife and children. Darcy also mentions this traid in Wickham's mother as the elder Mr Wickham could not afford to give his son a gentleman's education because he was 'always poor from the extravagance of his wife'. Being the manager of such an estate would have earned you quite a bit. For a man, this traid was even worse, because his wife and children were at his mercy.

Revenge on Darcy? Maybe, for want of money (which Darcy also implies: 'His resentment was in proportion to the distress of his circumstances...'). IF he had solely wanted money, he could have got another heiress. There were enough of them (there was a shortage of men after the Napoleonic Wars).

Saying that we do not like the novel because we say that this particular character just wanted to have sex with Lydia and nothing more is a weak argument.

[LitNetIsGreat]

An obvious point that he wanted to have sex, you say. I will refrain from commenting directly on that, aside from suspecting you are baiting, which is what can happen in threads when the people getting stuck in actually don't like the author, as one can see by the way they talk about him/her. There's nothing in the novel or Austen's sensibility to make talk like that about her books have any meaning. It makes one think that the person commenting has either missed the point or actually not enjoyed the book and not really having a liking for Austen.

Sensational comments on an Austen novel shows neither sense nor sensibility. It looks prurient, as if her subtle intellect is not rough enough for the reader's libido. I'm sure this comment will be mauled with a veneer of civility.

Bizarre, really bizarre. You put a theory out there on pretty weak evidence and when others point out the most obvious standard reading of it you accuse people of baiting and being biased because they, apparently, don't like Jane Austen!?! What this dislike of Austen is based on I have no idea, no clue. The fact that JBI loves Austen, as I do, and if Kiki's obvious knowledge and clear enthusiasm for Austen is not jumping out and smacking you on the face like a wet fish, signalling that she is more than fond of Austen herself, then I fear the 'subtle intellect' of Austen is equally out of your league as it ours too, according to you. Really bizarre, quite unbelievable.

I also have it on good authority that sexual intercourse actually occurred within the Regency period too and is not something that only came about recently!

As for you theory, which are you are certainly entitled to bring up, it is clear to me that Wickham did not go with Lydia in order to get back at Elizabeth or the Bennets, this to me is quite off the mark.

[Declan]

Quite off the mark, sir. Your favourite phrase is duly acknowledged lol

[Gladys]

I'd happily start a next thread, after reading Emma, on Washington Square and re-read it myself. Not to come round to agreement with you, which I know I could never arrive at; but just to defend my own reaction more clearly, and at no cost to a proper appreciation of what James is doing.

You say it's not about unrequited love. The story, to me, is nothing without that, and it's that love in her breast which enables her to leave her father behind and how he miscontrues everything. I don't think she was implacable towards her father after that phrase which struck you and which you re-read.

Is that the phrase he says to her on their last night in Liverpool? For my money, she accepted his limitations. I wouldn't be comfortable calling her her father's daughter.

But I hope you agree to a re-reading and we can both thrash out our views stage-by-stage? I think that's a lot better. When people know exactly why they disagree, the difference is a lot easier to acknowledge with mutual respect.

I understand, Declan, that you're no longer with us. Let me say that I did appreciate the elaborate textual analyses you provided and am sorry they've ended.

Like Kiki I don't reread novels although I have reread a number of plays, particularly Ibsen's. But I had decided to make an exception of Washington Square because, despite the modesty of Henry James, I found it magnificently evocative. As for my never coming round to agreement with you, I'm inclined to abandon my own position without hesitation where textual evidence requires it.

As for Washington Square, it is about unrequited love: the two final decades in the life of Austen Sloper when daughter Catherine is blind to his love and respect for her. She first glimpses her mistake when his will is read, and that pain becomes excruciating when the irrelevant Morris Townsend returns. She treats him entirely as her father's daughter, with every word high irony, every word brimming with allusions to her departed father. The "eagerly" phrase is uttered well before the overseas trip and, as you say, she is not implacable towards her father until a full year later, the night they leave Liverpool, when she totally misconstrues his, "A year ago, you were perhaps a little limited - a little rustic".

I do agree there could be more attention to textual detail in many of the literature threads on the forum. I would farewell you with your own words. When people know exactly why they disagree, the difference is a lot easier to acknowledge with mutual respect.