Why Georgiana Darcy is not Lydia Bennet

[anghraine]

[reposted from wordpress]

Awhile ago, I got enmeshed in a rather infuriating Georgiana discussion, and while I had no interest in continuing to beat my head against a brick wall, I’ve heard the comparison so often, in so many places, without the slightest trace of irony – ever – that I decided this deserves its own bit of space.

Austen all but whacks us over the head with the parallels between the two girls.

 

They’re very close in age — Lydia turned sixteen in June, while Georgiana is ‘just sixteen’ when Elizabeth meets her in July. They both were ready to run off with the same man, George Wickham, con artist/seducer/gambler/deserter/etc, at nearly the same age (fifteen for Georgiana, sixteen for Lydia). They’re even the same physical type — tall and voluptuous, less classically handsome than their eldest siblings, but attractive — and indulged favourites of their dominant guardian.

So, if they are so alike, what’s the difference between them? Why does chance — i.e., the author — intervene for Georgiana, and not for Lydia?

Anyone who’s read the book — an unabridged copy in English, at any rate — will probably say ‘duh’ at this point. Austen makes it painfully clear that two more dissimilar girls never existed; the parallels between them only throw their differences into sharper relief. The point of the paired subplots isn’t ‘ha, so much for aristocratic pretensions; Darcy’s precious sister is no better than Lydia Bennet.’ At least, I don’t believe so. I think the point, aside of adding yet another parallel situation for Darcy and Elizabeth and a convenient plot twist, is to highlight the danger that a man like Wickham represents, not just to the wild, mindlessly selfish Lydias of society, but to the innocent, submissive Georgianas.

There are countless stories where a man mistakenly believes that his little sister (or daughter, niece, cousin, whoever) is this shy, sensitive, talented, dutiful, accomplished, sensible, naive young girl, who must be protected from a dangerous and hostile world that will use her innocence against her. Almost without variation, he has to discover that his idea of ‘my sister’ owes more to an ideal of young femininity than to the person his sister is.

Pride and Prejudice isn’t one of those stories. Georgiana Darcy really is that girl — every man’s sister or daughter, the instantly-recognisable ‘good girl’ victimised by a social predator (personally, I think Fanny Price’s relationship with Henry Crawford is a much more complex and subtle version of this). The fact is that chance doesn’t intervene for her any more than it does for Lydia. Darcy shows up in London as he did at Ramsgate, and tries to convince Lydia to leave Wickham, with the promise of his assistance in doing so. She doesn’t want his help, she won’t leave Wickham, they’ll get married eventually. When Darcy shows up at Ramsgate, ignorant of Wickham’s presence, Georgiana immediately tells him everything — since the whole point of the elopement was to keep Darcy from finding out and preventing the marriage, Georgiana’s choice to tell him all is, in my opinion, highly significant. Her reason? She couldn’t bear to disappoint him. A year later, Austen gives us this glimpse into her mind and her relationship with her brother:

While Mr Darcy was attending them to their carriage, Miss Bingley was venting her feelings in criticisms on Elizabeth’s person, behaviour, and dress. But Georgiana would not join her. Her brother’s recommendation was enough to ensure her favour: his judgment could not err, and he had spoken in such terms of Elizabeth as to leave Georgiana without the power of finding her otherwise than lovely and amiable.

After her escapade, Lydia is boastful, ungrateful, crass, and utterly without remorse. Georgiana is at the opposite end of the spectrum — traumatised by shame and terrified of doing wrong. One extremely oblique reference to Wickham’s existence renders her incapable of speech (not that she was talkative before).

The other issue, of course, is their different relationships to Wickham — because they are quite different. For Lydia, he’s a handsome, charming officer. If he’d been wiped off the face of the earth, it would have ultimately made little difference — which is not to exonerate Wickham. Whatever Lydia may have been or done, he is the one who ran off with her, slept with her, and was fully prepared to abandon her to a life of prostitution. Nevertheless, neither Wickham nor any other man had to do much to ruin Lydia. She threw herself at him, she chose to run away with him, and Wickham, scum that he is, simply wasn’t one to refuse the companionship of a pretty girl with plenty of pocket change. If she hadn’t thrown herself in his way, however, he’d likely have ignored her altogether. So, ultimately, she was complicit in what happened.

In the Ramsgate affair, however, Georgiana acted her archetypal role of passive victim. She was isolated from her friends and family, left with only the conspirators themselves for aid. She had every reason in the world to trust them both; one was her own companion, as far as she knew, a stranger to Wickham; the other was Wickham himself, her father’s godson, protégé, and favourite, raised alongside her own brother, and an affectionate friend to her as a child. They deliberately preyed upon her and her only action was to confide all in her brother (not what was shown in the 1995 mini-series, and one of my greatest objections to it). Then there’s one minor detail — Georgiana’s belief that Wickham wanted to marry her was not, in fact, wrong. He very much wanted to marry her … well, to marry her thirty thousand pounds, in any case.

Oh, and one last thing. I’ve heard it suggested, more times than I can count, that the reason Darcy is so, er, open-minded about the whole Lydia incident is because he feels he can’t judge Lydia for doing what his own sister did, blah blah blah. Darcy, of course, never says anything of the kind. Why should he? What he says is that he feels responsible because he never bothered explaining his (pre-Ramsgate) past with Wickham to anyone, believing it beneath his dignity. If he had (he insists), this could never have happened. He later acknowledges that his feelings for Elizabeth added force to that feeling of personal responsibility. But there is never the slightest indication that it has anything to do with his wreck of a sister.