Tumblr crosspost (21 February 2020)
Sep. 24th, 2021 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineAn anon said:
hey, i've been going through your various P&P tags and I noticed these tags "#georgiana and lydia parallel each other to highlight their differences to highlight how little it matters anyway #they also parallel each other as part of the broader darcy--elizabeth parallels but not even getting into that" on this post /post/100262707898/warmed-up-rant and i was wondering if you ever went into how georgiana and lydia are part of the broader darcy/elizabeth parallels? i'd love to read it if so :)
I replied:
Hmm, it was some time ago, but I think I meant that Georgiana and Lydia occupy roughly similar positions in the narrative with respect to Darcy and Elizabeth respectively. They’re significantly younger sisters to Darcy/Elizabeth (and exactly the same ages as each other), they’re attractive but less so than Darcy/Elizabeth, they get led astray by Wickham in partial consequence of Darcy/Elizabeth’s inaction and are rescued in some form or another by Darcy.
(At the same time, they’re exact opposites in other ways—they operate as sorts of mirror images of each other.)
So it’s not just that Lydia and Georgiana are strikingly similar or starkly dissimilar at pretty much all times (and in either case, in ways that still associate them together). They’re also paralleled specifically in relation to Darcy/Elizabeth. And that makes the parallels between them feed into the broader Darcy/Elizabeth parallels that drive the novel (you can see something similar with Jane and Bingley, say, and perhaps Charlotte and Fitzwilliam, along with Mr/Mrs Bennet and Lady Catherine). I would say that it’s the clearest way that they’re bound up in the overarching thrust of the story.
That’s in addition to their significance as vulnerable young girls whose radical differences of situation and personality don’t prevent them from being preyed upon in similar ways—reinforced by the fact that their predator is literally the same person.
They said:
parallels anon here - thank you! that makes a lot of sense, and it's given me a bit to think about with regards to how character dynamics aren't conceived in a vacuum, but are also influenced by the other characters they interact with :)
I responded:
I’m very glad to hear it :)
hey, i've been going through your various P&P tags and I noticed these tags "#georgiana and lydia parallel each other to highlight their differences to highlight how little it matters anyway #they also parallel each other as part of the broader darcy--elizabeth parallels but not even getting into that" on this post /post/100262707898/warmed-up-rant and i was wondering if you ever went into how georgiana and lydia are part of the broader darcy/elizabeth parallels? i'd love to read it if so :)
I replied:
Hmm, it was some time ago, but I think I meant that Georgiana and Lydia occupy roughly similar positions in the narrative with respect to Darcy and Elizabeth respectively. They’re significantly younger sisters to Darcy/Elizabeth (and exactly the same ages as each other), they’re attractive but less so than Darcy/Elizabeth, they get led astray by Wickham in partial consequence of Darcy/Elizabeth’s inaction and are rescued in some form or another by Darcy.
(At the same time, they’re exact opposites in other ways—they operate as sorts of mirror images of each other.)
So it’s not just that Lydia and Georgiana are strikingly similar or starkly dissimilar at pretty much all times (and in either case, in ways that still associate them together). They’re also paralleled specifically in relation to Darcy/Elizabeth. And that makes the parallels between them feed into the broader Darcy/Elizabeth parallels that drive the novel (you can see something similar with Jane and Bingley, say, and perhaps Charlotte and Fitzwilliam, along with Mr/Mrs Bennet and Lady Catherine). I would say that it’s the clearest way that they’re bound up in the overarching thrust of the story.
That’s in addition to their significance as vulnerable young girls whose radical differences of situation and personality don’t prevent them from being preyed upon in similar ways—reinforced by the fact that their predator is literally the same person.
They said:
parallels anon here - thank you! that makes a lot of sense, and it's given me a bit to think about with regards to how character dynamics aren't conceived in a vacuum, but are also influenced by the other characters they interact with :)
I responded:
I’m very glad to hear it :)