I'm sympathetic to her no matter what, whether she was a poor innocent who was lied to or raped by Willoughby, or if she jumped his bones and he went along with it. The punishments women faced for any sort of sex outside of marriage were so severe, disproportionate, and long-lasting, that I'm sorry for any gal who had her life ruined for what we consider normal behavior today.
Some people think that since Miss Austen wrote novels about love and passion the era was filled with romance, but FYI romance was the exception rather than the rule. Women were absolutely expected to marry for money rather than love, in fact, women were very much discouraged from falling in love - they were expected to leash their own passions and make some man with money fall in love with *them*! Because that's the only way they could establish a decent life for themselves, refrain from any sexual behavior until they roped in a man who could support them, lose their virginity on their wedding night with no preliminaries, no practice, and no enthusiasm because they were marrying for money or to please their families rather than passion.
Austen's heroines were actually unusual for their times, because they married for love as well as money. Every girl in these books is actually defying society's expectations to a greater or lesser degree, they refuse to marry the Mr. Collinses and hold out for someone they actually love, which was at that time an act of daring and unconformity and risking one's future. Now for a woman to actually let herself feel passion, as Marrianne and (presumedly) Col Brandon't ward did, was considered horrifically unwise and risky. To actually let yourself feel love and passion instead of concentrating on roping your man into marriage was to break all the rules, and risk a marriage made unhappy by financial worries or worse - an out of wedlock pregnancy. Or the suspicion of one, whether there was a baby or not a passionate young woman would have faced not just social ruin but being financially cut off from the family, either being thrown out to live rough on the streets, or being sent to live in poverty in some rural hellhole where nobody the family knew would ever see her again. Those were the standard punishments for a woman who broke the sexual roles, and both punishments lasted for life.
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Coleburg83 (684)
6 years ago
Yes, but do you think Marianne would ever have run off from her family without a word, spent months living in sin with a man and then only contact them after she becomes pregnant and her lover takes off because she needs money and someone to take care of her?
It's not like Willoughby showed up in Bath and seduced her then took off the next day. She actually left her caretaker to run away with him (knowing the consequences) and only contacted Brandon months later. As I said, much more similar to feckless Lydia Bennet than Marianne.
And it seems especially egregious since she presumably would have been aware of what had happened with her mother by then and returned Brandon's care and support for her with such disgraceful and thoughtless actions. Not just the premarital sex, but disappearing for months without a word.
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Otter (24464)
6 years ago
She was fifteen and in love, she was a fool but I'm still endlessly sympathetic towards her. She was condemned for falling in love and having sex like a normal person, something men were not normally condemned or even censured for.
More when I get back to a proper keyboard.
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Otter (24464)
6 years ago
Okay! Back at my laptop! Okay not only was Beth fifteen and under the influence of hormones, but she was illegitimate, which meant her chances of marrying were pretty slim. She couldn't marry a young man in her own social circle, she could have actually thought that becoming Willoughby's mistress was her best option (and that's why in this century, we don't let kids of that age make legally binding decisions). I mean, being a mistress wasn't that bad, some mistresses were with their lovers for years and raised families, she didn't know that Willoughby wasn't going to make that kind of commitment.
The other reason that I'm so sympathetic towards young Beth is that under normal circumstances, Willoughby would have suffered absolutely no consequences for ruining a girl's life and abandoning his own child. The only reason he suffered at all was that he was financially dependent on a woman, the aunt who cut him off when she learned what he'd done. This was very unusual, men controlled almost all the money, and most men thought that seducing virgins and abandoning children was normal and excusable.
As for Marianne, I suppose there was a chance that she'd run off an live with a man under some circumstances, although IMHO it'd be far more likely for her to make a financially inadvisable marriage.
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Furienna (3322)
6 years ago
But even so, Coleburg83 does make some good points about Beth sounding very much like the extremely foolish Lydia Bennet. They were both stupid young girls, who decided to run off with a scoundrel. it is true that Beth seems to have been worse off in a way, as an illegitimate child in that era. But even Lydia was only lucky that Darcy managed to bribe Wickham into marrying her, so she and her sisters didn't have to lose their good reputation.
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Otter (24464)
6 years ago
I'm also sympathetic towards Lydia Bennett, less so than the unknown Beth... because I know Lydia was a twerp. But then most sixteen-year-olds are twerps, especially if they're in love. If fact I'd admire her bravery in defying society's expectations, if I thought she had any clue what she was doing and what the consequences would normally be.
Really, I'm surprised to see so much condemnation of Beth and Lydia. Sure, Lydia was a twerp, but one can love Miss Austen's works while still seeing how harsh, unfair, and unequal the sexual mores of her society were.
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Furienna (3322)
6 years ago
True, society was really unfair back then. I will not disagree with you on that one. And I won't condemn Beth too much, because she would hardly have felt that she had anything to lose. She was illegitimate and had no biological family left. Lydia should really have known better though, even at only sixteen years of age. Because even though the rules of their society seem unfair to us, she should have known them and done her best to follow them. And even if she didn't care at all about her own reputation, she had four sisters who weren't married yet. And as young as she was, she still was old enough to nearly cause a scandal and thus also old enough to know how to avoid one. But it was like Lydia was willing to throw her family into shame just because of a dumb fling with a nasty libertine. Of course, is is likely that she might have thought that Wickham was a better man than he was. And that would mean that Lydia was seduced and fooled by him. Then again, I don't believe that any true gentleman would have run off with a girl like that. He would have gone to her father and talked about marriage, if he was the least honorable. And that is what Lydia should have expected from him before thinking of eloping. But it was like she didn't think things through at all...
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Otter (24464)
6 years ago
A true gentleman would NEVER run off with a girl he wasn't married to... if she were anywhere near his social station. It was considered okay to seduce, impregnate, and abandon young women of the lower orders, but it definitely wasn't okay for a Wickham to seduce a Miss Lydia Bennett! She actually outranked him, by the standards of the time, as she was a gentleman's daughter and he was an estate manager's son.
Who knows what the hell Lydia was thinking, if she thought anything at all, which wasn't guaranteed. Maybe Wickham promised her marriage, maybe she thought she had no chance of marrying and this was her once chance to experience love, maybe she thought that her family wouldn't punish her for breaking polite society's rules, because they never had before.
Really, I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for the ladies of that era who had little to no hope of marrying for reasons we see as horribly unfair today - illegitimacy, lack of a dowry, older sisters being given first crack at the local bachelors, etc. Society gave them no options but to live with their parents or other relatives as dependents or unpaid servants, and to die as virgins. The penalties wouldn't have been so harsh if so many unmarriagable women weren't desperate to avoid that fate.
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Furienna (3322)
6 years ago
Yet again, those are some good points about what life would have been like for women in that milieu. But that is exactly why it is hard for me to feel sympathy for Lydia. After all, she should have known what the consequences were if you misbehaved. I would have felt sympathy for her if Wickham had been a better person, who was worthy of a young lady's love, and if her father still had been unwilling to let her marry him for some reason. But as the situation was, Lydia was either very foolish or very selfish, maybe both, when she didn't think about her sisters. And it was only thanks to Mr Darcy bribing Wickham into marrying her after all, that her family was saved from a huge scandal. Which would have been a big deal back then for a family with five unmarried daughters.
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