In Pride and Prejudice, who is to be blamed for Lydia’s behaviour? Essay

In Pride and Prejudice, there argon a number of people who can be institutionalized for Lydias behaviour. Lydia develops into a selfish, egocentric, thoughtless and superficial girl through the influence of others and a lack of discipline and boundaries.Primarily, Mrs. white avens is to blame. Lydia and her mother are two of a kind silly, vain, snobbish, pretentious and flirtatious. Mrs. Bennet has indulged and cosseted Lydia and favours her above her sisters. Instead of preventing Lydia from making an disturbance of herself and disgracing the family by flirting with the officers when she is too late to socialise, Mrs. Bennet encourages her behaviour in the hope of getting at least daughter married off. both(prenominal) Mrs. Bennet and Lydia seem to comport a fondness of men in uniform, and are unfortunately crude enough to show it. In fact, Mrs Bennet says, I do remember the time when I liked a red coat myself very well and indeed so I do still at my heart. From this we can s ee that Lydia has inherited her betise from her mother. Mrs. Bennet is a social climber and very interested in marrying well, scarce upon hearing of Lydias elopement with the discreditable Mr. Wickham, instead of being baseless is excited, and thinks only of the wedding clothes. Yet if her daughters Elizabeth or Jane had eloped and were marrying a man with pocket-sized money and many debts, Mrs. Bennet may not have been so thrilled.Mr. Bennet overly has a reasonable input into Lydias behaviour, but in a totally different way from his wife. Lydias beat isolates himself in his library, burying himself behind books and a wall of sarcasm, allowing his wife to backpack certificate of indebtedness for his daughters upbringings, with the knowledge that she wasnt fully capable of doing it satisfactorily. When Lizzy warns him against letting Lydia go to Brighton, Mr. Bennet does not take heed, and allows Lydia to go anyway.This is because he thinks that Lydia may be brought back d su stain to earth and shown that she is not so important in Brighton, and that she would be in the safe hands of Colonel Forsters wife. Mr. Bennet also knows that if he did not, then Lydia would emotionally blackmail him by nagging and crying, as would his wife until he granted permission. Instead of disallowing her, Mr. Bennet is weak and gives in, as he thinks it pass on be easier for him. Little does he know that Lydia will elope with an officer and disgrace the whole family. However, at the end of the book, he realises his mistakes, and blames himself for Lydias behaviour. He saysYou may well warn me against such an evil. gracious nature is so prone to fall into it No, Lizzy, let me once in my life feel how much I have been to blame. I am not afraid of being overpowered by the impression.Another person part to blame is Mr. Wickham. It is not entirely Lydias fault that she cannot resist his charms, as after all, he deceived her older and far wiser sister too. However, his intenti ons were not august and he did not seem to have any intention of marrying Lydia. Had Mr. Darcy not intervened and bribed Wickham, Lydia could possibly have gone home disgraced, with no possibility of conglutination in the future.In addition, Elizabeth herself might feel partly, if not wholly to blame for Lydias behaviour she knew what Wickham was capable of, having heard Darcys account about(predicate) his past behaviour. She could see what Lydia was doing and could have potentially prevented her sister from being subjected to disgraceful gossip and also stopped Lydia from making a fool of herself by letting people know what Mr. Wickham was like.In considering the role that various characters have to play in Lydias behaviour, we tend to forget that everyone has a responsibility for themselves, and their actions, including Lydia. After all, she has older sisters who turn out to be respectable young women who have happy, loving marriages to wealthy men. Maybe Lydia has more input into her own behaviour than we should ignore.