Faces & Façades

A Pride & Prejudice fanfic I wrote for university. Now, one year later, I suppose it's time to share it with the public.

~ 1 ~ Lydia's shadow

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman not in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a husband.

Another truth is that a woman of that kind will never find a husband if she is not allowed to look for one. Detention is even worse when combined with the inability to show off anything said woman could be proud of, simply because she fails to have anything but a serious deal of clumsiness.

Ever since I could remember, I've been disappearing in the crushing presence of my four sisters. Well, maybe not disappearing, exactly, but I haven't been able to shine either. Everyone in town would constantly talk about my eldest sister Jane's beauty, or how smart and witty Elizabeth is. Neither of them had an easy life to begin with, yet still, their virtues eventually paid off.

Three years ago, Jane, aged twenty-three back then, got married to Charles Bingley, a rather wealthy and handsome gentleman who lives in Netherfield, not far from Longbourn, where my family resides. In that same year, Elizabeth, two years younger than Jane, married Fitzwilliam Darcy, an even wealthier and handsomer friend of Bingley's. One might say the two of them were just lucky. Others might say they didn't get where they are today for nothing.

It's not that I hate them – I love all my sisters. But sometimes I envy them a little bit. I'm not half as beautiful as Jane, not half as intelligent as Elizabeth, not half as self-confident as my younger sister Lydia, and not half as willing to accept that lack of favourable traits as my other sister Mary. I'm just Kitty, or Kitty-Cat, or Catherine or whatever they feel like calling me, but I've never had the change to be more than that. It's always been this way – I'm "Just Kitty". And sometimes I'm no more than "the fourth Bennet sister".

Who would want that? What kind of man in his right mind would choose to marry a woman who is neither pretty nor smart, and doesn't have anything else to offer? It's not like I want to live a life like Lydia. She may seem quite happy judging by her letters which detail her "fairytale" everyday life with her husband – yes, Lydia is two years younger than me and was the first to marry, how embarrassing is that? –, but I've learned to read between the lines and to see through her façade. She dropped me like a hot potato the moment she decided to elope with George Wickham, but before that, I had been her best friend for long enough to know her and understand what she really means by "Everything is alright". It means that her husband was not as drunk last night as the night before when he returned home from gambling away all his money with some of his shady friends.

There was a little, but noticeable soft spot on the last letter I received, which looked like it had been wet at some point. I suppose it's where the one tear she could not hold back landed at the time she wrote the letter. My sister may be everything, but she's definitely not happy.

Lydia's problem is, in a way, also my problem, or more precisely, she is my problem. The immoral lifestyle she engaged in with Wickham was an enormous disgrace to our family that only a forced early wedding could set right. Well, kind of. Despite all the time that has passed since then, my father as well as most of my sisters are still upset with her, which in the long run means they're upset with me too. Why? Because they think that I, if given the right opportunity, would fare no better than her. And sometimes I fear they might actually be right.

I've been living in Lydia's shadow for much more than just those few years since she has officially become Mrs Wickham. We got up to a lot of silly nonsense together when we were younger, and more often than not, she was the driving force. I acknowledge in hindsight that I never had a life, or even an opinion of my own until I was nearly eighteen – that's when she got married and moved out for good. In order to prevent me from shaming my family like she had, my father basically grounded me, threatening to never let me go out again until I prove myself able to spend at least ten minutes a day doing something useful.

I don't know if I will ever be able to please him. If only I was like Mary! She doesn't even feel the need to go out. It's the simple things that make her happy: Put her in a random room with a book full of dull stories consisting mainly of foreign words that no normal human being under normal circumstances would enjoy reading, and she will be busy for a good portion of the day. Sometimes, when she is extremely fascinated with whatever she's reading, you can even draw lines on her face with makeup or do silly things with her hair – she won't complain as long as you don't take her glasses off, and she never looks into the mirror anyway, so why not?

It's quite funny, actually. Unfortunately, though, painting my sister's face doesn't exactly qualify as "doing something useful" by my father's definition. And ever since Lydia is gone, I've been officially promoted to "the girl who causes problems".

If Mary is ever worried about her future, she doesn't let it show. While I wouldn't understand a single word of her books if she gave them to me, she can't understand why I worry so much. The only two sisters left after the others' weddings, Mary and I got quite close in the course of time, and although she's a woman of few words, we've talked to each other more over the last three years than in our entire lives before, and I especially remember one long conversation we had two weeks before I left Longbourn to see Elizabeth.

What triggered the event was a letter from Lady Lucas containing an invitation to her second eldest daughter's wedding. The eldest, Charlotte, was already married to our cousin William Collins, and no one, really, no one envies her that husband. But the second eldest, Maria, is about my age, and that was the problem.

"When will you ever stop making a face as if you had read an unsatisfying book just because someone is going to get married?" Mary asked me that evening.

At first I didn't know what to say. Mary knew about my internal struggles, there was no need to explain anything.

"How can you be so indifferent?" I asked in return. "Aren't you ever afraid that you might end up as an embittered spinster with no money, no husband and no children and no life?"

Mary didn't even look up from her book when she replied: "If that's how you define life, and if I were you, then yes, I would probably be afraid."

"What is life to you, then?" I demanded.

"Life is what you make of it," she said. "I enjoy reading books in the garden, playing the piano and singing, among other things."

"You can't even sing," I argued, knowing I was right. Our mother begged her once to stop singing aloud, stating that listening to that any longer would "put her nerves in danger".

"I don't care," she explained. "If that's what makes me happy, I'm going to continue doing it anyway."

The way she spoke without even looking at me got me slightly irritated with her. Once more I felt like a little child being taught the most essential life lessons for the umpteenth time, as unable to understand them as ever. And now my apparent stupidity was starting to annoy even Mary. She had never been the most patient of my sisters, though.

"That's easy to say for someone as... withdrawn as you. If only I could find pleasure in reading, I would do it all day."

"If you find pleasure in something else instead, why don't you do that all day?"

"Because it would involve being allowed to leave the house. And another person."

Finally, she lifted her head to look at me and casually asked me the one question I'd never asked myself before. "Kitty, do you even want to marry?"

At first the question seemed stupid and out of place. "Of course! Mother says it's what we need. A single woman can't..."

"No," she stopped me, that being a first, given that she never interrupts other people because she considers it impolite. "I wasn't asking if you think you need it. I was asking if you want it."

It was the moment I realised, although for no more than a short second, that what I need and what I want might not necessarily be the same. Did I want to get married back then? I didn't know. Do I want it now? I still don't know.

But there's always that terrible feeling that I'm missing something very important in my life, and I can't shake it off. Sometimes Mary's answers to questions regarding life are too simple. Whether she only desires the finest of men she will never get, or she's just a closeted lesbian or entirely happy on her own, I don't know. But there's no way she can ignore – although she seems to think so – that one day, she will need someone to support her. Where will she live? What will she eat? How will she get hold of the money she needs in order to buy her precious books? It's the reason Charlotte Lucas married William Collins: A woman needs a roof over her head and something to eat on the table.

I didn't get the chance to confront Mary about these facts that evening because she suddenly came up with a brilliant idea I hadn't even thought of – mainly because I would never have considered it possible. My father could forbid me to see any unmarried specimens of the masculine gender, but he could not forbid me to see my sister. I hadn't seen Elizabeth in ages.

"I'm going to spend way too much time with a married couple," I argued, afraid that I might get envious of my sister for her happiness. Because if Lydia's relationship with Wickham is Hell on Earth, Elizabeth's marriage with Darcy must be Heaven.

"But that way you won't have to attend Maria's wedding, and I'm sure you'll benefit from a change of scene as well," was Mary's more logical objection.

Things were discussed with my parents, letters were sent to Pemberley, and soon Elizabeth replied that she and her husband would be happy to accommodate me for some time. The fact that "some time" was going to coincide with a specific wedding didn't bother my father, who thought a wedding was an event to meet new people, and that's just what he didn't want me to do. As for my mother, being the woman she is, I successfully relied on her inability to notice the elephant in the room.

And now, barely two weeks later, I'm sitting in the carriage, travelling alone for the first time in my life, on my way to Pemberley.