Because, as much as I dislike Lydia, she was only sixteen when she ran off with Wickham. Of course, I'm only a year older than that and I would never run off with anyone…but unlike her, I have a brain. :) Either way, her life shouldn't be ruined because of a mistake made when she was practically a child.
Bonne lecture.
Lydia Bennet—Lydia Wickham, rather—has never been to school. She has never had a governess, a tutor, or any instruction from anyone of higher intellect. As a child her mother had made a halfhearted attempt to teach her arithmetic and history, and had tried to interest her in the occasional novel; however, after discovering that her youngest daughter took more to fancies and fripperies than language and literature, Mrs Bennet quickly abandoned her daughter's academic education in favour of one knowledgeable in the ways of the beau monde.
At the time Lydia had sneered at her bluestocking sisters: Jane, who took so well to history, and Lizzy, who had an unfashionable liking for mathematics. Who cared about the battle of Hastings when the dashing young soldier who hailed from there had danced twice with Lydia? What need was there for a calculation when one could hardly curl one's hair pin-perfectly?
Later, however, Lydia learnt that while battles and equations may never serve her any good, the skills involved—memory, sense, hard work, a solid head on her shoulders—would help her tremendously.
She did, at length, receive her education. Not a bluestocking one, not a social one, but a rather unexpected one.
She learns that a sixteen-year-old girl cannot hold for long the attention of a man a dozen years her senior.
She learns that being a poor vagrant is not the romantic ideal it once seemed. Not when her stomach has been empty for three days, her shoes have holes in them, and she is forced to sleep on a bench on what appeared to be the rainiest night in English history.
She learns that rakish husbands rarely make loving, kind, gentle ones; in fact, they tend to remain perpetually on the angry, drunken, insolvent side of society.
She learns that infidelity never makes a situation better. No matter how blissful her time with the other man is, nothing can prepare her for the moment her son is born a redhead and the back of Wickham's hand first meets her cheek.
She learns that men live by another standard, and that Wickham could bring home as many women as he liked and she could only bite her lip to keep from crying.
She learns that she is not naturally made for motherhood, but that even if it took two hours of frantically offering sweets to and waving playthings before little Henry's wailing countenance, the cherubic smile that meets her when she finally satisfies him is worth every second.
She learns that carrying another child, Wickham's child, is more repulsive to her than anything else in the entire world.
She learns that when an expectant woman is beaten as often as she is, she will be expectant no more, and that the loss of an unborn baby is one of the most frightening events in a woman's life.
She learns that her hero, her Henry, could be much older than his eight years and could confront Wickham with one of his own pistols, threatening to shoot him unless he fetched a doctor.
She learns that she could pawn the one string of jewels she has and use the money to leave her husband.
She learns that it is not beneath her to work in a millinery in London, measuring and fitting women who are as silly and empty-headed as she used to be.
She learns that her son could grow quickly, almost too quickly, and that he has no qualms at all about handing over every hard-earned farthing to his mother so she could pay for their dingy room and meagre dinners.
She learns that despite her foolishness, despite her former contempt for her eldest sisters, despite her attachment to the most insolent man in the country—despite all this, when Lizzy happens upon the same millinery in which Lydia works, she will gasp and embrace her younger sister with genuine good feeling, and act with even more grace towards her child.
She learns that Mr Darcy can be kind when he is not too busy looking down his nose at everyone, and that he will let her and her son live in a little cottage on the outskirts of his grounds at Pemberley.
She learns that her son can finish first in his form at the school Mr Darcy paid for him to attend, and that her bastard son can become one of the best doctors in Derbyshire.
Most importantly, she learns that she does not need men or balls or gowns to be content. All she needs is a fine son with a growing family of his own, lovely sisters who will never abandon her, and a fat, rosy-cheeked grandchild who need never want for anything, most especially good sense.
Lydia Bennet is, finally, at peace.
Sorry if this depressed you a little at the beginning. I did try to give her a nice ending! If you need to be cheered up, you can always read An Education again…or you can go and read my Cotillion fic, which is happy and full of fluff and in dire need of reviews (hint, hint). :)