heliopausa

I don't know... the Lydia diary I saw today, No 29, has left me wondering if this whole relationship with Wickham is not so disastrous after all.

Spoilers, if anyone hasn't read the book.  :)

To hear her say "I feel good enough for somebody for once... it's really nice" was very moving,and revealed such a bleak landscape of years of insecurity.  Even if Wickham is a jerk, and he is, he is giving Lydia a taste of feeling adequate and loved.  What she's doing, putting her sense of self-worth on such a shaky foundation, is hideously risky --  it leaves me feeling like some croaking aunt on the sidelines, saying "it won't last!".  (and it won't. :(  )  But in the meantime, she has found someone who makes her feel, as it seems for the first time, loved and valued.  Wickham mightn't have intended to give her that, as Wickham in the book didn't intend to give her the status and security of a married woman, but for the time being, she has it.

BookLydia's life is permanently impinged by Wickham, but she manages, and is "Lydia still", as the book says -- unabashed, zesty, snarky, seizing everything she can even the top place at the table, pushing spinster Jane back into second.  She comes up a winner, or undefeated, at least, when a lesser person would have whimpered away, crushed. The last we hear of her she is trying it on, asking for a "job for the boys" from Darcy -- she doesn't get it, but she's got the gall to try, and I have to admire her for it (as someone who would probably never have a tenth that amount of bravado.) 

There should be a disaster hanging over the whole family, and I can't quite see it, but this episode makes me feel (or hope) that Lydia, though her assurance of being "good enough" is based on an insecure foundation right now, will come through finally to knowing she is good enough, and can make her life on her own undaunted terms.  I'm cheering for you, Lydia!