Wickham and Lydia — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Wickham and Lydia
Characters
What you need to know
How Austen presents Wickham and Lydia, and how the character develops across the text: charm without principle and a reckless youngest sister, and the elopement that threatens the family.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'His appearance was greatly in his favour', 'a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address', 'almost all his actions may be traced to pride', 'whether he may be equally capable of retaining them, is less certain', 'I have bought this bonnet. I do not think it is very pretty', 'the assurance and disdain of all restraint which mark Lydia's character', 'She saw herself the object of attention to tens and to scores of them at present unknown', 'What a good joke it will be!', 'Lydia was Lydia still; untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless', 'He simpers, and smirks, and makes love to us all', 'I am prodigiously proud of him'.
Wickham as a foil to Darcy, charming in manner and bad in principle, and Lydia as a warning of what Elizabeth's liveliness could become without sense.
Context: militia regiments quartered in country towns and camped at Brighton during the wars with France, and the Marriage Act that made Gretna Green the place for elopements.
Edexcel's novel question has two parts, and neither marks context: part (a) on the printed extract marks language, form and structure (AO2); part (b) on the novel elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1), not language analysis. Use context only where it explains a reading, and say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
