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Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—Lydia’s Reputation:
After finding out that Lydia has run away with Wickham, Mary uses imagery to highlight the ways that, in their particular context, single young women’s reputations are particularly fragile:
“Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful lesson: that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.”
By describing young women’s reputations as “brittle,” Mary communicates the fragility of single unmarried women’s reputations during this time period in England in a way that she couldn’t accomplish with a literal description alone. Readers know what brittle things feel like and that tactile imagery adds to the intensity of the climax of this story—the Bennet sisters waiting to find out if Lydia and Wickham will get married, which throws into question whether or not their brittle reputations will end up intact or not.
This moment also underlines how the Bennets in particular need their reputations to survive this scandal because they do not have the type of wealth of the aristocratic class and will lose their home as soon as Mr. Bennet passes. The Bennet sisters have to protect their fragile virtue or else they will end up with nothing.
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