Pride and Prejudice, Abusive YA Relationships and YOLO

Yesterday was the 200^th Birthday of Pride and Prejudice. For 200 years the story of Lizzy and Darcy has been capturing the hearts and imaginations of generations. It’s a love story that I have to confess I’ve never read (please don’t revoke my nerd card) but I’ve seen many adaptations of. I know the story incredibly well (from watching far too many adaptations) and also from being friends with Angel. I’m pretty sure Angel can quote the book, at random.

Swoon, BBC mini-series with Colin Firth . . . sigh.

Right, back to the topic of this post. If you haven’t been watching the Lizzie Bennet Diaries (where have you been living? Under a rock?) then let me catch you up. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice told as a series of vlogs. It’s a fantastic idea which so far has been well executed and enjoyable. Damn you, Thursday, why are you so far away from Monday (Lizzie’s vlogs go live on Mondays and Thursday at 9am PST, not that I’m like counting the hours or anything).

The flip side of Lizzie’s vlogs are a series of vlogs kept by her sister The Lydia Bennet. At first Lydia’s vlogs are so annoyingly painful to watch they make me want to YOLO my freaking eyes out. It’s hard to remember being that young. Or naïve. Or energetic. I wasn’t ever that much of a party girl. But something about Lydia is hopelessly and at times adorably youthful. *cringe* If you don’t have a youth where you cringed a lot, you didn’t have much of a youth.

In the past few weeks, as the dastardly George Wickham (or Wix, as Lydia calls him) has become a focal point of the story the tone of these vlogs has changed. Lizzie and Lydia had a massive fight before Christmas, prompting Lizzie to take an internship at Pemberley Digital (yes, I know, we all knew what that meant—Hipster Darcy! Did I not mention Darcy is a hipster? He is.) and Lizzie to go on a wild trip to Vegas. A trip where she reconnected with a certain Mr. Wickham.

(WARNING HERE BE SPOILERS)

Anyone who has read the book, or seen several (all, ok ALL) of the adaptations can already tell where we are going. We are moving into the endgame of the book. Just as Darcy and Lizzie finally realize that they love each other Darcy is called away, Lizzie has to rush home because her family is ruined and then . . . well, there’s the epic confrontation with Lady Catherine and finally, finally Darcy and Lizzie together at last. 

But . . . let’s rewind. Right now, we are rolling into Lydia’s part of the story.  A part that has always been vague.

Angel told me last week when we were discussing the vlogs (Yes, we google chat after we watch the vlogs, because that’s what adults do, right?) that in the book it just refers to the passage about Lydia and Wickham as ‘Lydia being completely under his power’.

This sounded ominous. You get the impression by Lydia being ruined (and subsequently Darcy forcing Wickham to marry Lydia—you read that right. Darcy. Forces. Wickham. To. Marry. Lydia. Mr Darcy’s Shotgun Weddings buy one get one free?) by the rakish Wickham is a bit lighter in the books. Lydia was a cheeky girl, but in the end it all works out.

However, this isn’t the case with the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. For me, this is the part where the adaptation gets really interesting. It’s a task in and of itself to retell Pride and Prejudice. We all know the source material. We know what is supposed to happen.

But what about Lydia’s story? She’s always the annoying younger sister who buggers everything up, right?

I’ve never before seen an adaptation focus on her as a character. Other than as a silly schoolgirl who gets in way over her head with the ‘menfolk’. But, The Lydia Bennet, is brilliant. What begins as a silly schoolgirl turns into something else. And for the first time (in my opinion) we get a real look at what the relationship between Lydia and Wickham would have looked like if she were in fact ‘completely under his power’.

*Shivers*

To fully understand this we have to look at last week’s video. Last week, Gigi, Darcy’s irrepressible sister, drops by Lizzie’s vlog to confess to the world the story of her and Wix. Go on watch it. I’ll wait.

You’re probably thinking what Angel and I were thinking. Um . . .  am I missing something? I think, very cleverly that we are.

We know that Lizzie edited out ‘the crying bits’. We know that Lizzie is worried that the video will anger Darcy. But actually, what we are seeing in this video feels a bit melodramatic. We don’t really know what Wix did to anger Darcy (ok, besides dating his MUCH YOUNGER sister and living with her, prolly mooching off her etc). But overall, this sounds more like a ‘relationship’ than abuse or anything terrible. Anything as epic as Gigi is making it out to be.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. Clearly whatever happened between Gigi and Wix (I am going to keep calling him that as it cracks me up—also it rhymes with dick, which he is, I’m mature like that.) was traumatic. I am sure it was probably abusive and I am in no way downplaying that. All I’m saying is that the video we’ve seen is vague at best. We can conclude that Gigi wanted to warn the internet about Wix and that she is really hoping to warn Lydia.

It’s a warning that falls on deaf ears.

The same week we get this *cringe worthy* video on the Lydia Diaries. Go on, watch it. I’ll wait.

Right, after watching this video we see exactly what Gigi could not verbalise. This is not the Lydia we’ve come to know and love (ok tolerate). This is a girl ‘completely under his power’. She’s pale. She looks unhealthy. We watch as Wix loses his temper with her over very minor things. We watch as he manipulates her. Threatens to do whatever he has to do to be with her forever.

In short, we are watching the intimate diary of an abusive relationship.

At first, I was floored. I couldn’t believe that the creators had chosen to tell Lydia’s story this way. Frankly, I was expecting the party girl to have a stint in rehab as the emergency that pulled Lizzie from Darcy. I never saw the abusive relationship. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this plot twist.

Until I talked about it with Angel. In today’s YA literature we are seeing a lot of borderline abusive relationships. Edward and Bella being just the tip of the iceberg. In a fair bit of modern YA  (please note this is not ALL YA and I am not going to start naming names here, though I could and you’d get bored) young girls are told that overpowering, borderline abusive relationships are all about ‘love’. Being controlled by a man/vampire/3000 year old demigod/centaur/fallen angel/zombie/triceratops is actually a form of love. If a ‘mate’ orders you around, isolates you from your family, friends, the things you love to do and tells you that ‘your love is the only thing that matters’ then it must be true love.

People, this is not true love. That is the classic pattern of an abuser. Isolate someone from their family and friends. Remove their interests outside of ‘you’. Make it so that their world revolves around you. Your love. And keeping you happy. Make the person feel like they need to be ‘good enough’ for you and that if they aren’t somehow they are in the wrong. This is terrifying.

What scares me more is the crop of literature that has popped up saying that this is how you find a healthy relationship. Even if it is fiction. Even if it is ‘escapism’. What worries me is that this sort of escape isn’t being produced for the romance market, who we know understand the conventions of the genre, this is being pushed at teens. Teens who are going to base their first, second, third, relationships on an abusive pattern.

So, I salute the Lizzie Bennet/Lydia Bennet Diaries for tackling this sort of a relationship. Not only have they handled it (so far, I can only go based on what we’ve seen at the time this blog is published) incredibly well, but they’ve also forced me to think about so much of the YA literature that is being produced.

In Lydia’s last published video entitled 'Good Enough' (Am I the only one who gets the reference to the Sarah McLachlan song about abuse?). Go on, give it a watch. I’ll wait.

As I was saying, in this last video we see a very different Lydia. This girl is a mess. She’s all over the place. She’s strung out on her love for Wix. She’s worried about pleasing him. Being ‘good enough’ for him. The old YOLO Lydia was the shit. The life of the party. The girl everyone wanted to smack, but also be. She was so full of joy. This Lydia, not so much. She’s a sad starved flower waiting for her sun to return.

This video painfully shows the insidious forms of abuse that exist in Lydia/Wix’s relationship. I felt myself start to tear up when I watched this. It’s a fine piece of acting and an important turn in the plot. With a very scary coda of a question mark as to when the next video will be airing.

So thank you, Lydia Bennet Diaries for shedding some light on this issue. Because you’ve given me a lot to think about. A lot to rant about. A lot to worry about. Mostly about the state of romance in some YA novels.

I’ll be waiting hopefully for an update from Lydia soon.

And I promise on my next reading post I’ll tackle some healthy YA relationships in fiction. 

Because there are TONS out there. I promise.