Hi, my name is Ellie Dashwood and this is another episode of Dashie Notes.
Today, we'll be talking about Lydia Bennet, Wickham and Gretna Green.
Oh, Lydia Bennet.
She just loves making trouble for her family.
Not only is she the most determined flirt in England, she also decides to
run off with Wickham to Gretna Green.
But wait, what is Gretna Green and why would Lydia Bennet
want to runaway to there.
After all, London is definitely more her jam.
Those are great questions.
And we'll be answering those for you today here on Dashie Notes.
My name is Ellie Dashwood, and this is Dashie Notes where we answer your modern
day questions about classic literature.
So if you love classic literature or a period drama set in England, you
may have heard of characters running away to a place called Gretna Green.
But, what is Gretna green?
Well, it's a small town in Scotland that's on the border of Scotland and England.
You know, actually when I was over there visiting the UK, which is
the awesomest thing ever, we drove past the motorway sign that says,
"This is the exit to Gretna Green."
And I was so excited and you can't even really see the town from the motorway.
So.
But I saw the sign.
But I did not run away there.
So what does this small Scottish town have to do with Lydia Bennet
and Wickham and elopements?
Well, let's look at a few legalities of Jane Austen's world that will
help us understand this better.
The first we'll be looking at is Regency marriage basics.
And the second is the Marriage Act of 1753.
Doesn't that sound exciting.
Regency marriage basics.
So in Regency England, there was about three different ways you could
legally get married: the reading of the banns in church, getting a common
license or getting a special license.
The first and most basic way to get married was having
the banns read in church.
Now the banns were essentially an announcement that the preacher
would get up and say, "So-and-so wants to marry so-and-so.
If anyone has a reason, they shouldn't be getting married, please let me know."
And he would say that for three consecutive, Sundays in the church that
the people getting married attended.
And that gave anyone the opportunity to come forward with, you know,
something super dramatic like, "No, they have a secret wife, that's locked
in their attic, who's been crazy since they've married them in Jamaica."
Named that classic novel.
Most of the time, it was just a formality.
Nobody objected dramatically to these banns.
And after the end of the three weeks, they could simply get married in their
church, be happy, little married people.
This was most common among the poorer classes, because, well, it
was the cheapest way to get married.
The second way was to get a common marriage license, which was a very similar
to getting a marriage license today.
You buy a marriage license and you get married.
You don't have to have these big announcements or the
three week waiting period.
You do have to of course have consent and show up to your wedding.
But it was more of a slightly higher class way to get married.
It was more expensive.
People like Emma Woodhouse and Mr.
Knightley probably got married with a common marriage license.
Because getting their marriage banns raad was more of something
like Harriet and Richard Martin probably would have done in Emma.
Getting a special license.
Now, if you were nobility or you were like super rich and maybe like in parliament,
or something super cool like that, you could get a special marriage license.
Which was of course super expensive because it's special and you would get
it from the Archbishop of Canterbury.
And you get it.
You go get married, you didn't have to have bannds or anything.
And you'd just be all like, "I'm so special and rich."
Now in Pride and Prejudice, Mrs.Bennet is like so excited when she finds out
that Lizzie is going to marry Darcy.
She's going to be like, "You're going to have a special marriage license."
Now it's much debated, whether Mr.
Darcy could have a special marriage license.
Because even though he was very, very rich, he was not nobility.
So there's a big debate of whether he could actually have
a special marriage license.
I don't know, either way Mr.
Darcy is still great.
The second thing we'll be going over today is the Marriage Act of
1753, AKA an act for the better preventing of clandestine marriages.
That's such a dramatic name for a law.
I mean, you have to love the Regency and the, well, that was before Regency,
the Georgian era law, naming people.
I mean, those members of parliament had flair when they were naming stuff.
This marriage act.
Let's talk about it.
So we went over the three ways that people could get married in Regency England.
And if you think of there's so many awesome ways you can get married,
why would you run off to Scotland?
And the answer is of course, age.
Now this act in 1753 was basically solving the problem the British had
with apparently runaway teenagers getting married clandestinely.
That was a big problem they were having, I don't know, British problems.
Life.
First world problems really let's face this here, teenagers
running off and getting married.
This act in 1753, required that anyone getting married under the age of 21
to have their parents' permission.
Which creates a really big problem if you're under 21 but
he was just met this officer.
And he's so cute and you need to marry him, even though like a couple
of weeks ago, he was hitting on your older sister was just kind of weird.
But that's okay because you guys need to be together.
And it doesn't matter that you're a 15 year old girl on vacation at the seaside.
Yes.
I'm talking about Lydia Bennet.
So why is Lydia Bennet and Mr.
Wickham running away?
Because Lydia knows that her father, Mr.
Bennet would never agree to her marrying Mr.
Wickham.
So they need to go somewhere where the Marriage Act of 1753 will not
prevent them from getting married.
And where is that?
Scotland.
Because in Scotland at this time, you could still get
married if you were a girl at 12.
And if you were a boy at 14.
Which is incredibly young, and I don't know what they were thinking at the time.
However, all Lydia and Wickham needed to do is get over the
English-Scottish border and get married.
Now, Gretna Green was a town in southern Scotland and it was the first town
when you're on the major road going up that you're going to run into once you
got across English-Scottish border.
So that's why it was so popular because young couples could
run away there and get eloped.
And that legal marriage was still legally binding when they returned to England.
And that's why Gretna Green became the original Las Vegas of the world, because
people were running away to elope there.
And marriages were not as good of an idea there as they are
mostly in Las Vegas today.
So that is Lydia and Wickham's plan.
They're going to run away to Scotland, get eloped and come back down as man and wife.
Of course, Mr.
Wickham, being the slime ball that he is, doesn't even have
the decency to marry Lydia.
And instead on their way, he stops in London and just convinces
Lydia to shack up with him.
And this raises another question.
This is a question that one of my Instagram followers submitted and wanted
to be answered in a Dashie Notes episode.
So here it is.
The question is why would Mr.
Darcy use his influence to have Lydia marry Wickham, when Mr.
Darcy already used his influence to have his own sister not marry Wickham.
So it's sort of like this double standard, like everyone knows Mr.
Wickham is going to be a horrible husband.
So why would you marry Lydia off to him, but not Georgianna?
Why don't you save Lydia from Wickham just like you saved Georgiana?
That's a great question.
But the answer all goes back to Regency morality, because if you
remember, Lydia ran away with Mr.
Wickham and shacked up with him in London.
Which means she committed immorality.
Which means she has essentially destroyed her reputation and any hope
she has of making a good marriage match or really any marriage match.
Girls at this time, losing their good character, ruined the rest of their life.
If she does not marry Mr.
Wickham, she's going to live out the rest of her days in
loneliness, poverty, and shame.
Pretty much marrying Mr.
Wickham is the only way she can to somewhat save her reputation, help
her sisters out because her ruining her own reputation is now affecting
their reputation by association.
And it's pretty much the only way she's not going to end up in
complete poverty as she gets older.
And so marrying Mr.
Wickham is the better of two evils there really.
Meanwhile, Darcy's sister Georgiana did nothing to ruin her name.
She did not commit immorality with Mr Wickham.
And even though she planned to run away in elope and marry him, that was not
something that would ruin her entire future, like what Lydia had done.
So that allowed Mr.
Darcy to step in prevent this horrible marriage and save his sister.
Meanwhile, since Lydia had already run off with Mr.
Wickham, Darcy had no way to essentially prevent the big domino effect on her life.
And instead he helped her choose the lesser of the two evils of marriage to Mr.
Wickham or, you know, essentially playing out the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel
Hawthorne for the rest of her life.
And really that was so great of Mr.
Darcy.
Isn't that why we all love him.
So in conclusion, why does Lydia runaway to Scotland?
Because she's too young to get married in England and Gretna Green
is the closest place she can go and marry her beloved like him without
her parents standing in the way.
And because she doesn't make very good life decisions, that's really the big,
bigger reason we're dealing with here.
Big reason: Lydia makes bad life decisions.
So my name is Ellie Dashwood and this has been another episode of Dashie Notes.
I hope you've enjoyed it.
In the comments, let me know if you lived in Regency England,
how would you get married?
Would you have the banns read or do you have a common license?
Would you have a super special license?
Or would you run away to Gretna Green.
Comment below and let me know, also make sure to subscribe to my
channel for more awesome videos about classic literature and Jane Austen.
Thank you so much for watching again, and I hope you have a great day.