Trudy J. Morgan-Cole's Blog, page 69

Parenting: The Curse of the Normal

Apart from the everyday joys and stresses of raising two kids, today’s post is inspired by two things. One is reading Emily Rapp’s searing memoir about caring for a dying child, The Still Point of the Turning World. The second is a chance encounter with the mother of two of my former students. Both her sons finished high school with us, and it’s pretty much a given that if kids end up finishing high school in the adult-ed program where I teach, they’ve experienced some significant difficulties along the way to a high school diploma. Those difficulties might not be academic or learning-related — both this woman’s sons were brilliant — but it turns out there are a hundred things that can derail a kid from getting through high school, and parents are often taken completely by surprise.

Chatting with this woman, I was struck by how much as parents (I’m no different!) we expect our children’s lives to be an orderly progression from one stage to the next. I’m not even talking about some kind of helicopter super-parenting here, where parents are stressing out about getting their kids into the right preschool so they can make it into the right college (to be honest I’ve only encountered those kind of parents in magazine articles, blog posts, and fiction, never in real life). I’m just talking about the expectation most of us have that our kids will enter kindergarten and progress through to high school graduation and post-secondary without any hiccups more significant than the occasional poor mark on a report card. Socially, we expect them to progress from first crushes to high-school dates to a healthy, long-term (usually heterosexual) relationship. And the end result of all this should be a healthy, happy adult with a productive career and a thriving marriage, who produces similarly “normal” grandchildren. It doesn’t seem so much to ask, does it?

As I asked my former students’ mom how her sons were doing now, she happily reported that one was “back on track” (i.e., in university). The other was still “living the dream,” she told me with an ironic eyeroll (in fact, I knew a little bit about this young man’s current adventures from Facebook and friends, and while he seems to be doing fine, it’s obvious the dream he’s living is his own and not the one his parents had for him). She talked about how this whole circle of boys who had gone to school and been friends together for years had ended up having trouble completing school, and how blindsided the parents were. (“The girls from the same group were all fine!” she told me. “They’re all convocating now!”) I knew this, of course, because I’d taught several of these young men. In her bewilderment I heard the echo of every parent who has never expected anything more than “a normal life” for his or her child.

That obsession with “normal” started early, as most of us pored over “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” followed by “What to Expect the First Year” and “What to Expect in the Toddler Years.” Was I the only parent who felt lost and devastated when those books simply stopped at age 3? How am I supposed to know what to expect next???? I remember wondering with a sense of panic. Although by that time, I think I already guessed that there were no guidebooks and maps for the rest of the journey, and many parents had already jettisoned the books long before that, recognizing that no-one can ever really tell you what to expect.

But the seductive lure of those books was that you could go to them with the persistent “Is this normal?” question and find at least an overview of what was normal-ish. Baby not crawling at ten months? Not talking by fifteen months? Am I seeing normal variation in meeting developmental milestones, or something I should be concerned about?

Emily Rapp discovered when her son was nine months old that he had Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always fatal condition that meant he would not live past the age of three. As I read her brutally honest memoir, I thought about how much of our parenting is (necessarily) oriented toward the future. Even if I feel like in the whirl of everyday life I’m just surviving from moment to moment, the truth is that I’m nagging my kids about homework while trying to cook a relatively healthy meal and referreeing their sibling quarrels because I believe all this education, nutrition and discipline will do them some good later in life. In a hopefully “normal” life. You can’t avoid this future orientation as a parent, yet reading Rapp’s book made me think about what it’s like for parents who don’t have that future orientation, who can do nothing but love and care for their children in the here and now.

As kids get older, our questions about “what’s normal” don’t end; they just change. Is my teen’s rebellious attitude normal, or does he have Oppositional Defiant Disorder? Are her mood swings normal, or could she be suffering from clinical depression? Is her horrible boyfriend just a phase she’s going through or is she going to end up as an abused teen mom living on social assistance? Is his lack of interest in schoolwork normal or will he be living in a big-city apartment in his 20s, working minimum-wage jobs while trying to line up gigs for his band? And if he is … will that be such a bad thing? (Admittedly this last one is a bit inspired by the mom I chatted with last week, but as I am also the mom of a budding rockstar who’s not overly enthused about school, it’s not entirely irrelevant to my own concerns).

So far, in 15 years of parenting, 25 years of teaching and youth work, and 47 years of being a human, I’ve never met one parent who has raised a normal child. Normal is an illusion, and if you see someone who appears to be living a normal life, I can assure you there’s been some speedbump along their path that you may not have seen. Not that it’s wrong to question whether our and our children’s problems are typical or whether they require interventions. Not that it’s wrong to have dreams and aspirations, for ourselves and for our children. But for goodness’ sake, let’s go a little easy on ourselves and on our children in the ceaseless quest for normal. Because we’re chasing something that doesn’t really exist.

 

Searching Sabbath 09: The Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ

Here it is: this week’s Searching Sabbath. There’s a lot to wrestle with here in what I think is really the FIRST fundamental belief — how we view the role of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. I understand why the SDA fundamental beliefs put the Bible as belief #1 (because, as I’m learning more and more in exploring this, what you believe about Biblical inspiration really shapes all the rest of your beliefs). But to me it seems obvious that the heart of Christianity is what you believe about Jesus.

There’s so much to say here and I’ve only scratched the surface in the video above by talking about Penal Substitutionary Atonement and some of the different views people hold on Jesus’ death and resurrection and what it means for us. I didn’t even get to talk about whether those who don’t explicitly state belief in Jesus can still be saved by His sacrifice and death, which is a huge issue when we think of faithful godly people in non-Christian religions. Nor did I get to touch on the fact that it’s hard to hold the “life, death, and resurrection of Jesus” in balance. So many Christians seem to emphasize one of those (in the case of conservative evangelicals, usually His death) at the expense of the others. N.T. Wright’s work has been really influential in helping me think about what Jesus’ life means. It was more than just a prelude to the Crucifixion!

As always, I’m very interested to see what emerges in comments. So far, my post about Jesus as “God the Son” has had the most active comment section of any of these, so I’m hoping some people will want to continue that discussion in comments on this week’s topic.

For anyone who’s been enjoying my conversation with Ed Dickerson about Genesis and Creation, Ed has posted a new video here. However, I won’t get around to posting a “Sunday Supplement” until next  Sunday — I haven’t had time yet to finish watching, absorbing, and formulating a response. Stay tuned for more!!

Writing Wednesday 24: The Black Snowbanks of Spring

It’s March, and the gradual, messy process of melting has begun. Of course, at any moment we have to be braced for a new snowstorm. Spring here is a process of two steps forward, one — or probably three — steps back. That got me thinking about how often a creative process, like writing, can be messy in the same way a Newfoundland spring is. You think you’re making progress, and then … you get slammed back and wonder if you’re making any progress at all.

I am, though. Making progress, that is. I’ve gotten to the end of the section of the book that I wrote during NaNoWriMo and given it a vigorous going-over with my red pen, and now I have to input all those changes into the computer. Soon I should be really moving forward and writing new words!

Big news on the vlog is that next week will be my 25th Writing Wednesday! I want to do a Q&A video for my 25th, so if you have any questions about writing, books, or anything you’ve ever wanted to ask me or any other writer — post in the comments here, and I’ll try to answer it in next week’s video.

Sunday Supplement 02: Testing Truths

My conversation with Ed Dickerson about the Genesis Creation story continues this week. Please note Ed was clever enough to use a picture of my beautiful hometown as a backdrop. I am less clever so my backdrop is the usual scene of my bookshelves. I filmed this the same time as this week’s Searching Sabbath, so I’m still (unintentionally) showing off my pajama bottoms. Next week it’s back to black jeans, I promise. Also, for anyone like Jennifer S. or my mom who was concerned, the bandaid on my arm is from giving blood, not having it taken or anything else put in!

Enough about me … back to Genesis. I’m enjoying this exchange with Ed, though I don’t know if I’m any closer to having answers. In fact, once the concept of “testing truths” was introduced by Ed, I may have moved even further away from having answers. But I find the discussion — not just with Ed but with those of you who post comments — very helpful. Below, here’s Ed’s latest video and then my response.

Searching Sabbath 02: Testing Truths

My conversation with Ed Dickerson about the Genesis Creation story continues this week. Please note Ed was clever enough to use a picture of my beautiful hometown as a backdrop. I am less clever so my backdrop is the usual scene of my bookshelves. I filmed this the same time as this week’s Searching Sabbath, so I’m still (unintentionally) showing off my pajama bottoms. Next week it’s back to black jeans, I promise. Also, for anyone like Jennifer S. or my mom who was concerned, the bandaid on my arm is from giving blood, not having it taken or anything else put in!

Enough about me … back to Genesis. I’m enjoying this exchange with Ed, though I don’t know if I’m any closer to having answers. In fact, once the concept of “testing truths” was introduced by Ed, I may have moved even further away from having answers. But I find the discussion — not just with Ed but with those of you who post comments — very helpful. Below, here’s Ed’s latest video and then my response.

Searching Sabbath 08: The Great Controversy

Important note: When I shot this video, I thought I had it framed so that you could only see me from the waist up and wouldn’t see that I was wearing pajama bottoms. By the time I realized my jammies were in-frame, it was too late to re-shoot. Not a big problem in the context of the great cosmic conflict between the powers of good and evil, maybe, but still … I didn’t intend for my pajama bottoms to be on the internet. OK, now that I’ve got that off my chest, on to the Great Controversy!

All humanity is now involved in a great controversy between Christ and Satan regarding the character of God, His law, and His sovereignty over the universe. This conflict originated in heaven when a created being, endowed with freedom of choice, in self-exaltation became Satan, God’s adversary, and led into rebellion a portion of the angels. He introduced the spirit of rebellion into this world when he led Adam and Eve into sin. This human sin resulted in the distortion of the image of God in humanity, the disordering of the created world, and its eventual devastation at the time of the worldwide flood. Observed by the whole creation, this world became the arena of the universal conflict, out of which the God of love will ultimately be vindicated. To assist His people in this controversy, Christ sends the Holy Spirit and the loyal angels to guide, protect, and sustain them in the way of salvation.—Fundamental Beliefs, 8

 

This week’s fundamental belief is one that, as I explain in the video above, was so much a part of my worldview growing up that I never questioned it or even knew that there were Christians who viewed the universe differently. Seeing things in the framework of a great cosmic conflict between God and the devil appeals to my imagination. Is that really what’s going on behind the scenes? I recognize now that the Biblical foundation for this worldview rests on a few carefully chosen Bible passages (Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, the first bit of Job, Revelation 12) and that these must be read through a certain interpretive lens to bring out the “Great Controversy” picture that seemed so clear to me as a child.

I’m also starting to understand, as I get older, why this view is unappealing to some people. Some believe it gives too much power to a literal devil. Others believe it would be unfair of God to allow billions of people to be, essentially, playing pieces in a game that’s proving a point about His character to the universe — but that allows those people to suffer horribly, sometimes for the whole of their short lives. But what’s the alternative? A universe of random evil and a God (if one exists at all) who is either powerless to stop it or refuses to do so? That’s hardly more comforting, nor does it create a better picture of God to worship.

So I stick with the Great Controversy picture of the cosmos despite its troubling weaknesses. But I’m interested in what others believe too, and how they explain the problem of evil in the face of a loving God. Because that’s what the doctrine of the Great Controversy really is: it’s Adventist theodicy, our attempt to explain why in a universe created by a good God, horrible things happen. Our answer is, ultimately, look at the big picture. We’re playing a long game here; ultimately your suffering will be vindicated and glory will be yours. Does that “big picture” thinking comfort you or seem remote when everything’s falling to pieces in your life?

I guess one of my struggles is that I’ve lived a pretty comfortable, easy life, with not a lot of suffering (so far). So when I say, “Oh, we’re all part of a great cosmic experiment; God’s justice is being vindicated in the eyes of the whole universe and His way will be proved right in the end!” I hear the voice of some starving person on the other side of the world whisper, “Easy for you to say!” And yet it seems like parts of the world where people have experienced the most horrific suffering are often much quicker to embrace a theology that says that justice and reward are coming at some future time, than we in the West who like our rewards here and now, thank you very much.

What do you think?

Writing Wednesday 23: Interview With a Character

This week’s Writing Wednesday video finds me trying a writing technique I’ve always considered a little bit “gimmicky” — that is, “interviewing” a character to help me better understand her motivation and/or to move past a spot where I’m blocked in my writing.

I found this fun to do but not really terribly useful. I didn’t feel that I understood anything new about Lily than I did before, and that I probably would have learned more if I’d spent the same time adding a new scene or editing an old one. But the acting part was fun! I think I probably shouldn’t quit my day job …

Sunday Supplement: Conversations with Ed (1)

As you know if you’ve been reading along, my Searching Sabbath videos took on a new twist when fellow Adventist writer and video-blogger Ed Dickerson offered to engage in a “video dialogue” with me. Ed has been doing a series of videos about the book of Genesis and offered to respond to some of the questions I raised about the Genesis creation story and what it says about our origins. I think it’s a great idea to engage in dialogue. I also think his video, which cuts between my questions and his answers, makes me look like a squirrel with ADHD on speed, compared to his laid-back and relaxed presentation style, but that’s OK — we all have our different onscreen attitudes and personas. Mine is just a little more hyper than Ed’s. Anyway, if the whole Genesis, Creation/Evolution, origins question interests you, please watch the two videos below — Ed’s response to last week’s “Searching Sabbath” and then my response to him. I’m still left with lots of questions! Feel free to add to the discussion in comments.

Searching Sabbath 07: The Nature of (Hu)Man(ity)

Well, to be honest I expected a lot more response (and was braced for a lot more negative response, but also hoping for some enlightenment from the wise and learned) to the blog on Creation last week, but in addition to the two people were kind enough to leave comments I did get, as promised, one excellent video response. You can view Ed Dickerson’s video response to me here, and tomorrow I’ll be posting a “Sunday Supplement” in which I reply to him.

Because we’ve got that tangential dialogue going now about Creation vs evolution (and I’m eager for other people to jump in with comments and insights — don’t feel you need to make a video, just comment!) I’m going to leave aside the Creationist element of today’s topic, Seventh-day Adventist fundamental belief #7: The Nature of Man, and concentrate on some other aspects. The text of the belief states:

Man and woman were made in the image of God with individuality, the power and freedom to think and to do. Though created free beings, each is an indivisible unity of body, mind, and spirit, dependent upon God for life and breath and all else. When our first parents disobeyed God, they denied their dependence upon Him and fell from their high position under God. The image of God in them was marred and they became subject to death. Their descendants share this fallen nature and its consequences. They are born with weaknesses and tendencies to evil. But God in Christ reconciled the world to Himself and by His Spirit restores in penitent mortals the image of their Maker. Created for the glory of God, they are called to love Him and one another, and to care for their environment.

As my title for today’s video and blog post suggests, I’m more comfortable with the term “nature of humanity” than “nature of man,” but otherwise, this statement of belief is one of the things I really like about the Seventh-day Adventist church. I like that it affirms the indivisible unity of body, mind and spirit — no disembodied soul living on after us. This has huge implications, as we’ll see later, for our beliefs about what happens after death — but it also has huge implications for how we live here and now, since it implies that our bodies and what we do with them matter.

I also like the fact that (as is further explored in the chapter accompanying this statement in Seventh-day Adventists Believe), while Adventists do believe in the Fall and in the fact that we have a sinful nature with “weaknesses and tendencies to evil,” we don’t share either the Original Sin doctrine of our Catholic friends or the “total depravity” doctrine of our Calvinist friends. Human nature, in the Adventist view, is a mixed bag — weakened by sin and fatally prone to selfishness, but also still reflecting the image of God. In other words, a mixed bag — just as we all recognize it to be when we look at each other and at ourselves.

Finally, I like that humanity’s role in being given “dominion” over the earth is clearly interpreted here as stewardship and care for the environment — the perfect theological framework for a commitment to  Christian environmentalism that most areas of Adventism have not developed nearly as fully as we could or should.

Pride, Prejudice & Feminism: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (Part Two)

In Sunday’s blog post, I talked about how I’m enjoying The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, YouTube’s modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The most interesting aspect of this series to me is how updating a famous 200-year-old story by and about a woman forces us to examine how women’s roles have changed in the last two centuries. The intertwined concerns of gender and social class permeate Austen’s novel: the central problem of the novel is that Mr. Bennet has the misfortune to have sired five daughters, all of whom must be provided for, while his modest family estate is entailed upon the nearest male relative. In other words, he is prohibited by law from leaving any of his wealth to his daughters, and of course there is no possibility of women of their social class being allowed or able to earn an income. The only possible solution is for all of them to marry, or for some of them to marry well enough that they will be able to support their unwed sisters.

This is obviously not a concern that translates well to the twenty-first century. This was one of the creators’ reasons for reducing the number of Bennet sisters from five to three (as co-producer Hank Green explains here). The modern Bennet girls will earn their own way in the world, although there’s some concern that with Jane’s ambition to be a fashion designer, Lizzie’s graduate degree in Mass Communications, and Lydia having been relegated to community college because her grades aren’t good enough to get into university, they may not be able to support themselves comfortably in a faltering economy. They worry about student loans and being underemployed. And the differences of wealth and social class between the Bennet girls and their admirers still exist. In one video Gigi Darcy, happily babbling about her family’s winter place in Colorado, innocently asks Lizzie, “And where does your family ski?” — a question that illustrates as well as anything the minefields of class in a supposedly classless society.

But though financial pressures exist and Mrs. Bennet would like to see her daughters marry rich men, marrying “up” is no longer seen as a career move. Mrs. Bennet’s obsession with marrying off her daughters is always presented as a personal oddity rather than the pressing economic necessity it is in Pride and Prejudice.

This, in fact, is the underlying message of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries for those who are familiar with the original: Times Have Changed. Young women, you no longer need to find a man to support you! You can support yourself, and marry only when you find someone you genuinely want to spend your life with, rather than someone who can support you, or a distant cousin upon whom your family’s property is entailed. Let’s be honest: marriage for love, as we practiced it in the 20th century (and continue to practice it in the 21st) certainly has its shortcomings, as evidenced by the divorce rate. But anyone who thinks we need to get back to the “good old days” when a more “traditional view of marriage” prevailed really needs to read their Jane Austen. Marriage in the past was a business arrangement, in which the personal happiness of either partner (but particularly the woman, who unlike her husband would have fewer interests outside the home, no career, and less freedom to pursue extramarital affairs) was a secondary concern.

Jane Austen herself turned down a proposal of marriage from a not-particularly-appealing suitor (much as Elizabeth Bennet turns down Mr. Collins) knowing that by refusing him, she was passing up the chance of greater financial security not only for herself but for her family. In a letter written several years later to a niece who was considering a marriage proposal, Austen urged her “not to think of accepting him unless you really do like him. Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without Affection.” But even as she was apply this to both her own and her heroines’ lives, Austen was keenly aware, as her fiction makes clear, that “marrying without Affection” was the lot of many women of  her time, for practical reasons.

Elizabeth Bennet, of course (like thousands of heroines of genre romance that have sprung from the plot outline originally laid down by  Austen) is offered the best of both worlds. After her initial dislike of Darcy turns out to be based on, well, pride and prejudice (on both sides), she is given the opportunity of marrying a man who is both personally appealing to her, and wealthy enough to offer all the security her family could ever desire. The same is true of Jane’s match with Mr. Bingley. But other characters — Charlotte and Lydia — do not fare so well. Charlotte marries the pompous Mr. Collins for security and seems moderately happy; Lydia impulsively elopes with penniless and shiftless George Wickham, whom she adores, and finds that his charm quickly wears thin and married life is less idyllic than she had imagined.

What of their twenty-first century counterparts? Modern Jane Bennet’s story has just reached its conclusion with yesterday’s Episode 92. As in the original, she and Bing are reunited after misunderstandings. But rather than the couple riding off into the sunset to become master and mistress of a country estate, their relationship is resolved in a way that makes it clear that Jane’s career is just as high a priority to her as her relationship with Bing, if not higher. Jane may be the sweetest and most tractable of the Bennet sisters, but she is assertive and insists on an equal partnership. And though we haven’t yet seen the resolution of the Lizzie/Darcy relationship, no-one who’s watched the series can doubt that Lizzie will maintain her independence in whatever romance emerges.

It’s Lydia’s story that’s the most poignant element of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and that most sharply points up the changes in society since 1813. Modern party-girl Lydia, self-absorbed and always out for a good time, occasionally gives her viewers glimpses of the insecurity beneath her bravado — her early videos imply, though never directly state, that it’s not easy being the least obviously bright and talented of the Bennet daughters, nor being the odd girl out of Lizzie and Jane’s tight sisterly bond. There are hints of wistfulness beneath her bubbly exterior that never appear in Book-Lydia (at least, not as seen through Elizabeth’s narrative point of view).

In Pride and Prejudice, Lydia runs away with George Wickham, a handsome militia officer whom Elizabeth briefly admired but for whom she later lost all respect, thanks to Mr. Darcy’s revelations about Wickham’s unsavory past. Lydia writes home that they are going to Scotland to be married, but in fact they go to London, where they live together for a couple of weeks until Mr. Darcy tracks them down and essentially pays Wickham to marry Lydia. Throughout, Lydia seems unaware of the disgrace that living with a man before marriage brings not only upon her but upon her whole family; she appears to have been initially deceived into thinking they are to get married immediately but when no wedding is forthcoming Lydia seems unconcerned. She assumes that they will marry at some point, not knowing that Wickham is keeping her as mistress while trying to keep his options open in hopes of finding a wealthy wife — after which point the discarded Lydia would be shamed for life and valueless on the marriage market. When they do marry, Lydia does so gleefully and without the sense of shame her family feels would be appropriate, and takes great pleasure in her new marital status — until the romance has dimmed and Wickham’s charm has worn thin.

How to translate this situation to the twenty-first century? Obviously, Lydia and George living together would have no shock value at all today, and throughout the series fans speculated about how Lydia might be disgraced. In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Lizzie briefly dates handsome swim coach George Wickham, and does indeed begin to see him in a new light after Darcy reveals some facts about George’s past. After Lizzie and Lydia have a nasty quarrel, Lydia runs off to Las Vegas, where she happens upon George and their relationship begins. That relationship unfolds under the watchful eyes of the internet, since George begins appearing in and even orchestrating Lydia’s videos, but without the knowledge of Lizzie, who has stopped watching Lydia’s videos since their argument.

The videos Lydia makes with George are some of the most interesting of the series, since on one level everything that happens between the couple can be seen as a typical romantic cliche. On another level — one viewers were quick to comment on — the relationship appears manipulative and even emotionally abusive (it’s interesting to speculate whether viewers would have been as quick to accuse Wickham of setting up an abusive dynamic if they had not had previous knowledge of book-Wickham’s evil ways). Lydia diminishes almost visibly before the viewers’ eyes, her trademark “totes adorbs” personality becoming muted and quiet, her usually vivid wardrobe replaced by drab and baggy grays and blacks. In a final video, with George absent, Lydia offers a moving testimonial to how much George loves her and how their love has changed her for the better — yet it’s hard to watch her declaring this when every non-verbal clue is shouting the opposite.

It’s the last of Lydia’s videos because the next thing to hit the internet is a website (available online for a day or two before it’s ever mentioned in the videos, and sure enough, it took fans no time to find it and react) offering access to a hot video of YouTube star Lydia Bennet baring all. No actual video appeared on the site, only an email address and a countdown clock, counting down the days until the “Lydia Bennet tape” would become available.

Fan reaction to this revelation was fascinating. The show’s producers and writers had, of course, chosen the perfect scandal to expose Lydia and her family to public shame, and reveal Wickham’s manipulative colours. In 1813, the greatest scandal imaginable for a young woman of good family was for everyone in the community to know that you were having sex outside marriage. In 2013, when everybody assumes you’re already doing that, the greatest scandal is for the community to be able to actually SEE you doing it.

Almost all fans immediately assumed that Wickham was advertising and releasing the video without Lydia’s knowledge or permission, either exploiting a tape they had made together and meant to keep private, or possibly even taping her without her knowledge. Only a few fans opined that Lydia might have been complicit in the video release (and Lizzie herself, upon learning of it, makes the same assumption, only to be excoriated by viewers).

In fact, if Lydia had been involved in the release of the video, the story would have remained truer to the original. Lydia and George deciding together to parlay Lydia’s YouTube popularity into internet stardom via “adult” videos — having a laugh and making a quick buck along the way — would be a better modern equivalent to the couple who run away and live in sin together, heedless of the consequences, in Pride and Prejudice. In this sense, Austen’s Lydia is almost more empowered and independent than her twenty-first century counterpart: rather than being the nearly-innocent victim of an abusive opportunist, book-Lydia is a knowing partner in crime. Book-Lydia would be more empowered, of course, if she were deliberately flouting social convention because she genuinely believed that marriage didn’t matter and that she had the right to sleep with whomever she wanted, regardless of what the neighbours thought. Book-Lydia is no fearless defier of convention, though; she is almost unbelievably stupid, appearing not to recognize or understand the social censure to which she is opening herself. And, of course, that very stupidity and lack of regard for the consequences makes it impossible for her sisters to ever like and respect her, or for the reader ever to view her as a really sympathetic character.

YouTube Lydia is a very different young woman, despite her superficial similarity to her book-original. Though less academically inclined than her sisters, she is never presented as stupid, and beneath her brash exterior is an obvious core of sweetness and vulnerability. Society has changed a great deal since Austen’s day, but not so much that a respectable young woman can become an online star of naughty videos and retain the approval of her family and friends. For Lydia to retain and strengthen her relationship with her sisters — and the fans’ approval — she has to be an innocent victim (suggesting that perhaps our perception of to what degree young women control their own sexuality, while it has come a long way since 1813, may still have some distance to go). Sure enough, Lydia turns out to know nothing about the adult website, is horrified at the thought that George has violated her privacy, and is immensely relieved when the site is taken down without any incriminating video being released to the public (as yet viewers have not been told how this was accomplished, though of course we have our suspicions). After the crisis, Lydia retires (temporarily, fans hope) from appearing in Lizzie’s videos and makes no more of her own, suggesting that the experience has not only scarred her but forced her to reconsider how much of her life she wants to share with the public.

What I found particularly interesting about this entire story arc was that a few fans, even after the illicit video site had been revealed, were suggesting that the story might still end with Lydia and George together, as in the book. Some Austen purists protested that keeping them apart was too big a deviation from the original. But it seemed obvious to me that the sympathetic way in which Lydia’s character had been developed (due at least as much to Mary Kate Wiles’s excellent acting and onscreen charm as to the writing) made this impossible. In 1813, if a man took advantage of you, stole your innocence and shamed you in front of the community, your best case scenario was that he would then marry you. Legal marriage would offer you protection in the eyes of society — even if it offered little in the way of love, congenial company, or protection from domestic abuse. In that sense, women in the 1800s hadn’t come all that far from Biblical times, when the law required a rapist to marry his victim. Those laws seem repugnant today only because we’ve forgotten that in a pre-feminist world such a marriage, unpleasant as it was, really was your best possible outcome.

Thank God — and I say that with all sincerity, believing God to have been behind the feminist movement — this is no longer the case. No-one would suggest today that if a young woman’s boyfriend made compromising pictures and video of her available on the Internet without her consent, her best course of action would be to marry him. The Wickham experience has been shown to be traumatic and probably life-altering for Lydia (we have yet to see what new version of Lydia might emerge from this experience, and very few episodes left in which to see it). But viewers have no real doubt that the Lydia they’ve come to love will emerge wiser and stronger, and certainly with no need of George Wickham in her life.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries series has so much to offer — but really, if keeping Lydia free from marriage to George Wickham were all it offered, it would still be enough. Enough to remind us that although all feminism’s battles have not yet been won, we have come an impressive distance in 200 years.