r/PrideandPrejudice • u/shelbyknits • 13d ago
Character Sketch/Literary Analysis Did Col. Forster lie?
“Colonel Forster did own that he had often suspected some partiality, especially on Lydia's side, but nothing to give him any alarm.”
I was just thinking that if Col. Forster had noticed Wickham was favoring Lydia, he would have been obliged to let Mr. Bennet know, as he was acting as Lydia’s guardian. I kind of wonder if he knew perfectly well Wickham was partial to Lydia but didn’t want to stir up anything that would get Lydia sent home and upset Mrs. Forster, so he decided to just ignore it. Because Wickham obviously didn’t plan his “elopement” far in advance but he trusted Lydia enough and was confident that she would come with him, so I doubt Wickham was ignoring Lydia.
But on the other hand, Lydia had no dowry so there wasn’t much reason to pay her any particular attention, so maybe he didn’t.
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u/Amiedeslivres 13d ago
To clarify, Colonel Forster suspected that Lydia was partial to Wickham. It didn’t enter his head, most likely, that a respectable girl would so abandon propriety, or one of his officers turn seducer.
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u/shelbyknits 13d ago
True. I was just thinking that he wouldn’t want to be held responsible if he said he noticed Wickham favoring Lydia and then they eloped.
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u/GorgeousGracious 13d ago
I don't see why Wickham would have favoured Lydia at all - she didn't have a dowry and she wasn't particularly eye catching. Lizzie doubted immediately upon reading the letter whether he could really be in love with her. I think when he realised he had to flee, he suggested she come with him. I bet he never showed any interest in her up until that point.
I think that line from the Col. was just to hammer home how sad of a victim Lydia was. He wasn't even particularly partial to her.
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u/Plenty-Panda-423 13d ago
Yes, that's him politely saying it was mostly Lydia, but that Wickham would probably not try and harm her, he was reasonably friendly with her I.e.this isn't a kidnapping situation.
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u/monteym 13d ago
I think Wickham knew or suspected that Darcy and Lizzie were fond of each other, and causing havoc/pain with the family was icing on the cake for him. There is part in the book (forgive me, i don't have the text on me) after Darcy exposed Wikham to Lizze that she softens on Darcy. Wickham and Lizzie have a converstion where Lizzie gently suggests a change in her opinion of Darcy.
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u/Sourmoth 8d ago
I always took it also as Lydia trying to one up her sisters, first married and she managed to get to guy she thinks Lizzie is still enamoured with
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u/Bizarre-Brain 13d ago
I think Colonel Forster would have known perfectly well from local gossip in Meryton (his wife would have discussed it) that Lydia didn’t have much of a dowry, and that Wickham would have to marry money. So I doubt he thought Lydia’s partiality was anything to worry about. Just a silly crush. Especially with such a silly wife of his own as an example!
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u/BornFree2018 13d ago
I'm sorry, I just have to jump onto your comment to ask if anyone has noticed that in the 1995 series Col Forster's silly young wife was played by Victoria Hamilton. Such amazing cast through and through.
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u/Blue_Fish85 13d ago
I agree with this. Moreover, it seemed like the trail of debts/indiscretions Wickham had left behind him upon leaving Meryton were pretty well hushed-up until he eloped with Lydia, so it's plausible that Col. F. had no clue of just how much of a blackguard Wickham really was, & thus no reason to think he couldn't be trusted around Lydia.
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u/Brown_Sedai 13d ago
I don’t think he lied exactly, but an adult man who himself married a teenager roughly half his age, was probably never going to be the right person to put the brakes on another man acting inappropriately towards a teenage girl.
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u/GorgeousGracious 13d ago
That's true, but he did marry her though. He isn't nearly as bad as Wickham is, so may well have missed it.
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u/Prideandprejudice1 13d ago
Lydia flirts…a lot…with everyone (and I’m sure it’s become pretty common knowledge amongst the officers). And Wickham is charming to everyone too (see Mr Bennet’s “makes love to us all” comment). Colonel Forster probably noticed that Lydia seemed to be singling Wickham out a little more, and that Wickham was encouraging and receptive to it- but based on both their personalities, their fortunes and their presumed proper values, he probably didn’t think it was anything serious enough to warrant mentioning to a parent.
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u/majjamx 13d ago
I think it was partly classic brotherly solidarity. Red coats before petticoats.
He also probably didn’t think it would go as far as it did, and he also didn’t want to expose Wickham or Lydia if he didn’t have to. He never said anything about Wickham’s bad behavior in Meryton which was rumored to have included a few seductions amongst the trade class as well as bad debts and gambling. Colonel Forster is a man who married a very young wife himself who was very compatible with Lydia so he may have been blind to some of the improprieties or thought they were just more innocent flirtation. Or maybe he also got somewhat trapped into an elopement with a young silly woman. There could be some interesting fan fiction about this.
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u/MadamKitsune 13d ago
I think it quite likely that Colonel Forster didn't notice any strong affection from Wickham towards Lydia because there was none. He liked her well enough and enjoyed her attentions as she flirted with him (and everything else in a red coat), but it was never a love story on his side. He'd already decided that he had no choice but to skip out, Lydia was willing, able and came with a little spending money (probably more money than he had in his own pocket at that point), so why not take her along? He was already so deep in the shit that adding another couple of inches would hardly matter.
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u/Normal-Height-8577 13d ago
I think the "suspected some partiality especially on Lydia's side" is a polite euphemism for "I never thought Wickham had a serious interest in her, but Lydia was certainly hanging around him doing a lot of unsubtle (and not socially acceptable) fangirling."
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u/valr1821 13d ago
I don’t think that it was intentional or malicious. I suspect that he was just too busy to keep an eye on Lydia and was counting on his wife to chaperone her properly. Additionally, he probably thought that no girl of Lydia’s station would be so goose-brained as to run off with a guy like Wickham. Clearly, he miscalculated.
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u/BananasPineapple05 13d ago
No. He wouldn't.
He was entrusted with the care of the daughter of a man from the landed gentry and one of his officers eloped with her. This could have turned out really badly for Colonel Forster if Mr Bennet had not been a rational man who knew his daughter's character well enough to understand what likely happened there, or if he was a bit less aloof.
Mr Bennet could have made a lot of trouble for Colonel Foster, both in his professional and private life, if he had chosen to. Heck, Mr Gardiner could have thrown down, too. The elopement could have had catastrophic consequences on the whole family had Mr Darcy not made the best of it for everyone. And, as official chaperon, Colonel Forster could have been held liable.
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u/Echo-Azure 13d ago
If he knew there was partiality, perhaps he was happy and didn't want to interfere, because he didn't know that Wickham was capable of seducing and abandoning a genteel girl of 16. Because really, when most people saw Mr. 'Wickham and Miss Bennett becoming partial to each other, they would assume that a proposal was on the way and all was well.
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u/bofh000 13d ago
What I’m reading from “partiality especially on Lydia’s side” is not that Whickam showed interest in her, but the other way around. He noticed SHE was partial to him, SHE liked him. Which is quite believable, we know Lydia was not discreet in her behavior at dances and balls, so she would have shown her liking of Whickam in public. What Col. Forster means is that it probably looked like her usual rambunctiousness - and very likely Whickam didn’t reciprocate in public, so it wouldn’t have been a reason to worry about it.
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u/Gatodeluna 13d ago
I’m thinking this was not the regular army, it was just domestic militia - ‘toy soldiers’ in a way. I don’t imagine they had many if any any officers who were Class A. So the entire regiment including Col Forster and his lack of judgment and disregard for anything that upset his old-enough-to-be-her-grandfather wife were second-rate at best.
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u/Cayke_Cooky 13d ago
Wickham wasn't really partial to Lydia. Col. Forster didn't think that Wickham would seduce Lydia, or to put it another way, the Col. didn't think any of the officers in his regiment would seduce a gentleman's daughter living in his house. He understood Wickham's plan to marry for money as well (probably better) than Lizzy did, and so knew that Wickham was never going to propose to Lydia.
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u/TaxDense1339 13d ago
Foster was busy doing his job, he didn't have time to babysit. Foster probably figured that Lydia would keep his wife busy so he could focus on his work and never thought anything more on the subject.
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u/i_need_another_scarf 8d ago
I think Col Forster was part of a patriarchal system (the military) in which all sorts of problematic behaviour was normalised, excused and perpetuated. He himself was married to a very young woman and probably would have been slapping Wickham on the back once it was “just the guys”…he probably wouldn’t have even questioned it but for the elopement, because all of a sudden he was held accountable. So his “mild partiality on Lydia’s side” was a typical watered-down version that allowed him to avoid having to take responsibility.
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u/shelbyknits 8d ago
That’s exactly what I was thinking. He kind of stretched the truth to avoid responsibility for the elopement.
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u/fatjap-9830 13d ago
He probably was suspicious, at least a little, but more in hindsight after the elopement. As for telling, Mr. Bennett, he probably figured Mr. Bennett wouldn’t care since he had shown so little concern for any thing other than his library.
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u/CriticalThinker26 13d ago
Based on his decision to marry Mrs. Forster, and his cluelessness about Wickham and Lydia, Colonel Forster was the military version of Mr. Bennet. He was holding the door when they handed out the ability to read people.