Language In Clarissa, Evelina And Pride And Prejudice

villein. Pride and Prejudice's George Wickham also
presents a possible character trait through his name.
The reader comes to realize that George Wickham is surely
as wicked as his name suggests. He uses false pretenses
and a story of denied inheritance to gain access to the
upper regions of society. His deceit and treachery
nearly ruin every woman he sets his greed on.
Young aristocrats were out to find wives with
fortunes and estates in order to improve their own lot,
but there were also those who pretended to have a fortune
in order to marry a fortune. Claudia Johnson notes that
"for [Austen's] male characters, dependence on the wishes
or the purses of others, if sometimes exonerated as
necessity, is never admirable . . ." (85) . George
Wickham's life and energy are devoted to finding a
wealthy wife. He builds a past out of partial truths and
turns his less than stellar youth into a moral cause.
Tara Wallace observes that the silences surrounding
Wickham, including Darcy' s, Elizabethf s, and Jane' s,
allow George Wickham to "invent a self and a history as
attractive as his features," keeping him free to "safely
contract more debts and seduce more women" (49).
Wickham counts on the discretion of others to mark
his own silence regarding the truth. Elizabeth is taken