Willoughby
- seduces a young woman
- gets her pregnant and bolts
- lies about this to Marianne
- tries to be overly affectionate to Marianne
- competes with Colonel Brandon and tries to create rumors about him
- the only thing that he really wants is to have sex with Marianne (it seems)
- he leads on poor Marianne who is both innocent and oblivious to what is going on
Wickham
- tries to seduce Darcy's sister Georgiana into marrying/eloping with him
- doesn't get the opportunity to get Georgiana pregnant (thankfully) and bolts
- lies about this to Elizabeth Benet
- tries to get Elizabeth on his side by giving his "side" of the story
- competes with Darcy and spreads lies about him
- all he wants is to flirt with a beautiful girl and then ditch her for someone else
- he is charismatic and seems to go after the girls with low self esteem who make up for it by being flirtatious.
I think the lesser of the two evils in this scenario has to be Wickham. Willoughby is the worse one here. I mean he got some poor woman pregnant, bolted and now here he is again trying to seduce Marianne. He seems older and has more experience in the world with woman and having sex and he seems to pry on the younger women like Marianne. I think he is the more dangerous one. Wickham in contrast is calmer. He seems to want to be in the companionship of young girls that are beautiful so that he can make out with them. He seems a lot less scary than Willoughby. See Wickham tried to seduce Georgiana but when Darcy stepped in to protect his younger sister Wickham backed off, bolted and left her alone. When Willoughby is trying to seduce Marianne everyone around her including Colonel Brandon try and protect her from him, but he is persistent and doesn't give up or go away. I think that is more dangerous than anything Wickham could have done, as that kind of goes into the category of being slightly obsessive and possessive. It is kind of creepy, at least to me. The major problem with both Willoughby and Wickham is that they seem nice (they are certainly handsome, tall, and charismatic), but there is something that is slightly off about both of them. Willoughby wants to have sex with any woman he can seduce and then leave her to become destitute. Wickham wants to go after a woman's fortunes and then leave them with nothing. Both have similar goals but Willoughby's motives are a lot more aggressive and violent.
I don't know what books you read or when, but I believe you are mistaken. Wickham eloped with Lydia and surely had plenty of sex. If he didn't abandon her was merely because of Darcy founding them and the fact that she didn't get pregnant was mere chance, since it was a fortnight between eloping and marrying. He wasn't even ashamed of it when he visited the Bennets. And we can't really know if during the years after abandoning Pemberly and meeting the Bennetts he didn't get anyone pregnant.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand I believe Willoughby to have been seriously attached to Marianne. He may have other views at first, but since he was well known in Barton I don't think he would have sank in everybody's (his aunt included) opinion by doing too much. Either way I think (by some of Austen's expressions) that he seriously regretted losing her. If he would have exerted himself to live on little income in order to marry Marianne, I believe he wouldn't have been without hope of growing a better man. On other of your points, Marianne's acquaintance far from protecting were always promoting the connection, until they learnt he was to marry someone else.
Everything considered, I believe Wickham to be the worst of the two, but find too much similarities between them (name included) to wonder whether they are inspired by some real person whose name starts by W.